BUDA-PESTH AND BELGRADE
Buda-Pesth and Its Language—From Buda-Pesth to Belgrade—The Servian
Passport System—First Impressions of Belgrade—Garden Spots in and
about the Servian Metropolis.
Buda-Pesth, with its imposing buildings, its kaleidoscopic market
scenes and its impossible language, seems to be the Eastern jumping-off
place, so to speak, of Continental travel. It is the suburb of Europe;
but what a fascinating suburb it is, to be sure! Its architectural
beauty is unsurpassed; its situation unrivalled, with the Danube
coursing between the old city, Buda, and the new city, Pesth; its parks
are veritable bowers of refreshing green; its cafés are interesting and
its military music delightful. It is the Mecca of Magyar aristocracy
and, if one can infer aught from natural proof, it has been well
adopted.
But the language! The atrocious combinations of vowels and consonants
fairly numb your powers of pronunciation. In order that your attempts
to even read the signs may be made all the more tantalizing, our own,
the Roman, alphabet is used to muddle the brain of the foreign
visitor. When we see the writings of the Chinese or the Greeks, for
instance, we are not inclined to regard these tongues as altogether
unmasterable, but to behold the letters of _our_ alphabet so
haphazardly jumbled together and capped with many accents, grave and
acute, seems bitter indeed. Taking it all in all the Hungarian tongue
seems analogous to a waste of talent.
[Illustration: THE FISCHER RAMPARTS, PESTH.]
One delightful evening I summoned my courage and ventured into a
trolley-car, hoping that it might eventually take me near the Casino
of the principal park. It did, _mirabile dictu_, and I alighted.
But a week in Buda-Pesth had not passed without many and varied
experiences. In order to be doubly cautious and not mistake my car
to return to the hotel—for, luckily, this one made the park its
terminus and returned by the same route—I unsheathed my note book
and copied then and there the name of the route from a sign on the
side of the car. Fortified with this valuable data I was prepared to
enjoy the evening with reckless abandon, mingling with the crowds,
listening to the music and concerning myself not at all as to the way
to get home, for I had only to wait until a car came along marked
“Városlíget-Eskü-Tér-Podmaniczy-Utcka,” whatever that means, and I
would be among friends.
If you do not stop to look at the signs—for what is a city of this era
without a host of glaring, gilded advertisements—Buda-Pesth is just as
enticing, but on a somewhat smaller scale, as Vienna, and at the end of
a fortnight we were loth to leave. As the next slip of our Rundreise
book read “Belgrade,” we jammed ourselves into one of the dusty
compartments of a crowded railway train bound for the Servian frontier.
Among our fellow-passengers was an aged, rheumatic Jewish woman,
travelling from Vienna to Constantinople, who became very sociable,
despite her affliction, and lighted one cigarette from the stub of the
other as she unveiled to us her past history in broken German.
The railway line from Buda-Pesth to Belgrade, traversing the great
Hungarian steppes, is devoid of attractive scenery and the journey
of seven hours becomes somewhat tiresome, especially if the season
is summer with its accompanying heat and the train is uncomfortably
crowded. Agriculture along the route seems to be very much on the wane,
but enormous herds of long-horned cattle, flocks of sheep and tens of
thousands of pigs tell succinctly of the product of that portion of
Hungary. Now and again you may see a native driver in heavy leather
boots, white petticoat, or smock, to his knees, and a derby hat (not a
very dignified-appearing combination of apparel), tending a large flock
of unusually huge geese, tapping the laggards deftly with his long
willow switch.
[Illustration: THE ELIZABETH BRIDGE,—BUDA IN THE BACKGROUND.]
The minute you cross the Danube at the Servian frontier you begin
to feel the influence, although a waning one, of a nation that has
been struggling desperately for hundreds of years to regain her lost
provinces—the Turks. It is not so noticeable in Servia as in Bulgaria,
not so noticeable in Bulgaria as in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, but it
is there, nevertheless; the sullen, silent suffering of a nation of
stoics, whose forefathers were defeated in their murderous attempts to
Mohammedanize Europe only at the very gates of Vienna itself.
The fact that Servia entertains exaggerated fears for her own is
brought to the notice of the traveller—and forcibly, too—at Zemlin,
on the Austrian side of the Danube River, opposite Belgrade. At this
point one of King Peter’s ominous-looking arms of the law, resplendent
in epaulets and gold cord, boards each and every train from the west.
Although his trailing sword appears to be no little hindrance to his
ease in getting about, his temper remains unruffled and he examines
with polite suspicion the passports of all who expect to leave the
train at the Servian capital. The name of the owner of the passport is
jotted down on a piece of paper which, later, in the depot, is handed
surreptitiously to a pair of warlike individuals who guard the exit to
the street, while the customs officials are demanding excuses for the
contents of your grips. Between these two warriors you must pass out
from the depot and give them your name, which is forthwith checked off
the list previously furnished by the portly train inspector.
But this is not all.
Upon arrival at the hotel you are handed an information blank, which
must be filled in with your name, address, occupation, religion, where
you came from, how long you expect to remain in the city, your ultimate
destination and such data as would facilitate the authorities in
bringing you to earth in case you attempted to cut short the life of
the King or incited the natives to revolt.
One of these blanks, for you must fill in two, is kept at the hotel;
the other is sent to police headquarters. No matter how insignificant
you may imagine you are when in your mother-country, you are under
the eagle eye of the government continuously in Servia. Your every
move is watched and made a note of. It matters not even if you change
to another hotel; the police are immediately notified to that effect.
You are branded as a suspicious character and will remain so until you
prove it or leave the country, vindicated.
Your first impressions of the metropolis of Servia are apt to be a bit
disappointing, and especially so if you arrive at night, for Belgrade
is anything but an imposing city, even in the daytime. You are driven
rather recklessly through streets of very uneven cobbles, miserably
lighted and apparently abandoned by human beings. The business, and,
at the same time, residential part of the city, in which your hotel
is located, looks down from the crest of a hill upon the squalid, old
Turkish quarter on one side, from which emanates a veritable vapour of
highly seasoned cookery, and the poor Servian district and warehouses
on the other. To the west, on a cliff overlooking the junction of the
Danube and the Save, are the Kalemagden Park and the old fortress, the
guns of the latter having been long since silenced by the Treaty of
Berlin of 1878, which forbade Servia fortifying her Austrian frontier.
“The cheerful boulevards of Belgrade,” as one author earnestly puts it,
may have been in existence at the time the phrase was coined, but I
very much doubt it, because of the dearth of evidence of these alleged
“boulevards” ever having deserved such flattery.
This Kalemagden Park, however, is one of the few beauty spots of the
Servian capital. Another is in the vicinity of the _konak_, or palace,
of King Peter, in the eastern portion of the city. The street borders
one end of the _konak_ and continues past the garden and lawn which the
building faces: if it were not for the gates being guarded constantly
by soldiers one would hardly imagine the edifice to be the residence
of a royal household. The mutinous murder of King Alexander and Queen
Draga in 1903 occurred in the old _konak_, later demolished by order of
the present ruler, which stood in front of the new palace but facing
the gardens and the street.
Three miles to the east of the city is located Topchidere Park, the
beautiful country-seat of the ill-fated Prince Alexander, who was but
one victim of the many infamously successful plots of the Servian
regicides. His chalet stands on the opposite side of the roadway from
the little chapel, and in the garden his stone tea-table is still
preserved. Above it spread the branches of a monstrous tree of some
three hundred years of age, famous from the fact that from its massive
limbs the invading Turks were wont to hang their Christian victims.
Near by is the country estate of the present Crown Prince, with stables
and kennels containing his favourite horses and dogs.
Topchidere is the improvised country club of the Belgraders, and many
are the social functions given in its casino—if I may apologize for
the use of the word “casino” in describing the ramshackle frame house
of carousal in the Park. But the gardens are really beautiful, and are
kept in excellent condition by state prisoners detailed to work in
them.