After an amazing night's sleep in my perfect hotel room, I woke to watch the river cruise ships navigating the Danube under the Chain Bridge. It doesn't get better than that and even though I was tempted to just stay in the hotel to watch the scenes, I was super excited to see what Budapest had to offer. Budapest is actually 2 cities - Buda and Pest. I slept in Buda, but a lot of the great sites are in Pest (although, Buda is worth getting excited about too).
The hotel had a great breakfast included in the rate, so I enjoyed my English tea whilst watching the ships on the Danube and plotting out my day. Budapest has great public transport. Metro, trams and buses are everywhere and other than the spelling and pronunciation of streets, is fairly easy to navigate. I bought a Budapest card at the hotel, which includes free public transport and discounts to most museums/sites. In hindsight, it most likely wasn't worth the cost, but the convenience of not needing to pull cash each time I caught a bus or tram or figure out the ticket system was invaluable. They do have people checking for tickets constantly, so the card was a good peace of mind purchase.
The tram stopped right in front of my hotel, so I grabbed the one headed to the Metro that would transport me into Pest. The trams look like they are Soviet era - which gives the city an interesting vintage feel I wasn't expecting. The first metro I caught over to Pest was very modern, which I suspect is because one of the stops was at the Parliament. The second had to be pre-war. The only thing missing on that Metro was the horses pulling it. Incredible.
I went first to the House of Terror. That sounds creepy and it was. The name really does it justice. The museum is in a former Nazi and then KGB equivalent prison for dissidents. First, they have security guards at the museum dressed like KGB officers. In fact, the museum which is one of the most visited sites in Pest, is not open door. You have to be buzzed in by a guard outside and the building itself doesn't look like a museum at all - there is very little signage. I thought at first that would be sign of something I should have skipped, but the subtlety of the outside is no indication of the incredible displays inside. The minute you walk through the door, you are transported back to a time of unspeakable horror. The soundtrack music is intense and creepy when you walk in and follows you through the entire exhibit. Add to that the intense security guards and the Hungarians have done an excellent job setting a reverent atmosphere.
The museum chronicles in the upper floors the history of the capitulation of the Hungarian government to Nazi desires, followed by the eventual invasion by the Nazis themselves after perceived missteps by the government in Budapest. It briefly discusses the use of that building for Nazi interrogations as well as the torture chambers that were used to extract information. Although the museum is billed as a history of WWII and Soviet repression, the content on WWII is relatively light (not by nature, just in volume). The real focus of the museum is really Soviet repression and the effects of the secret police, which is an era I was vastly unfamiliar with.
When the Soviets "liberated" Hungary, the Hungarians quickly found that they went from one repressive regime to another. The Soviets may not have been shooting people in the streets as the Nazis were doing, but they set about to quickly implement communism and equal division of property. The success of the system was based on complete cooperation of the populace, which was monitored intensely by the Hungarian version of the KGB. These covert officers randomly and in large quantity pulled people off the street to interrogate, often using torture to extract confessions or implicate many more people, including family and friends. There was no rhyme or reason to it - peasant to doctor could be targeted. The upper floors of the museum went into great detail about the first days of Soviet rule, the interrogations, the work camps in Hungary for "re-education" of the wealthy, the Gulags people were sent to and the crimes against humanity committed over and over again. The reading was terrifying, which was appropriate for a museum called "House of Terror".
After that, 2 guards send you into an elevator that shows film clips of people who were interrogated in that building under Soviet rule. At the bottom, you find yourself in the cave-like rooms where those clips took place. It is unnerving. I only stayed for a short bit to read through some of the descriptions, but suffice it to say, it was nothing like visiting the bunkers where Churchill directed the war in London. Same type concept, but the atmosphere here was one of pure desperation, rather than the hope that springs out of Churchill's War Rooms. I couldn't take a lot of it - seeing the pictures in each of the chambers of people who had been tortured in those rooms was disturbing.
After that, they give you more in-depth looks at the Soviet leadership. The most interesting thing about this area was the understanding that most of the leadership in one way or another ended up themselves on fake trial and being sent to Gulags. The institution itself was built on no one person ever accumulating enough power to make a difference. The last room of the museum "names and shames" hundreds of former KGB officers where evidence exists that they participated in the torture of civilians, but charges have never been filed. A good portion of those people are still alive, which just boggles my mind.
You couldn't take pictures in the museum, but I don't think it would have mattered. The museum covers all of the senses, minus taste. I can't speak highly enough about how well the layout was done - I'm tempted to say it was my favorite museum in Europe, but that's like picking a favorite child. It shouldn't be done.
Part 2 of Pest coming....
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