Journal of a Sabbatical

August 16, 1999

the Danube bend

Bird Sightings
Visegrad

1 great tit (Parus major) 

I'm sitting in a cafe in Szentendre - blue table cloths, white wrought iron chairs, walled garden, geraniums in blue ceramic pots instead of the usual terra cotta window boxes. People are taking pictures of each other in the walled garden every five minutes - obviously this is tourist Mecca. I am sitting in front of the pastry case so everybody comes over to peer over me at the dobos torte and chocolate cakes - how weird and uncomfortable. I paid 710 forints for one espresso and a tiny truffle (which I didn't order). This is a pricey tourist place.

Szentendre seems to be mostly touristy shops with high prices and mass produced kitsch. I checked two china shops selling Herend in case they might actually have a hunt pattern. I know the particular pattern we had a the hunting lodge was a custom job with the communist party crest on it but I thought maybe there's other demand for wild boars and deer...

Anyway, this is a strange way to end the day after Esztergom and Visegrad.

I drove the back roads to Esztergom this morning. Part of the Telki road was blocked off for what looked like either a film crew or a fashion photo shoot, but other than that the roads were empty. It was a pretty drive through the limestone hills and hay fields.

The basilica at Esztergom is visible for miles around. It towers over everything, dwarfing the entire city. It's like an HO gauge train in an N gauge layout. It just doesn't look like it belongs - well, actually the basilica belongs - it's the rest of the city that doesn't.

The sanctuary and its side chapels are beautiful. The domed ceiling soars - you can almost see it drawing the prayers of the faithful upward.

One of the side altars has relics of three martyrs canonized fairly recently (by John Paul II I think). Umm, the relics are the bones of the three priest martyrs and they're in a glass case. It's kind of grisly and bizarre to see some priest's skull on display on the altar, especially with cobwebs forming in the case. It felt creepy to me - like I was watching a murder victim's mortal remains turn to dust before my very eyes.

The treasury room full of gold monstrances and chalices was too crowded for me. I couldn't see much over the heads of taller people and I've never been one to ooh and aah over the wealth of the church anyway.

The crypt, where the mortal remains of Cardinal Josef Mindszenty repose, was even more crowded. Talk about a Cold War flashback moment! As a little kid at St. Bernard's grammar school I prayed for Cardinal Mindszenty every day while he was holed up in the American embassy. As a kid the whole scenario of communists persecuting Catholics in Hungary seemed very far away and exotic to me. Who knew I would ever visit Hungary (much less Russia!) . The cold war and the "iron curtain" are things of the past and I'm only just beginning to understand how that rhetoric shaped me. Anyway, the crypt was wicked crowded and the climb to the dome looked daunting, so I headed back outdoors and took off for Visegrad.

I drove along the Danube, catching glimpses between the trees. At Visegrad I had lunch and espresso on a terrace overlooking the river before I started climbing the trail to the citadel. Part way up the trail - about when I got to the hexagonal prison called Solomon's Tower I noticed a parking lot. Wait a minute, a parking lot? That must mean there's a road and I don't have to hike up the trail (it's not the up that' a problem, down a steep hill just kills my bad knee). Back down the trail to the car and up the road past that telltale parking lot to the lot at the top - right at the citadel. It was still quite a climb from there but nothing compared to what it would have been had I climbed all the way from the bottom - that hill is steep!

I could have done without paying 200 forints to see the wax museum graphically depicting explicit torture scenes. The statues' agonies were so realistic I almost threw up right in the museum. There was quite a display of torture instruments too - many of which I couldn't even imagine how they were used. I bolted outside and avoided the embarrassment of throwing up.

The view from the citadel is fantastic: all rolling hills and red tile roofs and the dark green waters of the Danube with mist floating over everything. Isn't the Danube supposed to be blue? No matter. The green Danube is gorgeous.

I bought some sour cherry juice, yogurt, and cookies on the way back, which seems like more than my diminished appetite can handle. I watched a South African tv show dubbed in Hungarian. It seemed to be about killer bees and pretty girls toting guns. Then I went through my digital photos and labeled the disks. I was too tired to do much else.