Universal Architectures. Eastern Europe, Eyelid windows - Design moving West

Rural poor. Architecture as global. Hungary.

Rural Hungary is like any other rural area - some poorer, some more well-to-do. Bifurcate this multe-family house, and this coudbe Ireland, anywhere.

This neighborhood was in a village on the way, as we drove cross-country, from Budapest back to Slovakia. Ethnic group? Unknown.  Perhaps settled gypsy?  We considered that, because of the quick movements behind curtains, people left their yards as soon as we stopped to get our bearings.

See the eyelid windows below: no sharp eaves to leak.

Architecture: eyelid windows, in eaves, at roof areas. Eastern Europe

Look at the blue roof there. Watching. Eyelid windows are seen often in both traditional and modern houses - and in Romania (especially in Sibiu, to us - Sibiu windows -  where roof eyes follow you everywhere) and many other countries.












They are coming here. See also in the Hartford Courant 1/31/07 at the Money and Business section, D-1, by Robin Stansbury and photo in newspaper by Stephen Dunn: upscale homes with architectural features including these eyelid windows, as a way of opening up attic and eaves to living space with light. Nothing new.

Understandin Hungary's Past. Magyar and Khazar. Site for History of Central Europe; Tatar and Hussar.

 The Unknown Hungary, for many of us in the West

Our visit was brief. We need to go back to find out more.  Think Austro-Hungarian Empire. Who ad what is Hungary, apart from other empires. The nation is located at such a crossroads of invaders and trade, that much is unclear.  If you are a tourist, you just listen to the guide, perhaps. For free-lancers, issues and connections just beg to be explored.

1. History. Hungary and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. See The History of Central Europe, at //mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/misc/europe.htm#Mong. For Hungarian history, see ://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/thou/.

2. Tatars. In particular, read of the Mongol invasion of 1241- Mongols were also known as the Tatars. We learn that the Magyars, the Hungarians, learned then that they had to fortify. Apparently the famous Hussars, Hungarian light cavalry, were Polish, but were hired at that time by the Hungarians. When did the Hungarians then develop their own Hussars?

3. Hussars. Here is a site that has Hungary claiming the Hussars, at ://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/thou/thou12.htm. "Hungarian light cavalry units, called Hussars (huszars)...."

We may have a negative idea of mercenaries, but in those times, they were the professionals. There was no issue of cheap opportunism, out for hire. The site says that many units deserted the Austrians, once they were far away from Hungary; and fought for the Prussians. But they wore a costume of red and gold trim, not the leopard skin and winged back apparatus of the Polish Hussars? See the Polish Hussars at Poland Road Ways, Hussar.

Who rightfully claims the Hussars? Poland, with that "winged cavalry" that saved Vienna from the Ottomans, or Hungary? History is complex. See fine images at //www.germaniainternational.com/hungary.html - but still no wings as on the Poles.

The "Thousand Years" site also mentions Hussar service in the French. There were even Hussars in America at the time of the American Revolution. And the Civil War!

And with Garibaldi in Italy.

Poland, make your case. Promote a military genius. See Poland Road Ways, Hussars.

Hungarian history, Magyar and Khazar: Site for History of Central Europe

The Turul, that mythical bird, guide of the Magyars, is perhaps the most gripping - literally - national symbol we have seen. Far greater than the image of a mere eagle, the Turul actually seems to represent a people, a spirit.

Turul, Mythical in Hungary, Magyars

How did that come about?  What are the Magyars, the Hungarians from the long ago.  Most of us in the West, perhaps, have no idea.

We found a site that adds a handy chronology. Go to The History of Central Europe, at //mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/misc/europe.htm#Mong. Helps explain "Turan" and overview.

Doing a "find" for Khazar in the Magyar section:

Khazars and Mongols overcome the Huns.

1. Magyars were vassals of the Khazars
2. Khazar era - 602-1016.
3. Area - Crimea to Caspian Sea, north to Volga
4. 7th Century - Khazar chief converts to Judaism, population follows
5. By 889, Magyars settle south of Kiev
6. Khazars expel those who replaced the Vlachs in Romania

Then what? The Turul, symbol of Hungarian Magyars.  A strong people.

Sequential Denationalizations - Heroes here, Oppressors There

Word associations.

"Hungar!" with a spit of disgust. A friend is showing how her Romanian mother, from Baia Mare, Romania, acts out her relatives' reaction during her childhood there, to anything Hungarian. They lived on one side of the street, the Romanians on another, and it was true segregation, I hear.

Magyars - heroes to Hungarian nationalists, demons to the Romanians who were subject to Hungarian denationalization of Transylvania during the last century. See http://budapest.mae.ro/index.php?lang=en&id=215. And after the World Wars, allied denationalization of and on and on.

History and culture. People's universal dependable defense of their own, and driving desire to spread their own over boundaries. And do away with what the others already had over there. Wander in a fine overview to get a flavor of the scope of Hungarian culture and history - see www.hunmagyar.org/.

Specific leaders: Janos Hunyadi, or Janos Hundeoara who governed part of Romania when Vlad III Tepes sought his help in fending off the Turks (Ottoman Empire), is "Iancu" in Hungarian. Is this Iancu Hunyadi? I am researching the headdress here because I cannot find "Janowe II", that seems to be the inscription. Headdress is more like Michael the Brave, but he was in Romania. No, here he is here: mek.oszk.hu/03400/03407/html/118.

The inscription does not fit still. Back to Janos Hunyadi? An old etching of him also does not look like this, but keep looking. So the process goes. I am at www.budpocketguide.com/TouristInfo/famous/Famous_Hungarians16, at the list and clicked on Janos Hunyadi (a/k/a Hunedoara in Romania - see also Romania Road Ways).

The history of nation-rearing is like child-rearing. The cycle of abuse perpetuating unless there is a strong intervention, or the individual has the unknown genome to rise above. The long back-and-forth between the Hungarian areas and the Romanian areas is laid out at budapest.mae.ro/index.php?lang=en&id=215. See also Romania Road Ways.

Pre World War I. In 1867, the Budapest-Vienna agreement put all of Transylvania under Hungarian control, at a time when the other two Romanian areas, Wallachia (Vlad III Tepes) and Moldavia were united as "Romania." Hungary Magyarized Transylvania a process of denationalizing the Romanians, and then Russia Russified Moldavia.

Is there any country or group that does not seek to de-countrify the people it conquers. Like de-Baathification. People do not just go away. Just wait and see where their deeply held individual and group beliefs lead if they are simply discounted and turned loose. The hatreds intensify. Read history before leading a country anywhere.

A child not doing well in school? If you possibly can, skip other expenditures, and go with that child to another country. See what interests him/her. Start there.

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.

The Chain Bridge

Chain Bridge, Budapest

See it (this is an update) in the video of Katy Perry on "Fireworks".  There it is.  Global videos.

Here is the great link beween Buda, the hill-side of Budapest; and Pest, the flat plain side of Budapest. Walk across it from the hotels and old town area, the flat side, at sunset and all goes mauve.

Those are the parliament buildings on the far side at Pest; the picture is from Castle Hill - up the incline from the landing point of the bridge.

Count Szechenyi, instigator; English designer, William Clark; Scots engineer, Adam Clark (for whom the tunnel through the mountain on the Castle Hill side is named), no relation; mid-nineteenth century, triggering the unity of Buda and Pest and its enormous commercial growth, once the Danube was spanned. See www.aviewoncities.com/budapest/chainbridge.

The Castle District - On The Buda Side

Dan Widing at the Castle District, Budapest

The Castle District is honeycombed beneath the cliff with centuries of cave networks, some even used during WWII - there was a History Channel TV show on this that showed a German hospital set up in the underground warren. See www. history.com/ and look for Cities of the Underworld.

See also wikitravel.org/en/Budapest/Buda.

I understand that the caves are so close to the house basements that there are frequent holes opening up and down you go.

Buses are forbidden said the TV show, because of the weight.

Horse cart, Castle District. Budapest
















The area other than the castle itself remains residential and elegant.

Castle district, residential parking problems, Budapest

The Funicular (Incline), the Adam Clark Tunnel

From the Pest side, where we found the hotels and the old town, walk the Chain Bridge over to the Buda side and the ride up to the Castle District.

The Chain Bridge and the 1857 tunnel here opened up Buda to commercial and settlement activity that earlier had been so hindered by the cliffs. See http://www.aviewoncities.com/budapest/chainbridge.htm

Castle District, Budapest. Funicular, tunnel, Turul Bird view.














Walk across the Chain Bridge from the hotels-side (the Pest side), at sunset. The funicular is less crowded then -- the inclined railway cars from the riverbank on the Buda side of Budapest, up the hill to the Castle Hill. See the Turul up there, previous post. Here is how a funicular works: travel.howstuffworks.com/question512.htm/.

Funiculars around the world:  Pittsburgh has some fine ones, web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/Pittsburgh/Inclines/.

Also Gibraltar, see Spain Road Ways(here including the side visit to British Gibraltar).

The tunnel is the Adam Clark Tunnel, named after the British engineer associated with its construction in the 19th Century. Seewww.britannica.com/eb/article-9343099/Adam-Clark.

The tunnel heads to endless suburbs - the drive into the city from the motorway is not glamorous. If you want glamor, go the usual entry way by tourist boat. If you are lost in the car, find the Danube.

Parliament and the Danube View - The Pest side of Budapest

Budapest Parliament Buildings, Danube, Budapest Hungary

Government buildings along the Danube. That is the Parliament.











Pest, as in Budapest, was on the flat land side. Buda, the mountain


Pest was the town on the flatland side of the Danube, the one most accessible to boat traffic, markets, expansion without overcoming cliffs. Then again, the cliffs on the Buda side provided a defense.

Ideal for merchant as well as invaders - down the Rhine and the Danube - Amsterdam, Cologne, Rudesheim, Mainz, Wertheim, Wurzburg, Nuremberg, Passau, Linz, Melk, Vienna, Bratislava to Budapest. See www.rollintl.com/roll/rhine.

The Buda side of Budapest

Saint Gellert monument, Buda side of Budapest (mountain)

Saint Gellert here dominates the cliff and a dedicated park area (lots of steps up from the riverbank). He tried converting the people here and was martyred in the 10th century. He was thrown off the cliff in a barrel, into the Danube below.

A difficulty in researching is the variety of spellings for the same person. This is also Gerard Sagredo, and is also Gerhard. And Gellert. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Sagredo.

See this fine night photo by David Pride at www.davidpride.com/Europe/Hungary/HU_04_061.htm.

The tour boats; Danube-Rhine route to Amsterdam

Budapest, Danube cruise ship view

Idea for easy itinerary regionally: start in Budapest, rent a car, and follow the Danube and then the Rhine all the way to Amsterdam.

Borrow and modify the cruise ships' itinerary and just wheel it instead.

Drive, don't ride.

Budapest Castle - the Buda side; nation-building and WWI

Budapest Castle, Budapest, Hungary

Budapest Castle. Its predecessor nearly destroyed in the 17th Century, the conflict to take Buda back from Turkish rule.

http://www.virtourist.com/europe/budapest/03.htm. Here is a photo gallery: www.fsz.bme.hu/hungary/budapest/kepek/nagyok/budvar2.

How nationstates evolve through wars and boundary allocations: a start on the uses of propaganda is at www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/bors/bors04. How this kind of castle is seen, and the power and eras it represented, depends on who is plugs in which charged words, and who has the ability to reach people. Probably very little as to "reality."

The Turul and Magyar Origins

The Turul Falcon, Budapest

The Turul. Mythical bird, central to the Magyar creation story. Once there were three huge Turul. Review the great history of the Magyars at ://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no141/p3.html/  Old in time does not mean last in courage.

Find a Turul on the motorway from Bratislava, Slovakia, to Budapest - the distance between the cities is not great, maybe some 100 km or 65-70 miles. Just see the big green sign, and turn that way.  You can use your debit or credit card until you find out about Hungarian cash.

Look to your left near Tatabanya, up a cliff in a hilly area. See its website about the Turul on its new coat of arms, at 193.138.127.88/tb211911.html. There in the distance is the silhouette of this huge falcon-like bird.

This is a copy atop the Castle District of the Buda side of Budapest. More at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turul.

The cliff Turul is the largest statue of a bird worldwide, so say. Find the creation myth of the Magyar people at www.stavacademy.co.uk/mimir/turulhawk.

For a colorful and highly educational (because it holds attention) website on the Hun-Magyar roots, the long association with peoples from northwestern China-Mongolia, see www.hunmagyar.org/. Click on the English "Enter" to get in the site in your own language. Click on the "Belep" to appreciate the richness of trying out new sounds and letters. Now: drive that way.

Especially: the Turan portion, related to that Turul. www.hunmagyar.org/turan/turan.

Find a thorough discussion of the Turul in other areas cultures through history, including that the Turul is the symbol of the House of Attila, as well as other cultural "big birds" (Phoenix) at Migratory Patterns of Tales, Big Birds, Phoenix, Turul.

The Jewish Quarter: Jewish History, Eastern Europe

Great Synagogue, Budapest, Hungary

The Great Synagogue is on Dohany Street, so sometimes is known as the Dohany Synagogue. See www.bh.org.il/Communities/Synagogue/budapest.asp.

The synagogue at Jerusalem is larger, then this, then the Great Synagogue at Plzen, CZ. See Czech Republic Road Ways. But this site says it is second only to Temple Emanual in New York City. See www.sacred-destinations.com/hungary/budapest-dohany-street-synagogue. More photos of the graves and Holocaust memorial on the way.

The Jewish Quarter is a mid-length walk from the riverfront, but hard to identify.
The old Quarter has few landmarks. Follow the map to get there, and there may or may not see anything identifable except the synagogue-museum, see below. We did see a few persons in Orthodox dress, but not many. What is haunting is what is not there.

So go to the virtual history tour of the area at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Budapest. See the fine photographer David Pride's slides thumbnails of Budapest at www.davidpride.com/Europe/Hungary/Hungary_index.


Old Jewish Quarter, Budapest, plot now a children's playground

Much of the old Jewish Quarter is now something else, like this playground amid the destruction of other buildings, and I do not know which if any are war-related, or just urban renewal. We just know that there are few Jewish buildings or centers.














Spinoza House, Budapest, Jewish Quarter, Hungary

 This is the Spinoza house, with the 17th Century philosopher on the plaque at the entry, and in the Jewish Quarter, reached by following the streets on any map away from the Old Town.
It is a cultural center founded by groups from The Netherlands. Concerts, theatre. Cafe.

The posts on Magyar origins notes that the Magyars converted to Judaism, and then centuries later, to Catholicism. What were those circumstances? The Inquisition where it was convert or die or be expelled from your lands? Or voluntary, a drawing toward another belief?

Are Magyars connected at all with the Khazars - see current research and discussion about Russian Jews being descended from the Khazars, whose roots are not the Jewish peoples in Europe - Germany, Portugal, Spain, etc. See www.khazaria.com/khazar-diaspora. That site reviews the book, "Are Eastern European Jews Descended from the Khazars," by Kevin Alan Brook.