Duna

strongest current i've ever seen. it flows from north to south-- hungarians learned the geography of their city against its flow: south on top, north on bottom. the river makes the city, a center of their mentalities-- separating the old city from the new, the hills from the plain, Buda and Pes(h)t. six bridges (hit) that span this fast moving water, the Duna, such a simple, fitting name for this female force.

my favorite, Erzsebet or Sisi bridge, connects the two parts at the foot of the Gellert Hill. coming upon it, you encounter the Gellert Hotel on the Buda side, the city's oldest and only remaining hotel from before WWII. its baths are some of the most beautiful in the city. Erzsebet was Franz Joseph's wife, together rulers in the late 1800s of the Hapsburg Empire. although born in munich and ruler of austria, budapest held a special place in her heart. their princess di, hungarians developed a speical love for her.

the Duna: runs from Vienna to here. at night it frightens me to cross, i think of how fast moving it is, how if i was pushed in i'd drown. anyone would drown. like swollen waters of the mississippi after a flood... so wide. i think about during and after the second world war, when all of the bridges had been destroyed by retreating nazis. must have been a local economy to get people across, though i cannot conceive of how anyone would cross without a motor.

there are sculptures on the Pest side, right before the Parliament. bronze-cast shoes. a monument to the hungarian jews who perished? sad, faded bronze, empty shoes. conveys an emptiness, a haunting trgedy of some collective past memory.

Hungary, Magyarorszag, the Hungarians attest, has the most looted history in the world. the mongols (tartars), austrians, turks, hapsburgs, fascists, nazis, and soviets all had their own part in stripping the people of their autonomy. perhaps their biggest blow to their physical empire, though, and one they still do not forget, is the treaty of trianon that was signed in 1920, reducing the land mass of hungary by two-thirds. later hungary would lose significant proportions of its population during the holocaust, including estimates of two-thirds to three-fourths of its jewish population (600,000-700,000 people), and perhaps a large part of the perhaps 200,000 roma who were killed.

the Hungarian Empire used to occupy a land size stretching into Romania, Austria, encompassing Bratislava and Vienna-- borh of which are still regerred to by their Hungarian names-- Poszony and Becs.

the Duna has seen all of this.