Four hours was all I had that Friday after my meetings at the Sheraton ended and before my flight out of Budapest was to depart. Four hours to see Budapest. Should I take a river cruise on the Danube and have the attractive guide explain to me in English, German, and French about the cathedrals, bridges, and parliament building? Should I go to the Hungarian National Gallery, famous for its Gothic alters and carvings and its Renaissance and Baroque artwork? The Music Museum, with its displays on Liszt and Bartok? Buy paprika for the wife and otherwise shop for the family? ……… Nah. None of that. When you only have four hours, hard choices must be made. The War Museum. What else could be more important?

    From the map, I could see it was up on the heights on the Buda side of the river (Budapest is the union of two towns, Buda on the west side and Pest on the east). So I crossed the Danube over the Chain Bridge, saying “no thanks” to a dozen or so gypsies trying to sell me postcards and T-shirts, and started up the heights. These were the heights where Hungarians holed up for a while after Otto the Third, the medieval German king defeated them at Esztergom in the year 1000, bringing them the blessings of Teutonic civilization, and the heights from where Hungarian nobility rode out to fight the Turks in the early 16th Century, until ousted by the latter. (One of these noblemen, as I recall, rode out to do battle knowing that the cause was lost and that he’d be killed and thus proudly placed gold and silver coins and jewelry in all his pockets so that when the Turkish janissaries mutilated his body and looted it, they would know without doubt that it was the body of a nobleman they were defiling. Such pride and such values we have lost these days.) These were also the heights on which German and Hungarian units made a last stand in February 1945, facing the wrath of Timoshenko’s 2nd Ukrainian Front with 10,000 artillery pieces. (An often forgotten fact is that the Romanian army fought alongside the Russians at this point, having switched sides in September 1944 and doing penance by serving often as the Red Army’s shock troops and suffering horrendous casualties in the process. It’s not a forgotten fact to the Hungarians, however, judging by one of the exhibits at the museum.)

     I reached the top of the hill, passed the Matthius church, where the last two Hapsburg Emperors were crowned, and found the museum nestled in the corner of what’s left of the walls of Buda Castle, overlooking the Field of Blood. The museum itself covers three floors, and one cannot do justice to it in only a few hours. The exhibits cover the Roman era, the Huns, the Magyars, the Mongol onslaught, the Crusades, the wars with the Turks, the fights between the Roman and Protestant churches, but most of the space is dedicated to the 19th and the 20th centuries. Lots of Hussar uniforms. Lots of swords and muskets. Lots of cannons and artifacts from the Hapsburg days. But it was the 20th Century that most interested me.

    Hungary, as you will all recall, is one of only two countries in the world that fought against the Allied powers in all three worldwide conflicts of the 20th Century - World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. (Can you name the other country?) There are no apologies for this to be seen. No hint that perhaps they were on the wrong side in 1939-1945. Although there is no praise of Fascism in the museum, neither do they appear to be embarrassed about it, or feel the need to apologize, as would be the case in a similar museum in Germany. Although the 1948 to 1990 period is well represented with artifacts (from PPSH machine guns to Russian fur caps), there is not the same zest in telling the story, in my opinion, as there is in the exhibits covering the first half of the century. One can only imagine the political slant during the cold war years, where I am sure there were lots of compliments and expressions of warmth to the Russian liberators and allies. That’s all gone. It’s a Hungarian museum now - a museum that displays and honors the Hungarian military spirit, its accomplishments and defeats, never mind the politics of those with whom they were allied.

    Most of the explanations to the exhibits were in Hungarian and German only, at least when I was there in the late ‘90s. Only some were in English. Better know your military history before you go, or take along your Langenscheidts. (That may have changed by now, since I just looked up the web site and I see that that has been translated into English (http://www.militaria.hu/htieng/general.htm#MUSEE).) There were hundreds of model airplanes and tanks from the Second World War. If you want to see the development of the Me-109 from the E to G versions, and beyond, or the Tiger tank, this is the place to come. By the way, Budapest is pronounced, Budapesht by the Hungarians. So if you want to impress your girlfriend with your sophistication, always pronounce it that way. The museum is an old fashioned one - no shop selling T-shirts or rubber knock-offs of exhibited items. But there is the ubiquitous European coffee shop, with Viennese style pastries and great bratwursts. A highly recommended museum.

Hess