5 Hungary

Prague to Warsaw night train 1993 - DON'T - Can't lock doors on first-class compartment & forbidden due to sleep, due to "hooligans". For $50 dormitory car with guard. Plus don't go to police, as they will hold onto your passports.

Budapest - art nouveau buildings (on the Danube)
CHECK PRICES BEFORE YOU EAT!
1990 Beware of pickpockets - leave passports in hotel safe, carry waist bag
Avoid Pesta hotel hub across from the palace.
Beware of Mace in the face walking alone on beach (Lake Balaton).
Budapest Castle - labyrinth (half an hour)
Grundel restaurant (famous 1930s), reopened - overlooks City Park lake.
Hhistoric Gellert Hotel overlooking the Danube and bustling Gellert Square - Art Nouveau masterpiece, most famous hotel in Budapest. Houses the ornate Art Nouveau Gellert Baths, the most popular of Budapest's renowned thermal baths.
Daniel Hamar, leader of the Hungarian band, Musikas
Walk up to the Gellert Hill from where you can view both hilly Buda and the flat Pest side of the Danube River.
Walk through the old cobbled Buda Castle district and enjoy the fabulous view from Fisherman's Bastion.
Walk along the Danube,
Central Market Hall
Daniel's house in the countryside completely restored in the traditional Hungarian way. Visit the fort up the hill from the village and stop in at the local potters's studio.
On Wednesday night Budapest is alive with the gypsy music at many of Budapest's lively dance hauses.

+ nearby: Szentendre - artist's colony - PICTURES
(day trip from Budapest - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szentendre )

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http://www.budapestinfo.hu/en/programmes/evesjelentosprogramok.phtml
http://www.escapeartist.com/efam3/Budapest_Expats.html
http://www.escapeartist.com/efam9/Living_In_Budapest.html
Richard's Budapest Journal - http://www.greatestcities.com/users/rap123/Europe/Hungary/Budapest/
Discount Budapest Hotels - http://www.talkingcities.co.uk/
Sziget Festival 2006 - http://www.szigetfestival.com/
Basics - Hungary, real estate for sale - http://www.casa-mia.at/information.php/language/en
Bela Halmos - Google Search
Budapest Spring Festival 2007 - http://festivalcity.hu/btf2007/?t=h&id=2096&l=en&PHPSESSID=45fbe385bd1e44d408e2b70f2bd22c84

HONGRIE BUDAPEST Voyage photos Carnet de Voyages - http://www.bourlingueurs.com/hongrie/

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Budapest - BE CAREFUL OF GETTING VASTLY INFLATED BILLS IN RESTAURANTS!!!
12/23/1990 - In broad daylight in the crowded Vaca shopping mall, shoulder bag cleverly opened. LEAVE PASSPORTS AND OTHER VALUABLES IN HOTEL SAFE & CONCEAL CREDIT CARDS AND CASH IN ZIPPERED WAIST BAG!!
Avoid Pesta hotel hub across from the palace, esp. at night.
One man had Mace sprayed face while walking on the beach at Lake Balaton & lost valuables.

Ibusz Private Rooms and Apartments, operates 24 hours a day at Petofi Ter 3 in Budapest; 118-4842 (the country code for Hungary is 36, the city code for Budapest is 1). Rates start at $18 a night for a double room. (10-27-91 NYT & 11-20-91 BG)

[Nov 1990] Marco Polo - "One of best Italian restaurants anywhere in Europe" - opened by Italian importer of Hungarian beef who married a Hungarian. In former library of the Hungarian Hydrological Society. $95 for two.

Sense of exuberance, food, witty articulate handsome talented.
Central market bursting with fruits, flowers, cheeses, peppers.
Hilton built around the ruins of a 13th-century Dominican church atop Castle Hill.
Have dinner at the Matyas Pince, where only the best gypsy bands play.

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[NYT 1-19-92] Folk Dance -
Fridays -
The Teka at Almassy Teri Szbadido Kozpont (Almassy Square Free Time Center), 6 Almassy Ter, seventh district, 5 pm - midnight. 500+ people. Faithful village music.
The Zsaratnok group at Lagymanyosi Kozessegi Haz, 17 Korossy J. Street, 11th district. Balkan (Serb, Macedonian, Greek, Bulgarian).

Saturdays -
Kalamajika plays at the Belvarosi Ifjusagi Haz (Downtown Youth House), 9 Molnar Street, fifth district. Béla Halmos (fiddler) helped found the dance movement. Best practitioner of Szek Village music this side of Rumanian border.
Pontos Ido at XII Kerulet Polgarmesteri Hivatal (Twelfth District Municipal Building), 23-25 Boszormenyi St. (Lackluster, but visiting musicians liven things up.)

Sundays -
Meta at Jozsefvarosi Klub (basement), 13 Somogyi Bela St, eighth district. Has woman leader & uses bagpipes.
The Hora dance house, with Israeli dances taught by Israelis (usually not to live music) alternates between the Il Kerulet Muvelodesi Kozpont (Second District Culture Center) on Marczibanyi Square OR the Almassy Teri Szbadido Kozpont. Hungarian Jewish Cultural Organization = 142-6924.

Tuesdays -
Muzsikas at Szakszervezetek Fovarosi Muvelodesi Haz (Union Culture House), Fehervari St 47, 11th district. Most polished & internationally known.

Wednesdays -
Tatros plays Csango music at the Il Kerulet Muvelodesi Kozpont (Second District Culture Center) on Marczibanyi Square. Music from far reaches of Rumania. Popular sound. Five minute walk from Moscow Square.
Falkafolk plays Balkan at Szakszervezetek Fovarosi Muvelodesi Haz (Union Culture House), Fehervari St 47, 11th district.
Tukros at the Ferencvarosi Muvelodesi Haz, 27 Haller Street, ninth district.

Thursdays -
Mezo at Czerepeshaz, 28b Vezer Street, 14th district.

First dance is always from village of Szek, an island of Hungarians amid their enemies the Romanians.
Tanchaz
Csárdás
Bela Bartok & Zoltan Kodaly had collected earlier.
Zoltan Kallos = noted collector.

Budapest Spring Festival - March 16th - April 1st, 2007
Palace of Arts - Béla Bartók National Concert Hall
1095 Budapest Komor Marcell u. 1.
555-3300, 555-3301
March 28 - Márta Sebestyén and her guests: the Muzsikás group, Ferenc Seb?, Béla Halmos, Balázs Szokolay Dongó, Mátyás Bólya, Andy Irvine, the Bisserov Sisters, the Vujicsics and the Söndörg? groups will appear.

http://www.budapesthotels.com/touristguide/Tancz.asp
http://wherebudapest.hu/2001_03/hungarian_dance_house.html

Google: Bela Halmos Budapest

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http://wherebudapest.hu/
Szentendre - 20 kilometers north of Budapest along the Danube.
SoHo on the Danube: An Artist's Village [NYT 11-18-90]
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Holloko, dans les montagnes du nord-est de la Hongrie et à 60 km de Budapest, est un exemple exceptionnel d'habitat traditionnel volontairement conservé. Ce village, qui s'est développé surtout aux XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles, reste un témoignage toujours vivant des formes de la vie rurale avant la révolution agricole du XXème siècle. Les maisons reposent sur des soubassements de pierres, les clochers des églises sont en bois, et les murs blanchis à la chaux. Hollóko est inscrit sur la liste du Patrimoine mondial de l’Unesco depuis 1988. <<<
http://www.bourlingueurs.com/hongrie/page_04.htm
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Pecs - mosque Hassan Jakovali + grill with locks
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[NYT 9-27-92] the Orség - uncharted region - tip of western Hungary, next to Austria & Slovenia - "behind the back of God".
Ancient villages and medieval churches. Long harsh winters. Home-made fruit brandy = palinka. Potter = Fazekas.
Oiszentpeter, the central village, is 160 miles west of Budapest, about a 4-hour drive.Trains to Kormend & Szombathely. Ispank & Szalafo are the most charming villages. (If they cook breakfast, leave a few extra dollars.) Rooms $10 for double. Peasant houses = paraszthazok.
Pityerszer open-air museum - settlement with "bun-topped" houses. From Oriszentpeter, take road to Szalafo and follow signs. Walk around looking in through the windows.
Fazekas Haz, Fo Ut (Main Street), Magyarszombatfa Village - preserved potter's house and kiln.

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SoHo on the Danube: An Artist's Village
By ALEXANDRA SHELLEY;
Published: November 18, 1990
IN Hungary, SoHo is west of the Danube. It is the small town of Szentendre, less than an hour from Budapest by ferry, train or taxi. Its meandering cobblestone streets and steep alleyways lead to over a dozen museums and galleries revealing the scope of 20th-century Hungarian art.
Artists have flocked there since the turn of the century, inspired by the landscape of the river on one side and the Pilis Mountains on the other; the town's Baroque churches; its sway-backed, ceramic-tiled roofs and 18th-century merchants' houses painted in bright yellows, cool greens and rich russet as if defying a painter to come up with a more colorful portrayal than this reality.
Today more than a hundred artists work here and the fingerprints of the muses are everywhere: you may come across a young man in a suit and tie, his face obscured by mud, in the midst of a performance piece; or find yourself ogled by dolls' eyes embedded in the wall of an alley; or pass the gateway of a courtyard to hear a jazz band, then find the same syncopations echoed by the boot heels of a Serbian dance group performing on Templom Square.
If this was once a town that time forgot, it was only a temporary amnesia. The population stands at 18,000, though most live on the outskirts. The tourist influx of the last decade has created a series of contrasts that open the mind's eye. Stout peasant women in babushkas lick cones of gelato, over the door of a restaurant advertising O Magyar (Olde Hungarian) cuisine hangs an American flag, and the driver of the horse carriage for hire listens to rap music -- all but drowning out the rhythms of village life.
On the other hand, realizing the tourist potential, the local government has meticulously preserved the town core; each keystone is in place. There are several restaurants that rival the best in Budapest. And if as in SoHo its Bohemianism has become slightly institutionalized, Szentendre is at the same time the only place to go, in the absence of a national museum of modern art, to find the contemporary work of Hungary -- some of it fascinating, disturbing, spectacular, and much of it unknown in the West.
What makes Szentendre unique is the refractions, as in a fun-house mirror, the opportunity to see it through one's own eyes, and then walk into a museum and find the same townscape, the dance of riverside light, the penumbral interiors of the Serbian Orthodox churches and their golden-haloed icons, filtered through the perception of the artists.
Travelers who stop here for a couple of hours on the typical Danube Bend region tour miss entirely the irregular beauty of Szentendre (it's pronounced SENT-en-dray). It is worth a whole day's trip.
Chic is nothing new to this riverside town. The Romans put it on the map in the first century A.D., when the garrison at Szentendre was a strategic link in the empire's chain of fortresses.
The town went through a number of reincarnations until, thanks to its complete demolition during its invasion by the Turks, it was rebuilt in the late 17th century with the unified Baroque face that remains today.
The new settlers were mostly Serbian insurrectionists fleeing the Ottoman Empire after the fall of Belgrade. They were followed by Hungarians, Germans, Slovaks, Greeks, Romanians and Dalmatians. But it was the Serbs who gave the town its Mediterranean overtones, the houses herding up the hillsides, arched gateways leading to quiet courtyards, tangled streets. Baroque Orthodox churches, with their pear-tipped steeples, can be found nowhere else in Hungary. Here, there are seven (for the seven communities from which the Serbs came).
Each Aug. 19, as they have for the last three centuries, the Serbs gather for the outdoor fair and Feast of the Transfiguration, at the Preobrazenska Church on Bogdanyi Street. The Orthodox see in Szentendre, vacant since the Communists tightened control of religious organizations in the 1950's, will this year once again be inhabited by a bishop from Yugoslavia.
One inevitably begins a tour of Szentendre at the Main Square (For Ter). From here none of the museums are more than a 10-minute walk. At its center is a florid Baroque cross erected in 1763 by a Serbian merchants' guild to mark the bypassing of Szentendre by an epidemic of the plague -- although it is now at the focal point of the recent outbreak of commercialism. Swirling around it are visitors holding cameras in front of them like talismans, hawkers of knickknacks ranging from small wooden buddhas to broken pocket watches, skateboarders narrowly missing elderly residents on their way to market.
The cross was restored this year, the marble cleaned to its original baby-cheek pink, the icons repainted. A saint on one of the lower panels -- who appears to be wearing glasses and a befuddled expression -- is thought by local residents to have taken on, after the restoration, a suspicious resemblance to Woody Allen.
The two-story houses along the square belonged to the richer merchants, mostly vineyard owners, who proclaimed their wealth with wrought-iron balcony railings or rococo moldings, although these could only be afforded in the humble medium of plaster. A few of the steeply pitched roofs span two houses, a sign that a marriage had taken place between the neighboring families.
Presiding over the Main Square is the Serbian Blagovestenska Church. Its iconostasis was completed in 1804 by Mikhailo Zivovic, a Serbian whose apprenticeship in Vienna is evidenced by his inability to resist surrounding the austere paintings of biblical scenes and saints with a Baroque fringe. This icon wall separates the nave from the sanctum where women -- considered less pure than men -- continue to be prohibited. Along the walls are the wooden seats, which fold up so that worshipers can stand during the service, proving that they are willing to make at least this sacrifice for God.
Next door in the former Serbian high school is the Ferenczy Museum, housing the works of five members of one family. Karoly Ferenczy (1862-1917) was a pioneer of the Hungarian school of post-Impressionism that painted in the Transylvanian hill town of Nagybanya until, when Romania took control of the region after World War I, eight members left to found the first artists' colony in Szentendre. The museum collection includes some of Karoly Ferenczy's most lyrical works in the Nagybanya style; Art Nouveau tapestries by his daughter, Noemi; and sculptures -- mostly stylized plump nudes -- by his son Beni.
Down the block at 10 Dumtsa Jeno Street is a lovely, airy museum devoted to Jeno Barcsay (1900-88), a member of the first Szentendre artists' colony. The paintings in this building, his former studio, trace his evolution over a half century, from swirling townscapes to the pared-down abstractions of his last years. The exhibit also includes some of the bold constructivist tapestries for which he is renowned, woven by a local artist, Margit Czako.
A volatile concoction of Orthodox iconography, surrealism and Russian constructivism can be found in the collection of works by Lajos Vajda (1908-1941). In a house on the corner of Kigyo and Hunyadi Streets are the tense charcoals, collages and paintings of an artist who is one of the most imitated in Hungary today, yet was so impoverished during his lifetime that he did much of his work on wrapping paper.
A FEW paces around the corner at 12 Bogdanyi Street is the Amos-Anna Museum, exhibiting the paintings of a husband and wife. The work of Imre Amos (1907-1944), considered one of the foremost Hungarian surrealists, provides an unusual first-hand chronicle of the tragedy of the Jews of Hungary during World War II. He continued to sketch clandestinely while in a Jewish forced labor brigade. As his situation became more desperate -- he would eventually die in a concentration camp -- his signature guardian angel was transformed, until, in one of his last paintings, "Crying Angel," she is a mourner at his own death, her hand at her throat, one eye askew and an expression of unbearable sorrow.
His wife, now 77, is still painting, exploring the marriage of whimsy and tragedy, juxtaposing overweight puppets, cut-out angels from old postcards, images from the war -- all brought to life from a gaudy, folk-art inspired palette.
This inspiration can be traced back with a five-minute walk to the Museum of Folk Art of Pest County, clinging to the side of Templom Hill on the Hild Stairway. This is the oldest preserved house in Szentendre, its mud and willow-thatched walls still standing from the 17th century, the cellar dating to medieval times.
The exhibit through December is of rural children's lives, objects from the daily rounds of play, work, superstition and religion -- among these a swine-bladder rattle, a field cradle made of three sticks with a canvas sling, embroidered A B C's.
This culture is the underpinning of the work of Margit Kovacs, the sculptor who turned utilitarian objects of peasant life -- tiled stoves, pitchers, plates -- into folk-art inspired figures collected in the museum at 1 Vastagh Gyorgy Street. Although she sometimes dances on the border of kitsch, it is hard to resist Miss Kovacs's marvel at everyday gestures (a young girl brushing her hair, a woman cutting bread); her celebration of mourning, mythology, religion; the life she manages to breath into clay, making her museum the most visited in Hungary.
It is in the galleries, however, that the latest chapter in Szentendre art is unfolding. With their more abstract and political works, today's practitioners clearly do not have the kind of connection to Szentendre that Monet had to his garden at Giverny or Van Gogh to the postman in Arles; yet they seek the advice of older artists here and find inspiration in the late Barcsay and Vajda just as the Serbs incorporated the stones of the Roman fortress into their houses.
Some of the most original work comes out of the Vajda Lajos Studio, a group of young self-taught artists who insured their place in the underground by setting up shop in a cellar donated by the local government. Much of their work is exuberant and erotic, spilling over from the canvas into video, music and poetry. In the 1970's they were banned from exhibiting. One art critic classified their style as "permanent deviant realism." Policemen with dogs broke up a show they tried to organize on Templom Square.
Now they can be seen at the 4-year-old Art-eria gallery, at 1 Varoshaz Square, a clutter of everything from Daliesque surrealism to bucolic landscapes. Included in this jumble are the tongue-in-cheek paintings of Istvan efZambo, a small, disheveled man with wire-rimmed sunglasses who is the driving force behind the Vajda Lajos Studio. Although he is currently exploring the motif of headless women sitting on a coffin from which a flame is erupting ("The connection between life, sex and death," as he puts it), even Mr. efZambo traces his inspiration to Szentendre's Serbian illuminated manuscripts.
More conservative artists are represented at the elegant Szentendrei Muhely Galeria on the Main Square. Anyone not shopping for a painting can still afford a cup of coffee at the small Galeria Presszo in the courtyard behind the Muhely -- a quick getaway to a Mediterranean village with its wicker chairs, white-washed arcade and languorous pace set by the sound of a fountain. Often on Wednesday nights, Mr. efZambo's Happy Dead Band -- sometimes accompanied by a goat -- plays punk music in the Galeria Presszo basement.
A less offbeat way to end the day in Szentendre is a walk at sunset up Donkey Hill, passing through Rab Raby Square, the tiny hub of the former Dalmatian neighborhood. Here, at No. 1, a stunningly simple yellow house built in 1768, lived the ill-fated Matyas Raby. Sent by the Austrian Emperor to investigate corruption in the local government, he found himself, upon refusing their bribes, thrown into jail -- small consolation that a century later he became the hero of a famous Hungarian novel, "Prisoner Raby."
Climbing farther on Bartok Bela Street, one comes to the 18th-century cross erected by the tanners guild. It points like an index finger to the spectacular view of the Preobrazenska Church steeple, the hodge-podge of tiled roofs, beyond this the Danube and, on the far bank, the wooded shores of Szentendre island -- a collage worthy of any canvas. Szentendre's museums, restaurants and shops Getting There
The quickest route from Budapest to Szentendre is by taxi, which takes a little over a half hour from the capital and should cost no more than about $8. The Hev train from Battyany Square or Margit Bridge takes about 40 minutes, leaves several times an hour and costs about 30 cents.
The Mahart boat from the Vigado dock lumbers upstream to Szentendre in about an hour and a half (the trip back takes an hour) and costs under $1. Schedule information: 118-1223 in Budapest. Museums
The Szentendre museums are open daily except Monday (only the Kovacs Margit museum is open seven days) from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Admission is less than 20 cents.
Given the lack of any English-language guidebook, one of Szentendre's most precious resources is Rita Bendes, an enthusiastic and incisive museum guide who speaks fluent English.
Call her office in the Ferenczy Museum several days in advance (from Budapest: 26-10-244 or 10-790). The cost is under $5 for each museum visited, regardless of the size of the group.
Amos-Anna Museum, 10 Bogdanyi Steet; paintings of Imre Amos and Margit Anna.
Barcsay Museum, 10 Dumtsa Jeno Street, constructivist paintings, tapestries of Jeno Barcsay.
Ferenczy Museum, 6 Main Square; paintings, sculpture, tapestries of five members of Ferenczy family.
Kovacs Margit Museum, 1 Vastagh Gyorgy Street; ceramic sculpture by Margit Kovacs.
Vajda Lajos Museum, corner of Kigyo and Hunyadi Streets; constructivist-surrealist paintings and charcoals of Lajos Vajda.
Museum of Folk Art, Hild Stairway (climbing from Rakoczi Street up to Templom Square). Restaurants
I would head first for the Aranysarkany, "The Golden Dragon" (2 Alkotmany Street; 11-670) which serves creatively prepared food -- Hungarian with some Serbian and Turkish influence. The dishes, from rooster pate to deer ragout, grilled goose liver to Lake Balaton trout, are served in a small garret decorated in simple peasant style. Open daily, noon to 10 (with a month's vacation in winter, generally December); reservations strongly suggested. A five-course meal with Hungarian wine averages under $15 a person.
Regimodi Vendeglo, "Old-fashioned Restaurant" (3 Futo Street; 11-105) also serves some of the best food in town and overlooks the Main Square from the second story of a Baroque house. Open daily from noon to 10. A five-course meal from caviar to Gundel crepe, with wine, about $20 a person.
Rab Raby Vendeglo "Prisoner Raby Restaurant" (Peter-Pal and Janko Street corner; 10-819) is the best of the inexpensive restaurants, a good place to give in to the urge for goulash (served in a cast-iron pot over a burner) while sitting in the shady courtyard. A five-course meal with wine should cost well under $15. Shopping
With such a dizzying array of stores, it is difficult to leave Szentendre empty-handed; although shopping here is an exercise in separating the wheat from the chaff.
Peter-Pal Galeria, 1 Peter-Pal Street, sells modern crafts. Extremely reasonable prices.
Metszet Galeria, 14 Main Square, in a cool vaulted cellar sells antique framed etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, engravings of bored-looking women in bonnets, pastorals, jousters.
Som Crystal, 4 Szerb Street, is where the crystal maker Arpad Som sells his works. Prices from $8 to $825. A. S.