Day 57: Budapest

I have been to Budapest twice and have very fond memories of it. Once, with Jonathan in 2013, the year before he died, and the other with Jo on the Peking to Paris rally.

After the worst overnight train journey in the world we arrive. We are staying in a hotel somewhat resembling the Auckland Airport Ibis Budget Hotel beloved of people travelling to and from the Pacific. We stop at the local Starbucks (just as bad as I remember). Because I have seen the tourist spots, I opt for a day off and wander the streets before catching up on washing and home admin. Jonathan and I wrote a travel blog on our 2013 trip (extensively about Hungary’s politics -particularly the 1956 uprising):

“Hungary has a sad national history. As an independent kingdom, it lost several key home matches to the Ottomans in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, and they stayed for a couple of hundred years. Then a Hapsburg-led western Christian alliance turfed the Turks out, but then they too took a liking to the place and held on to it for the next few centuries. Taking advantage of the gradual weakening of the Hapsburg Empire during the 19^th century, the Hungarians extracted the famous 1867 compromise from Vienna, resulting in the establishment of the dual monarchy – Austria and a new Kingdom of Hungary, supposedly with equal status and self-government, together forming the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Over 60% of the land and population of this Kingdom were carved off at Versailles in 1919, with large swathes of territory transferring to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania”.

“Many millions of non-Hungarian people were dumped by the Hapsburgsinto their Kingdom of ‘Hungary’ in order, presumably, to appease an empire-destabilising Hungarian nationalist movement.

“The 20th century also turned out to be pretty miserable one for Hungary. Starting out as a Hapsburg puppet Kingdom dragged into the losing side of WWI and losing over half its former people and land; falling under a right-wing dictatorship that took it into WWII on the Axis side, resulting in most of its army being slaughtered at Stalingrad; then in 1944 when its Government was in surrender talks with the Allies, the Nazis invaded and installed an even more right-wing dictatorship.That year, half of the 800,000 Jews were transported and gassed. Then the Russians then invaded to ‘liberate’ the country”.

“The Hungarian Uprising , was an attempted revolution against the USSR backed government. It began when university students appealed to the civil populace to join them to protest the USSR’s geopolitical domination of Hungary. Several students were then shot, and consequently, Hungarians organized into revolutionary militias to fight the army.The uprising lasted 15 days before being crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on 7 November 1956 (outside of Budapest, firefights lasted until at least 12 November 1956).

Thousands were killed or wounded, and nearly a quarter of a million Hungarians fled the country”.

Heather has been reading Michael Korda’s book, Journey to a Revolution, where he describes how in 1956 he and 3 student mates took a VW full of medical supplies to a hospital in Budapest.

“It was the morning of November 4^th. If we had been listening to the radio –and if we had understood Hungarian – we would gave heard Imre Nagy [we realise at some stage that his surname is pronounced Noitche] announcing that the Soviet forces had begun an attack on Budapest. We dressed hurriedly and went downstairs. Outside in the streets people were beginning to appear in small groups heavily armed and grim faced. We talked with a group of students and intellectuals. This group included a pretty girl with a fur hat and a Russian submachine-gun and was led, of all things, by a university professor called Attila.

“Tear up the cobblestones” Attila advised us.

“What difference would that make to a tank?”

“Attila sighed and explained. Cobblestones were wet and greasy and if you pulled enough of them they were difficult for a tank to climb over. At worst pulling up a cobblestone would at least slow a tank down so someone might be able to run up behind it and throw a Molotov cocktail onto the engine vents”.

Hungary stayed as a Soviet satellite with a failed revolution in 1956, until the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. And so far, Western democracy and market economics, and membership of the EU and NATO, don’t appear to be a panacea”.

Prior to May this year, Viktor Orbán served as Prime Minister of Hungary for 16 years, alongside his Fidesz party and their Christian Democrat (KDNP) coalition partners, and Hungary became what critics call an “illiberal state,”: centralisation of power, changes to electoral laws, and pressure on independent media and judicial institutions. Fidesz allies frequently benefited from state spending, public tenders, and corporate regulations, creating a close tie between political loyalty and business growth, which became known as “Hungary Inc.”

The government championed conservative and nationalist policies, including the restrictive 2021 “child protection law” that targeted LGBTQ+ representation and content.

The administration repeatedly clashed with the European Union over rule-of-law standards, democratic checks and balances, and foreign policy, leading the EU to freeze billions in bloc funds.

Then in April 2026, Péter Magyar and his centrist-to-reformist Tisza Party won a landslide victory in Hungary’s parliamentary election. Earlier this month, Hungary voted to scrap the controversial 2021 Orbán-era child protection and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, removing restrictions on LGBTQ+ content to align with European Union values.

The government established a new anti-corruption body, and instituted transparency reforms. Following these steps, the European Commission moved to unfreeze the EU bloc funding. As well, Hungary moved to lift its veto on Ukraine’s EU membership talks, and expelled Russian diplomats amid espionage concerns.

This evening we go out to dinner at Budapest institution, the Central Grand Cafe. The atmosphere is delightful, and a roving violinist plays classical and modern music.