Our last day was spent at a little slower pace than the previous two. We had a nice, long breakfast near the river in one of the city’s shopping districts before heading out to Memento Park (AKA Memorial Park). The trip takes an hour by public transportation, so we had to put off going on Friday when we originally planned to go. We decided to forgo a trip to another one of the museums in order to see the this park. It is the resting place of various statues and memorials that have been removed from the city. Most of these statues were placed in the city by the Soviets when Hungary was behind the Iron Curtain. The city felt that it was important to keep these items due to their historical significance, but didn’t want to see them all over the city. What a great idea!

After a long trip via 3 different buses, we arrived at our destination. We were unsure at first how we were expected to approach this attraction, but when we saw some of the memorabilia that was being sold, we knew that we pretty much had free rein to experience the park as we wanted. This is what we saw when we walked up to the ticket booth:

Keep this coffee mug in mind as you view our photos from the visit. (We bought one, by the way!) It’s pretty amazing how the Soviet Union put a spin on things to portray the relationship as a positive, welcome one for the Hungarians.

A quote by the architect is displayed at the park: “This park is about dictatorship. And at the same time, because it can be talked about, described, built, this park is about democracy. After all, only democracy is able to give the opportunity to let us think freely about dictatorship.”

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The last photo that shows the replica of Stalin’s boots is a symbol of victory and freedom for Hungarians. During the Revolution of 1956 people were able to crush most of the huge statue of Stalin that used to stand on the edge of City Park. All that was left of the statue after its destruction were Stalin’s boots. This is what the statue looked like when it was intact:

And this is what it looked like after the revolutionaries demolished it:

The Hungarian Revolution Memorial of 1956 now resides in the former location of the Stalin statue. Although it took over 30 more years for Hungary to gain its independence from the Soviet Union, this was the first major threat imposed by the country. Control of the government was seized from the Communist leaders for a short time before the Soviet Union sent in large numbers of troops to regain control. By January 1957, the Soviet Union was firmly in power and the revolution was extinguished. The first day of the uprising, October 23, is now a national holiday in Hungary.

After leaving Memento Park, we returned to the city to continue some low key sightseeing of different sights along the river and to do some shopping before heading out to the train station.

Elizabeth Bridge

Another view of the Liberation Monument on Gellert Hill

LIberty Bridge

Cave Church

The Buda Castle has an extensive cave system underneath it. In addition to the Hosptial in the Rock that we visited earlier, this church was built in the caves of Buda.

Budapest is a relatively inexpensive place to visit; you can get meals and souvenirs for a much cheaper price than other locations around Europe. We truly felt that we were pretty well off in Budapest when we got about $50 out of the ATM and received a bill worth 10,000 Hungarian Forints as part of our withdrawal! 

Each US dollar is worth about 275 Hungarian Forints.

Between Vienna and Budapest we saw a ton of windmills in the countryside. Here are some pictures of the ones we saw from the train on the way back.