Budapest Walks: the City Park in Autumn

If you live with a dog, and you live across the street from the City Park, then the City Park is where you spend a lot of your time, with the dog. Since this is the time of year when we raise the entire city of Budapest on jacks and move it from Southern Europe to Northern Europe for the winter and hope for the best until the strawberries ripen next April, and the foliage is at its peak, Folti and I took a few snapshots to pontificate over.

From the perspective of the landscaper's art, the amenity-loaded Városliget is not necessarily one of the world's great urban parks. For that, we have fantastic Margaret Island in the Danube, where the Ottoman pashas once kept their seraglios. We also have plenty of green space in Buda and, as I've noted elsewhere, easily accessible in most directions outside of the city limits. The Városliget serves several purposes. One is as a lung for the most densely populated parts of Pest, where we can stretch our legs, along with those of our dogs, children, and other beasts. Another is to host the country's main circus, zoo, and amusement park, and various national museums. A third is as a focus point for outdoor nation-wide events, political or otherwise. So pretty much everyone in the country has been here at some point or another, if just on a school trip.

To get to the park we have to confront a direct relic and an indirect relic of communism:

This giant parking lot, about 30 meters wide, runs the entire length of the park along Dózsa György Street - about a kilometer, as far as Heroes Square in the background. This strip used to be part of the liget, but the Communists needed a big central open area to hold their May Day parades, so they cut down the trees and paved it over. The neighborhood parking situation makes it unlikely that they will be replanted anytime soon, but if they were it would look really nice. 

That big pile of rusty stanchions is the monument to the 1956 revolution that almost everyone hates, set on the spot where a giant statue of Stalin stood, the toppling of which was a key moment in the chain of events of the uprising. The message is supposed to be "when we stand united we are tall, bright, and shiny but if we don't we're a bunch of scrofulous backbiting runts. A lesson well worth learning, but to most people it just says, "we're an ugly heap of girders in the middle of a big parking lot," and our current mayor has indicated he might replace it.


One thing this parking lot is good for is the free annual concert that T-mobile puts on. They used to clear out the entire thing and you could stand and watch Elton John or Lionel Ritchie do their thing. In recent years they have gotten chintzy though, hiring the Bryan Adamses of the world and closing it off so that only the telephone company's esteemed and honored VIPs get a direct view, as if you would want a direct view of Bryan Adams.

Dashing in front of the No. 74 Trolley, we're in the park proper. The southern half nearest home is composed of interspersed woods and clearings with various playgrounds, 5-a-side football courts, and statues. This is one of my favourites:

Erected to Crown Prince Rudolf, only son of Franz Josef and Elisabeth, who died in 1889 in a mysterious murder-suicide with his mistress, thereby throwing the endgame of Hapsburg political power into havoc. Presumably that hunting rifle he's holding isn't what he used to do himself in. Shadows of empire.

And of another empire. Ronnie gets a statue for his role in the peaceful denouement of the Cold War, which is fair enough. I think it was Peter Zwack, paterfamilias of the Unicum stomach-medicine-manufacturing clan who, after living as an emigre in the US for many years, spearheaded the push to set this up. Also in this area are statues of George Washington and Churchill, who sometimes get a paint job from right-wing radicals, which is their unsubtle way of pointing out that it's a bit odd to have a statue of a guy who sent bomber squadrons over your country, even if he did so with the best of intentions. Also here is Folti's favorite chestnut tree and lots of ping pong tables.

Moving right along we have Vajdahunyad Castle, in part a replica of a gothic castle in Transylvania, which houses the Agricultural museum. Probably most of the tourists think it's real.

All of this area was built up for a millennial exhibition (1000 years of Magyars in the Carpathian Basin) in 1896. The castle is built on an island in the middle of an artificial lake. In some areas you can go boating in summers. This portion is drained in winter and converted to a great big ice rink.

And it looks like someone is setting up a temporary ski-slope to launch the ski season. The sport has gotten very popular here in recent years, to the enrichment of our more mountainous neighbors. There's lots of these type of themed mini-events held here throughout the year.

Heroes square from the rear, with lots of statues of medieval chieftains and kings. The statues themselves are more of luminaries then actual heroes, but the square is dedicated to all those who gave their lives for the nation, voluntarily or otherwise.

Say hello to the ducks. Now we're on Zoo Road, which is packed with entertainment options for all ages. First we have, as you guessed, the zoo.

And then the circus.

I want to see those visiting Chinese acrobats. We keep hoping that one of our friends with kids will invite us to help take them here - and to the puppet theater on Andrásssy Avenue - but no one ever does. Sigh.

And then the amusement park, which will be moving to new quarters so the tigers and bears in the zoo can stretch out a bit. They will be keeping this vintage merry-go-round here though, apparently.

 

And across the street we have the famous Széchényi Baths, fed off the hot water that comes gushing out of the ground here. I used to go quite a lot but tourists and a major renovation have driven up prices. I could always go to a doctor and complain of back pains or one of number of imaginary ailments that get you a script written for subsidized entry here many of the other baths. There's also a little kiosk outside where you can buy stinky drinking water that's beneficial to many of your vital organs.

Swinging back toward the east side of the park, we pass the Petőfi Csarnok, an indoor-outdoor concert hall built in some kind of Soviet Moorish style.

Concert organizers used to be able to bribe the official whose job it was to make sure they didn't play too loud or too late, and on summer nights with atmospheric conditions just right and windows open, I've been serenaded at high-volume by the likes of Iron Maiden and Billy Idol in my bedroom nearly a kilometer away, usually when I was ready to go to bed. Now they seem to be a bit stricter.

On Saturday afternoons it doubles as a flea market where you can purchase a wide range of counterfeit brand-name products.

Here is where Budapest children learn to stop their bike at a railroad crossing and look both ways. The transportation museum is in the background, with lots of neat old trains and planes on display.

And in case the autumn leaves don't remind us of the fleeting nature of life, this guy was a wealthy lawyer who, upon dying in 1806 left his estate anonymously to what was then the city of Pest, on condition he could be buried, also anonymously, in the Városliget. The marker bore only the word "fuit", which I don't need to tell you is Latin for "was", but was later amended to include all of the information I've just given you. If you have cash, the interment statutes don't apply to you.  

Thank you for you attention. I will be collecting your sticks, pinecones, and chestnuts at the exit. We hope you will enjoy the rest of your stay in Budapest City Park!