[12] Throughout Hungary the visitor is struck by the duality of nomenclature in places, streets, etc., (the Donau becomes the Duna in Magyar) and it has seemed best to avoid any confusion as much as possible, by giving first the national name of a place and then in parenthesis the Germanized name imposed since the period of Austrian domination.
CHAPTER IX
THE HUNGARIAN CAPITAL
“Buda and Pesth,
Where Hope soared high or dwindled in despair
As Cross and Crescent alternating flew,
An ancient race has quickened with new life.”
From the Magyar
The immediate approach to Budapest by river is distinctly and remarkably impressive. Ahead on the right are seen the heights of the Gellert Hill and of the nearer one on which the royal palace stands, while as we pass under the Margaret Bridge we get a striking view of what is surely one of the most beautiful groups of Parliament buildings in the world. Coming down-stream to Vienna it is only after we have got a certain degree of intimacy with it that we begin to do justice to its fascination. Budapest captures from the outset. Nor are first impressions of delight diminished on fuller acquaintance—for the place grows on us.
And apart from all other natural and civic beauties, those portions of the city along the Danube banks by themselves offer the most varied attractions. We may sit outside an hotel in the morning and see the wonderful effect of light and shade on the splendid royal palace, rising above terraced gardens on the hill on the further side of the river, on the massy Gellert Hill (or Blocksberg) to the left, and over the many buildings at the foot of the Castle Hill, while away to the right rises the beautiful spire of St. Matthias’ church. We may wander along the quayside and inspect closely the long barges with their tiny houses, their high-perched steersman’s shelter, their little “gardens” of flowers; we may see the long roofed-in barges with high, curved, carven prows, that look like the foreparts of some ancient galleys; we may watch a throng of busy men, half naked and a rich brown with exposure, bringing up great measures of grain from the barges to be put in sacks, weighed, and loaded on wagons on the quayside; we may idly scan the incessant little paddle steamers fussing to and fro with passengers who prefer this method of crossing the river to making use of one of the various handsome bridges that span the Danube.
At sunset the view of the west side of the river against the coloured heavens takes on new beauty—comparable only in my experience with a sunset behind the Mala Strana, and Hradcany at Prague, as seen from the right bank of the Ultava. And again at night the wonderful sky-line of buildings and hills with myriad specks of light between it and the river forms another attraction. Cross the river and look down from the Castle Hill, from the bastion behind St. Matthias’ church, or other point of vantage, and the scene is newly impressive, where beyond the broad river lies the newer of the twinned towns spreading far over the plain, from which the dome and towers of St. Stephen’s cathedral, the many spires of the Parliament House, and other prominent buildings, stand out with special distinction.