Unfortunately, I'm going to have to make this entry brief because we've decided to take an excursion to Vienna for 2 days, and have to wake up at 5am to catch the 7am train - and it's already 11:40pm here - and I got little sleep last night - and I could probably write for hours - but I would bore you and I know that many of you have to go to work tomorrow and wouldn't be able to read all of my stuff (ok, you can take a breath now.) So here's what we did today in a nutshell:
We walked, we walked, we talked, we walked, we ate, we walked, and we saw some interesting things. Then we walked some more, got on a train, a bus, another train, purchased tickets for Vienna, got on a bus, got off the bus, and walked the 10 blocks back to the flat. Then I walked around the flat a bit (just to stretch my legs from all that walking - although it's no more than 7 paces from one end of the flat to the other) and now I'm writing this.
Brief enough? Well, ok, here are some details of what happened after our family chat - that ended at about 1pm! Erzsi is obviously very interested in the family - while Zora is - well, not so interested. But she's still a great cook so I want to keep her happy.
We went to the largest synagogue in Europe here in Budapest, Doheny utca, where my great-grandparents and the baron and baroness were married. It's huge, fully restored from the drubbing it took during WW2, and it's really beautiful. In the synagogue is a museum where many relics of Hungarian Jewish history reside. I had to explain many of the items to Zora and Erzsi as the family had converted to a variety of non-Jewish faiths back around the turn of the 20th century to avoid the rampant antisemitism, and therefore, my cousins were fairly unfamiliar with the traditional Jewish accoutrements.
After that, we, um, walked to where my great-grandparents lived on Sip utca, only about 2 blocks from the synagogue. The original building is no longer there, but there are a few examples that have survived from that era on either side of the new structure, of what it might have looked like from around 1880-1884.
Then we, um, walked to another street and found a building I didn't expect to exist, where the parents of the baroness lived, and where I believe my great-grandparents shared the apartment with them for a while immediately after they married. Remember that my g-grandmother and the mother of the baroness were sisters, so it makes sense that they would have lived together for a while. Zora and Erzsi didn't know about that building and were extraordinarily excited to see it. The time frame is from 1879. Just love the architecture. Corner building.
We spent some time looking for the site where my great-grandparents and my g-uncles owned a stationary store on one of the main streets, but the addresses have changed. We went to the library to look up the old addresses and found where it might now be located, but it was too late to return to the hunt. So I know where to look next week when I have time to return for another look.
It was getting dark and Erzsi had to return home, but Zora took us down to the Duna river (the Danube for those of you unfamiliar with Hungarian :-)). So we, um, walked around and saw the sites across the river on the Buda side - Castle Hill - where the gov't buildings are located, as well as a real castle to its right in the distance as you look at the picture below.
Afterwards, we stopped at a fantastic coffee shop on the plaza for tea and some great Hungarian desserts, and then, um, took a train to a bus and to the flat.
And for my friends from Brooklyn, especially Lee, I got a taste of home while waiting for the librarian to locate the addresses for the stationary store. There on the walls, in beautiful red, orange, yellow and blue, was a fantastic poster of ..... Luna Park. Ok, it was the one in Budapest, but still....
I won't be taking my laptop to Vienna so I won't be posting tomorrow. Look for the next installment on Thursday.
Goodnight.
No comments:
Post a Comment