Alongside and down the Danube

It was my one full day free from Wagner in Budapest - magnificent, unforgettable, now chronicled on The Arts Desk - and I decided to visit somewhere upstream. The choices were plentiful: Szentendre, Esztergom, Vác, Visegrád. So I set off through the Budapest streets on the hottest day of the year, shaded by its art nouveau-d or neoclassicized tall buildings - no time to pause and namecheck with guidebook -

to the Nyugati Station to see what was going where. Vác cropped up the most as a destination, only an hour away, so I bought a ticket and hopped on a train there (Budapest to Vác, incidentally, was Hungary's first rail line, from the time of this now very quiet town's livelier past). While settled and guide-studying, I realised that another train and a ferry would take me to Visegrád on the Danube bend.

In the meantime, I had a couple of hours in this very pretty place with a grim more recent history.

Claudio Magris, who like Simon Winder in Danubia and  Péter Esterházy in his much more selective and typically funny/quirky/profound The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube) ignores Visegrád in his own Danube, sums up Vác perfectly:

This little town, also rich in memories of bloodshed, is really beautiful, with its Renaissance and baroque buildings...on the way from Vienna to the Tartar Crimea, the noble gentleman Nicolaus Ernst Kleeman complained about Hungarian innkeepers in general, and those of Vác in particular, saying that among them one found 'the quintessence of inkeeperish incivility': the food and drink were bad, served in filthy kitchenware at exorbitant prices. But Vac has seen worse. In the Theresianum, the old academy for the sons of nobles built by order of Maria Theresa and later converted into a prison, the Horthy regime imprisoned and eliminated the militants of the workers' movement.

I certainly didn't avoid this edifice on purpose. But my free ramble didn't take me close to it. The walk from the station is one long, mostly pedestrianised, provincial shopping street, very pleasant. It ends in the  Marcius 15 tér. The town is clearly proud of its showcased 12th century remains, central to the square, which is dominated on one side by the Town Hall

and on another by the Dominican Church.

Outside it a holy dedication was neatly formed with rose-petals, lime-blossom and other vegetation.

Not the approximation to the colours of the Hungarian flag on either side.

A blackbird was presumably enjoying the pickings.

It's hard to believe that under Turkish occupation there were seven mosques here. The Catholic takeover lost no opportunity to replace them with churches. The bishops of Vác have left quite a legacy; several of the religious schools are still in use as centres of indoctrination. Heading south-east down Köztársaság Utca, you first hit the Piarist Church and handsome row of buildings alongside it

with a holy trinity statue group dating from the 1750s opposite.

Then there's a big square dominated by the Cathedral.

Its French classical ('revolutionary', though pre-1781) look the result of Bishop Kristof Migazzi's instructions to the architect Isidore Carnevale. The huge Corinthian columns are its most striking feature.

The interior has now been restored to its original pomp; Migazzi didn't like the fresco behind the altar and had it bricked over. It was only rediscovered during restoration work in the 1940s (*shrugs*).

Walking past the lively pupils of the Piarist grammar school, I found my way down to the river with an abundance of trees and the inevitable lime blossom smell which had overpowered us on Budapest's Margit Island a couple of days earlier.

You're looking across not to the main opposite bank of the Danube but to the enormously long Szentendre Island which effectively runs from Visegrád to the northern tip of Budapest. Which is why Danube boat trippers would tend to see either Szentendre or Vác, not both, unless they made a detour.

After a quick lunch in the central cafe, I took another train up what is now the spectacularly beautiful Danube bend to Nagymaros, graced with the best view of Visegrád and a beach which was clearly much enjoyed by people, dogs and swans.

I headed straight for the hourly ferry, which left within minutes and likewise took only minutes to cross to the other side.

'Visegrád' is the name for 'high castle (or city/citadel)', given by the Slav tribes who settled here. The strategic castle on top of the hill replaced a Roman fort; it's both ruinous, though parts have been restored, and not as spectacular as I was anticipating from the description of János Thuróczy in 1788: 'upper walls stretching to the clouds floating in the sky,  and the lower bastions reaching down as far as the river'. Not Valhalla, as it turns out, but still quite impressive.

The real ruined gem is hidden from initial sight, and you have to take the road into the village proper to see it: the royal palace of King Mátyás Corvinus and Beatrice of Aragon/Naples, who may have plied her influence to make this a place of Renaissance splendour, described as a 'paradisum terrestrium' by the Papal legate Cardinal Castelli.

I only got thus far into the palace site, intending to plough on in my remaining hours up the hill, but I should quite like to have seen the reconstructions of courtyards, Hercules and Lion Fountains (pieces of the originals are lodged either here or in Solomon's Tower, which unlike the palace is, like the citadel, a landmark from a distance.

Maybe best to imagine the palace as Antonio Bonfini defined it, describing 'a large number of magnificent and spacious halls, porticos with snow-white facings and beautiful windows, as well as a terraced garden and splashing fountains with ornate red marble and bronze basins'.

The real hard sell here now is of medieval knights and jousting. There was hardly anyone around on the Tuesday I visited, but you could tell from the craft-y shops and 'armoury' that it could be hell on a weekend. Perfectly good visitors' centre, though, and the lavender planted outside the information office looks good if selectively photographed with the citadel behind it

as well as being a haven for bees and butterflies.

I walked on into the village, poked around a rather interesting antiques shop with plenty of rooms, pondered buying a Napoleon campaign plate, decided against it, found the start of the route to the citadel behind the post office - and quickly realised as my head began to spin that despite all the water I'd consumed and was consuming, heatstroke might seize me if I ploughed on up. So here, above the church, I halted in the shade

and walked onwards for another 10 minutes or so, with fine views of the Danube and the hills when open spaces appeared between the trees

and plenty of bird and butterfly life, as well as these sempervivums on a rock,

before the path started to ascend steeply, whereupon I turned back and down to the pizzeria in the row of buildings leading up to the church

for one of those very special Hungarian lemonades. The heat was going out of the sun and the sky turning bluer as I headed back down the high street - shouldn't omit another bird here, a thrush, pert to my left -

for the 5.30pm, two-and-a-half-hour boat back (the only one - it heads up from Budapest in the morning and I think goes as far as Esztergom on the border between Hungary and Slovakia).

Soon after rounding the promontory past Solomon's Tower,

the scene opened up and for much of the way there were nothing but trees and water. It seemed a shame to be saying farewell to the Danube bend having only just begun to discover it,

but the views back continued to open up in the deepening light

and the vegetation on the banks of the island to our left could be mistaken as Amazonian.

The occasional groups of birds came into sight either on the beaches or up certain creeks. I could hardly see exactly what I was snapping here, but closing in reveals not only two herons but also - widespread through the world, but not that common - a black stork.

A very jolly white-kimonoed Japanese gentleman, two French cyclists and myself seemed to be the only non-Magyars on a lively boat full of Hungarian scouts and elders.

Many disembarked at Szentendre with its Serbian past, the first major sign of human habitation since we'd left Visegrád. I want to come back here on my next visit to Budapest and stroll around at leisure.

Magris calls the town 'the Montmartre of the Danube'; I'd prefer to think of St Ives, but the point in both cases remains the light that draws artistic colonies to such places. It was quiet even here at about 7pm.  Then we moved outwards

and onwards

to Budapest, signalled first by the southern end of Szentendre Island just past a road bridge which connects the island to both banks.

Then there were lots more holiday chalets, then joggers running round the track that surrounds Margit Island in Budapest proper

and the Margit Bridge came into view, with the Gellért Hill behind it

and then the ever-impressive Parliament Building appearing on the other side.

As the boat made its first Budapest stop at Batthyány tér close to where we'd stayed for the first four nights as guests of J's friend Marie-France André at the Belgian Embassy, a bigger pleasure cruiser and a more humble tourist boat negotiated in front of the Parliament

and then we reached our final destination at the Vigaro tér pier just as the sun was setting over Buda.

Alone but not lonely after many days of lively socialising, I headed back to the excellent Gerlóczy Cafe and Brasserie which our friend Ildiko had chosen for our pre-Götterdämmerung Sunday lunch - it was no hardship sitting outside in front of the trees and the statue watching the world - and back to the hotel for an early night before the final assault on Parsifal at 4pm the next afternoon.

Budapest: people and places

One full day in November didn't give me time to get to know many more places in this lively city than I've explored on two previous visits (also short), but I was pleased to be able to accommodate two familiar faces in the afternoon and evening: pictured above, our dear friend Ildikó Takács, whom we got to know while she was the superb Hungarian cultural counsellor here, and young Eszter Bránya, befriended when the Lambtons of Broughton and (for one year) of Kecskemét asked if we'd put her up while she auditioned for the Guildhall and the Royal College of Music. She got a place, but not the money to support it, so now she's playing and studying from 7am to 11am at the ferociously demanding Liszt Academy. Between them are new acquaintances at Müpa, the 2016 acronym for what was formerly known as the Palace of Arts, Marcell Németh and Müpa's CEO Csaba Káel in Csaba's splendid office.

Most of my time was devoted to Müpa, my host, though the fact that I spent so much time there on the morning following the big Eötvös event I've written up on The Arts Desk and went to a second wonderful concert there was entirely of my choosing, and I was delighted that I did. Essentially it was a case of up and down the Danube from near my quiet and comfortable hotel room above Kálvin tér (so called because of the Reformed Church and the statue of Calvin outside) to Müpa and back, plus a fascinating excursion to the Liszt Academy. Autumn still hung in air, and the cold weather was only to start as I left the following day.

Budapesters have the idea in their minds that Müpa is out on a limb. Certainly it's not ideal to come out from a concert and have to take the No. 2 tram back into town for a decent choice of bars or restaurants. But even if you don't hop on that very regular tram service, it's only 20 minutes' pleasant walk along the embankment. I discovered it more or less by accident because I hadn't realised that the tram stop nearest the hotel is underground and comes up here (tagging is ubiquitous, of course).

The walk takes you from the Szabadság (Liberation) Bridge, looking over to the Gellert Hotel where we stayed on the last trip - yes, the baths were wonderful -

 to the ugly but still rather striking Rákóczi Bridge, beyond which nature seems to stake its claim.

Street life was teeming. A roasted chestnut seller was setting up his stall

and tram stops were always heaving, however regular the service.

My interview with Csaba, whose office commands a good view over the Danube with the odd ziggurat built in the 1990s foregrounding,

 was followed by a tour of the building with Marcell. We strolled around the empty foyers,

saw the folk setting up the cimbalom exhibition in one of the many public auditoriums,

looked out on the skating rink (still not icy enough) and the three flags - Hungarian, EU and black for the recent death of national musical hero Zoltán Kocsis -

and then bumped into his old friend, another 'Zoli', percussionist Zoltán Rácz who was conducting that evening's performance. I've written a little about him and the splendid evening programme over on TAD, and hope he'll give us some lines on his memories of Kocsis, but here he is conjuring up the big tune of Rhapsody in Blue, played like the Ravel G major Concerto's slow movement from memory (bear in mind that the soloist was Louis Lortie, not Rácz).

Zoli 2 told me about his first engagement by the senior  Kocsis in Bartok's Sonata for two pianos and percussion, and about Kocsis' completion of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, which I didn't know he'd done. A photocopied page of the score was sitting on the box office table as we made to leave.

Nature was doing its stuff along the Danube as I returned to the centre - a cormorant skimming for fish

and batches of gulls on landing stages.

As you can see, the sun was trying to break through the mist, and the few leaves still on the trees indicated autumn rather than winter (which, given average temperatures, it would already have been).

I stopped for pulled pork and a fine accompanying salad at a riverside cafe with a colourful array of schnapps

and - although it might have just been possible to sit outside - a good view from within over the Danube.

Not difficult to imagine what a lively place this must be in warmer weather, with its merry rows of bottle lights.

Back to the open spaces around the Liberation Bridge

and a telling juxtaposition of relaxed young and impoverished old outside the City Hall.

I know from a previous visit that the Great Covered Market is a major tourist destination, but once you get beyond the stalls nearer the entrance, it becomes more localised and anyway it looked very splendid with its Christmas lights.

Vegetables inevitably include the strings of peppers

and my, do the Hungarians love every bit of meat they can get their teeth into.

A market of another sort met me at every turn as I wove through a zigzag of streets to meet Eszter outside the Liszt Academy. Each district has one day a year on which its residents can dump anything they like on the streets for collection, and this was the turn of the Terézváros.

For some reason windows and their frames seemed the most popular jettisoning.  And there were rich pickings for anyone who wanted some free furnishings.

Eszter managed to escape her tyrannical alma mater, the inside of which I still haven't seen - there was a concert that night with Jordi Savall -

to take me to the hugely characterful Darjeeling Teahouse,  after which I hopped on a tram down to the river and headed back to Müpa for an hour in the Ludwig Museum - chronicle to come in a separate entry - and the evening's concert with Ildikó, who remains staunchly independent of governmental ties in her film work. The plan for the next morning was to rise early and head for the Széchenyi Baths. But of course I didn't leave myself enough time so instead I took a big walk around the block, admiring the local baroque and the Nereid fountain in front of the Franciscan Church

where a service was in full sway with Gregorian chants projected on large screens, and a presepe Italian style stood outside the church.

Then a lively drive to the airport with a taxi driver whose usual customers were hungover Brits. He'd been to London several times and it always rained so he rushed from museum to gallery; one group of his passengers asked why he didn't spend all the time in the pub like they did.

The good news is that it looks as if we'll be going back for the annual Wagner Ring held in Müpa, by which time it will be June and summer should be in full swing.