Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 14: National Pride and Ambiguous Memory

Friday 7 June
I’m glad of the late flight that gives us this additional day in Budapest. Well, Pest actually. We begin by walking upstream along the promenade. We come to the “shoes” in memory of the Jews who were hurled into the icy Danube in 1944. It hardly needs saying how moving this sight is: boots, shoes, slippers, what looks like a little girl’s dancing shoes. Votive lights with Hebrew texts have been placed among, and even inside, these infinitely forlorn objects, so full of pathos, that speak more eloquently than words ever could about “the heartbreak at the heart of things”. And when I remember that the South Koreans drowned in a Danube within sight of this shrine, it simply adds to the painfulness of this part of the river bank.

As we walk on, the immense Parliament building looms up above us. We go inside the visitor centre and find that there is a place available on an English language tour of the building this afternoon. So I’ll come back to that later. The sun has come out and it’s warming up rapidly. We walk out of the shadow side of the Parliament (nice turn of phrase?) and into the sunshine. The glare from this extraordinary building is almost painful. Soldiers are on guard. The anti-terror barricades are not the crude lumpish blocks you see in London but integrated into the architecture of the square, which is surrounded by fine buildings. Indeed, everywhere in central Budapest the buildings are on a monumental scale. The green spaces are a relief from this surfeit of grandeur whether its imperial, neo-classical, art nouveau or modern. It’s tempting to compare it with Paris (again) but the difference is that Pest has no Notre Dame and no Left Bank to set off the monumental with something more intimate in scale. Buda has those things of course, but once these were separate cities and their respective urban styles architecture seem to tell different stories. Like Newcastle and Gateshead, maybe?

We go inside the Basilica of St Stephen’s. Aggressively neo-classical, vast and imposing, a noble Greek cross that on the outside fully rises to the challenge of the imperial architecture that surrounds it. But the interior feels gloomy and lifeless. Like St Sava in Belgrade, far from bringing me to my knees it leaves me cold. But it’s humanised by a group of young schoolchildren at the front of the nave who are singing their hearts out under the tutelage of their teacher.

But the gloom of the Basilica is more than made up for by our discovering the Church of the Assumption by the river. It’s Pest’s parish church and its oldest. The site is ancient: under glass in the floor we can see extensive remains of the Roman camp that once stood here on the bank of the Danube. There are remains of Romanesque and this provides the highlight of this rebuilt gothic church. Behind the high altar is all that’s left of some wall paintings. The crowning glory is a most beautiful depiction of the Assumption. It’s graceful and delicate, art that is full of love and devotion. But I’m even more moved by a painting to one side. It once showed Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Almost all of him is lost, except his hands held together in prayer, just like the famous Dürer drawing. And what’s best of all in this Romanesque Wall painting, surviving intact, is the image of God the Father, listening intently to his Son’s prayer as he hides behind a tree. The association must be to the Garden of Eden - how winsomely it’s done, and how rich theologically!

And so back to the Parliament Building for the guided tour. I won’t describe the architecture: the travel writers can indulge their superlatives and rhapsodise about this amazing edifice. Suffice to say that it’s a cross between the fairy-tale Chateau of Pierrefonds in northern France, and St Pancras Station with, of course, the obvious homage to the British Houses of Parliament (but this is in much better condition). National rhetoric and a (very very) proudly imagined past come into things at every turn - in the symbolism of the architecture, the sculptures of national heroes and the ordinary Volk - artists, craftspeople, scientists, philosophers, engineers. Gold leaf is on display in abundance.

But the clue to this place lies at its geometric centre. Here, underneath the dome (more Florence than Rome or St Paul’s), the crown regalia are kept in a sealed case of toughened glass. Round it is an innocent looking rope - but alarmed. That in turn is guarded by two military officers with guns. Touch the ropes, alarms will sound and the soldiers will as likely as not fire - that’s the message we are given. Oh, and photography, allowed everywhere else on the tour, is not permitted here, again on pain of - well, who knows? The regalia which go back to the eleventh century and Hungary’s king-Saint Stephen I are clearly treated as holy objects, the embodiment of the nation. Is this the real reason photography is forbidden, not any security risk so much as the violation of a sacred space that bears mystical significance?

I walk back via Freedom Square. On the far side is a memorial to the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who perished in the Holocaust. Most were Jews, but we must never forget the Roma, the political dissidents and the gays who also ended their days in the extermination camps. This memorial shows the eagle of the Third Reich descending on Hungary brandishing a huge and evil claw bearing the year 1944 that’s about to lay hold on and devour the woman below, the personification of Hungary. On the ground is a classical pillar twisted out of shape. It’s powerful but it’s hard not to read this grotesque image as kitsch. There is an inscription in Hebrew and Hungarian, and a date - 19 March 1944. This was the day the German eagle landed on its former ally, its hanging black claw dragging Hungary viciously into the Reich that would last a thousand years. “That’s what the Nazis did to us.”

But that way of telling the story by blaming the Nazis has become extremely politicised. It seems that Viktor Orban had the memorial erected under cover of darkness and without consultation in order to establish once and for all where blame for the Hungarian holocaust belonged. But history does not bear this out. Hungary appeared to welcome the Nazi occupation with the same enthusiasm as Austria did. What’s more, Hungarians were not only complicit with their occupiers but initiated their own outrages against their fellow citizens including the Jews murdered in the river. (There was also a terrible massacre at Novi Sad, then under Hungarian rule. I don’t recall hearing anything about it when we were there.) So those protesting against this memorial, who include liberal politicians, civic leaders, academics and relatives of the victims, have brought memorabilia from 1944 and laid them out at the foot of the monument. They have also displayed images, photographs explanatory texts in all the world’s principal languages. They are challenging the Orban government to take responsibility for what happened in that terrible year and tell the truth about Hungarian involvement in it. This protest memorial has not been swept away - yet. If it were to be, there would be an outcry.

Of all that I’ve seen on this cruise, this memorial will, I think, stay with me longest. The image is meant to be unforgettable and it is - for all the wrong reasons. It encapsulates so many of the dilemmas of Central and Eastern Europe that we’ve been faced with on this journey: how nations tell their stories, how they face up to their past, how they define their identities in the present, what kind of futures they aspire to. To that extent, the rhetoric of the Parliament Building and of this memorial is the same. Am I right to be worried about the nationalism they both represent in this beautiful but paradoxical country? And can its Europeanism save it from all that’s corrupting in the emergence of the politics of the far right?

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And if this is a question for Hungary, what about the other Danube lands from Germany and Austria in the west to Serbia and Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria in the east? And what about the UK? While we’ve been away the results of the European Parliament elections have shown how the postwar politics of our continent are being reframed in ways that couldn’t have been predicted when we were growing up and when the postwar political consensus seemed settled not only for our own lifetimes but those of our children too. Britain is as exposed to these changes as anywhere else in Europe. 

It’s tempting to see history as offering precedents. The rise of right wing populism across the world suggests parallels with the 1930s. I’ve wondered whether visiting Orban’s Budapest in the 2010s is like visiting Berlin in the 1930s - beautiful, seductive but full of portents. I’m sure this is far too facile. “The chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies” said the Liberal politician James Bryce quoted in a recent article in the London Review of Books, “Populism and the People” by Jan-Werner Müller. Travelling around central and eastern Europe opens your eyes to the history of our continent but we should be wary of drawing parallels. That may be one of the most important things I’ve learned here. Good Europeanism must be earthed in a proper use of history, not an imagined past.

So if this voyage has taught me anything, it’s made me a better European, to quote the fellow-traveller who shared her thoughts with me as we were drawing into Novi Sad. What does “better” mean? Not so much that I’m more convinced than ever of the importance of the European Project, though I think that’s true. No, I mean that it’s revealed how little I knew my continent, how western my assumptions about had been, how much I need to learn about all those who share our common European home, whether the people next door or those who are further down the street.

And what’s true of the continent I call home is also true of the planet I call home. If travel doesn’t make us citizens of the world, why take ourselves off at some cost to cruise down a far-off river not our own? But it is our own. That’s the point. We are privileged to see what we have seen. It’s been hugely stimulating and enjoyable. But beyond the pleasures of a holiday, the companionship and conversation, stories to tell and memories to share, sightseeing, fresh air, relaxation and rest, what matters for travel, what is ultimately important, is how it changes us, and therefore what we do next. I suppose that's why I've been writing this blog of our voyage - not as a record of things seen and done, but as a way of woolgathering, thinking on the page about how and why it should make a difference.  

But for now it is time to get on the coach that will take us to the airport.

Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 13: Back in Hungary

Thursday 6 June
Our last full day on the ship. We have a leisurely breakfast. I go up on deck to write up this blog. It is overcast but warm. We have been extremely fortunate with the weather on this cruise. Rain and thunderstorms have been forecast, but the rain has fallen when we’ve been tucked up in our cells (sorry, cabins) and apart from the spectacular storm at Belogradchik, which was such a gift photographically, we have dodged them on our walks and visits.

After two weeks, voyagers are talking to one another more readily now, sharing stories and experiences, reminiscing about the sights we have seen, contemplating going home. I find myself conversing with a number of people I haven’t spoken to before about everything from Bird Watching to Bach to Brexit - nothing  especially deep, nothing especially lengthy, but the kind of talk that happens when people feel relaxed with one another. Maybe it’s the knowledge that our life together on this ship is coming to an end in the next few hours, but this has been a pretty comfortable kind of “total community” (to go back to my musings on Day One).

By midday we are back at Budapest where our voyage began. We dock by the Chain Bridge, further upstream than when we were here before. From our cabin we have a marvellous view across the river to Buda with its citadel crowning the Acropolis on the other side of the bridge. Is there a city in the world that has exploited its river so effectively as Budapest has the Danube? It’s a silly question really when you think of Paris or London or New York or Lyon or Newcastle. But here it’s the strongly individual character of the river itself that adds texture to the city. Even when the Danube is not in flood, its surface is never placid here, never truly calm, always turbulent with currents and eddies unlike most other great rivers in the world, at least not by the time they flow through their great cities. And we are all conscious of the tragedy that has happened in the Danube since we were last here, the sudden catastrophic sinking of that pleasure boat only a few hundred metres upstream from where we are moored at this moment. The circumstances are still not entirely clear, but you have to wonder how much the rapidity and capriciousness of the Danube were factors in the deaths of so many people last week.

We board the coach for our last excursion, a panoramic drive around the city. We start with the left bank, Pest. Our guide is fluent and informative, telling us about the succession of great buildings we pass, pointing out their architectural styles and highlighting sites of particular significance in the city’s history. The profusion of Art Nouveau is striking, especially the famous entrance to the Zoo. We drive round the Place of Heroes, and pass the South Korean Embassy where it’s moving to see flowers laid in memory of the Danube’s victims last week.

At the Holocaust Memorial alongside one of Budapest’s central synagogues, we learn about the Jewish community in the city. By no means all its members perished in the Nazi era because unlike in more isolated communities in the countryside where whole communities were sent to the extermination camps, there were simply too many Jews in Budapest for their persecutors to achieve the Final Solution they had set themselves. Nevertheless there horrific stories told about Budapest’s Jews, but the Nazis were not the only perpetrators of terrible cruelty. Once, hundreds of Budapest’s Jews were rounded up on the banks of the Danube, told to take off their shoes, then tipped into the icy river to perish. The Hungarians who committed this outrage were themselves summarily shot minutes later. Budapest still has a significant Jewish presence with a dozen or so synagogues, far fewer than before the war, but these are still a vital part of the city’s religious diversity. Most of them are liberal or reform Jews, rather than orthodox.

Not far away we drive down a street where buildings opposite each other are pockmarked with bullet holes. They preserve a memory of events only eleven years after the end of the Second World War when the abortive Hungarian Uprising was brutally suppressed by Soviet forces. I can just about remember talk of events in Hungary in 1956 when I was a six year old. Looking at Budapest today, with all its vitality, confidence and cosmopolitanism, by all accounts a successful and certainly a truly European city, you would not guess that so much has had to be reconstructed following the events of the 1940s and 1950s.

After Bucharest, I’m wary of making judgments based on very little knowledge. Appearances can be deceptive. I’m aware that the policies of Viktor Orban’s regime, while not questioning Hungary’s commitment to the European Union, are infusing it with right wing, nationalistic ideology that is in real tension with the European ideal. And although this has nothing to do with religion, it’s troubling that Hungary’s Catholic history and identity is being invoked to justify it. The bitter memories of the socialist era doesn’t altogether explain this phenomenon, though similar tendencies are observable in other former Eastern bloc countries as we’ve seen on this journey. Maybe Hungary’s historic identity, rooted in the Magyar migrations from central Asia and the distinctive language they brought to Europe have contributed to a Hungarian exceptionalism that sets it apart from its neighbours whether Germanic and Slav. These are among the seeds sown by what our guide has to say to us today. Plenty of food for thought to take back to Brexit Britain tomorrow.

We cross the Danube by the Chain Bridge, the oldest extant and most venerable of Budapest’s bridges. The magnificent view over the river opens up, including the Parliament Building upstream. There, just below, is our ship. I look down at it fondly. However enjoyable they are to sail in, I don’t find these cruise ships beautiful to look at. They are supposed to look shiny and sleek, but unlike seagoing vessels, their sheer length and lack of draught suggests an oversized floating railway carriage. But it has been our home for two weeks and we have been looked after well by people who care about what they do and do it well.

Over in Buda, we are embroiled in heavy traffic so our guide chats amiably with us about our cruise. How many countries have we visited? Which did we like best? Hungary of course! comes the reply, for people on holiday are always eager to please. No seriously, he insists. There’s no clear answer to this unanswerable question. He goes through them by turn. When we get to Serbia he says, “People often find Serbia difficult. Maybe that’s because of the history and how it has shaped people there. But I think it’s a wonderful country.” This is intriguing. So is this. “Now that you’ve spent time in Serbia and Croatia, you may think you now understand the Balkan wars. If that’s the case, then you need to go to Bosnia-Herzegovina. You’ll realise that you haven’t begun to understand it at all.” Like Brexit, as he quips later on, which is another of those Schleswig-Holstein questions (only ever understood by three people, the first of whom had forgotten, the second had died and the third gone mad).

We get out at the citadel. It was inevitable that the tour would end here at the Fishermen’s Bastion. It is thronged with people. The view is undeniably very fine but I can’t get any decent images for hoards of youngsters taking selfies on the parapets. And the concept of this self-conscious over-visited site feels like a tourist concoction, Budapest-as-cliché, not the authentic Hungarian city we have come to see. The river on the other hand, the city’s star attraction, never falls into trope. Is that because it’s a working river? Discuss.

But what I shall remember from this walk is our guide's parting shot to us. “Remember the Slovenian national anthem” he says. It’s the only one in the world that’s about world peace rather than one nation’s flourishing. Of course I have to look it up on the web. It goes like this:

God's blessing on all nations, Who long for that day When across the whole world No war, no strife holds sway; Who long to see that all are free;
No more shall foes, but neighbours be.

As for the Bastion, there is nothing to detain us here. We walk away from the bustle down steep steps. Suddenly it is quiet again. We come across an intimate pedestrian square created on a terrace surrounded by elegant modern buildings. I notice one of them is an architect’s practice, maybe the one that designed this project. There’s a small cafe there. We sit down and enjoy cool drinks while a little girl no more than two or three years old dances in front of  us. She is oblivious to her audience. She is filled with the unselfconscious joy of being alive. It’s beautiful and touching to watch.

We walk the promenade back towards the Chain Bridge. We are overtaken by cyclists in a hurry, and by trams ancient and modern. Lovers linger by the riverside parapet with eyes only for each other. On board ship, there are rites of passage to mark the end of our voyage. We reminisce with fellow guests over an amiable dinner, then go back to our cabin. Budapest is beautiful by night, and we have a spectacular view of it from our window.  

But for us, the journey is not quite over. We have a late flight tomorrow, so we shall have time to discover more of the city in the morning.

Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 9: A Fortress in the Sky

Sunday 2 June
We sail into the port of Vidin on the right (Bulgarian) bank of the river. An impressive new road-rail bridge across the Danube linking Bulgaria to Romania was completed in 2013. It replaced the car-ferry which could not reliably run either in cold winters because of ice, or in dry summers because of lowered water levels. At such times, road traffic would need to detour through Rousse 190 miles downstream to take the only other Danube crossing, the "Friendship Bridge" connecting the two countries. On the lower Danube, all distances are huge by western European standards, whether it's to travel up and down along the river banks or to get across this mighty river.

We set out for the little town of Belogradchik in the foothills of the Balkans. Our guide this time is a woman who is not only Anglophile but has a distinctly British love of irony and word-play. Once again we hear the take of a native Bulgarian on the history of her country. But she is more outspoken than her predecessors in the countries we’ve visited. As we leave Vidin she points out the effects communism has had on her town. Once upon a time, she says, this was a jewel of the Lower Danube, a stylish, beautiful riverside resort full of churches and mosques, narrow streets and fine houses, a place that encapsulated the best of the river’s rich, complex history from antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages through the Ottoman centuries to the Victorian age of elegance. One book I’ve read says it was once a magical town on the Danube where you first caught a whiff of the Orient. “Now look at it!” she scorns as we drive past an unending sequence of derelict socialist-realism factories, office buildings and apartment blocks. Is there anything more depressing in the repertoire of human assault on a townscape than concrete that has been abandoned? “If you want to know why we hate communism so much, just visit Vidin.”

We leave it behind us and head for the blue uplands on the horizon. Rust-and-concrete grey gives way to lush greens. The cumulus is towering ominously. The road is torturous but well engineered, and our driver is skilful. Your first view of Belogradchik is across a deep forested valley. “There’s only one building in this town not to like” announces our guide, “and that’s the socialist telephone exchange”. But we don’t pay much attention to this charmless building so out of scale with the intimate architecture of this town. What holds the attention from miles away is the extraordinary acropolis that sits at the very top of this hilltop town. A vast citadel built among red sandstone crags that tower above the fortifications like giants’ teeth. It’s an unforgettable apparition.

However, the sky is darkening ominously. “I pray that God will preserve us from light (sic) and thunder this afternoon” she warns, all irony gone. “There is iron in these rocks. If an electrical storm happens, and hopefully it won’t, keep away from them for safety’s sake.” Through the medieval gateway, we see a path snaking up a series of steps to another gateway high up, then more steps to the crags at the very top. This adventure is not for everybody. But even from the entrance you can take in the magnificent spectacle of fortifications that are probably unique in Europe.

Known by the Ottomans as Kaleto ("the fortress"), the citadel was created in Roman times as a defensive structure to control the Danube plain at the northern edge of empire. It was remodelled in Ottoman times, and a splendid curtain wall added. We climb up and reach the middle gateway. The sky ahead behind the towering rocky pinnacles is getting darker by the minute. But this is not a time for faint-heartedness. We strike out again, onwards and upwards until we reach the summit. From here there is a magnificent 360 degree panorama over the mountains to the south and the lowlands to the north, with the town (and telephone exchange) as foreground. But most spectacular of all is the sky to southward, blue-black, brilliantly setting off the red rocks rearing up all around us. It’s a photographer’s dream, this dramatic sky that so perfectly echoes the dramatic landscape.

But there is lightning in those clouds, and the first oily drops of rain. We need to get off these rocks quickly. But like the summit of Everest, traffic in both directions has to pass through a gully where the steps are steep and narrow and only one person can get through at a time. Some of our companions are not as fleet of foot as we (still) are, so there is a queue to get off the acropolis, not a long one but enough to concentrate the mind as the storm begins. Meanwhile a party of schoolchildren is on its way up. They crowd inside the upper gate for shelter just as I reach the lower bastion, and the heavens open.

The drive back to Vidin is eventful for the number of heavy trucks that have appeared on the road, heading towards Sofia. It is narrow and sinewy and the risks taken by some of these drivers anxious to make progress are worrying. We round a bend and there directly in front of us is one big truck overtaking another. A head-on collision is averted but it’s a nasty moment. But there’s a good moment later on. Our guide spots a stork in its nest at the top of a pole guarding its young. We stop and enjoy the sight for a full five minutes, a simple pleasure that is touching for its sweetness.

Back in Vidin, we drive round the city. Our guide continues her architectural survey of the depredations of communism on her native town while picking out surviving buildings of beauty such as three houses from the Ottoman era, one of which has been lovingly restored by its owner. We walk to the medieval bastion, the Baba Vida fortress that guards the river upstream of the town. Its mighty curtain walls and towers testify to the threat posed to western Bulgaria by Serbia in the late middle ages. The nearby synagogue is singled out for comment. This fine large late nineteenth century building is ruinous now - emigration to Palestine after the war largely emptied Vidin of its Jews. But our guide tells us proudly that Bulgaria was the only state in Eastern Europe that did not hand its Jews over to the Nazis to be deported and murdered. I find out later that this statement, while true, needs qualification. As an Axis power, Bulgaria was forced to collaborate with the deportation and murder of non-Bulgarian Jews resident in the country. However in 1943, a public outcry supported by both King and Church led to Jewish deportations being halted before any Bulgarian Jews had been transferred to the Germans. This only became generally known after the end of communism in 1989. It's a very different story from Romania and Hungary.

While everyone else gets back on board ship, I wander round the town centre alone with my camera. Children are playing round the grim buildings that front the river, something you see all over Eastern Europe in the way you used to in Britain in the 1950s and 60s when my generation was growing up. Our guide has already commented on this, saying that smart phones and computer games have yet to take over the lives of the young in the way they have in the west. They laugh and giggle as I photograph them, then line up to pose and wave merrily at me. “Hola” they shout, “hi!” And I can’t even say hello or thank you back to the, in Bulgarian!

This is one of the grimmest urban environments I’ve seen on this cruise, so much the worse because of what was destroyed to create it. Rust, weeds, rotting concrete are everywhere. Even the river frontage, normally the showpiece of every riparian settlement, is brutalised by socialist-realist buildings that are not only ugly in themselves but disproportionate in their scale. The railway station seems to be an exception to this rule, contemporary, clean, functionally elegant - but then I step inside the ticket hall that fronts the rectangular plaza as if to say, here at least is an attempt to do something that will make the twentieth century worth remembering. It is deserted and has every appearance of having also been long abandoned. I may be wrong about this - after all, it is Sunday afternoon and no rail movements are due for a while. But as I look up at the destination indicator, my eye is caught by two pigeons staring down at me from their perch on top of the board. This is our domain now, they seem to say. At least till Monday morning.

Outside the station is an object of genuine beauty. It’s a bronze sculpture commemorating those who fell in the conflicts that have plagued the Balkans for so many centuries. Here is a soldier looking down at his own sword in sorrow for the suffering and death it has been responsible for during his time of service. It symbolises the universal longing for peace that achieves real poignancy. Here is humanity’s best self, undaunted by the corrosive effects of living under one tyranny after another.