Budapest has a romanticism that attracts tourists from around the world

12 May

By Oliver Clark, in Budapest

In 896AD the Magyars, a host of nomadic tribesmen from Siberia and the ancestors of today’s Hungarians, first arrived in what is today Budapest and decided it seemed a good place to make their home.

And travelling around the Hungarian capital on a city tour it is easy to see why.

Boasting beautiful tree-lined Parisian style boulevards, such as Andrassy Avenue, a thriving café culture and noble palaces harking back to its Imperial past, Budapest has a romanticism that attracts tourists from around the world.

Our tour guide Susanna, explains that the city of Budapest has gone through many transformations over the years.

From a population of just 200,000 a hundred years ago, the city grew quickly at the turn of the 19th century to become home to some 2 million people, with the majority Roman Catholics, but also with a sizeable Protestant and Jewish minority.

As something of an ethnic island within Europe, Hungarians are acutely aware of the history as the Hősök tere or ‘Heroes Square’ testifies.

A semi circular memorial housing influential politicians and moments from Hungary’s past, such as the 1588 battle of Szikszó when Hungarian forces defeated Ottoman forces, some 100 years before the liberation of the city itself from Turkish rule.

At the centre is the millennium cenotaph around which are depicted the tribal elders of the Magyars looking out at the country they had chosen as home after a gruelling journey across Europe.

In our own journey around the city we see the variety of sites on offer to tourists from museums and art galleries, to circuses, zoos, opera houses and the nature lovers getaway of Margaret Island.

Today, the city is famous for the number of natural spas it offers, the oldest is a Turkish spa dating back to the 16th century, a time when Budapest was a part of the Ottoman Empire, but now in a poor state of repair.

Originally two cities – Buda and Pest – that were separated by the mighty currents of the Danube, they were physically linked for the first time in 1840 by the Chain Bridge and was finally officially united as one in 1873. That being said the two are still very different, with Buda more grand and residential and Pest the life and soul of the city.

Today the Chain Bridge, guarded by two lions on both sides of the river, is one of the iconic images of Budapest and we get a good view of it as we travel from Pest to Buda to visit Buda Castle.

The journey up a steep winding road takes us to the entrance to Buda Castle, a natural strong point which dominates its surroundings and on which royal fortifications have stood since medieval times.

Today, Buda Castle’s natural defensive position make it a great place to view the skyline of Budapest and its Fishguard Bastion offers incredible views of the city below.

The vista includes the Hungarian parliament building, completed in 1905, and the third largest government building in the world.

Also situated on the summit is St Matthias Church, built in medieval times and the place traditionally used by the Hungarian monarchs for their coronations.

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Commendable exhibition on Israel’s modern history – but it’s only half the story

22 Apr

Telling the story of modern Israel is no easy task. Since declaring independence in 1948, and indeed in the years running up to then, the nation has been in dispute with neighbouring countries and Arabs demanding a state truly independent state of Palestine.

Over the last 65 years thousands have died, on both the Israeli and opposing sides, in fighting and there have been multiple atrocities on innocent civilians. But getting everyone to agree to a single narrative of events would be near impossible.

The Israeli Museum, on the edge of Tel Aviv, attempts to chart independence through the life and times of Yitzhak Rabin, a career politician and one time commander of the country’s armed forces. He was assinated in 1995 by right wing, Jewish extremists as he addressed supporters, just a year after having secured in the Oslo Accord one of the most important peace agreements in modern Israel’s history.

It’s from the years running up to independence in 1948 to Rabin’s murder in 1995 that the exhibition focuses on. Through perhaps one of the most impressive uses of multi-media that I’ve seen at a museum (audio automatically starts on your personal headset as you approach displays and videos), both the personal and national stories emerge.

Some of the narrative seems quite brave to me. As well as the displays telling us that 6,000 soldiers and civilians died in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, we are also told that 650,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, but acknowledges that Israel did not permit the the refugees home once the fighting was over.

And there is space given to Yom Kippur and the national outrage when the military was caught ‘off guard’. Israel won the battles, but many soldiers’ lives were lost.

However, when it comes to the Six Day War of 1967 the story is more one-sided, essentially blaming provocation from neighbouring countries. It simply had to retaliate, according to the text on displays. Others would argue that Israel started the fighting.

While a commendable exhibition, stopping the story in 1995 has it’s limitations, not least that since then illegal Israeli settlement building in the West Bank has increased, to the extent that there are now around 500,000 settlers. This of course goes against the Oslo agreement made in 1994 to provide a home for the Palestinian people.

And since Rabin’s death Israel has blockaded Gaza in protest of a Hamas-led government in the strip and invaded Lebanon in the face of Hezbollah militants. The second Intifada (uprising) may have come and gone, but peace still seems a long way off.

This latest history deserves to be properly charted. But it’s going to take some bravery to complete the story and debate the last two decades of Israeli politics.

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How art speaks volumes in the oppressed West Bank

18 Apr

Not far from the place in Bethlehem where Jesus is said to have been born there’s a gift shop dedicated to Banksy. In fact, it seems the whole quarter is given over to this infamous graffiti artist from my home town of Bristol.

Before purchasing some prints of graffiti he has done in the occupied West Bank, I had lunch in ‘Banksy’s Restaurant’ – a room filled with reproductions of his colourful work.

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The shop’s owner, Yamen, told me that he has met the secretive Banksy on his trips to the region and was inspired to open a store where visitors could buy the artist’s work.

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Classic Banksy – pictured in Bethlehem

In a land where the Palestinian people have their daily lives controlled by the Israeli military, Banksy’s work speaks volumes. I love the picture where a donkey (central to the Biblical story of Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem) is captured next to an Israeli soldier, machine gun poised.

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Much of the graffiti in the West Bank is on the Palestinian side giant of the separation wall with Israel. For the people that live beside this ghastly structure, it feels like being in a prison.

I saw one house near Bethlehem where the wall surrounds a Palestinian home on three sides. The inhabitants can’t even open their windows, on account of ‘security reasons’.

But while the wall is oppressing (Palestinians talk of it as the ‘apartheid wall’), for artists the wall is a giant canvas. In a place where protests can lead to soldiers using deadly tear gas, this is a way that people have found to make their voices heard by the outside world.

It’s the idea of military occupation that has captivated many artists. But many also have hope in painting pictures keys in the hope that one day they will return to the lands they’ve been evicted from.

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You’ve got to be strong to survive in the West Bank

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Israeli soldiers blindfolding and leading away a Palestinian

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Inside the occupied West Bank – only by stopping the Palestinian land grab will peace be realised

17 Apr

Walking through the Arab quarter in Hebron’s old city is an eerie experience. Bar the Israeli soldiers standing guard in watchtowers and on rooftops, the place is deserted.

The shutters on the shops along what was once the city’s busiest street are permanently down. Some 10 years ago, during the Second Intifada, the Israeli government kicked out the Arab traders out on “security grounds’”. They had little time to leave and it’s said that many of the units are still filled with stock.

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Deserted – once the busiest street in Hebron’s Arab quarter in the old city

At this heart of this mass evacuation, something all too common in the West Bank today, was and is a ploy to create illegal settlements for Israelis. In Hebron, a city of roadblocks and where Israeli citizens are separated from Palestinians, I saw today more of these developments in progress. This is not a way to achieve peace.

Every time a new Israeli settlement is built life becomes more difficult for ordinary Palestinian families. Additional streets are closed and suddenly people find they can’t visit friends and relatives. Or they are forced to take less direct routes. In Hebron access is restricted to the Muslim cemetery, for example.

Even the parts of the Arab market in Hebron that are still open seem fairly quiet. Settlers, who live above some of the shops, throw their rubbish and stones at passing Palestinians. While Palestinians are defenceless I saw with my own eyes today settlers that were armed with guns.

The boundaries drawn following the Six Day war of 1967, and affirmed in the 1993 Oslo Agreement, was meant to mean that the West Bank would be a place for the Palestian people.

But in the last 20 years settlement development has continued, perhaps now even at an increasing pace. There are today around 500,000 illegal settlers living in the West Bank by some estimates.

And, travelling with a local guide, on the road from Bethlehem to Hebron today we saw that these are by no means small villages – they are fast-becoming towns in their own right with populations of up to 50,000. The land grab is gathering pace.

The West Bank was and is meant to be for the Palestinian people. The Israelis have plenty of land they could legally settle on, but for some reason they choose to build homes here. And the Israeli government let the settlers get away with it.

In fact they actually making it an attractive proposition, with military guarding their compounds and create exclusion areas around their homes. I even saw five, and in some cases 10, police officers standing watch at bus stops – snipers poised at all times, of course.

The Palestinians by contrast have little protection, or indeed freedom. Their daily lives are controlled by the Israeli military. Soldiers stand guard outside the numerous refugee camps across the West Bank. Papers are checked and, if the Israeli military so decides, they are ‘locked’ inside their squashed compounds, barred from the outside world.

Palestinians are already banned from Jerusalem, where many have relatives, and the rest of Israel.

Earlier today I went inside a camp, the Aida Refugee Camp, in Bethlehem. When it was set up in 1948 people lived in tents, but over the years more permanent structures have been established, giving it it’s current appearance of that of a shanty town.

Although conditions are cramped (around 5,000 Palestinians live in an area less than 200 metres by 400 metres) inhabitants have access to running water for some of the day and children have schools in the district they can attend.

But at the Lajee Centre, a place in Aida that campaigns for the local community, the manager told me about some of the problems that residents face, not least the night time raids that are made at the homes of families by the military. Often arrests are made, he says, and many will know someone who is languishing in an Israeli jail, without having been officially charged.

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Israeli military stand guard outside at the school, not to protect the children but to fire at them if they start throwing stones. Tear gas is also frequently used and I saw some of the canisters that were used outside the centre earlier this month.

Just last week one of the workers was shot at by Israeli soldiers as he photographed them through an open door from the room where I today spoke to the manager. The victim is still in hospital, having suffered terrible burn marks to his face. Other in the Camp have died in recent weeks through confrontation with the Israeli military.

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Aida Refugee Camp – a cramped shanty town

Travelling around the West Bank today many of the Israeli soldiers were very friendly to me once they knew that I was from England. At the tomb of Abraham, one actually said he didn’t need to check my bag as I was a foreigner, joking: “As long as you don’t have a bomb in the bag.”

Key to bringing lasting peace to the West Bank is for the settlement building to stop immediately. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, tells the world that he’s committed to a two-state solution, yet day after day he allows for new Israeli homes to be built on Palestinian land.

God may have spoken about the Israel being the promised land for the Jews, and I respect that they have the right to live in peace in the Holy Land. But that doesn’t mean that others should be oppressed and forced out of their homes so that new settlements can be built.

For 400 years under Ottoman rule Jews, Christians and Arabs lived alongside one and another. My hope is that this can one be a reality once again across Israel and the Palestinian territories, just like it is the case in Jerusalem.

But until the separation barriers can be pulled down and travel restrictions eased for Palestinians, the settlement building must stop. Immediately.

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Building of settlements continues in Hebron

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Rubbish thrown down by settlers into Hebron ‘s Arab market

Jerusalem’s peace can be a blueprint for the Middle East

15 Apr

Blue and white flags are up shops, final sound checks are being made at open air stages and soon fireworks will light up the sky. If they’ve not already, parties marking 65 years of Israel’s independence will soon get underway. It’s going to be a late night for many in Jerusalem.

So far in the Old City things are looking peaceful. But in 1948 when independence was declared it was a different story. Tonight (we hope) we’ll hear music, 65 years ago it was gunfire. Back then Arab armies flooded into the new country of Israel in protest at its formation, with particularly bloody fighting in Jerusalem.

The Old City, with it’s maze of narrow streets and religious buildings, was taken by Jordan, who quite literally made the Jewish Quarter uninhabitable; homes and 22 out of the 27 synagogues destroyed. The 2,000 or so Jews that were living there were forced to flee and many of the best fighters were taken back to Jordan as prisoners.

For 19 years, Jerusalem, like Berlin, was a divided city. Today, I walked through what would have been ‘no man’s land’ – walls separated the Old City and East Jerusalem (held by Jordan) and West Jerusalem (part of Israel). I saw the traces on bullet holes on both sides of part of surviving barriers where soldiers would have got caught up in fracas as they defended their respective quarters.

For Jews in particular it was a painful experience; not only were many forced to flee the Jewish quarter, but they also could no longer reach the Western Wall – their holiest site, at the foot of Temple Mount.

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For 19 years the Jewish people couldn’t reach their holiest site – the Western Wall in Jerusalem

But in the Six Days War of 1967 Israel captured the rest of Jerusalem from Jordan, thus unifying the city. The seizure was controversial in the Arab world to say the least in that Israel had now far exceeded what the UN had permitted in 1947.

Israel would of course say that the 1967 war was necessary defence in that there incursions into the country by its neighbours. But whatever the debate about the causes and Israel’s motives, you can say with certainty that many in Arab world became increasingly angry.

As soon as peace returned to Jerusalem, there was a massive re-building programme with particular emphasis on the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, which had been little more than a waste ground today for 19 years. The modernisation programme means that its stands out and seems cleaner against the other three, tireder looking quarters.

One highlight for many tourists visiting the area is the Hurva Synagogue which was only re-opened in 2009, having been blown up by the Jordanians using 200kg of dynamite during the war of 1948. The re-building programme in the area has also meant that some important archeology has taken place – there’s 3000 years of history on display at Whol Archeological Museum in the Jewish Quarter.

Jerusalem’s Old City seems a peaceful place to visit, but my experience of walking around the historic streets today suggests that the glue holding everything is very fragile. When air raid sirens sounded at 11am signalling the start of a minute’s silence, Jews stopped where they were (even if this meant stopping their car in the middle of the road) while groups non-Jews did their best to shout and make a lot of noise.

For the second group, there is no reason to celebrate today; 1948 for many Arabs was nothing short of a catastrophe. And just as many Israelis died in the fighting in 1948, so did many Arabs. But what many of the latter group faced with independence was eviction from their homes, and sometimes into refugee camps.

Unlike other places in the Middle East, Jerusalem survives today through its inhabitants showing respect for their neighbours, whatever their religion. There are four distinctive quarters in the Old City, but people are largely not restricted to a particular one i.e. Christians can live and work in the Arab Quarter.

This mutual understanding for one and other should never be taken for granted. But perhaps it can also be a blueprint for how peace can be achieved in the wider region. Here’s to hoping things remain calm tonight in Jerusalem and wider Israel.

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No man’s land – for 19 years this was the space between Jordain and Israeli walls

How the Shard is ushering in Rotherhithe’s next wave of development

10 Apr

Like other areas of London, Rotherhithe’s population exploded in the 1800s; growing from close to 10,000 people in 1801 to some 38,000 a century later. Workers flooded into the area as new docks were dug and warehouses built, creating employment for an army of dockers.

By the mid-1820s the eastern side of the peninsula consisted of a vast network of eight docks, owned by three different dock companies. Ships laden with goods as diverse as timber, hemp, corn, iron and tar from America and Northern Europe, were unloaded on the busy quays.

It must have been a real ‘sailor’s town’, dominated by employees of the East India Company who enjoyed many of the riverside pubs that are still popular with visitors today. There was some smart housing, but equally there was some not so good housing.

But Rotherhithe’s sea faring traditions went back a lot further than the 19th century, after all it was from here that the Pilgrim Fathers set sail from on their pioneering voyage to Massachusetts in 1620 on the board the ship, the Mayflower. The location is today remembered by the wonderful Mayflower pub.

And it’s said that timbers from this and other vessels are contained in a range of buildings in the Rotherhithe area. That’s because oak was not allowed to be used in new-builds, hence the need to recycle old wood from ships when they returned from voyages.

There were at least 12 major shipyards in Rotherhithe, as well as shipbreaking. One of the latter was occupied by John Beatson who broke up the Temeraire, a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar. Some of the ship’s timbers went to make up two bishops’ chairs and a communion table for St Paul’s Church off Rotherhithe Street and are now in St Mary’s Church.

The name Rotherhithe means ‘landing place for cattle’ in Anglo Saxon. So from being a spot where cattle grazed so they could be fattened up, and thus command a higher price at market, this corner of south east London grew to be an important port.

When the last docks were closed to commercial traffic in the 1970s Rotherhithe’s place in history could have come to a bitter end. But it was fact the start on a new exciting chapter, as from the 1980s the area started to be redeveloped with former warehouses being converted into homes and new builds.

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Riverside living at its best in Rotherhithe

Rotherhithe benefitted from the building boom that stretched across the water to Canary Wharf in the 1980s. And in the decades that followed took advantage of improvements in transport, such as the Jubilee line extension in 1999 and the opening of the Overground in 2010.

Walking around Rotherhithe today, it seems as if it’s about to take yet another leap forward. Just 10 minutes from the Shard, where 10,000 people will eventually work, you can see why property developers are getting enthusiastic about snapping up the few parcels of land that remain.

In fact, wherever you are in Rotherhithe it seems that you can always see the Shard – it’s this iconic structure that will define the area’s future, something I’ve written before in relation to London Bridge railway station.

One of key arrivals of the 1980s was that of the Daily Mail’s Harmsworth Quays print works. This 14 acre site has now been sold to British Land and, when the presses are re-located to Thurrock later this year, some 1,000 homes will be built.

The somewhat dreary Surrey Quays Shopping centre is also going to get a make-over and, in a sure sign that the middle classes have arrived, will get a John Lewis.

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Surrey Quays shopping centre – getting a much-needed refurbishment (and a John Lewis!)

Rotherhithe is a pleasant place to explore on a spring afternoon – I enjoyed walking to the nature reserve at the weekend and climbing the mount to admire the view of the regenerate docks. And then there’s Surrey Docks City Farm at South Wharf, a real asset for an inner city area.

The area is going to get busy again thanks in part to the Shard development, but let’s hope with all the changes you can still get a spot by the bar at the Mayflower pub and enjoy some peace and quiet in one of the numerous cute little parks.

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The Mayflower – one of London’s best riverside pubs

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Daily Mail’s Harmsworth Quays – soon to be transformed into 1,000 homes

The last post (box) – has Royal Mail conceded defeat to Amazon?

7 Apr

No matter where you are in Britain it seems you are never far from a post box. From isolated hamlets to busy city centres, it’s more likely than not there is one of Royal Mail’s cylindrical red pillar boxes just around the corner from where you live.

Most of us probably speed past numerous post boxes during the course of a working day. Yet we don’t stop and admire what can only be described as an iconic British symbol.

And why would we? In a world dominated by electronic communication, writing letters is becoming less and less common. The logic goes that if we don’t write letters, then we don’t need to post them either.

When Royal Mail announced its annual results last November it said that letter mail had declined by 25% since it peaked in 2005. This graph from the British Postal Museum & Archive illustrates the decline that’s been taking place since around the turn of the new millennium.

One of the biggest casualties of this behavioural shift towards electronic communications has however been post offices. While other factors have contributed to the decline, we can say that over the last 30 years the total number of post offices has halved. Emotions can run high when the Royal Mail announces proposals to close them, especially when they are in rural areas. For older people in particular, a visit to the local post office can sometimes be the only form of human interaction they get during the day.

Unfortunately given that more and more services can now be completed online the future for post offices as stand-alone entities is bleak. The best hope for preserving services is for them to be moved into other outlets such as convenience stores and pubs, creating so-called community ‘hubs’.

But what about the future of pillar boxes? As the trend for online communications grows surely we’ll get to the stage where Royal Mail employees arrive at their pillar boxes and find not a single piece of mail. By that stage it just won’t be cost effective to include many stops on their rounds and it’s inevitable that there will be calls to cut them.

We talk of the pillar box, but in reality there have been many variations. The first, sited in the Channel Islands in 1852, was green (and was introduced to the mainland the following year). And it was only around 20 years later that they became standardised.

This weekend the store of the British Postal Museum & Archive opened its doors to the public. In the middle of the giant warehouse in Essex, and next to an array of Royal Mail vehicles, there is what the curators have dubbed ‘pillar box alley’. It’s here than you find 160 years of pillar box history.

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‘Pillar box alley’ at the store of the British Postal Museum and Archive in Essex

Seeing the original is pretty impressive and is it good to see the first, standardised red one from 1879. But it was also equally fascinating to find out about the failed experiments – like when the Royal Mail thought they’d play at removing the Queen’s head from boxes (and stamps) and when they thought it would be more efficient to move away from the cylindrical design (the way it was finished meant it wasn’t that weather proof).

The Penny Black transformed the post office in the 19th century in that it opened sending a piece of mail up to the masses – it cost just a penny per item. Previously this form of communications was out of the reach of many. But I think the post box is just as important in this story. People needed somewhere to post their letters after all.

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Post boxes come in all shapes and sizes – the collection of the British Postal Museum and Archive

Yet as I walked down ‘pillar box alley’ this weekend, I wondered how many more new designs there would be from the Royal Mail. Surely we be must be at (or nearly at) the end of the line of these red iconic fixtures?

For me it’s important that we retain this heritage, meaning that the museum store is so important. But at the same time we must look to the future of post boxes.

People will be sending and receiving items for many years to come. As orders on websites like Amazon (currently the Royal Mail’s biggest customer) increase, so the number of packages that need to be distributed across Britain will increase.

And in a bid to make this process more convenient for customers, the company is introducing ‘Amazon lockers’ in supermarkets and other convenient public places where orders can be picked up through entering a code.

With more people also selling their stuff online through eBay and other websites, it’s easy to see the trend could be two-way. Why stand in a long line at a post office when you can just drop your package off in a convenience store that’s open late into the evening?

The trouble for Royal Mail is that they seem to be happy to let the Amazons of this world dominate in what I believe will be the post boxes of the future. And if everything starts to be delivered to these boxes, rather than through letter boxes, in the end the Royal Mail will be even worse off.

If the Royal Mail doesn’t do something to enter this market (for example through putting their own boxes in supermarkets and the like) soon then the next wave of post boxes will be in an Amazon museum, rather than the British Postal Museum & Archive’s store in Essex.

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Orginal pillar box – dating back to 1852

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Royal Mail vehicles from bygone years at the museum store

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