This was by far the hardest but most worth it trip. The language barrier was ridiculous. We do not speak anything even close to Czech or Hungarian. It was terrifying. I almost started crying again. ALMOST. I didn't.
Heads up, there's a lot of history in this post. There was way more WWII stuff here than I was expecting.
 |
| Here's where we went. Also, I got my passport stamped in England and Germany, and our train went through Slovakia so I'm counting them! |
It was a looooooong trip. Tuesday night we left around 8pm, spent the night in the London airport, had a connection in Germany, and finally arrived in Prague on Wednesday around noon. We were exhausted but only had a day and a half in Prague so we had to get going.
Please don't judge me, but Prague is WAY over-romanticized. I mean, it was pretty but I wasn't overwhelmed. Maybe it was the time of year? It rained the entire time we were there and it was so cold. So so so cold. And humid. It was the wet cold that just chilled you to your bones. It got dark around 4 and then it was just eerie. We realized that the history of what went on was still right at the surface.
I haven't learned much about central Europe in my history classes. I'm pretty sure it wasn't because I wasn't paying attention either! We went on a walking tour of the city and here's what I learned:
WWII started in Prague in 1938, but I learned in school that it started in 1939! What gives? Nazis actually invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 and stayed until 1945. Prague was under communist control until 1989. But really, it wasn't until the mid-late 90's that Czechoslovakia actually started becoming a democracy and independent country. It's still a work in progress- the 2013 election will be the first time their president will be elected by popular vote of the people. Normally it's the two houses of Parliament that choose. Fun fact, one candidate, Vladimir Franz is causing quite the scandal. Over 90% of his body is tattooed or pierced. And he's the popular one right now, the word on the street is that he'll win. I'll keep you posted.
Check it out. This is from his official page.
 |
| I just don't think I could take him seriously as president. Or maybe I'd just be scared of him. It's laugh or run away. |
Since Czechoslovakia is one of the countries between Germany and Russia, they had two layers of dictatorship. When Nazi Germany had control, all of the Jews were taken out of Czechoslovakia, and then when Soviet Russia had control, all of the Germans and anyone with a semi-German sounding name were told to "go home"- many had lived there for generations. They are still trying to recover.
There was a very important Nazi leader named Reinhard Heydrich who was assassinated by two Czech men. Hitler went on a rampage when he found out. The cities that the two men were from were destroyed - completely flattened. Hitler said he wanted it to seem like they never existed. Thousands lost their lives because of it.
 |
| This is the Cernin Palace which both Hitler and Stalin used as a headquarters in Prague. The last president before the communists took over mysteriously "fell" from the top story in 1948. Odd coincidence. |
Speaking of presidents, we saw the current president of the Czech Republic! He drove past us while we walked through the palace where his office is.
We saw the John Lennon wall too. John Lennon really has no connection to Prague or the Czech Republic, but the people took the lyrics about peace and love and just dedicated a wall to him. Why it's only John Lennon, I have no idea. In 1988 the young adults in Prague would write on this wall all of the things about the government or communism or current issues, that bugged them. This led to the "Lennonism" movement and a huge clash between hundreds of students and the police on Charles Bridge.
 |
| The wall. It's just some random wall in this obscure part of town. |
 |
| With THE John Lennon. The original drawing of him was covered up by graffiti years ago. A new picture of Lennon appears once the old one gets covered up. |
 |
| On Charles bridge. |
We saw the Astronomical clock, and it has a little "show" every hour. It's just people that stick their heads out the top and play trumpets. I want to know how many hours that shift is. It has to be cold sitting in the top of a tower waiting an hour to play a 30 second tune over and over and over.
They had these outdoor food vendors in every square, so naturally we tried to try all of the food they had. We tried the hot wine, ham, sausage, and trdelnik. It kinda reminded me of the Rendezvous to be honest. Hot wine is just wine.. heated up. It was not good. I like my wine white, sweet, and cold. It was none of those. Trdelnik is a pastry with cinnamon and sugar on it. It's cooked over a fire and it was really good!
 |
| Hot wine and Trdelnik |
 |
| The sausage. Also, I bought this pink hat/scarf thing because it was so cold! Cute right? |
Prague is famous for its goulash. I was so excited to try it! All I wanted was some soul food- a pasta dish with red meat sauce. I'm kinda craving food from home so I couldn't wait.
This is not the goulash of prague in any way.
I ordered the beef goulash. What I got was a plate of beef similar to steak tips in a paprika sauce, with green peppers, onions, sausage, and those two bread things. The one on the right is like stuffing, and the one on the left was I don't even know. It was REALLY good. Totally unexpected, but good. It was also very heavy. The plate wasn't very big but I didn't even touch the bread.
 |
| They call it goulash. They don't even know what they're missing. |
Thursday night we went to the opera!! I feel so cultured. It was awesome. Probably #3 activity, behind the soccer game and what we did in Budapest (which I will say later). It was in German, with Czech and English surscripts. The inside was so pretty! It reminded me of Phantom of the Opera on the inside, which made everything that much more exciting.
 |
| Chandelier |
 |
| The seats in half of the house. We were on the very top, so you can't see the 5 levels below us. |
So that's Prague. I would have liked one more day, but I think we hit all the important stuff! Early Friday morning we took a train to Budapest. Little did we know it takes SEVEN HOURS. I have a confession. I am not cut out for road trips. I do not have the patience, nor the attention span to sit for that long. The plane ride over here almost killed me. The four hours to Vermillion is about all I can handle, and even then the last hour from Sioux Falls I have the radio blaring, windows down, and am dancing to keep myself entertained. Yes, I'm THAT person.
Budapest was crazy. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. Budapest is modern and busy and so beautiful and just so fun.
We started Friday night by going out with our hostel on a boat ride down the river that splits the once separate Buda and Pest. The city by night is amazing. We had a perfect view of the palace and castle and parliament from the river.
 |
| The Buda Castle |
 |
| This is the view from the boat. Wow. |
Saturday we took the city by storm. Since we were leaving Sunday at 6am we had only Saturday to see everything possible. 9am and we hit the streets. The city is divided into 26 sections and I think we walked through 7 or 8. It was a lot.
 |
| Szechenyi Chain Bridge Story with the bridge- the man who made it was so confident in its perfection said that if anyone can find something wrong with it, he would throw himself off it. The lions have no tongues. The story goes that he actually did throw himself off because of this overlooked detail. |
Hero Square - In the center is the Millennium Monument, and around the bottom of it are 7 statues for Arpád and the seven chieftains of the Hungarian tribes who conquered the land. The circular area around the back are men that "left their mark" on Hungarian history. And the statues on top of the circular thing stand for War, Peace, Work and Welfare, and Knowledge and Glory.
 |
| Hero's Square. |
As we were leaving Hero's Square we come to this bridge and next to it was this bright light. We veered toward it and it's this giant ice skating rink! We had heard about it, but didn't know where it was. Turns out, it's the largest ice skating rink in Europe. Naturally we had to test it out so Anna and I headed in. I can't even describe how big this thing is. There were hundreds of people out there. It was so big that both two ends were roped off- one side for a thrown together hockey game, the other for little kids to have an area where they wouldn't get trampled.
This is easily #2 on the Awesome Adventures in Europe list. And I gotta say, I'm a pretty good ice skater. Turns out having the City Area behind my house all those years really paid off. I should have been in hockey! Ok, I wasn't that good. I didn't fall down though! That has to count for something!
It was a little embarrassing. Anna and I always end up doing really coupley things together. So we get out on the ice and there's all these cute couples holding hands and laughing and gazing lovingly into each other's eyes, and it's all Christmasy and romantic with the lights and the music.. and then there's Anna and me. Now Anna has only skated twice in her life so she was holding my hand for dear life. And we weren't moving very fast so people had plenty of time to notice the two chicks holding hands, which technically wouldn't be a big deal in western Europe, but we were in central Europe which had just left communist hands so it was a little weird. Oops. At least we got some good pictures I guess.
 |
| It was massive! |
 |
| Successful lap! |
 |
| I'm doing a thumbs up for the record, and Anna isn't falling, she's just catching her balance. |
Saturday night we went to the House of Terror- which is exactly as scary as it sounds. It's a museum which shows the horrors of the Nazi, Stalin, and Hungarian control. It's located on Andrássy Boulevard, which is one of the most beautiful streets in Budapest. Our hostel was exactly perpendicular to it, on the other major street in that section. It had offices in the upper floors and torture chambers in the lower. They would bring prisoners there to interrogate, detain, and/or torture.
It's serves a memory to every single victim of the house, and it calls out all of the people involved in any way with the happenings there. It was so awful, all throughout the building are names and pictures of the people that were tortured or killed there, and then there's one room lined wall to wall and ceiling to floor with photos and names of all the people that tortured or worked there or made decisions that caused the suffering of innocent people. Some of them are still alive.
I honestly didn't know anything about Hungary's history. So here's what we got (This is just me summarizing, so I really hope I have all of this right. Correct me if there's a mistake!) - The Arrow Cross Party ran things previous to the Nazi invasion, and their ideology was Nazi-ism, so there wasn't a huge difference. Hungary formally joined Germany in the Axis forces in 1940 but sometime in 1941 or 42 they made a secret pact with the States and UK. When Hitler found out about it around 1944, Hungary was formally invaded by Nazi forces. Between 1941-44, of the 825,000 jews living in Hungary around 250,000 survived - less than one third of the Jewish population. This is really all I knew about WWII. I thought it ended with Hitler dying and the Jews being released.
Then the Soviets took over.
The Soviets naturally targeted any and all Germans. Abductions and deportations happened in two waves- first all Germans, then it was just unlucky people were were kidnapped. Since there was no one left of the Jews, Slavics, Gypsies, anyone not of Aryan race, smaller sects of Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses and disabled, the Soviets just started taking people off the streets. There was a story of a lady who took her three kids to get groceries and she was taken from the market in broad daylight. There are also records of a quota of prisoners needed from each city. They didn't care about demographics, they just needed numbers. They were at large from about 1945 - 1949.
This was horrifying to me: The last Soviet advisors left Hungary in 1989, the last soldier left in 1991, and the last Hungarian POW returned home from Russia in 2000.
Perspective- I was born in 1991.
The State Security Authority (AVH) came in 1949, (even thought the Soviets were still in control), and they specialized in terrorizing the entire country. No one in particular, just anyone they could. They had a "legion of informers" which monitored everything that citizens did - their thoughts, conversations, and daily habits, which seems very "Big Brother" to me. I remember reading 1989 and it seems very similar. Until the fall of communism in 1990, the AVH had considerable control of the government and political system. After that, many of them were killed or went into hiding. It's rumored that those who stayed in the city joined and strengthened the mafia.
We got to walk through the levels of the building- through the offices, meeting rooms, and torture chambers. It was awful. The rooms were so small. One of them had the single gallows used to hang people, one had a ceiling that was so low I had to completely bend over and there was no space to stand up, one had the whips and sticks and studded bats, and there were so many more.
We realized while watching the videos that hey, the podium where Hitler is talking to the masses is right in front of the building we're in right now; and the street where Soviet troops are marching is right in front of our hostel; and wow, the AVH had spies about 3 blocks from here. It was so surreal to think that the most sadistic men in the world were working and planning right where I'm standing.
I know that was pretty heavy. I'm still working through all of it. It's just crazy to me that Hungary is still getting over the era that I was born in.
I gotta say, the public transportation in both cities was unbelievable. It was efficient and easy to understand. I guess one good thing came out of communism. Fun fact, ok scary fact, we couldn't use the taxi's in Prague or Budapest because they're run by the mafia. Remember who joined the mafia? Yea. Scary stuff.
Well that was our weekend. I'm going to get a massage or something after that.
No comments:
Post a Comment