Trams and river drives - Commercial Budapest - and Magyar, Buda and Pest origins

Hartford is discussing bring back the trolleys, citing the European tram system. Watch it. Efficient but deadly to the careless. Parking may be perpendicular to the tramway, the rail right there. Go back to open the trunk of your car, and if you hear that racket coming, sprint. See tram history at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Trams

They can't veer, so you have to.



Budapest was originally two settlements, one on each side of a wide river difficult to cross - the Danube. Then it became two towns, then two cities, then one by formal merger in 1873.

1. Buda was on the hilly, cliff side of the Danube River. Good for defense, castle high views, dominating. Pest was on the flat land side, conducive to markets, docks, trade routes, easier construction sites spreading. See www.asap.co.uk/info/archives/666. Question there -was there a Buda who was Attila the Hun's brother?

2. Pest. The flat land, on the other side of the Danube. See www.filolog.com/pest. Here is a view of the Pest side - multilevel motorways, trams. The Old Town and Jewish Quarters are an easy walk away. Handy to refer to one side of the river or the other by the shorthand, Buda side or Pest side, But remember that separate towns are no more; and that Budapest is a huge, commercial city. The glamor points on each side get more attention than the metropolitan nature of the entire area.

3. Romans: We did not visit the ruins, but you can find them here: www.leafpile.com/TravelLog/Hungary/RomanBudapest/RomanBudapest. They were here 100-500 AD says the site, and the Magyars arrived, after Attile helped defeat the Roman Empire, in the late 10th Century.

4. Magyars. The Magyars have a complex past of migrations and origins. Read about the Magyars at this site, an overview for the history of central Europe -mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/misc/europe.htm. The Magyars have language links to the Finns-Estonians and others, and they are not Mongol or Turkish.

Others look to their origins as northwestern China. See archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/HUNGARY/1999-11/0943289383. Others compile. See groups.msn.com/AncientWisdomCulturesPeople/magyars.msnw. Back to the site on central Europe at mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/misc/europe.htm. Magyars. Variation, and movement.

Many converted to Judaism in the 7th century, and settled south of Kiev, according to the "mysite" site. Many raided, as mercenaries, for others. They then became Roman Catholic, says the site - again, please dig into this. So much to learn on your own.

We may think of Jewish peoples as Semitic, from the ancient near east, see www.fas.harvard.edu/~semitic/; but an entire population seems to have grown in central Europe, of different ancestry entirely.

Does that explain why so many photographs of victims of the Holocaust show Caucasians, and not near-eastern physical characteristics. We know of distinctions between Ashkenarzic and Sephardic, see www.jewfaq.org/ashkseph. Do those groups have different DNA??

Another group, "White Magyars" moved into the Carpathian areas. There are old Jewish cemeteries Sighetu Marmetei in Romania, see Romania Road Ways, the birthplace of Elie Weisel. In Moisei, Romania, there was a horrendous killing and destruction of this village with a majority Jewish population, see cja.huji.ac.il/NL14-Romania. See Romania Road Ways, and the memorial at Moisei.

Migrations. Have to follow every one.