Prague to Budapest [then back to London]

Thursday, 26th September 2019

Today I am flying back to Gatwick from Budapest. The flight is at 14:15 so I have a brief opportunity to do a bit of culture before I head off to the airport.

Just along from my hotel I pop my head into the New York Cafe. Unfortunately the large queue of people waiting to enter, even this early in the day, doesn’t mean I can do much more than take a photograph of the interior.

Next I walk down into the old Jewish quarter of the city, first stopping at the wall memorial. The most famous tribute to the half a million Hungarian Jews who perished under the Nazis during the Holocaust is the 60 pairs of cast-iron shoes placed on the edge of the Danube’s bank in memory of Budapest Jews killed here by members of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross Party. They were ordered to remove their shoes before being shot and their bodies fell into the river and drifted away.

The old entrance to the Jewish ghetto is marked by a large memorial. The ghetto was a 0.12 square mile walled area of Budapest created by the Nazis in 1944. It only lasted for six weeks. 70,000 Jews were crammed into 4,513 apartments (14 people per room). 10,000 lost their lives during those six weeks.

From the memorial I walked down to visit the Dohány Street Synagogue. This is the largest Synagogue in Europe, built between 1854-9 in a Moorish style. Unfortunately time did not allow me to look around inside.