Budapest a second thought…

It is clear that Budapest and the country has gone through so many changes over so many different centuries. Often war-torn, the ancient and historic relics being  created and subsequently destroyed by man’s own hand.

From the Mongol attacking Buda, the Turks moving in, to the eventual military coup of Nazi Germany and the impact of World War II, when “The Arrrow  Cross” committed heinous crimes against the Jews. The shoes that are aligned on the bank of the Danube are a memorial to those who were shot into it by the Arrow Cross for their beliefs.

In the Jewish quarter the former slums as they were known, are memorials to the Holocaust on the street which leads to the largest synagogue in Europe today, which is able to hold 3000 worshipers.

Budapest is a place for reflection, its vastness and its busyness hides and appears to overlook the tears of yesterday, but the memories are there to be seen in the urgency to recapture the grandeur of times gone. 

If you have the pleasure to visit  Budapest, then take a moment to look closely at how the developing city is reaching out to western and eastern philosophy, learning from the past and how the words and actions of yesterday’s influential world figures are helping to create a city-wide memorial in remembering a glorious and yet sad history.