Statue in Memento Park
Before I took the Private Budapest Communist History Walking Tour, I knew very little about life behind the Iron Curtain. As a small child, I’d seen Soviet life depicted on television reports, but I questioned the accuracy of the black-and-white footage of people queuing up to buy bread that was so frequently showed in the west. All I really knew that Hungary’s “Goulash Communism” that dominated from the 1960s onward was more lax than what was found in other parts of the Eastern Bloc.
I met Zsolt, my tour guide, in front of my hotel early in the morning. When I arrived he was already waiting for me along with a driver and a shiny new black Mercedes that would be our transportation for the first part of the tour. As we began our drive across town to Memento Park, Zsolt pulled out a coffee table book in Hungarian and proceeded to explain to me the history of the country and the Magyar people, from the pre-Christian days all the way up to the end of the fall of the Habsburgs at the end of World War I.
We arrived at the park right when it was opening. Before entering, Zsolt pointed out an enormous statue of a pair of boots that loomed over the parking lot. He explained that the statue was a replica of what remained of a statue of Stalin that was torn down duing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The original eight-meter-high statue was torn down by a group of protesting Hungarians, and all that remained was the boots. The replica was installed just outside of Memento Park in commemoration.
Memento Park Boots
We entered through a side gate guarded by statues of Marx and Engels. The main gate is closed off to symbolize the round-about paths that people had to take during the Communist Era in order to get things done. While Zsolt was arranging our entry with the ticket counter, I wandered off to check out the old Trabant car (commonly known as the Trebi) that sits on the grounds. This car, as Zsolt would later explain, was one of three models available, and those wanting to purchase a car would often have to put money up front and then wait for years before actually receiving their vehicles. Party members, naturally, would get their cars faster than the rest of the population.
Trebi Car
We walked through the park, stopping at some of the more important statues, where Zsolt would explain symbolism and history. What struck me most was how Russians were portrayed with strict styles of dressing, upright, almost stiff posture, the women with tight ponytails. Hungarians, conversely, were depicted with a more relaxed look, in more casual clothes and with loose hairstyles.
A humbly dressed Hungarian shakes the hands of a sternly portrayed Russian
Although the statues were made more fascinating and relevant thanks to Zsolt’s commentary, my favorite part of Memento Park was the indoor mini-museum, that features both a diorama on Hungaray’s communist history, but also a small movie room where old footage pulled from spy training videos is screened, complete with English subtitles. I managed to watch a good 10 minutes of the film, which detailed the lengths to which spies would go to secretly film their subjects.
After about an hour at Memento Park, we returned to Budapest and were dropped off right in front of the Parliament building. Zsolt told me a bit about the city’s history as we made our way through Liberty Square, past a group of tourists having their photos taken with a statue of Ronald Reagan. Our final stop was at the main office of Zsolt’s tour guide company, where I was taken down a flight of stairs and into a “time machine,” a room designed to resemble a home in 1970s Hungary, complete with décor such as candles in the form of Communist leaders’ heads.
Communist Candles
Zsolt showed me a school project of a young girl who had grown up under Communism, in the form of a diary/collage book featuring clippings and drawings of important figureheads of the time. He also pulled out the Hungarian version of Monopoly, where instead of buying real estate, players purchase goods for their homes. Points are gained for good deeds such as helping elderly people across the street and lost for wasting water or littering.
Throughout the tour, Zsolt had been promising me a surprise that would come at the end. After showing me the monopoly game, he broke out a guitar, handed me a lyric sheet with Hungarian and English lyrics, and broke out into a popular song translated as “Eight Hours of Work,” about the eight-hour workday, which originated in Britain during the Industrial Revolution and later became an important tenet of the labor movement.
Zsolt’s Performance
This was the conclusion of our tour and though I left with a notebook full of information that Zsolt had shared with me during our few hours together, and a desire to learn even more about what is arguably one of the most fascinating aspects of 20th-century European history.
-Margot Bigg
Private Walking Tour: Budapest Communist History Including Memento Park from Budapest Things to Do