Norway in a Nutshell

Taking a two day train and boat trip after spending a week on a ship looking at fjords and another week on the ground might seem like a bit much.  I like to think of it as dessert.  In fact, if you have only one day to see the fjords in Norway, this is the way to do it.  I stretched it into two days to make it a little more civilized, but you can leave Oslo at 7:00 am and arrive in Bergen at 11:00 pm having seen the best of Norway. As we cruised northward on the Hurtigruten ship, they laughingly told us that everything was “the northernmost [fill in the blank] in the world or in Europe.”  The northernmost store in the world, the northernmost gas station in the world, etc. etc.  Obviously, Norway’s mountains cannot compete with the Alps, so everything on this trip was “the highest [fill in the blank] in Northern Europe.  The train ride from Oslo to Bergen, which absolutely is beautiful, is the highest train in Northern Europe.  All right.

Seriously, the train ride is beautiful as it climbs from the lowland of Oslo over the mountains to Myrdal.  At Myrdal, we transferred to the Flamsbana (Flam Railroad) which descends steeply to Flam which sits on the tip of the Sognefjord.  The Flamsbana is the steepest regular gauge railroad … in the world?  in Europe?  in Northern Europe?  Who knows?  Anyway, it is so steep that it has three independent braking systems.  And what other railroad has a five minute stop for a photo op at a gushing waterfall?

My only complaint with the two train rides was that there were too many tunnels.  Those darn Norwegians are too modern and efficient.  I wanted to keep looking at the scenery. On the Hurtigrutten cruise, I said it was like sailing endlessly through Yosemite Valley, which I think is one of the most beautiful places in the world.  Why not? I realized this week.  Yosemite and the fjords here were made by the same process of glaciation.  According to the official description:  

The Aurlandsfjord is a 17-kilometre arm of the world’s second-longest fjord, the Sognefjord, and starts in Flåm and ends at the mountain Beitelen, which separates the Aurlandsfjord from the Nærøyfjord.  Together with the Nærøyfjord, the Aurlandsfjord is one of the most picturesque fjords in the world. This stunning fjord is a part of the World Heritage area and is surrounded by high mountains that reach heights of over 1,400 metres.  The Nærøyfjord is the narrowest and best known of the many arms of the Sognefjord. Surrounded by towering mountains up to 1,700 meters high, this arm of the Sognefjord is amazingly beautiful. With its steep mountainsides, hanging valleys, towering peaks, snowfields, waterfalls, and small hamlets, this fjord is perhaps the most outstanding natural attraction in Norway. The Nærøyfjord is 20 km long, only 250 meters across at its narrowest and a mere 12 meters at its shallowest.

I agree completely.  From Flam we took an e-boat (the future of fjord cruising) up the Sognefjord that again felt like cruising endlessly through Yosemite Valley.  Doesn’t this look like North Dome? The mountains rise straight out of the fjord and even in late July, had patches of snow on them. So there were dozens of towering waterfalls on both sides. Periodically there would be a small town on a flat stretch on the bottom, and every so often, a lone house perched halfway up. It was stunning.

After the cruise, we took a bus back to the Oslo-Bergen railroad and continued on the train to Bergen where I got to spend another half-day with Jane.  First, however, I took the funicular up the mountain overlooking Bergen.  After dinner with Jane and her family, I took a quick flight back to Oslo.  And that is Norway in a Nutshell.

On my last day in Oslo, I got in a quick visit to the Royal Palace.  How many royal palaces does one have the opportunity to see in one’s lifetime?  When Norway finally became an independent country in 1905, they decided to become a monarchy but had just one problem: no local royalty. They needed a royal family and also needed protection from Sweden.  So they invited the grandson of the king of Denmark to be their king.  His advantages included a wife in the English royal line and a son and heir already in existence.  He had never been to Norway and did not speak Norwegian.  Minor problems.  He and his family moved to Norway and he changed his name from Carl to Haakon VII and changed his son’s name to the very Norwegian Olav.  And today, the royal family is beloved in Norway. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. Finally, I made a quick visit to the Nobel Peace Center.  Although the other Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, the Peace Prize is awarded in the Oslo City Hall.

On one of my walking tours I did a double take when I saw this row of bicycles.  It turns out that this is a bicycle parking lot, and the metal sculptures are for locking one’s bike.  And finally one more thing I have never seen before:  A Roomba for mowing the lawn.

Oslo

My shortened bike ride was still quite nice as we stayed in resort villages on the shores of the Oslo Fjord, and rode through the surrounding countryside.  Finally, on Friday I arrived in Oslo with the opportunity to see more than the inside of the airport.

Norway’s history is a bit odd as it was allied with Denmark and at odds with Sweden for most of it, so the independent country is little more than a hundred years old.  Oslo’s history is interesting in a different way.  Logging was a huge industry here and all of the old buildings were made of wood.  Oslo thus suffered no fewer than fourteen major fires.  Finally, they (that is, a Danish king) decided to move the city center and rebuild with brick and stone.  (Duh!)  As a result, there are almost no buildings here from before the eighteenth century.  

In recent years, Oslo has undergone a second rebuilding.  Using its oil money wisely, Norway has invested in modern buildings while also repurposing old buildings such as factories.  Highways have been moved underground so the city streets are fairly uncrowded and there is little street noise.  A tax on cars coming into the city helps keep the streets uncrowded.  As a modern European city, there is a modern, efficient system of trams, buses, and metros, as well as several streets dedicated to walking, miles of bike lanes, and buses and trams that go everywhere.

A silo repurposed as a dormitory

Modern building complex called the Barcode

As a very modern city in a very affluent and modern country, Oslo, like China, is a nearly cashless society where everything is paid not with a card but a phone app.  At one food court booth I went to, you order and pay on your phone and the one man working there sends a text when your food is ready.  He would not let me either order or pay in person.

Two other weird food facts that I am not sure that I believe.  According to one guide, the most eaten food in Oslo is …. wait for it … tacos.  Really?  Also, with a population of only six million, he said that Norway consumes eleven percent of all Pepsi Max worldwide.  I feel like I am not doing my share.  The explanation for this factoid might be that we drink way more Diet Pepsi in the US, but that is not available here, just Pepsi Max which is also sugar free.

Another weird factoid ... I'm not sure if it is a sign of modernity ... The first time I left my hotel room, I checked the door and it did not lock.  I kept opening and closing it, but it would not lock, so I went down to the desk to report the "problem."  The very nice man at the desk explained that as a safety feature, the door locks after about thirty seconds.  In case there is a fire and you run out without your key, you can run back in for something (or someone?) you forgot.  Oh, sure.  I'd probably want to run back in if the room were on fire.  I guess after fourteen major fires you think about emergency measures.

I took a walking tour of Oslo on my first day to get myself oriented, and then a couple more walks in interesting neighborhoods.  There are a few older sites like the medieval Akershus Fortress and the old City Hall, but not surprisingly, most of the sites are modern.  The Akers River flows through Oslo for ten miles with green area and walking/bike paths along the entire way.  I should have realized when the guide said there were dozens of waterfall that we would be walking uphill the whole way, but it was still worth it.  Beautiful area in the middle of the city.

The highlight was a tour I took of the Oslo Opera and Ballet House.  Just ten years old, it looks like a glacier and you can walk on the various roof levels.  It is designed to be for the people, both inside and out.  The tour took us through the inner workings and backstage area.  Half the building which is not usually seen by audiences contains opera, ballet, and orchestra practice areas, administrative offices, and a huge costume design and storage area.  The backstage was huge because there are actually three interchangeable stages including one that revolves and can be lowered into the basement and two other stages that can be put in its place with entire sets on them.  Also, the ballet floor is suspended in four pieces and can be lowered into place.  Who knew that operas and ballets have different floors?  Makes sense.

From the inside you can see people walking on the roof

When in Oslo … of course, I went to the Edvard Munch Museum.  His whole body of work was impressive but, of course, you have to see The Scream.  They have three of the four copies of it here but they only show one at a time, rotating them every hour to protect them from too much light.  Unfortunately, in the time I was there, I saw the print and the pastel, but not the painting.  Everyone knows the mask, but I didn’t remember that it is set against a vividly red sunset. Also, the original title was The Scream of Nature.  The androgynous figure is not screaming; rather, the figure is covering its ears so as not to hear nature screaming.  It turns out that Munch was frightened by the red sunset. Hmmm… okay.

Another artistic highlight of Oslo is Vigeland Park - the largest sculpture park dedicated all to the work of one artist, Gustav Vigeland. There are hundreds of sculptures of nudes, singly and in various somewhat bizarre combinations. Like this one of a pile of babies.

Perhaps the most famous of the sculptures is Angry Boy.

I also enjoyed visiting two of the museums on the Bygdoy Peninsula, which my handy transportation app told me to go to by bus and return by ferry.  The Kon Tiki museum is dedicated to Thor Heyerdahl who had a theory that the people in Polynesia came originally not from Asia but from South America.  As he wasn’t believed, he and his crew built a balsa wood raft and sailed along the ocean current (without steering) for 101 days and did in fact reach Polynesia.  He built and sailed other boats that he designed in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Next door to the Kon Tiki Museum was the Fram Museum.  I had learned about the Fram at the Polar Museum in Tromso.  It was the specially built boat that was designed to go into the Arctic ice, get stuck there in the current, and thereby reach the North Pole.  I had gotten the impression at the Polar Museum that the expedition was a failure, but in fact the boat, which is in the eponymous Fram Museum, did spend three years in the Arctic ice stream, surviving with everyone on board actually gaining weight.  There was just a slight miscalculation:  the ice stream goes in a circle around the Pole, so the ship never crossed it.

It is totally amazing to me that so many people, and in particular, so many Norwegians, were willing to go on long, impossible expeditions to prove rather dubious points or to be the first one THERE.   An interesting exhibit showed the “race” in 1911 between Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott to be the first to the South Pole.  Amundsen got there first and left a letter for Scott to bring back to his family if he didn’t make it back, but it was Scott, who arrived a few months later and saw the letter, who did not make it back. Amundsen, who is still a Norwegian hero, may have also reached the North Pole first as other claims are dubious. He died himself on an Arctic rescue mission.

I am spending my final two days in Norway on my own expedition. Hardly a leap into the unknown, it is marketed as Norway in a Nutshell, and involves three trains, a boat, a bus, and a plane ride back to Oslo. Can't wait.

The Joys of Travel

 

Five years ago at the moment that I took this picture, I was the southernmost person in all of Africa.  Today, along with the others in my group,  I was the northernmost person in all of Europe.  Unfortunately, I never saw the view of North Cape as it was completely fogged in.  But hey, I was there.

I was right about the nationalities of the people on the cruise.  There were four buses to North Cape from the cruise dock:  two in German, one in German and Norwegian, and one in French and English.  Needless to say, I was in the fourth bus and it was less than half full.

I was a bit concerned about my connections getting to the cruise but never considered that the one flight from Kirkenes, our end point, to Oslo would be canceled because SAS is on strike.  Do you know how hard it is to get to anywhere from Kirkenes?  There are no flights except the one SAS flight that was canceled.  It is a 24 hour drive to Oslo but there are no rental cars available.   Kirkenes might as well be the northernmost place in Europe as it is just as inaccessible.  The cruise line has arranged an eight hour bus ride to Rovaniemi, Finland, because FinnAir is not on strike.  Rovaniemi?  I can honestly say that I had never expected to visit there in my lifetime.

But it turns out that Rovaniemi is one of the largest cities in Finland and is famous, at least as much a random Finnish city can be famous.  Not only is it the capital of Lapland; more importantly, it is the Official Hometown of Santa Claus.  Who knew?  One of the don’t-miss sites is Santa Park (not to be confused with Santa Village which is also in Rovaniemi) where you can go to Elf School to learn how to become an elf.  How was this not on my can’t-miss list?

But back to Norway and the cruise.  Notwithstanding the uniformly gray skies, the scenery continues to be beautiful although the stops in cities are a bit underwhelming.  Trondheim is famous for its classic Gothic Cathedral, but in Tromso they have the much more interesting Arctic Cathedral which looks like slabs of ice.  Tromso also has a Polar Museum with information about North and South Pole excursions and winter hunting trips.  Needless to say, a lot of Norwegians were involved and Roald Amundsen is still a national hero. All I can say is that those guys were nuts, spending months essentially snowed in with whatever they brought with them or could kill.  And the excursions in the early twentieth century to the North Pole took months, if not years.  One genius had the brilliant idea that if he sailed a ship into the Arctic ice, the flow of the ice would bring the ship over the North Pole.  Wrong.  Although he spent years building a super strong ship that could withstand the pressure of the ice, they ended up iced in for over two years and never got more than a few more degrees north.  Amundsen finally made it over the North Pole in a airship.

And one last unique landform that we sailed by - Finnkirka. Unfortunately, I never saw it as I was on my computer trying to figure out how to get out of Kirkenes.

Fish and Potatoes

It is not surprising that they have a lot of fish in Norway.  After all, there are 63,000 miles of coastline (including islands) which is the second longest in the world after Canada.  But who knew that the real national dish is potatoes?!?!  I can’t say that I am enjoying the side dishes with every meal.  The variety of meats is a bit different than I am used to.  To keep meat fresh in the old days, they salted or smoked everything, and they still do quite a bit.  Of course, I expected smoked salmon, but smoked lamb?  That’s a new one on me.  My first night on the ship they served ox - another first for me.  And tonight I tried white onion soup which was made with pickled onions, dried reindeer meat, and leek oil.  Hmmm … not ingredients I usually combine.  There are a lot of Thai and Chinese restaurants.  I walked by one tonight that had all the standard Chinese dishes that I am used to but also a local specialty - deep fried cod tongue.  Of course.

The scenery has been as spectacular as expected.  It is almost like floating by a Yosemite Valley that goes on and on.  But it never gets old.  It is also reminiscent of Halong Bay in Vietnam, but there it feels eerie, and here it feels majestic. On our second day we sailed into Geiranger Fjord, one of the most famous and beautiful fjords with dozens of waterfalls.  It took the better part of a day for the round trip. 

Tonight we are in the Lofoten Islands where the mountains rise dramatically right from the water. 

Passing through the Lofoten Islands, we went into the short, narrow, and dramatic Trollfjord.  They told us not to go to bed because we will not enter it until 11:45 but that it was worth staying up for.  Needless to say, we won’t have any trouble seeing it as the sun will still be up. And, of course, they were right. It was worth staying up for. A short narrow fjord barely wider than the ship with both sides rising dramatically straight up.

We did cross the Arctic Circle this morning at 7:40.  I happily slept through that great event.  But later in the morning we had the “traditional” Crossing the Arctic Circle celebration:  a glass of champagne after they poured ice cubes down your back.  I passed on both but still received an official certificate.

The weather has been overcast and drizzly off and on.  Too bad because I really wanted to see the sun make a circle around the sky, rather than its one way route that we usually see. But the weather had hardly detracted from the spectacular scenery.

I hear very little English onboard the ship and even less American English. It is impossible to distinguish Scandinavian languages, so I can't tell where those speakers are from, but it does seem like the predominant language spoken on the ship is German.

A Week in Budapest - Part II

    On Thursday and Friday we took short excursions to the countryside around Budapest.  First, on Thursday we went to the famous Danube Bend.  The Danube runs primarily east-west for nearly 2000 miles from the Black Hills in Germany to the Black Sea.  But just north of Budapest, the river makes a u-turn and then a sharp turn to the south so that it is running north-south when it divides Buda and Pest.  On a hill overlooking the Bend is Visegrad, a Medieval citadel with an incredible view of the river and the town on the far side.

    On the way to Visegrad we stopped to look at several Roman ruins including an amphitheater larger than the Colosseum. And of course there was an aqueduct.  The Romans needed their water and they loved the hot springs in Hungary.  When I listed everyone who had overrun Hungary, I think I forgot to mention the ancient Romans since that was so long ago.  Like Hadrian’s wall in England, there is a distinct line of demarcation in Hungary - the far extent of the Roman incursion.

    In the afternoon we drove to the huge basilica at Esztergom, the largest church and the tallest building in Hungary.  Like the castle at Visegrad, the basilica is on a hill overlooking the Danube.  Esztergom is the site of the coronation of King Steven, the first king of Hungary, in 1000, and the basement "houses" the crypts of several archbishops including Jozsef Mindszenty, famous for his opposition to both Nazi and Communist rule.  Gabe first took us across the Danube to see full on the commanding presence of the cathedral.  Across the river was Slovakia so we got a bonus half hour in a country I have never before visited. 

    When we returned to Budapest, we took a short, evening cruise on the Danube because Gabe assured us that it was the best way to appreciate how beautiful the city is.  As usual, he did not steer us wrong.

    On Friday we drove to Lake Balaton, the Lake Tahoe of Hungary.  It is huge - over fifty miles long - peaceful, and quite lovely.  Gabe assured us that everyone who lives in Budapest has a second home at Lake Balaton.  At the lake, we took a ferry ride to the Tihany Peninsula to visit the Benedectine Abbey there.

    The Tihany Abbey is another monument to lost Hungarian sovereignty.  There are three stories that dominate Hungary’s fate in the twentieth century.  Most recent was the Soviet Iron Curtain from 1945 to 1990.  Before that was World War II with Hungary’s shameful alliance with Germany, participation in the Holocaust, and then invasion by the Germans anyway.  Hitler decided that Budapest was strategically important and ordered that it never surrender but fight to the last man.  The Soviet Union “liberated” Budapest after pretty much destroying it in a siege that lasted longer than any other in the war except Stalingrad.  (It does seem like reading Hungary’s history is like reading the newspaper today about the Ukraine.)

    But the greatest source of Hungary’s national misery was the Treaty of Trianon which was part of the Paris Treaties of 1919 at the end of World War I.  Hungary lost two thirds of its land to Romania, the Czechoslovak Republic, Serbia, Croatia, and Austria.  It also lost its access to the sea and became a much smaller, land-locked country.  King Charles, who had been emperor of Austria and king of Hungary before the Austro-Hungarian Empire disappeared after the Great War, came back to Hungary in 1921 to resume rule over his kingdom.  At Tihany Abbey, he and his pregnant wife were politely interred in a room while his fate was decided.  After five days, they were equally politely escorted onto a ship to Madeira, never to set foot in Hungary again.  His eldest son, Crown Prince Otto, grew up stateless with no passport and was finally allowed to return to Austria after he formally gave up all claims to the Hapsburg throne in 1961.

    On Friday night we had a special treat:  a concert for two pianos performed by Lucas and Andrew Jussen, two incredibly cute, talented, and young brothers from the Netherlands.  They are 26 and 29 years old.

    On Saturday we finally made it back to the Buda side of the river.  On Tuesday we had walked briefly through the Castle District and visited the historic Gothic Matthias Church. Today, after visiting the Hungarian Museum of Fine Arts in Pest, we returned to Buda to enter the

Castle itself which is now the Hungarian National Gallery. Then it was back to Pest and the famous Opera House.

    David had grown up listening to his grandmother’s description of the fabulous Opera House in Budapest and really wanted to see it, but it was closed to tours.  So he bought a ticket to the ballet on Wednesday night that he had no interest in seeing just so he could walk into the theater and then leave.  Then we got lucky … sort of.  This week the Opera House opened for tours again, Gabe got us tickets for Saturday afternoon, and David blew off the ballet.  We got to the tour and saw … the lobby, the staircase, the balconies, and the lounges, but the orchestra was rehearsing and the theater was closed!  We asked the guide if we could just peek in and he told us that the rule is that you cannot go in during rehearsal, wink, wink.  We got the hint and lingered behind the tour and into the private boxes so we could see the inside.  Beautiful.  And David was happy.

    On Saturday night we went to another incredible concert, this time at the modern Mupa Theater.  Before the orchestra began to play, a choir sang one song beautifully and unaccompanied.  After the song they all took their places in the orchestra!  I know they are all professional musicians but who knew that an entire orchestra could sing as well as they played.

    And that was our incredible week in Budapest.  Gabe left on Saturday night and the Salems left early on Sunday morning, but the Sambergs stayed for half the day, so we went on our own to one of the more unusual sites that I have seen:  the Hospital in the Rock.  It turns out that the hills on the Buda side are laced with natural limestone caves.  In 1939 the authorities decided to link the caves and create an emergency hospital underground.  Designed to hold 60 patients, it had hundreds when it opened in 1944, with patients doubled up in beds and in the hallways.  The hospital has operating rooms and sterilizing equipment, but during the siege of Budapest, eventually food and water supplies were cut off.  Amazingly,  the medical staff kept on, doing whatever they could.  Later, in the 1960’s, the cave system was converted to a nuclear fallout shelter that, in retrospect, was very naively thought out.  It could hold only 60 people and had enough water for only two weeks.  Not very helpful if there really had been an atomic bomb strike.  So the second half of the tour was on the horrors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and nuclear wars.

    After the Sambergs left, I had half a day to continue exploring Budapest.  I visited the home/museum of a stained glass artist, Miksa Roth, and the Hungarian National Museum.  On that last day, Marcee and I also finally had a chance to wonder through some Hungarian shops, and shared a chimney cake, a delicious Hungarian treat.  A perfect dessert for an interesting week so soaked in history and misery.

A Week In Budapest - Part I

     More than two years after my last trip abroad, I had the opportunity to take a one week trip to Budapest with Marcee and Mark Samberg, David and Laurie Salem, and their wonderful guide from previous trips, Gabe.   Snce I arrived a day early, on Sunday I took two quick walking tours to orient myself to the city.  The first tour met at the main cathedral of Budapest:  St. Stephen's.

This St. Stephen is not the first Christian martyr who was tortured in gruesome ways.  Rather, he was the first Christian Hungarian king, so as Gabe told us later when we went into the basilica, it is less a church and more a monument to Hungarian nationhood.

In Liberty Park we visited the fascinating monument that Victor Orban had put up in the middle of the night and the counter monument which is all the papers encased in plastic and hanging on the string in front of the monument.  In fifteen different languages, the counter monument explains why Orban's view of Hungary's role in WWII is wrong.  The counter monument cannot be removed because of freedom of speech laws.  More on why Orban's view is wrong later.

   
    The other signature buildings in Budapest are the Parliament on the Pest side of the Danube and the Castle on the Buda side.  The most significant feature of Hungary's geography is that it is completely flat on the Pest (eastern side) and mountainous on the Buda (western side).  When the hordes of Mongols and Huns arrived from Asia, they could ride their horses no further than Pest, while Buda maintained more of a European identity.  So while the flat plains allow Hungary to produce enough food, over the century, the Hungarians were overrun by everyone.  The Huns, the Turks, the Russians, the Austrians, the Romanians.  Everyone took a shot at poor Hungary.

The tour of the Jewish quarter with Gabe's fellow guide Agnes on Monday was fascinating.  Three incredible and incredibly different synagogues survive including the Dohany Street synagogue which is the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world, seating 3,000.  This is not a synagogue.  It is a church, complete with an organ.

    Then we went to the Rombach synagogue.  This is not a synagogue.  It is a mosque, complete with geometric designs on the walls.

    Finally the Kazinczy Street synagogue which looks like a synagogue inside.  It fact, it looks like the one that I attended as a child.  All three synagogues have balconies for the women.  Hungary developed its own reformed movement which it called Neologue (Latin for new law).  Despite the organ, the movement was not nearly as liberal as the German Reform movement, and kept much of traditional orthodox practice including separate seating for women.

    Prior to the Holocaust, Hungary had a thriving Jewish community of over 600,000 people.  I believe that Gabe said it was the second largest community in Europe after Poland.  Hungary allied itself with Germany in large part because Germany promised to restore to Hungary the lands it had lost after being on the losing side in WWI.  Present day Hungary is only one third the size of pre-WWI Hungary.  Despite fighting with the Germans against the Russians, and despite having passed repressive anti-Jewish laws similar to the Nuremberg laws, Hungary refused to transport its Jews to the East, which of course was a euphamism for the extermination camps.  When Hungary realized in 1944 that Germany was going to lose the war, they tried to switch sides, and Germany then invaded Hungary and took over.  In the last year of the war, Hungary was the site of the fastest and deadliest deportation of Jews.  Fully one third of the Jews murdered at Auschwitz were Hungarian Jews.

    The dispute about the Orban memorial has to do with the culpability of Hungary in the Holocaust.  Yes, the deportations did not occur until Germany took over, but although Adolph Eichmann came to Hungary himself, he had a staff of only twenty.  The deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews took place with the active participation of the Hungarian authorities and police.  The Orban memorial assigns complete culpability to the Germans for the Hungarian holocaust, while the counter-memorials acknowledge, and to the extent that they can, apologize for, the role of Hungarians.  

  

On Wednesday we visited the excellent Holocaust Museum which, like the counter-memorials, explained in great detail the sad sequence of events and responsibility.  Then we went to the promenade along the Danube and the site of one of the most unique and touching Holocaust Memorials that I have ever seen.  Sculptures of pairs of shoes are lined up where, after the deportations stopped, Jews were lined up, removed their shoes and were shot, falling into the Danube.  To save bullets, several people were tied together and only one was shot.

    In the afternoon, we visited the Soviet Statue Park.  After the fall of Communism, people removed all of the large statues that the Soviets had placed prominently around the city, and placed them in a park outside the city.  All except the massive statue of Lenin.  During the uprising in 1956, people had tried to topple the statue but it was too big.  And it was too hard to remove from the plinth.  So they cut it off at the top of boots, and then tore the body apart.

And our late afternoon activity:  when in Rome ...

When in Budapest, enjoy a soak in one of the many hot spring fed baths, the fabulously ornate Szechenyi Baths.