I went out last night and ended up eating sushi. What other form Asian cuisine will I dine upon before I finally try goulash and eat some Hungarian food? Is there a Mongolian restaurant in the area? (Keep in mind, I was in Paris for more than a week before I finally tried crepes.)
Today, I’m planning to go to Statue Park, about 5 miles south and west of here, out in the Buda ‘Burbs. It’s a collection of communist-era statues and sculpture. I think it’ll be a nice antidote to yesterday’s trip to the House of Terror. Of course, the Josef Stalin bottle-opener worked as a pretty good antidote. I think this’ll be in the same spirit: monuments reduced to ridicule.
I put together an itinerary of other stuff I want to do before I head back to the U.S. When I look over it, I think that it’s a good thing that the others from the wedding have already headed back to the America (and elsewhere). Sure, there’d likely be some overlaps, but a bunch of these things are pretty private, I bet (like the Raoul Wallenberg memorial I wanna check out).
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Rained out. All I got to do today was go to Statue Park, which was pretty rewarding, but the rest of the itinerary’s going to have to wait for Thursday.
The Park was great. I felt a little triumphal, I guess. I mean, “Onward and upward,” my ass. It was cool to see all these alleged heroes and idealizations of workers and soldiers, reduced to a tourist attraction. At the gift shop, I bought plenty of neat stuff, including a tremendous T-shirt of “The 3 Terrors World Tour” of Stalin, Lenin and Mao.
I thought, “Y’know, I want ’em to gouge me on the price of this stuff, just to prove the point. As they were tallying my bill, I said, “Oh, yeah: And gimme a Coke.”
Pix
A bed of flowers in a little square near Deak Ferenc Tec. I’ve never seen their color before.
The flowers were in front of a statue.
On the way out to Tiszaroff, Rene and I drove through a bazillion acres of wheat and sunflower fields. Evidently, Hungary feeds a chunk of the surrounding countries. Go, Ceres!
Two guys, presumably headed to the future.
Some guy, pretty firmly embedded in the past.
Second most impressive sculpture in the Park. It’s of Bela Kun, a communist who took power in 1919 an unleashed “Red Terror” on the country. He got purged when the Romanians invaded a few months later. He was buddies with Bela Lugosi, who was his minister of culture.
Same sculpture, without the flash.
It really is pretty impressive, in person; Kun’s up on this podium, and the troops are all charging out to nationalize whatever they can and prove that centralized economies are for shit.
Good-looking guy, that Enore Sagvari.
Some of the statues, like this one, put me in mind of the drawings of Jack Kirby. It’s in the expressiveness of being blocky, if yer familiar with The King’s comics. It’s funny, because Toth is a Hungarian name.
There’s no English description of this monument, but it reminded me an awful lot of Oscar Wilde’s tomb in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, so here you are.
This guy is directing traffic. With all those little Trabants around, I’m sure it’s a tough job.
Rats. Unfortunately, you can’t see too much of the detail in
this guy. He has a military look that borders on the appearance of Flash Gordon. It made me think about the utopian aspects of some science fiction and its corollaries in this bankrupt ideology.
Speaking of bankrupt ideologies . . .
That Dmitrov was one suave-looking mo’fo’.
If you managed to avoid getting nailed with an icepick, a la Trotsky, the Party could still have you frozen in carbonite.
I have no idea what this is supposed to represent.
Maybe the faces on these soldiers weathered away from the acid rain that they get around here. I hope they weren’t sculpted this way.
This guy greets you upon your arrival in the park. He’s kinda impressive, but sorta lifeless.
I took some glee when I noticed that his weapon is a tommy-gun. It fits with the whole racketeering aspect of Soviet communism, doesn’t it?
The most impressive statue in the park.
I’m serious, dude. This guy’s massive, and full of energy.
Yeah, yeah: nice ass.
I need to write a book, so’s I can use this pic for my cover.