Buda-side: even further into the past

After the park and the baths, monuments and so on in Pest, we drove over to Buda, which is really like a whole other world. While Pest is living in its 19th century glory, Buda is medieval. They have all the castles and towers and royal palaces over there, as well as many of the universities, where, the guide said, my ancestors probably studied. And they have lots of entertainment on this side, too.

But before we went up into the hills, we had a special stop to make right down along the river. Our guide had found us a 19th century Hungarian Lutheran church. The Hungarians were the first country after Germany to jump on the Reformation bandwagon back in the early 16th century, which they likely got news of quickly from being connected via the Duna. So there are bunches of churches, and she figured this one, still in use and very popular during the 19th century, was very likely to at least have been visited by my forebears. It had the added benefit of being half-renovated and of a very unusual octagonal style. Our pictures aren't much, but they had postcards! And I found their site for the second inside shot.







And here is a link to a Hungarian Lutheran choir singing "A Mighty Fortress" in Hungarian. (Scroll way down). It's a different church (but also in Budapest), and the sound starts out too soft but it picks up. I thought it would be fun to learn a couple of verses. It's not so hard. You get used to their rhyme scheme in a hurry: nk nk nk. Sing along!

http://www.lutheransonline.com/servlet/lo_ProcServ/dbpage=page&gid=20083118477763822901111555&pg=20091374958555345901111555&mode=display&start_count=1

Joyce took these of the outside. You can see from the postcard exterior, above, and a couple of these, how they are partway through their restoration. The renewed parts have all the shiny tiles, and the older, unrestored part is brown. But they're working on it. It appears again later in my pictures from along the Duna on another cruise.