Citadella

After lunch, we met up with Agnes, a local historian who gave us a tour of the city and discussed life under Communism. She was just a girl when the USSR collapsed, but she colored the history of Hungarian occupation with the stories of her parents and grandparents.

We headed to Liberty Square, home of the American embassy and a statue of Ronald Reagan. Funny enough, it's also home to Budapest's only remaining statue to communism, which praises the Russian soldiers who seized the city from the Nazis (but fails to mention the atrocities they themselves committed).

Next we walked to Parliament, where the murder of over 200 Hungarian students and workers took place during the Velvet Revolution. They had gathered to protest in solidarity with Poles who demanded more freedom and better working conditions, but the Soviets quickly squashed it with brutal force. In one of the pictures, you can see a wall littered with copper orbs, which each symbolizes a bullet fired into an unarmed protestor.

We saw many other sites along our tour, including various plaques, propaganda, and statues that were destroyed by the communists only to be rebuilt by the resilient Hungarian people. After finishing, we walked along the river and visited the Shoes on the Danube memorial, which commemorates those who were executed on the riverside by the Hungarian Nazi Party.

Later, we returned to the Citadel to see the city at dark (and, with some cash fresh out of an ATM to buy a few more things), and then returned to the Jewish Quarter for dinner at Mazel Tov—an Israeli-Hungarian fusion restaurant. We had duck breast, a spicy pastrami sandwich, and a pistachio mousse tart. If those sound good to you (which they were), fret not! We bought their cookbook to make the dishes at home.

It was a very, VERY busy day, but we saw and learned some of the most amazing things. Ruled by the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, the Communists, the Nazis, and the Communists again; and under constant attack from the ever-flooding Danube river, the Hungarian people have a will to remain that is unparalleled, and awe-inspiring.Read more