Budapest   The 3-4 hour drive Wien-Budapest on the motorway was charming, mostly through the green Hungarian countryside, since Wien is so close to the border.

I've used the word Praha. I've used Wien. Now I'm using Budapest, but what I'm saying is Budapesht. More about that later.

When I was talking about twin cities, principally Minneapolis-Saint Paul, I made reference to the granddaddy of all twin cities, the ones that figured it out right. It was in 1873 that Buda, on the west bank of the Danube, and Pest, on the east, joined to form the new city of Budapest. (And don't make jokes that Lon must have joined Don to form London.) However, the two names are now neighborhoods of the whole city, so you still talk about Buda and Pest (Pesht). Amazingly, the layout is remarkably similar to Prague, and almost as pretty. Buda has its castle, illuminated at night, along with lots of other buildings, on the hilly west bank of the north-south river, and Pest is on the flat east bank. Unlike Wien, the Danube in Budapest is quite spectacular. Aside from Buda castle, the Pest side has the huge, neo-Gothic Hungarian Parliament building, with the Soviet red star now happily removed from its steeple.

We could see lots of other changes since our last visit. However, Budapest still needs more time to recover. There are still too many otherwise attractive buildings with chipped stucco. And lots of buckets of fresh paint would work more wonders.

The Hungarian Language   I know next to nothing about Hungarian, but the little I know, you are now going to know. Hungarian is a European language in name only. The Hungarians arrived from Europe from Siberia, and Hungarian is related to Siberian languages, not European ones. Actually, Finnish and Estonian are also originally Siberean, but those speakers can pretty much understand each other. Hungarian is only distantly related to even them, so it's really pretty isolated. Fortunately, I've noticed a lot of words borrowed from European languages, so some things are indeed recognizable.

First of all, even though Hungarian is not related to Czech, accented vowels are long in the same way. Coffee in Hungarian is kávé, which would be KAAvee (e as in olé).

There's one other thing of interest. Like most languages, Hungarian has both an S sound and an SH sound. But then the fun begins.

The letter "s" is used to show the SH sound (!!!), so note that Pest is PESHT and Budapest is BUdapesht. One other word: when you see gulyás--now look at that carefully--know that you're talking about what is spelled in English gulash.

The next logical question is: well, if the letter "s" is SH, how do they spell the S sound? The way I always taught "weird" things in class is to give examples of what people already know. You know the Hungarian composer (Second Hungarian Rhapsody) Franz Liszt. Look at his last name. You know it's pronounced LIST, so you have your answer. Hungarian spells the S sound as sz.

After a while you start giggling. You walk down the street and see all the borrowed words. You pass a szalon near the busz stop. Maybe the busz goes to the neighboring countries of Ausztria, Szlovakia, or Szlovenia. I even saw a Szupermarket. After a while, you're ready to sztart szpelling that way in English (Englis?).

To show how different the language is (without knowing the language), I'll mention we went to a restaurant near the hotel for a great meal. Note that gulyás/gulash is used to refer to a soup made from meat and paprika. If you have that as a main course, which we did, it's called pörkölt. Go figure. But this restaurant, which claims to be the oldest restaurant in the city, has a name meaning Hundred Years. If it had been named in German, you might recognize Hundert Jahre. But the name in Hungarian is Száz Éves. It’s really quite different. Now work on pronouncing it. Remember s/sh and long vowels.

I hope you came up with SAAZ EEvesh (E as in olé). If you visit, you'll be able to ask for it and go and enjoy the good food and music.

This is a trick, but try it anyway: who was Sékszpír?

Near our hotel was a statue of Shakespeare. I say the above is a trick, because they spell it in the original, English way, so the above spelling is theoretical only.

Here's another startling difference. Vienna in Hungarian is Bécs (BAYCH), with CH being spelled cs.

Now for names. I think it shakes non-Hungarians to the core to find out that names in Hungarian ALWAYS have the family name first, so the train we took when leaving Budapest, named after the famous composer, was called the Bartók Béla. That would also go for Lugosi Béla. And--hold your breath--the ladies would have been born Gabór Éva and Gabór Zsa Zsa. (Learn from her name, too: the ZH sound is zs. Parisian Street in Budapest is Parizsi utca.)

Another surprise. Franz Liszt is the German version of his name, usually used internationally. At home he was and is Liszt Ferenc (FErents).

Family names first (also in Chinese: Mao Tse-Tung is called Chairman Mao), are really quite common elsewhere. In most European countries a student asked his name by a teacher would automatically reverse it to Doe John. That's done regularly in English as well, with the assistance of a comma: Doe, John. And remember, your name in the phone book is always in that form. In the Hungarian phone book, they just don't have to reverse it. It's that way already.

I remember 1956 and Imré Nagy, who was executed, and the Hungarian revolution. I was glad to find out that right after 1989, the government honored him, giving him a state funeral, and reburied him in a place of honor. Opposite the Parliament there is a statue--to Nagy Imré--showing him crossing a bridge as he stares toward the Parliament building, to symbolize the changes he was trying to make.

One other monument was extremely impressive. We went to the Jewish quarter to see (from the outside) the famous Dohanyi Street Synagog, the largest in Europe. Behind it was a small, enclosed park, very appropriately named the Raoul Wallenberg Park. In the center was a unique monument. It was rather large, and showed, in silvered metal, a gnarled old tree with many branches. Sticking out of these were a couple of thousand steel rods, pointing up, then bending down in a U shape, with metal leaves. The Weeping Willow Monument is the most impressive holocaust monument I've seen. It presupposes knowledge of the horrors, and dwells on the sadness.

Paprika   I think Americans have been victims of a conspiracy for years. There's a powdered, red food coloring sold everywhere, close to tasteless, that goes under the name of paprika. I describe it that way because I've never heard of anyone using it for taste, only "for color". It's sprinkled on deviled eggs, maybe potato salad, "for color". That makes it powdered, red food coloring, right?

When we were at the Heuriger in Vienna I was up at the counter and an American in front of me wanted more of a cheese spread, so I got some, too. He asked the woman "What's in it, jalapeños?" Knowing that would be rare if not impossible in Europe, I checked with her in German. It was liptauer cheese mixed with--paprika. If you can confuse jalapeños with paprika, then you know you're either near or in Hungary, and this is PAPRIKA!! not food coloring. There were some sliced rings of pepper in a salad, and these weren't bell peppers, not when your hair stands on end. I checked and found that paprika comes in three colors, white, green and red. Our last day in Budapest I went to the central market to see Hungarian szalámi and paprikas. Szalámi from Hungary (in a szalámi szendvics?) is as good, if not better, than any Italian salami I've had, and there was plenty on display. Paprikas are about four inches long and taper to a point. I saw plenty of white ones (really very pale yellow), some green ones, and next to no red ones, except that some white and green ones were turning red. Maybe it's a matter of maturity.

Dining   I wasn't planning on going to Gundel before we got there, or even after we arrived, but then I said, why not. I had read about Gundel in the papers and in magazine articles some years ago. It was founded as a very upscale restaurant in the city park in 1894. It obviously didn't do too well in the mid-20th Century. After 1989, it was rehabilitated, reopened in 1992, and has since regained its reputation. It's the most famous restaurant in Hungary. We sat on the outside terrace, but I went into the main room to look at the walnut paneling, brasswork, glass, and art.

Here, as well as at Száz Éves, there were musicians in costume. I hadn't found a single zither in Vienna, but both bands in Hungary included a cimbalom player (TSIMbalom). It's table-sized, with legs, and has rows of horizontal strings. It's played by tapping the strings with two felt-tipped sticks. It sure sounds like a zither to me.

They played it all. Whatever they missed, I asked for. I also asked for Podmoskovnye Vyechera/Moscow Nights, and for my Mother (and me), Ochi Chornye/Dark Eyes.

I know little about the great Hungarian wines, except for Tokay (Tokaji), which is a sweet dessert wine. The one wine I do know, I ordered twice: Egri Bíkavér. Eger is a wine-producing city; as Egri it means "from Eger". Bíkavér is Bull's Blood. It's the most robust red wine I know, moreso than Merlot or Shiraz.

As to language again: you may know that Torres in Spain puts out a Sangre de Toro, which also means Bull's Blood. But Sangre de Toro is perhaps more recognizable as meaning bull's blood. How could you make that out with Bíkavér?

A Parting Surprise   I was really pleased when I found this out in the last two minutes we were in our hotel (right on the river, with a balcony overlooking the illuminated Buda Castle).

On our only other visit to Budapest, on our sabbatical in 1971, we were living on a shoestring and found a room privately, that is, we boarded in someone's house (how adventurous, in retrospect; but we were younger). I very clearly remember walking along the river prominade and noticing the Intercontinental Hotel, which I know was way above our means. I don't know why, but that particular hotel stuck in my mind: maybe we'd stay there someday.

But when planning this trip, I saw that the Intercontinental was too far up the river. The Marriott was very well placed, especially considering we'd be walking with the wheelchair, so I chose the Marriott. Too bad for the old dream.

On checking out, I was chatting with the clerk about the building, noting that it looked a bit Soviet in style, and might have been built during that era. What he answered floored me. Yes, it was built in the 1960's. It used to be the Intercontinental. With the change in 1989, all franchises were redone, and Marriott took over the former Intercontinental. Then Intercontinental took over the old Forum hotel upriver.

We had been living in the "Intercontinental" of memory for four days and I didn't know it until my fortuitous question at checkout. You can't make these things up.