Day 25 - Buda Hills and Statue Park

We ventured across the other side of the Danube for the first time today. We took a tram over Margaret Bridge to Moszkva tér, and another tram a few stops to the lowest station of the cogwheel railway. This is a train line that goes up the steep slope up into the Buda Hills. This unusual train line counts as public transport, and so was covered by our Budapest Cards.

Getting off at the highest station, Széchenyi Mountain, we walked over to the nearby Children's Railway. This railway is run by the Young Pioneers, originally a Communist Party affiliated youth organisation. Today the Young Pioneers are apolitical and similar in many ways to the Scouts.

Everyone running the railway (except the train driver) is aged between 10 and 14: The ticket seller, signalman, ticket inspector... It's quite remarkable.

Evan in front of the Children's Railway station at Széchenyi Mountain.

A train on the Children's Railway.

We took the train up to the highest point in the mountains, János-hegy. From this station, we walked up to the lookout and then took the chair-lift back down the mountains, which was relaxing and had a good view of the city. We caught a bus back to Moszkva tér, where we had lunch in Mammut (a large shopping centre).

The lookout at János-hegy.

The view from the chair-lift.

Next, we needed to take a tram and then a bus out to Szoborpark, or Statue Park. This park, far out in the suburbs of Budapest is a remarkable place. At the fall of communism in Hungary, communist statues were rounded up and relocated here. The park, situated under tall electricity pylons, is hardly glamourous, and it's a bit neglected. No doubt the exisitance of this park is controversial for many people.

The statues and plaques here are interesting. Many are Hungarian-Soviet 'friendship memorials'. Others are statues of figures such as Lenin, and Marx and Engels. A few, perhaps the most controversial, are memorials to those who died fighting against the revoluntionaries in 1956.

Szorborpark.

This statue is interesting. It was created in 1951 as a memorial to Ilja Afonoszejevis Ostapenko, a captain in the Soviet Red Army. It was placed on the highway leading out from Budapest to Vienna, and greeted people as they arrived. After the fall of communism, locals didn't want to get rid of their friendly, waving statue!

Back in the city, the tram we caught didn't cross back into Pest as we expected it to (there were lots of announcements, but they were in Hungarian, so we didn't understand). We had to catch a tram at the next bridge. Then, at the main metro station, Deák Ferenc tér, the platforms for the M1 were closed. Leaving the station to walk down to the next station, we noticed that many of the roads in the centre of the city were closed off. The source of all this inconvience, it turned out, was that George Bush was in town. That explained the US flags we'd seem around.

Now that our hotel has a kitchen - and after all the expensive restaurants we've been eating at - we went to a supermarket to buy some things to make ourselves dinner. While there we bought ourselves a bottle Tokaji (Tokay) 6 puttonyos (ie. very sweet) wine and a bottle of Unicum.