Rolling down the river
CEANS take you to countries. Rivers take you through them. Reclining, wine in hand, on the AmaCerto’s sundeck as the Danube swoons through medieval towns is exactly what floats my boat.
Every morning the landscape unfolds like a woman getting dressed. A gauzy pink sunrise unveils white flanks of riverbanks, dark limbs of apricot trees, wild grass tufting between sand and rock. When the light is true, all perspectives seem new. Castles, steeples, and domes drift by one minute. Vineyards tumble down mountain slopes the next. So tranquil is the scenery that it’s hard to imagine the Danube’s aquatic roadblock role during the Cold War when bureaucratic ballast required so many visas and special permissions that sensible people gave it a wide berth. Adventure was one thing. Dodging bullets from the border guard quite another.
Today’s river cruise is stress-free to the nth degree, providing everything a holiday should be. Embark-
Oing at Budapest, my Amawaterways cruise encompassed Vienna, Dürnstein, Melk, Linz, Passau and Vilshofen. I wasn’t sure what Budapest would bring. The people speak a language nobody understands and I envisaged peasants in kerchiefs bearing steaming bowls of goulash and paprika. How wrong I was. Hungary’s capital offers dreamy meanders, with eight balletic bridges arching over the Danube to unite Buda with Pest.
Hijabs worn by Muslim women loading up on tur nips at the Központi Vásárcsar nok Market Hall were the only head coverings around. I found my favourite Italian coffee here, way cheaper than in South Africa. And discovered that “Hello” is a Hungarian word. Now you know.
Our Amawaterways excursion guide told us Hungarians invented the ballpoint pen, the fuel carburettor, sound film holography, LPs, and CD-ROMs. Gustave Eiffel designed Budapest’s railway station, completed in 1877. The magnificent stone, steel and glass complex fell into disrepair after the communist takeover – McDonald’s offered to help with renovation costs in return for occupying the building. Yesterday, the Soviets ruled. Today it’s a corporate takeover.
Budapest may be described as a city of seconds, boasting the world’s second-oldest zoo, a Condé Nast Traveler “world’s second-best city” ranking, and the secondlargest collection of Spanish Art in the Museum of Fine Arts that adjoins Heroes Square, site of the second-oldest subway. But second best? Never Budapest…
Topped by the Angel Gabriel, a gleaming white column defines Heroes Square like a defiant middle finger flanked by a semicircular colonnade.
Equestrian statues honour the chieftains of the seven Magyar tribes who settled Hungary in 895.
Visiting heads of state lay wreaths on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that dominates the middle of the square. In 1989 a crowd of 250 000 gathered here for the reburial of former prime minis- ter Imre Nagy, hanged for treason in 1958.
Just behind Heroes Square, the City Park facilities – Budapest Zoo, Funfair, Municipal Circus, the Cultural Hall, Vajdahunyad Castle, museum of agriculture and transport, and the Széchenyi Thermal Bath – are tourist magnets.
Budapest wears her dark Communist past lightly, mixing fin de siècle garb with modern, stylish accessories. Like a 19th century courtesan, Pest reveals coquettish glimpses of Austro-Hungarian grandeur. Scented flower stalls, Hapsburg eagles, the sumptuous façades of merchant houses, and parliament’s splendid Gothic building led the writer M John Harrison to describe Budapest as “a dreamed-up city… invented out of Paris by way of Vienna”.