Day 30: Memento Park and Margaret Island
One of the most surprisingly pleasant experiences of my trip came on the morning on Day 30, in the form of a visit to Memento Park. After the fall of communism in Hungary, all the communist statues were gathered up and placed in an open-air museum a ways off from the Budapest centre. For about 11 euros, we had purchased a ticket online that included a direct shuttle bus from downtown to the park, a guided tour, and the entrance fee. With the fantastic tour guide we had, it was well worth the price.
As it would've taken over an hour to get there by public transit, with many transfers along the way, the bus was a great idea and the trip took less than half an hour. We arrived at around 11:30 and were dropped off in Witness Square, the front part of the park outside the gate, which is dominated by a giant statue of Stalin's boots.
The original statue of Stalin, which was located right in the city centre near Heroes Square, had been taken down and destroyed by revolutionaries during the 1956 Hungarian revolution against Soviet rule. During the revolution, the boots had been left as a symbol for the revolutionaries, however, after the uprising failed, the boots were destroyed by the Soviets and the statue was never replaced. The boots displayed in Memento park are an exact replica.
Facing the boots is the entrance to statue park -- a facade representing communism's empty promise. The statue on the left is Lenin, and the two on the right are Marx and Engels.
The park itself was smaller than I expected, but extremely well-designed and full of symbolism.
Although the statues were placed around beautiful gardens along the lines of infinity symbols, the main path down the centre led to a brick wall -- a dead end. Our tour guide was very engaging and knowledgeable, never explicitly speaking out against the regime, but hinting at it with humour and irony the entire way. This was pretty much the tone of the entire park.
The style of the statues was very unique as well. They were clearly not made for artistic purposes, but rather for propaganda and promotion. Most were made of metal or rough stone.
After the tour, we had some time to explore on our own, and see the photo exhibition and short film that were displayed in Witness Square. It was a very interesting learning experience to see the remnants of a regime that had never once touched North America. I left feeling like I'd definitely gotten my money's worth.
In the afternoon, we decided to take a walk to Margaret Island, a large city park, since the weather was so beautiful. Although sunny with bright blue skies, it was still breezy and not swelteringly hot. The walk was very pleasant and we stumbled across some cute restaurants, statues, and the most amazing ice cream shop in the world, Lavendula. I got a rose and lavender chocolate cone, which was the best ice cream I'd ever eaten.
One of the statues that we stumbled upon was the Peter Falk statue at the start of Falk Miksa street.
We were looking at it, wondering who it was, when a very excited tourist came up beside us and explained that the man, Peter Falk, was a homicide detective from Columbo, an American TV show. Clearly a very enthusiastic fan of the show and character, the tourist proclaimed that he had come to Budapest just to see the statue and proceeded to pose with it as his amused girlfriend took many photos.
It took about half an hour for us to get to the Margaret bridge, which took us right on to the island. We sat down on the edge of a large fountain and dipped our feet in the water, enjoying the sun for a while. Then, out of the blue, a long and supercool waterworks show started, with all sorts of tall jets and designs.
Further along the park, there was a mini-zoo with peacocks, horses, deer, and all sorts of strange coloured mallards that I'd never seen before. The herons were allowed to wander all around the park.
After a couple hours walking around the beautiful, natural park, we left the island and had dinner at one of the cute restaurants we had seen on the way.
I had a wonderful pasta and vanilla earl grey iced tea before we headed back for an early night.
Photos by Julie Zhang and Linh Nguyen.