Had a rather heavy last day in Budapest. Fascinating sight-seeing, but so full of tragic Hungarian history. The day started with a visit to the underground Buda castle district labyrinth. The labyrinth held plenty of terrible history, including prison cells in the underground tunnels where supposedly Vlad the Impaler was held as a prisoner, it was enjoysble to visit, especially considering that we were the only two tourists in the entire labyrinth during time. The trip included moving through some caves in complete darkness just holding on to a rope. The labyrinth is moist, dark and humid; there are spider-webs and puddles, it smells of ancient decay – in short – my type of a place, probably that’s why there were no other tourists. Our next point of interest was more disturbing. It is one of the newest museums in Europe, a place held top-secret until 2002. It opened to public in 2008 – “Hospital in the Rock – A secret emergency Hospital and Nuclear Bunker.” It is connected to the underground tunnel network under Budapest castle district. During the siege of Budapest, the conditions of the hospital were unbearable, water supply was damaged, temperatures were unbearably high, the hospital was overcrowded, and most of the patients dyied from infections. After the Hospital in the Rock, we visited the House of Terror, which is located at the building where Nazi and then KGB agents tortured and interrogated people. This place was so dark and disturbing, I can’t even write about it right now. It is full of real artifacts, and this is not ancient history, this happened during the lives of my parents generation. You walk through the actual prison cells, through execution rooms, through interrogation rooms. I left it completely ill from the terror of history. I address the subject of war and terror in many compositions - the Russian Requiem, the ode “In Praise of Peace”, Dresden Requiem… Nothing will ever be enough. How can we, as humanity, be so inhuman and cruel? While it is great that in Budapest these three places are preserved and open to public there are also some really disturbing fallouts in taste. The underground tunnels, so scary by themselves are full of silly mannequins dressed up in opera costumes, blasting fragments from Verdi operas. It also has artificial ghosts and other cheap Disney-style halloween effects, spoiling the real sense of history which this labyrinth holds. The hospital and nuclear bunker would have been amazing as it is full of real artifacts from the times and is unlike any other hospital in the world as it is based in the underground tunnels, but it was also spoiled by silly wax figures illustrating scenes from the past - doctors, hospitals, nazis, soldiers etc. Who needs these Hollywoodish wax figures, when the empty rooms full of equipment and beds would have been much more meaningful? And the worst lapse of taste was in the House of Terror displaying some of the most horrifying images from holocaust while playing… rock-music!
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 23:53:52 +0000
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