Terror museum and the baths

Today Em, Janene and I decided to take it a little bit easier and take the metro to the “terror museum” to learn more about Hungary’s 20th centaury history, the museum was really interesting, really depressing and even at some points really sickening! It was very well put together designed to both inform us and stir up emotions. The centre piece of the museum (and the only thing we were allowed to take photos of) was a Russian tank sitting in a big puddle of Oil I didn’t find out the specific meaning of the oil but it looked very impressive made me think of the students who protested in 1956 and how it would feel to find yourself looking down the barrel of one of those babies!

There were lots more rooms each with a different theme, talking about the 2 occupations in 44-45 by the Nazis and the Russians, about the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis and of the middle class by the Russians, about the gulags in Russia, the arrow cross political movement who were the Hungarian Nazi party. The last section of the museum was the basement, where they had re-created some of the cells that used to be there, the museum is in the building that used to be the headquarters of both the arrow cross and the Soviet secret police so it was the site of many people being held prisoner, tortured or even beaten to death! This gave the whole place a really eerie feeling!

Needing something more cheerful after the museum we headed up the Heroes square the nearby Turkish style bath house. Heroes square was amazing with heaps of statues represent 10 warrior looking Kings of Hungary and four horseman for the four tribes that originally settled Hungary I loved these statues and I think it’s probably my favorite monument so far.

Next to the baths, there are heaps of them all over Budapest; I think they started when the Turks invaded at some point. The place was HUGE with so many different pools of different temperatures from a chilling plunge pool at 18c to a almost to hot to get into 40c we stayed there for about 3 hours trying out lots of different baths but my fav part was whirlpool in one of the outside pools, they had strong jets sending the water around in circles and you could ride the current (with about 40 other people) for ages it was lots of fun!

written by

Chris and Emily on June 24, 2009 from Budapest, Hungary

from the travel blog: Europe 2009

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