Journal of a Sabbatical

August 8, 1999

a tour of the parliament building

Note: I bought a packet of postcards at the chair exhibit, mailed one to a friend and decided to keep the rest. I remember packing them, but I can't find 'em now. Should I find any of them, I'll scan them in and add them to this entry. 

Taking a tour of the parliament building is a major project, especially if you want the English language tour. We were advised to be there an hour early to get tickets.

While we were waiting, István pointed out the Arizona cypress trees that he had Zsolt had advised be planted there, as they are long lived. We also noticed the statue of Kossuth Lajos, revolutionary and botanist, and teased István about when there would be statues of him and Zsolt. He pointed out that Kossuth's statue was not erected because he was a botanist.

The parliament building is very ornate, with lots of gilded touches. The tour takes you through a fraction of the building - mainly public rooms. Everything from the carpet to the ceiling paintings communicates that this building is the "home" of the Hungarian nation. I got a little of the feeling I had the first time I visited the US Capitol when I was a kid. This led to a brief discussion of patriotism vs. nationalism with István, but it's hard to put that kind of feeling into words.

Everybody went separate ways after lunch. I wanted to see the special exhibit of chairs at the ethnographic museum. Carol had seen it and recommended it. The museum itself was the runner up in the design contest for the parliament building. The stairway and the main entry hall are spectacular. It's worth a quick visit just to see the stairway - I sent postcards of it to some of my friends. The chair exhibit was as wonderful as Carol had said. Handmade chairs from all periods were massed together or spotlighted separately. It's hard to describe the impact of the mass of individual homemade rough chairs with dates and decorations commemorating events or just the date the chair was made all gathered together in one room as if set up for a huge gathering. I was sweating from the intense heat and humidity and yet I lingered at every display. The regular collection, a display of folk art organized around traditional Hungarian life from birth to death was not nearly as riveting as the chairs.

In mid afternoon we rendezvoused with Margit for a tour of castle hill and the fishermen's bastion. Probably the weirdest architectural site is a modern hotel built on ruins of a monastery. Personally I don't think it works at all, but some people like it.

Despite the fact that I'm neither into shopping nor fancy dishes, I had to check out the shops selling Herend in case the communist wild boar pattern wasn't a one off after all . None of them had any kind of hunt pattern. I did end up buying a T-shirt, in an antiques shop of all places. It's a blue shirt with the parliament building embroidered on it in gold - very touristy, but visually pleasing and affordable.

The view from Castle Hill is spectacular in every direction. I think I shot a whole roll of film just from the fishermen's bastion.

It was brutally hot, and walking all over the castle area was a bit too much for me. I burned out before I was really done with the place, and we all ended up too tired for dinner.