Sunday night in Budapest and I’m sitting at a little outdoor cafe on Terez Korut (the Grand Boulevard). The Guideposts group arrived this afternoon without incident and with most of their luggage. Say a prayer for the few pieces that are still making their way here.
Though no events were planned, a few of us took a side trip to the Museum of Terror, which I know doesn’t sound very inspiring but it most definitely was. The museum catalogues in graphic and often heartbreaking historic detail the suffering and oppression the Hungarians endured first under the Nazis and later the Soviets and is housed in the very building that was used as a prison and interrogation center. The bravery and sacrifices of the people who resisted this unspeakable tyranny is moving and truly awe-inspiring, and one’s mind recoils at what human beings did to other human beings. Yet faith and the human spirit seem boundless in their resistance to evil. I don’t think you can understand the Hungarian people or eastern Europeans as a whole unless you understand the half century of terror and repression to which they were brutally subjected. How sweet freedom must taste to them!
Later the whole group of us had dinner at a nearby Hungarian restaurant and got to know each other a little. How surprised was I to see one of my New York neighbors among our number? I see Elena MacLeod almost every morning when I’m walking Millie and Elena is on her way to early Mass at St. John’s. She always says hi but didn’t tell me she was coming over here with us.
I also had a great conversation with Cinci and Eddie Geoghegan of New Orleans who have become serious world travelers now that the last of their four children has gone off to college.
Tomorrow is a full day of touring Budapest before leaving for Vienna on Tuesday and eventually Oberammergau and the Passion Play. I feel the jet lag settling in so it’s off to bed.
