It was pretty tough but the view was worth it! This was mostly at the top. We didn't go ALL the way up but that will be an adventure for another time.
And finally for a little something extra, this is Maria, one of the instructors, speaking english. This gives you an idea of what the Hungarian accent sounds like!
The audio is pretty quiet but you can still kind of hear her : /.
Last night we had some pretty awesome experiences though. We showed some people the movie "Kontroll" and we also hung out in front of the hotel with some people and that was pretty fun as well. We and Val also drew some monsters. I'll be sure to post them! O_o
That's all for now! I haven't been carrying around my camera for some bizarre reason so my future posts will have much more interesting things in them!
1 comment:
In "statue park" about 80 percent of the statues are intact, the rest are dismembered (decapitated, etc).
After the fall of Communism, the most hated symbols, especially the Stalin statues, were destroyed, but the rest of them survived pretty much intact...
About the statue on top of Gellert Hill: Appearances Can Be Deceiving!
:D
It's actually an anticommunist symbol, NOT a communist statue.
In the communist era, the artists, poets, writers, and the general population, was constantly playing a cat and mouse game whit the bonehead communist censors.
It's so much fun to make fools out of them!
Artists are creative. The censors, are simpletons fooled by the communist dogma...
Everything created in the communist era, is full whit hidden meanings, secret messages and anticommunist symbols!
The statue on top of Gellert Hill is a good example.
Originally, it represented a woman figure holding an olive branch above her head, and in the communist era, there has been a statue of a soviet soldier set on a lower pedestal, "guarding" liberty and peace...
But the intent of the artist was different, and very clear for everybody:
-The huge symbol for liberty, was dwarfing and dominating the small symbol of communism...
And the statue is placed in the highest topographical point in Budapest, the city where the anticommunist revolt of 1956 originated...
And indeed, freedom was bigger and stronger than communism, just as the statue suggested!
Now, only the symbol of liberty remains in place. The symbol of communism is gone...
Freedom transcended communism.
The statue of liberty on Gellert Hill, celebrates the concept of freedom, and the victory over communism!
A homage to the 1956 anticommunist insurrection.
Powerful stuff !!!
But wait a second, and examine the statue more closely.
The woman figure closely resembles an ancient goddess, and the olive branch over her head is actually more similar to a huge feather!
It's a TURUL feather.
The Turul is a mythological giant bird, the most ancient Hungarian symbol, a thousands of years old legend...
It's the bird of the origin myth, who sits on top of the tree of life, and appears only in the most crucial moments of history to guide the Hungarians out of trouble, to a better destiny!
It is a powerful messenger of god, very similar in concept to a Cristian archangel.
The Turul is in fact the embodiment of the god's power and will.
In other words, the Turul bird represents DESTINY.
A better future...
And if you combine a Turul feather whit an olive branch, well the message is even more powerful and clear.
The statue on top of Gellert Hill has many layers of hidden meanings, apparent only in the right context.
Sorry for the very long comment.
But you and Val are artists.
An artist can appreciate the challenge to create a work of art subtitle enough to evade the communist censure, but clear enough to be understood by the people...
Whiteout detailed knowledge of local lore, is extremely difficult to interpret the true meaning of things left from the communist era.
It's intentional. The soviet commissars had no mercy, but had zero local knowledge (a big boon for the local artists and intellectuals to exploit).
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