Royal Palace, Gödöllő

Last week we visited the Royal Palace in Gödöllő. The weather was very nice and sunny in the middle of November. We went by suburban train. The journey take about one hour.

The Royal Palace of Gödöllő is located about 26 kilometersNortheast of Budapest . The Palace is the largest baroque palace in Hungary and the second biggest surfaced palace after Versailles. The building was  designed by András Mayerhofer in the 1740's.

The Palace was ordered by Count Antal Grassalkovich in 1773.

Count Antal Grassalkovich was the the richest nobleman of Hungarian aristocracy in the 18th century, a president of the Hungarian Chamber and the royal confidant of the Hungarian queen Maria Theresia. 

During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the building served as a summer residence for Emperor Francis Joseph and Queen Elisabeth between 1867 and 1916. The royal couple spent a lot of time there, especially empress Elisabeth with her children.  

The palace was used as summer residence by governor Miklós Horthy between 1920-1944.

  

After World War II, the Soviet Union occupied Hungary and confiscated the royal palace. The beautiful symbol of the former monarchy was used as a barracks for Soviet troops and later there was a nursing home for the elderly.  By the time Hungary declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1989, Gödöllő Palace was in a terrible state of disrepair.

Recently, the castle was beautifully restored to its original splendour.

 

The Grand Hall is resplendent in white and gold painted rooms, a red marble bath, conservatory, a riding school, a baroque theatre and a large park.

Riding school,  long ago and ......

today.

Baroque theatre

The palace gives home a permanent exhibition, as well as seasonal exhibitions of the historical and contemporary art all year round.

Visit - Castle Garden Bazaar

In the Castle Garden Bazaar I was last time at the end of the 70s. At this time here was the famous Ifi Park ( Youth Park ) Many - later they became a classics - beat bands came here to play first time in front of a big audience. The park was closed down on 23rd September 1984. I read a lot that it will be newly renovated, but the years passed and it looked quite deplorable  at the foot of the castle. Now I had an opportunity to visit the rebuilt garden with my cousin again.

In the 19th century Pest was in progress, but no development happened in Buda, so the reconstruction of the area in the neighborhood of the Chain Bridge (Lánchíd) and the Castle has been decided in 1872-1873. In order to have place enough for the construction of Castle Garden Bazaar (Várkert Bazár) all the old and ruined small houses had to be demolished. The Castle Garden Bazár (Várkert Bazár) was build between 1875 and 1883 in Neo Renaissance style.

 In the 2nd World War many parts of the Bazaar were destroyed (lions at the gate, statue of winter, pergola, vases and paintings of the recesses), caused by a bomb attack in the neighborhood. In the 1950s, the original condition was planned to be restored, but it wasn't successful (original parts were demolished, concrete stairs were built and during the restoration the scales were missed). From 20 August, 1961 to 1984 the Youth Park was operated here where several concerts were held.

However, the place finally had to be closed down due to the continually deteriorating structure of the building.

Luckily this almost forgotten gem of Budapest is fully renewed and was opened August 2014 with shops, exhibitions halls, restaurants and cafes.

Visit

I had a pleasant surprise recently. One afternoon, my cousin called me from Transylvania, that her son leaves for Vienna by car and she would come with her. If I wait for her on the M1 motorway, she'll be able to stay a few days in Budapest. At night, at  3 o'clock a.m. I was on the way by car. We couldn't sleep a lot because the next day – 23rd October - we would have liked to see some programmes of the national holiday. In the morning we drank a lot of coffee and we went to look at the Parliament. Thanks to the free entry, the people snaked in a long line around the building.

 We thought that we'll to wait for one hour and if we don't get ahead, we'll go away.

Incredibly, after one hour we were at the gate. Actually we could see the crown only, and we couldn't see the complete building. 

 When we went out, a musical changing of the guards just started.

The rest of the day we made up for the missed night.

The next day we awoke to a beautiful sunny day. At the end of October one can think, perhaps this is the last beautiful weekend, so we went to hike to the Buda hills. From the Szépjuhászné ( Beautiful shepherd wife ) we climbed to the top of Feketefej (Black head) hill 

and after that we arrived through the Kecskehát (Back of goat) and Meszes (Limy) hill to Remeteszőlős (Vineyard of hermits). From here we went home by bus.

I

Yesterday

morning my son Ö. flew from London to Las Vegas for a trade talks. The flight was long enough, more than 10 hours. 

He'll stay one week there. He won't have time to go to the casino, but he has a plan, an excursion to the Grand Canyon.

I'm here again :)

At last I'm trying to find time to write in my blog. Last year I've really enjoyed being retired, I was able to deal with things that I like, but I never had time for them beside work. There were many little experiences that are difficult to enumerate and my life has become much calmer. I traveled a lot. I travelled to Romania, Slovakia, Austria, Tyrol, England.

I dealt with the history of my family intensively. The oldest person was born in 1640. Unfortunately, the older documents are only in Latin, so I had a little taste of the Latin language. I learned Latin in the secondary school for one year, but I thought it isn't so important. I chose other languages. But how good it would be to have a little Latin knowledge !

I was hiking a lot. We began to walk on the National Blue Circle. Today two sections are ready - the National Blue Trail and the South Transdanubian Blue Trail - and this year we started the third section, the Big Plain Blue Trail. I hope the first half of next year I'll also manage to finish and then we can say we walked around the Hungarian border and we went almost 2,500 kms.

Meanwhile, my grandchildren have grown a lot. Zsolt is already 18 years old and Mate will be seven years old, and he's a serious pupil.

Also I read a lot, I continued my English study, I renovated my flat and finally I learned to bake cakes and bread.  

This year our next class reunion was due. We graduated 45 years ago. I don't even want to count, when I finished the secondary school. In general, we meet in May.On previous occasions, usually I organized it and everyone accepted it. This year I've been pretty busy, I only waited for an invitation. The months passed and nothing happened. In late September, I wrote an email to one of my classmates. : "What do you know about the meeting?" Did you forget to write to me ? I thought that everybody was very busy. The girl answered to me and she organized a lunch for 10^th October. We were 21 students in the class. Unfortunately, one of our classmates already died, and three of them never come there. A girl is living in Germany. She came all the time, but now she got the invitation a little late. 16 classmates gathered together. It's not so bad. Our school was in the town of Vác. 

We have calculated that the majority of the class was no longer living in Vác, but no one said: sorry I don't want to travel. For our form master we were the first class after her university and she's only a few years older than us We greeted each other as old friends. In 2011 was the last time when we met, so everyone had plenty to say. In the pictures there are no more children, but grandchildren. Now they have the leading role. We planned it have a little conversation for about 1-2 hours after the lunch but finally we only said goodbye to each other at 7 pm. I think everybody had a very nice Saturday afternoon .