Budapest, September, 2015

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You have probably seen many photos and read much about Budapest.  I was there in September when the weather was perfect.  The Danube was busy with those barge-like cruise ships that spend so much money advertising in every form of media.  The one shown is Viking line which is the one that advertises everywhere.
The photo at the top is the standard shot of the Parliament, Danube and the Chain bridge. It seems that when Og made the famous Chain bridge, he carelessly forgot to create places small enough to attach the so-called "love locks" which have become the worldwide bedbugs of bridges.  But... some positive thinking twits discovered that the lighting frames were silly enough to be just right for their expressions of love when we all know that could have been handled much more naturally in the hotel the night before.
I was on a tram that ran along the Danube one day when a cute teen couple were having such a happy and innocent time.  My camera urged me to push the action button as it aimed itself toward their shoes.

Famous theatre man now congealed in

 bronze while eternally holding a cigar. The nice old opera house you expect in Europe.  I was too early for the season start. But during the Communist days, the Party wanted a larger house that would be cheap and hold lots of proletarians so they could get some culture too.  They built a new and quite large house for the masses - conveniently about two blocks from my hotel.  They were performing "Carmen," which is not exactly a favourite of mine, but I went.  A perfect seat in the middle of the Orchestra level (about best in the house) was $15 U.S.  In fact, both the orchestra and performers were all brought over from the National opera for the event, so the quality was wonderful.  The performance started at 6 p.m. (!) and it was sold out to a polite and attentive audience and me.

When I was reserving hotel rooms for this trip, I intended to stay at the Boscolo which is shown above. On the left of the lobby shown above is a famous New York restaurant.  You may have seen all of this one that Anthony Bourdain on CNN when he did a long interview from there.  I decided against it because I feel that hotels with large atria often are noisy. Also photos of the rooms seemed to indicate they were not as attractive as the lobby might suggest.

This hotel and the Novotel I actually stayed in, were only about six or more blocks from the train station that had been constantly on tv with so many wretched refugees.  I walked there and although there were five media trucks outside, there were few people and no difficulties.  I did not go into the station.  There were a few obvious refugees on the streets, but not many.

The entire trip was a guilty one for me  (not metaphorical). Each day when I turned on BBC tv in Hungary, Romania, and Turkey, the news was ghastly.  Turkey was not just dealing (roughly) with refugees, but also fighting the PKK.  My trip was one of  considerable comfort and many fine hotels, and I truly felt so bad, which did nothing at all for the refugees.  However, Toronto did announce it would accept 10,000 refugees initially, so I will get the bill for that later on.

In the above photos you will mainly see images of a park along the Danube, next to blocks of new business offices.  My interest there was the Modern art museum of Budapest, which probably is the most functional and beautiful one of its kind in the world (I will be inside the new Renzon Piano designed Whitney in NYC mid-October, but I don't see how it can be more beautiful than this one)

The sculpture park is populated with many first class bronzes.  The old man with the baggage above it just one (Our "Baggage" has become a worldwide convenience for artists - it speaks to them).

The building behind the Jester is the art museum. The beautiful lobby shown is for both Symphony hall and a couple of theatres.

If you look carefully between the Jester bronze and the building, you will detect the prow of a ship over a non-working water feature and fountain.  That ship is massive, extraordinarily beautiful and crafted as a piece of art.  I loved that ship.

The permanent art collection there seems to be small, but of good quality generally.  There was a show on of recent Russian art which took up a whole floor and was great.  One room was an installation with a preserved whole swine on a small platform in a living room, between empty chairs, watching a tv which has a video of pigs being killed, skinned, cooked, packaged and eaten: not the sort of thing you want to take your pet pig to see.

There were several rooms given to canvases ranging from amusing to garish to insane.  They were all by one artist and lively and interesting. 

He managed to paint himself into every scene.

 I was caught shooting this one by a guard who did not demand me to erase it, but did warn against doing it again.  There were more interesting ones I wanted to shoot, but this was the only room without a guard, so I had to record this one, and got caught at that.

The National Gallery of Art is large and mostly dreadfully boring.  It is a matter to consider, that all public galleries have works of art that were once considered as having some sort of merit, but today look ridiculous.  People also constantly donate works of art that are hard to sell at auction or in commercial galleries; these usually are portraits, pigs, cows, barnyards, mediocre flowers and fruit, and ships to name a few categories.  But public galleries are stuck with thousands of these works and they either cannot sell items from their collections or even if they could, there are no buyers for some ghastly bearded old man who was a colonel in a battle nobody can confirm every happened anyway.

The Budapest national looks fondly on even the most awful paintings in their collection.

I took a tour mostly to get a geographical fix on the city.  I also took a brief ride along the Danube.  I walked too much as usual. One evening I went to a Pipe Organ recital at the Cathedral of St. Stephen.  This is the most revered one in the city, is recently restored, and is beautiful

The Cathedral has two pipe organs - one electronic.  The programme was kind of the big hits for Pipe Organ, which was not a bad idea.  If course, it closed with the Vidor which is thrilling and bone rattling usually, but with that organ in that cathedral, it was electrifying. The sole problem was the vast and ever-increasing mob of idiots holding up their little electronic devices constantly to the utter distraction of all others.  These are always youths, clods or peasants unfamiliar with classical music and how to behave.  For them today, every building, artwork, everything without limitation is an opportunity for a photo or selfie in front of IT - to show the gurls back at da office dey got some culture over there in that foreign country.

I never can forget entering the bus station in Yunnan, China in a place where there were almost no Westerners yet.  But they had a huge sign on the wall of the station translated into English on How to ride a Bus.  The first sentence read "Upon entering the bus, sit down and shut up." I wish that instruction was used in many places in the West, but esp. in music venues.

Buda and Pest are lively, friendly, and attractive cities.  I enjoy riding subway and trams in all cities to see if I can figure them out and not be forever lost.  The public transit there satisfied my needs just fine.