Home

We are home from Budapest.  We left a week ago, about two weeks before our scheduled departure, and, against a number of odds, we made it back in one day.  I just wanted everyone who has been following our travels to know.  Also I have several Budapest posts in draft, which I will finish up and publish.  (Because there's not going to be a lot interesting going on here.)  And if you don't like reading about the travails of travel, just skip the next part.

About three weeks ago, we started hearing news about the spread of the virus in Europe, the ban (except for American nationals) for inhabitants of the Schengen zone (a group of European countries that have open borders, Hungary being one of them) to enter the US, and the cut-back on flights from Europe to the US.  On Saturday 3/14, we read that Delta was soon suspending all flights from Europe to the US.  I tried to contact Delta--by phone, twitter, and the website--about changing our tickets.  The phone immediately put me on-hold, and I waited and waited until the call dropped.  No one answered my tweets until about 10 days later, and the modify reservation option on the website didn't work (still doesn't).  So when I read that American would be flying from Europe to the US until March 18 to help Americans get home, I made a reservation and figured I would deal with Delta when I got back to the US.

The day before we left Hungary put a ban all restaurants, etc, and closed its borders.  That night the man who was taking us to the airport the next morning called and asked if we still wanted a pickup because another US client had just gotten an email that his flight was cancelled. I frantically searched the internet but couldn't find anything.  I called and back said we would take the 5:00 am pickup.

We got just a few hours of sleep before getting up at 4:00 and starting our trek.  We got to Budapest, then to Heathrow, where we had a six hour layover.  While at Heathrow, we saw flight after flight being cancelled.  Nevertheless, we took off on time and arrived at O'Hare.  We had seen pictures of the massive crowds at ORD the days before and read tales of people being crammed up together and standing on line for 7+hours. We only had a 90 minute layover in Chicago that we were so sure we would not make that I had booked us a non-refundable room at the ORD airport.

When we arrived in Chicago there were virtually no lines at all.  We got through immigration, through the mandatory health check and temperature taking, collected our bags and delivered them to the transfer point, went through security, caught a bus to take us around the airport to another terminal, found our gate, and boarded our flight.  I was astonished; 90 minutes is a tight connection at the best of times.

So we are home.  We are in a loose quarantine for two weeks (stay home, but can go to grocery store, pharmacy of walk outside, which is pretty much what all of Louisville is doing right now.).  Like everyone else we are scared: how quickly everything changed, how dire the prospects are, how terrifying it is to have a president who doesn't believe in science.

We are also worried for our friends in Budapest and are wondering what we will find if we go back next year.

Delta for all its vaunted no worries about changing or cancelling flights, will only refund us the return trip in miles, which we must use before October.  Fat chance of that happening.  And I will probably have to swallow the nonrefundable hotel.  But we are SO lucky.  We are safe, we have a safe place to live, we are vigilant about our health, we wash our hands a lot.

Kiskunfelegyhaza: Extraordinary Town Hall with Zsolnay Ornaments

Kiskunfelegyhaza (if you can pronounce it you're better than me!) is a small city about an hour and a half train ride from Budapest.  It has an extraordinary Town Hall that we have long wanted to see.  So we hopped on a train and spent the day there.

Town Halls were important structures in Hungary around the turn-of-the-century.  They attested to civic identity in a country that was growing by leaps and bounds.  Kiskunfelegyhaza invited designs in 1903 but controversy greatly divided the town.  Should they keep the older classical style or build their town hall in the new Hungarian style of Odon Lechner and his followers? (There is a lot of ideology and history, as well as aesthetics, embedded into this question.)  The latter side won, and the commission was given to Jozsef Vas, who began construction in 1909.  After Vas's death, Nandor Morbitzer completed the building in 1911, adding the tower to keep the building even more in line with the Lechner school.

The building is decorated with Transylvanian folk motifs, including flowers, hearts and a multi-colored roof.

The inside was attractive as well, but paint obviously doesn't hold  up in the way the technology of the external Zsolnay tiles does. 

Later we got to see the façade in the slanting late afternoon sun, making the colors glow differently and the ornaments almost three-dimensional in appearance.

There were some other interesting buildings in this little city, but the Town Hall is clearly the star of the show.

Here for example is a building decorated with small tiles.  The little round decorations are drawn from Transylvanian embroidery knots.  

 A beehive on the top of a building, signifying this was once a bank (bees storing honey is an image of "saving.")

More little dots.

 And a perfect Art Nouveau railing.

#Kiskunfelegyhaza

#HungarianTownHall

#Zsolnay

Rath Gyorgy Museum: Art Nouveau--a Hungarian Perspective

It was rainy yesterday, so we went to the list of museums we were saving for an indoor day, choosing the Rath Gyorgy Villa, Rath Gyorgy (1828-1905)--or Gyorgy Rath as we would say in the US--was an esteemed jurist and legal scholar.  In addition, he was an important collector of art, including major European paintings (now in the Museum of Fine Arts) and works of Art Nouveau, including those of Austria and England, but most significantly Hungarian Secession.  He organized the Museum of Applied Arts in 1881 and was its first director until 1896.

When he died, he left his art collection to his wife who, in turn, left it to the Museum of Applied Arts with the stipulation that it would form "the National Rath Gyorgy Museum constituting an auxiliary part of the Museum of Applied Arts, which is inalienable and must be contained together."  The museum was established in his villa at Varosligeti fasor 12, opened in 1906 and visited by Emperor (King in Hungary) Franz Jozsef in 1908.  In 1948, the collection was broken up for ideological reasons, the proletarian dictatorship considering it dangerous to celebrate a bourgeois apartment.  The museum re-opened in 2018.  It includes much of Rath's original collection (most specially Zsolnay pieces and tiles), many collected in a series of cases,  and a series of rooms designed to show what Hungarian Secession furniture and ornaments look like as used.

The highlight for me was the Dining Room.  In this room, no piece (furniture, art, table settings) has a straight line; every piece includes the Art Nouveau curve.

 There is also an Art Nouveau sitting room

And there is the house itself,  stairs and wooden settings by Pal Horti, iron gates by Gyula Jungfer,.

 A beautifully organized and maintained museum: recommended for anyone interested in Art Nouveau or Secession.

From the Museum

#Rath Gyorgy Museum