HUNGARY'S CAPITAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25065, 1 December 1944, Page 3

HUNGARY'S CAPITAL

TRAGIC FATE OF GAY BUDAPEST

HOPES CRASH. DOWN WITH THE BOMBS

By F. M. GRAHAM

What. is happening to the gayest city in the world? Not Paris, where death came to lurk in the once tender shadows; nor Vienna, where laughter died on frightened lips as "Sieg Heil" took its place; but tha,t undisputed synonym for gaiety, that home of haunting music, that magnificent back-cloth for romance— Budapest. Here the lights blazed on for beauty's sake long after the blackout had settled gloomily down upon the West. Here strains of gipsy violins echoed from old Buda to modern Pest and back again across the speeding Danube, bluer here than Strauss ever saw it at Vienna, long after Vienna herself had lost heart for music. Here the slender, graceful Hungarian girls, reputed to be the most beautiful in Europe, were able to take the evening air in peace along the Corso, elegantly gowned, delicately perfumed, with high heads and light hearts, long after Paris had become a drudge, a slave, a waiter in queues. Only now, when Russian shells and Allied bombs are matching destruction with German demolitions, and panic is spreading wildly among its people, is Budapest beginning to reap its just reward as Hitler's hanger-on and to feel at last the full and terrible weight of war. Lost Provinces What -hopes and dreams must come crashing down with the bombs, what despair in the bitter realisation that the lost provinces are now indeed lost forever and that a new penalty must soon be paid for the simple mistake, as I am sure it must appear to the Hungarians, of fighting once more upon the wrong side. These lost provinces form the key to all Hungarian thought and deed, of Hungarian domestic and foreign policy. Transferred from Hungary . to her neighbours by the peace treaties following the last war, they have become a burning obsession, an injustice crying to heaven for revenge, an outrage against civilisation, a call to patriotism which has steadily gathered strength and momentum in the long post-war years which have never brought resignation or forgetfulness. No map of Hungary has shown the new, shrunken, humiliating boundaries alone, but superimposed them on the vaster contours of the grand old Hungary, a constant reminder of defeat and spur to revenge. In the huge open square fronting the imposing parliamentary buildings, a garden was skilfully and intricately planted to portray this double map in flowers and leaves, with appropriate statues and inscriptions and, the final touch of drama, the national flag flying forever at halfmast in perpetual mourning for the lost provinces.

what's more, assured us they would wash, in spite of the utter lack or a common language; the suave hotel manager who could not or would not understand when we complained or the usual muddle over our luggage, but forgave us, loud and long, from the Y e jy bottom of his heart; the pretty night club girls who Bang "Home on the Range" especially to please our English ears—from swaggering aristocrat to lowly beggar (and there were plenty or the latter) they appealed to one's airections in a naive and child-like and therefore quite irresistible way. A curiosity which one could not omit to mention is the peculiar walk of the Hungarian. Liquid and serpentine in a woman, it became a very odd and suspicious sidle in a man, effeminate in a dandy, absolutely laughable in a coalman. Yet this, too, one learned to accept. , The money system of pengos and fillers was easy enough to grasp, but the language was bewildering, for no phrase book or dictionary could p e 'P you with the totally unfamiliar Magyar alphabet, nor assist in such petty but vital matters as the signs on bathroom taps and doors, the directions on buses, the newspaper headlines and the menus in restaurants. . .

The food was rich and appetising, well cooked and exciting, if you liked the\everlasting scented paprika and heavy spices, and if you couldn't learn to like them you were liable to starve, as even the coffee, bread and cake reeked of the curious mixture of sweet pepper, cinnamon, carrawav and aniseed which seemed to permeate and impregnate the house linen, the breath and hair of one's neighbours in tram and theatre, indeed, the very air one breathed. Still, it tasted good in goulash. Somewhat puzzling were the large egg-cups of solid coagulation upon the breakfast tray, which turned out on cautious experiment to be cream for the coffee. Haunting Music Of the wine of the country, the heavy, sweet, sunny Tokay, one can speak no evil. No doubt old Omar had it in mind when he wondered what the vintners bought one-half so precious as the goods they sold. Strong and exhilarating, it was, even so, less intoxicating than the tzigane music that always seemed to go with it. Budapest learned to suffer in silence the old bromide that every visitor started by asking for a cafe with n tzigane band and ended by begging for a cafe without one. The ears were assailed, the senses 6waycd and wooed, the imagination captured and imprisoned by the melancholy wailing, the wild glee, the unbridled passion of these gipsy violins, and the hypnotic sensation was heightened by tho sometimes amusing and sometimes embarrassing way the leading fiddler fixed his steady, burning gaze upon a susceptible-looking female, especially, one is forced in honesty to add, if her escort looked good for a tip. These haunting and disturbing violins were usually accompanied on the zither — or was that insistent undercurrent of sound the hammering of one's own heart, the pizzicatos of one's own nerves ? Budapest was not often included in the pre-war tourist's itinerary, being wrongly considered inaccessible, overcostly and, in some mysterious way, dangerous. Yet one could do the journey by boat and train from London to Budapest in a comfortable 36 hours, considerably less, of course, by air, and without loss of life or limb.

Fanatical Obsession Everywhere one encountered the repetition of the creed: "I believe in one God. I believe in one Fatherland; I beI lieve in one divine hour coming. I believe in the resurrection of Hun--1 gary." With this fanatical 'obsession upper- ' most in every mind, war—any old war j —offered all sorts of possibilities. "We are quite ready to fight if there is any chance of regaining the lost provinces" was the naive assurance we were given many times. Tbe_ speakers did not say for whom or against whom they were thinking of fighting, and indeed one felt that this was a distinctly secondary consideration. So they sparred with the Little Entente, fought shy of Russia, flirted with Italy, wooed the sympathy of England and France, persecuted their Jews, neglected their domestic economy, and finally surrendered the of Hungary for Nazi "dirt money." Remembering their fanatacism, *one can hardly repress a wave of the same sympathy one might feel for a child who had to "guess which hand" and chose the hand without the lollipop. There will be no lollipops for Hungary on the next peace table.. If a bomb lands fair and square on that pretty, clever map-garden in the centre of Post, it will not "shatter the flowery boundaries more completely than the Allied victory will shatter Hungary's hopes of resurrection.

And it is a frustrating thought nowadays that a fortnight's stay in Budapest, inclusive of all_ fares, hotel accommodation equal to New Zealand's best, admission to the opera, ballet, theatre, museums, galleries, bathing pools, all the usual sightseer's fees, local fares and tips, could be had for about £2s—considerably less than one would need to have in hand for a similar trip from Auckland to Dunedin and back today.

Queen of the Danube Does this fierce and long frustrated national feeling seem inconsistent with the claims of Budapest to be the gayest city in the world? It is not really so, for in fact both attributes arise from the passionate intensity, _ the natural enthusiasm, the emotional gusto with which the native Hungarian fives his life, and the traveller who looks back at Budapest across the gulf of six war years cannot fail to remember being bewildered, enchanted and in the end completely infected with the gaiety and beauty of the place. Clean, elegant, handsome by day, it became at night a scintillating, dazzling city of a million lights, the Queen of the Danube enthroned upon the exquisite bridges that link the two shores. On one side was ancient Buda, with its tiers of beautiful houses, the homes of wealthy merchant princes, and its green lulls crowned with the coronet of the Fisher's Bastion, a cliff-top promenade of delicately sculptured stone, commanding a wonderful view of the river. Here also was the Regent's Palace, full of sweet memories of the lovely Empress Elizabeth, but memorable chiefly for its magnificent ballroom. A symphony of honey-coloured marble, diamond-bright crystal and glittering mirrors, this was, in the unhesitating opinion' of one traveller at least, the most beautiful individual room in the world. On guard near by were Europe's strangest sentries, marching up and down their beat with an almost impossibly slow, mechanical robot-like goosestep, and here lived in those days the gullible Horthy, admiral without a fleet, regent without a kingdom, Protestant ruler of a Catholic State. Historic Cathedral

Also on the Buda heights were the historic cathedral of Saint Stephen, the rallying; point of Christendom against the Turks, and the famous Saint Gelert's hotel and spa, where artificial waves surged lip and down the luxurious swimming pool. Buda had a bracing atmosphero, a combination of the salt tang of Piha, the stimulating sulphur of Rotorua and that element all its own, the spicy odour of paprika. Across the river in Pest was the commercial and fashionable centre with its elegant shops, luxury hotels, theatres, museums: and half-way between the two, in the middle of the Danube, was the green and lovely island of Saint Margaret, so especially designed for pleasure and leisure that it seemed a link with Honolulu's Waikiki, on the other side of the world. On the island and along the riverside Corso in Pest were many open-air wine-gardens, beautifully set under a flowering canopy of pink and white chestnuts, with marblo fountains whispering in beds of tulips and anemones and the inevitable gipsy violinist serenading the patrons. The people inhabiting this paradise were —useless to deny it—likeable in the extreme: tho tiny comic-opera head waiter, traditionally unmerciful, bully to his underlings, the very spirit of subservience and exaggerated courtesy and flattery to his guests; the fat peasant women''in the market square who sold us exquisite hand embroideries and,