Chain Bridge Budapest, Hungary
As we left the train station in Budapest, Hungary for what was to be our last time, I saw the emotion in his face. The sun fading, my husband Jerry was lost in the imagining of what it must have been like, all those years ago, for his grandfather when he left Bekescaba, Hungary through Budapest heading for America, knowing he would never see this place or his parents again.
Just as Jerry’s grandfather brought with him on his great adventure to America a desire for a better life for his young wife and son, so too has Jerry carried these same values throughout his life and given them to others. My heart was heavy with the weight of putting into words, this memory.
As I looked up from my pen, I caught the red sun as it was disappearing behind the wooded horizon of this “old country”. Leaving a place by train is so profoundly different from merely lifting up in the sky. You feel the gradual speed hasten and a need to remember every detail; to hold on a bit longer. The little boy racing home on his bike became a dot in the neighborhood. I was writing the memory of our return: our last day in Budapest.
We were passing through on our way back from an incredible week in the Maramures, Romania and needed a connection to Krakow, Poland, the final leg of our four week journey. Having been to Budapest before, we knew how to fill our time, to get the most out of an afternoon and evening. And we did!
Still on the hunt for a few smalls for my antique business, we poked around familiar streets and eventually made our way to the Vaci Utca, the busy, yet still wonderful old street known for its shops and coffee houses. (It was once a place that even die-hard Soviet Comminists allowed to thrive and let their wives go shopping!)
As the day began to wind down, we strolled along the Danube and headed for the beautiful Chain Bridge. Built between 1839-49, then destroyed by the Germans in 1945 and reconstructed in 1949, this glorious Budapest landmark lights up the city each night. Massive and vast and full of history, this majestic bridge is surrounded by the city’s architectural jewels.
As the writer Gyula Krudy wrote, “It was under the soaring vaults on the Chain Bridge that old Hungary marched into new Hungary”.
It was a perfect place, as we simply sat on the banks of the Danube and watched as little diamonds began their dance and ignited the sky…on our last day in Budapest.
