Never B4 Love on Valentine's Day in Budapest

What's a married girl to do alone on Valentine's Day in Budapest when she's already seen all the major tourist sites and soaked herself silly in the thermal baths?

That's the question that immediately came to mind when my blackberry showed me yesterday's date. Knowing  that later in the day, I'd have a face-to-face Valentine's Day chat with my husband in the U.S. (thanks to my web cam & Skype), I brushed off any tendency I might have to feel lonely and decided to use the day to celebrate another love -- my love of doing something I've never done b4.

As I've come to learn from previous business trips to Budapest, Never B4's are not hard to find in or around the city. On one trip, I got myself lost in the city's maze of underground caves and another time I got a glimpse of the mummified hand of the Hungarian King Saint Stephen I in a back chapel of St. Stephen's Cathedral.

With love in the air, I decided nothing could be more quirky than to visit a Park designed specifically to remember a time that Hungarians hated. The time was the era of communist dictatorship and the Park is Szobor Park, an outdoor space designed to showcase the statues that used to loom over Budapest in accordance with the rules of the communist government.

Whenever I asked locals about this Park, none of them had ever been there and none of them showed any interested in ever going. That alone made me curious to learn more about why it was built and what exactly was on display.

Szobor park is about 20 minutes outside Budapest center and when I arrived, there were no cuddling couples strolling about like there were outside my hotel. In fact, for a good 20 minutes I was the only soul for the looming statues to cast their dark shadow upon.

Twenty-foot statues of Marx and Engels stood recessed in a brick facade that formed the entrance to the portion of the park called "One Sentence of Tyranny Park."

At my back, across a narrow street was "Witness Square,' a replica of a public square with a massive pair of black military boots standing guard atop the south wall. The boots themselves seemed even more daunting than the larger-than-life statues of Lenin & Marx and later I learned they were only a small portion of a statue of Stalin that used to stand in Felvonulasi Square in Budapest in 1951.

It was impossible not to feel insignificant and weak while walking beside the more than 40 statues and plaques dotting the perimeter of the Park. Each item, together with the bareness of the grounds around them, was a stark reminder of the intimidating power that had had a stranglehold on Hungary for many years.

In the late 1980's when the political scene changed in Hungary and Central Europe, literary historian Laszlo Szorenyi voiced his idea for a park filled with the city's old communist statues. He thought displaying the statues would educate people on Hungary's past and serve as a place to honor those that died fighting to free the country from communist tyranny.

The concept of a memorial park was controversial since many Hungarians simply wanted to destroy the statues. Eventually consensus was reached and the park opened in 1993 as an example of how to treat a sensitive topic in a civilized and educated manner.

I left the park with a camera full of picturesand boots caked in mud. The pictures I was happy to have but the mud was an ugly and constant reminder I didn't need or want. As I stood over the sink watching the mud wash down the drain, I thought about all the Hungarians who told me they had never been to Szobor or never wanted to go. I wondered if, like the mud on my shoes, the Park was an ugly reminder they didn't need when they could still easily conjure up pictures of the statues from their own memories.

For those of us who have been lucky enough to live without a history of such tyranny, Szobor Park is a place to go to appreciate what you have.

**** A Completely Unrelated Valentine's Day Never B4 from Budapest ****                   When my Skypeline rang last night, I answered thinking it was my husband calling for our Valentine's Day chat and instead I discovered it was a Hungarian hooker calling. That was definitely a first! Needless to say, I didn't answer. If you're wondering how I knew she was a hooker if I didn't answer, suffice it to say the picture she posted as her Skype ID told the full story.

How Did You Spend Valentine's Day this Year?  Any interesting Never B4's to share?  Click on the headline above, scroll down and add your thoughts in the comment section at the bottom of the page.

Comments

[The Artist formerly known as Dave]

Very cool post!

Informative - much as I would like to raze any reminder of the eight years of tyranny that we just suffered in the US, maybe we should have a "Statue Park" next to the George W. Bush memorial library (which should definitely be in the shape of a giant shredder, the constitution headed into its maw).

Statue suggestion: "W clearing brush" (ie, those pesky amendments)
Statue suggestion: "Executive order" (a large crayon - very DaDa)

Does anyone else have statue suggestions?