Just back from my trip to Budapest and Vienna, and since jet lag had me awake at 4 a.m. yesterday and 5 a.m. this morning, I’m stealing these gifted hours to bang out a few hopefully-not-too-addled thoughts about my latest travels. This will not be the most coherent post I’ve ever written, but F it.
Sidenote: I’ve seen the sunrise two days in a row, and I really like getting up early. It’s so peaceful when the world is still asleep. Can I turn myself into a morning person? Can I get my ass to bed by 10 or 11 at night? Can an old dog really change his stripes? We shall see.
First, let me dispense with a few firsts. This was my first trip to both of these cities and my first time in Hungary. I’d passed through Austria on trains before, when I was younger. This was also my first time traveling internationally during the fall since my grandmother died in 2009. And last, but not least, this was the first time I didn’t use any cash at all on an international trip. I used my credit card for everything. Cash is a pain in the ass, and it’s becoming extinct, so I wanted to see if I could get by without making any cash withdrawals at all (especially of Hungarian florints I’d never use again), and I did. Achievement level unlocked.
Now let’s briefly discuss a few logistical headaches. Getting to Budapest was a PITA because there are no direct flights from New York, so I was forced to take a connecting flight, which I hate doing. Due to a two-hour flight delay at JFK, I missed my connecting flight from Amsterdam, but KLM automatically booked me on the next one. Then, before we landed, a KLM flight attendant conveyed the unfortunate news that some passengers’ checked baggage didn’t make it to Amsterdam, which I couldn’t understand since they’d had extra time to load people’s suitcases due to the flight delay. She said that if one’s bag didn’t arrive at baggage claim, the unfortunate passenger would need to download an app and fill out a form, or go to the desk, do a ‘delayed/lost bag dance’, and pray that their bags eventually arrived.
A huge fucking headache and not a great way to start a vacation, to say the least. Fortunately, I only fly carry-on, which has a number of packing limitations, but eliminates the possibility of getting fucked like this. So when I realized none of this affected me personally, I put my headphones back on, closed my eyes, and patted myself on the back for my prescience and Ninja packing skills.
When I finally saw the Hungarian countryside from the plane window, I got that same contact high I always get when I’m seeing a new place for the first time. It’s a major thrill — I feel like fucking Magellan every single time.
Intro to Budapest
After a 20 minute drive from the airport to downtown, during which we passed through neighborhoods that looked drab, decrepit, and like something out of an 80s Cold War movie, I crashed at my hotel for a couple of hours because I was seriously wiped out.
By the time I woke up, it was dark outside, cold, and pouring rain. I haven’t had bad weather on a trip in years, but that bill definitely came due on this trip. I didn’t see the sun for a week, not until my very last day in Vienna. I don’t expect much from the weather when I travel this time of year, but it was disappointing from a photography perspective because some of my favorite photos from Prague had great sunsets and cloud breaks. None of that was happening on this trip, so I had to get creative and make the most out of the overcast and rainy weather. It was a fun test – we’ll see what I got.
When I woke up, I did what I normally do the first day I land somewhere new: I packed my camera and started walking around to get my bearings, letting my intuition guide me. The rain was intermittent and hard at times, only letting up for a few minutes here and there. My camera is weather-sealed, not waterproof, so I began to worry that I might be damaging it because it was getting soaked whenever I took it out. Next time I’ll be sure to bring protection. (Cough). I was praying for some snow–that would have been amazing–but Mother Nature told me to go fuck myself all week.
That first night, I ventured through my first-ever European Christmas Market, which was located only a few blocks away from my hotel (more about them later). Then I stumbled upon the Ferris Wheel of Budapest, which I didn’t even know existed, but apparently it’s the tallest ferris wheel in continental Europe. Then I got ambitious and decided to traverse the Széchenyi Chain Bridge that connects Pest to Buda. This is where I saw the Danube River again (hello, old friend!) in a new country this time. From the Chain Bridge I could see the famous Parliament Building on the Pest-side riverline, which is hard to miss and gave me a huge thrill. It was lit up like a massive, yellow Christmas tree ornament. It looked f’ng radioactive and was positively majestic.
Then I walked down the Buda side of the Danube all the way to Margaret Bridge, which was also lit up and glowing, and then proceeded over the bridge back to Pest. By the time I got back to Pest, I was seriously tired and cold (the wind that night rivaled Chicago), but the glowing Parliament Building was like an epinephrine shot. I wanted to see it close up because I was only in town for three days, two really, and I had no idea if I’d be doing this night walk again. I walked to its backside and was so glad I did. Close up it looked more orange than yellow, and it was f’ng huge. There were very few people were around, and it was so peaceful. The whole city felt that way during my stay, honestly. There were definitely some crowds here and there, but it was nothing like Prague, where sights are more centralized and always clogged with people.
The Melancholy City
I did two long walking tours in Budapest, one at Buda Castle, which isn’t a walled castle any more, and a tour of downtown Pest, during which I visited a bunch of landmarks. The tours were totally worth it, especially if you’re into history like I am and want to understand what you’re seeing. The guides were experts and sounded like history majors. I also visited St. Stephen’s Basilica, St. Matthias Church, Fisherman’s Bastion, and the Doháhy Street Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe (and the world’s fourth largest), and the adjoining Hungarian Jewish Museum. Not bad for two full days in Budapest.
One of the tour guides described Budapest as a “melancholy” city, and that’s how it felt to me, though I’m sure the overcast weather and darkness had something to do with this. Why is it melancholy? First, it’s because of centuries of wars, occupation, and division by foreign powers, just like Czechia. The guide also attributed this melancholy to the scars left by World War II and the Cold War, including the persecution of Hungary’s Jewish population by various Hungarian governments beginning in the 1920s, and of course, the Holocaust, during which approximately 600,000 Hungarian Jews (of an original population of 825,000) were killed by the Nazis and Hungarian militias. Most of them were deported to Auschwitz, and thousands were executed in cold blood by Hungarian “Arrow Cross” militias along the banks of the Danube during the winter of 1944-45. Before they were killed, the militias made the victims stand on the wall and remove their shoes because shoes were considered valuable and could be resold by the militias afterwards. The Jewish victims were then executed, and their lifeless bodies fell into the Danube where they floated away. Nothing to bury.
Today, these massacres are marked with a memorial called “Shoes on the Danube Bank,” which is a line of cast iron shoes of all sizes arranged on top of a section of wall on the Pest side of the Danube. I can’t tell you how it felt to be standing where these massacres happened and visiting a city where so many Jews were murdered. It was surreal and sickening. When I visited this memorial and later, the Doháhy Street Synagogue, I felt the same way I felt visiting Auschwitz 17 years ago. This sick feeling of dread and disgust that human beings could do this to other human beings. Leaving the synagogue and the small, adjoining Holocaust museum, you could feel the sadness, the weight of Jewish history, and the palpable fear that it could happen again.
My visits to these two places reminded me of where the desire for the creation of a purely Jewish state came from in the first place, and why many Jewish people wanted a state of their own where they could feel safe and defend themselves from another genocide like the one they and their ancestors experienced in Budapest, Vienna, and so many other places. It was a reminder I needed after the past two years of Israel’s genocide, which, ironically and sadly, has slowly eclipsed so much empathy for Jewish people in many people’s minds, including my own.
I thought to myself: It’s all about fear. A fear borne of the horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries, of pernicious antisemitism, of the targeting of people for death for simply being Jewish. The intentional and systematic extermination of a specific group of people by the state and unregulated death squads. A primal fear that comes with this history, and the fear that it will happen again. A primal fear that requires people to always keep one eye open and prevent it from happening again, by any means necessary.
It’s not difficult to understand and empathize with the source of this fear and the profound sadness and loss that accompany it. You can’t visit Budapest, Prague, Vienna, and Auschwitz and not understand them, birthed by the Holocaust, historical persecution, and the human survival instinct. Unfortunately, the flip side of this fear and sadness is that, if unchecked, they can attract an uncritical self-righteousness that makes one rationalize anything under the principle of “Never Again,” whether it’s justified or not. If I learned one thing on this trip–or was reminded of it–it’s that political leaders intentionally corrupt minds for their own ends. This is how we get ethnic cleansing, torture, mass murder, concentration camps, starvation, gas chambers, and genocide.
This is happening again today, and in my opinion, Zionism, at least today’s version, and the version embodied by war criminals like Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Shamir, and Netanyahu, is a violent, sadistic, and unjustified overreaction to the Holocaust, which “solved” one historical injustice by creating another that we’re still feeling today.
One can start with the mythological phrase describing Israel as “A land without people for a people without a land“, which is one of the biggest lies ever told in modern history, right up there with Columbus discovering the “New World”. As with Native Americans in North America before the pilgrims arrived, there were people on that land already. In 1917, the year of the Balfour Declaration, the population in the Palestine territory under the British Mandate was 94% Arab, 6% Jew. In 1948, when world powers recognized Israel as a state, and after almost three decades of globally-encouraged immigration of Jews to this territory, Arabs still constituted 60% of the total population in the former Palestine/British Mandate territory, and Jews only 30%. And yet, the vast majority of that land was given to/stolen by the minority Jewish population under the barrel of a gun, with the full complicity of world powers and many Arab governments. All Israel has done since 1948 is steal more of it under the guise of “defending itself,” displacing the Palestinian populations to Gaza and the West Bank, while trying to push them out of both territories entirely through occupation and running open air concentration camps. And throughout its history, it has used the Holocaust, fear, and a tortured version of “Never Again” to pursue its goal of Greater Israel.
“A land without people,” my ass.
Even after these two visits, which I’ll confess started to make me question whether I’d been too critical of what Israel has done to Palestinians throughout its history, and in the past two years in particular, it only took me five minutes of scrolling on Twitter back at my hotel and seeing more images of newly massacred families, which continues to this day, to remember that Israel is perpetrating its own genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. So there’s no reason for me to second-guess myself. There’s another holocaust happening right now, and most world governments, including the United States, still don’t give two fucks about it.
How little has changed in 80 years.
Reconciling these two histories, these two holocausts, these two injustices–which, while not equal in the number of victims or in severity or scale, are similar in the oppressors’ twisted justifications for targeting a specific group of people for mass murder, displacement, and genocide–takes critical thinking and objectivity. It’s not easy, but it can be done if one views these distinct histories and victimized peoples as equally worthy of empathy and justice. And if one remembers that “Israel” and “Zionism” are not synonymous with “Jewish people.”
When Will You Realize Vienna Waits for You?
In contrast with Budapest, which felt gritty and very Eastern block to me, Vienna felt like a wedding cake baked by German and Italian pastry chefs. In Vienna, I stayed in the Innere Stadt, First District, the center of the Habsburg Empire, which is loaded with beauty and history. Here, I connected with my niece who is studying abroad for the semester and who, much like her uncle, has the travel bug. She told me that she’s been traveling to a different city/country every weekend to see as much as possible before she comes home in December. It was hilarious hearing her tell me stories about staying in hostels as she travels, which were similar to my experience as a broke-ass globetrotter at her age.
Life is such a circle, man.
She was still in the middle of finals, so we met for dinner and visited the Christmas Market near Vienna City Hall, where I broke down and finally tried mulled wine, which tasted like a donkey’s ass. (Don’t ask me how I know this.) Since I was visiting the land of Mozart, Liszt, and Strauss, I felt the need to be cultural for a change, so I got us tickets to hear a string quartet play in St. Peter’s Basilica. I’m not the biggest classical music fan, but it was pretty cool hearing a string quartet play in a church that’s nearly four centuries old.
I did three guided tours in Vienna: a walking tour focused on the Habsburg Empire, one focused on Hitler and the Holocaust, and a tour of Schönbrunn Palace, which housed Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth (Sisi). I learned a ton and got a real taste of Austria’s incredible history. Finally, I visited the Albertina Museum, which has modern art (my favorite) and is named after the combined names of Archduke Albert, who founded the collection in the 18th century, and his wife, Marie Christine, who shared his interest in art. Muy romantico!
Sidenote: My tour of Schönbrunn Palace made me start watching The Empress on Netflix two nights ago. It was quite surreal seeing a show featuring a palace I was walking around in the day before (even if it’s a German replica).
Here are a few of my favorite paintings from the Albertina Museum. As you’ll see, there was a gothic exhibition going on when I was there, which was right up my existential alley. That first one of the skeleton taking a drag is a Van Gogh. God knows what it and these other paintings are worth, but I’m sure they could fund a lot of trips.
Vienna is one of those European cities that I’ve overlooked many times in the past, but it’s a real jewel, especially this time of year. Here are a few highlights:
- Christmas Markets, Christmas Markets, Christmas Markets!!! These things were everywhere. Some of them have creeped into New York in recent years–like in Union Square and Grand Central–but nothing on this scale, with small, adjoining wooden houses lining entire city plazas where people sell everything from Christmas ornaments to souvenirs to winter hats and scarves to Austrian sausage, hamburgers, hot dogs, beer, wine, hot chocolate, chimney cakes, crepes, and coffee, all with Christmas lights of varying size and elaborateness. They also have small tables for people to sit and eat, and WCs for people to use the bathroom. Very thoughtful, though I did not partake of the latter.
Surprisingly, the Christmas Markets didn’t feel schlocky to me at all, and I bought a bunch of small souvenirs from there. They were festive, light-hearted, and a way for people to gather in public, eat, drink, and be merry during the darkest days of the year. Such a great vibe. They made me wish I was there with a partner because they were romantic as hell too.
- I loves me some coffee houses. I love coffee. It’s one of life’s pure joys. Vienna is known for its coffee culture and is littered with cafes, some of which are ornate and decades old and have been visited by famous historical figures. The most prominent of these is “Café Central,” which is located in a very touristy area and thus, always had a line. I tried to get in there a couple of times, but the line was just too long, and I didn’t feel like killing an hour plus waiting. Why is it so popular? Back in the day Café Central was known as a gathering place for intellectuals, revolutionaries, artists, and uh… current and future dictators. Here are a few of the prominent people who visited there: Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Josef Tito, and Theodor Herzl. An insane list!
Instead of Café Central, I “settled” for visiting two other notable cafes that had no line: Café Landtmann and Café Hawelka. The former (which was also visited by Freud), was beautiful, ornate, snooty as fuck, and staffed by dudes in tuxedos. It was so upscale that I felt like an underdressed slug who had no business being there. The staff were more than a little intimidating but incredibly nice. I calmed down when I looked around and realized that I was dressed just like everyone else, and there was no dress code. My imposter syndrome was all in my head. Of course, all that snootiness came at a price, so I ended up paying an exorbitant amount of money for two coffees, scrambled eggs with chives, ham, and “original” gouda cheese (God damn, was it good), and a decorative slice of Mozart-themed chocolate cake that looked like a work of art. I’m still kicking myself for not photographing it before I inhaled it in three pieces like a starving giraffe.
Café Hawelka was much more my speed. I learned about it when we walked by it on one of my tours. Equally rich in history, equally authentic, but the total opposite vibe from Landtmann in terms of decor and clientele. It was dark and old school, with worn chairs, small marble tables, and tall coathanger stands littered everywhere. It was such a cool place and so much my vibe that I could have stayed there for hours. It reminded me of the Roebling Tea Room in Williamsburg, which closed a while ago, but I used to visit every Sunday, get wired on coffee, and read the New York Sunday Times.
The list of prominent visitors to Café Hawelka wasn’t quite as high end as Café Central, but still impressive: Andy Warhol, Arthur Miller, Henry Miller, Prince Liechtenstein, Peter Ustinov, Bill Clinton, Vaclav Havel, and uh… Falco. Remember him? And what’s really cool about Café Hawelka is that it’s still owned by the same family. Leopold Hawelka opened it in 1939 and had to close it for six years due to World War II. Miraculously, it was undamaged during the war and reopened in 1945. Today it’s run by Günter Hawelka and other members of the Hawelka family. Very cool.
- The Hitler/Holocaust tour was head-spinning. This tour was the bookend to my visits to the shoe memorial and the Doháhy Street Synagogue in Budapest. One of the things I’m always curious about is how certain historical events came to be, including the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust. What were the roots of these events that impacted hundreds of millions of people? On this tour I learned more about this from an Austrian perspective. I won’t retell everything, but what struck me is how Hitler was orphaned at 18, homeless at one point, and failed a lot in life, including, famously, in his genuine attempt to become an artist. We visited the art school that he applied to twice, the University of Applied Arts. We saw photos of some paintings he did, which weren’t horrible like I was expecting. We learned that his failure to become an artist was as much about the school’s extremely limited admission quota as it was about his artistic ability or lack thereof. We learned that he departed for Germany thereafter, managed to get military status despite having been born in Austria, and eventually found his identity, calling, and voice (literally) in local politics.
It was so strange being in a place where such a monster lived before he became a monster. Walking where he walked. Even one change to these pivotal events early in his life could have changed history. Do you ever think about this? How easily things might have been different with just one or two small changes in a single person’s decision-making? I think about things like this all the time.
I re-learned that the roots of WWII lay in the world’s extremely harsh treatment of losing countries after WWI. One big reason many Austrians supported Anschluss, “The Joining,” with Germany in March 1938, was the hope for a better economy, which Hitler promised (sound familiar?), and the goal of avoiding bloodshed from a Nazi invasion. Accordingly, it wasn’t exactly a free choice either. I saw the balcony where Hitler spoke announcing the annexation of Austria. Today it’s closed to the public, and you can only see it from the ground. They don’t want neo-Nazis paying homage. Makes sense.
We also visited several Holocaust memorials that are located in the First District. My favorite one was the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial, which commemorates the murder of 65,000 Austrian Jews in the Shoah. I stumbled upon it during my night walk my first night in Vienna, when it was raining (again). It’s a block structure with books lining all of its outside walls and two un-openable doors in the front of it. The books are all facing the other way, with the page side facing the viewer. It’s open to interpretation, but we were told that the memorial represents all the lost lives, wisdom, and knowledge due to the Holocaust. It’s absolutely beautiful and truly moving, one of the best memorials I’ve seen in a long time. (I’m partial to abstract memorials.) I took several photos of it in the rain, which seemed apt. We’ll see if they come out. - A pleasant surprise. On a lighter note, when I travel, my dating apps are active, so I occasionally get swiped on by people who live in the places I’m traveling to. I usually ignore them because I figure that people missed that I’m only visiting from New York, even though that’s what my profile says, and no one is interested in a long distance relationship across an entire ocean. But every once in a while, I’ll match with someone who swiped on me.
This happened when I was in Vienna. Someone swiped on me, I swiped back, we matched, and this was her opener to my profile question of “What was the last thing that made you smile”?
She said, “Your beautiful eyes. They sparkle.”
I mean…. Flattery will get you everywhere, ma’am!
We exchanged some edgy banter, and I let her know that I was only visiting Vienna for a few days. I thought that would be the end of it, but we kept messaging each other. Eventually we agreed to meet for a drink at the end of my Hitler/Holocaust tour, which was sandwiched between my visit to the Albertina Museum, and the church concert I was going to with my niece.
We met in Morzinplatz, the square fronting the building where the old Nazi Gestapo headquarters was located, which is where my tour ended. Do you know how weird it feels to be meeting someone for an impromptu date next to a building where the Nazis tortured people and sent them to concentration camps? I had just finished this tour, which was pretty emotional and had ensconced me deep into Vienna’s violent Nazi history, and now I’m segueing on a dime to my 2025 dating life and trying to meet someone who lives across the world. The whole thing was crazy and made my head spin.
Anyway, we went to a nearby cafe just off the plaza and ended up having the best conversation and the type of chemistry that I seem to be at a loss to find in the States. She was attractive and also had Big Brain: a medical degree, a law degree, and another one that I can’t remember. I was seriously impressed and attracted, and she seemed to like me too. We had great banter and laughs, interesting conversation, and solid physical attraction–the dating trifecta. I learned that she had just moved to Vienna from Ukraine four months before with her two boys, one of whom is in college. When I asked if she and her ex were amicable, she told me she was a widow, and he passed away two years ago. That must have been hard, and I really admired how she seemed to be handling the loss. She told me that she had only recently started dating again.
About an hour and a half in I had to leave for the concert because happy and unexpected things always happen to me when it’s inconvenient. We said goodbye and agreed to stay in touch, which we’ve been doing. It was a nice, fortuitous evening with an attractive stranger. The kind of experience that makes life interesting and solo traveling fun.
Other things worth mentioning:
An engrossing conversation with a Syrian Uber driver on the 25-minute drive back from Schönbrunn Palace where we discussed everything from the American and Austrian health care systems to European immigration to economic opportunities, racism, and Islamophobia in our respective countries, to the insane double-standards regarding the treatment of Muslims and Jews in both Austria and the U.S.
An incredible dinner in a Michelin restaurant I splurged on in my last night Budapest, which felt like a United Nations with all the Japanese, Croatian, Italian, and American patrons dining together in one place. There was a piano player in the back who took requests and played different songs that would appeal to our various nationalities, including ‘Bella Ciao’ and ‘Con Te Partirò’, which I enjoyed.
All the people who asked me to take their photo again, including a cute Parisian at the top of St. Stephen’s Basilica, who took my picture as well, and this group of rowdy older Belgian women at Schönbrunn Palace.
Committing the embarrassing amateur mistake of only buying a reservation for the train from Budapest to Vienna, instead of the actual TICKET. I had to buy it on the train like a total noob.
All in all, it was a wonderful trip, and I made some nice memories. I walked everywhere again — if my watch is accurate, I walked 74 miles in a little less than a week, which I can’t even believe. Now I just need to deal with the jet lag, a new cold that’s kicking my ass (thanks for waiting until I got home!), editing all the photos I took, and oh yeah, WORK.
