We arrived in Hungary the week after a devastating flood of the Danube and its tributaries in June 2013. We found that a resilient country had weathered the flood without serious damage to Budapest or the nearby towns along the Danube. Life was back to normal in most places, although a few parks were still closed pending cleanup of debris. But children flocked to public swimming pools and stores were filled with shoppers, only a few feet from the point at which the townspeople had barricaded themselves against the flood. There was plenty of evidence of the heights reached by the flood waters; dust and mud still covered the fields and woodlands along the river, stacks of sandbags lined the shore in many places, and river water was still standing in low-lying spots along the banks and in the nearby farmlands. Signs of high water came right up to the point outside each town at which sandbags had gone up to protect the inhabitants, their homes and businesses.
Unfortunately, a heat wave had followed hard upon the week of heavy rain. Temperatures were well into the 90's and sometimes topped 100. Most of the restaurants and cafes had moved all their services to terraces along the street, where customers preferred to sit in hopes of a cooling breeze. It became serious business to judge which way the shadows were going to move when we chose our dining spots; the pavement was still blistering hot from the midday sun and we didn't want the late afternoon glare to come creeping up on us as we enjoyed our meals!
We had gone to Budapest to give scholarly papers at the New Directions in the Humanities Conference at Eotvos Lorand University. I gave a slide presentation on Giulio Romano, illustrating why I think Shakespeare cast him as an off-stage character in The Winter's Tale. Amee Carmines and Joy Hendrickson gave an excellent paper on their teaching of literature from the African Diaspora outside the United States. Tom had chosen not to present a paper and to enjoy a week's freedom from teaching and administrative tasks. The presentations went well and we made some valuable contacts in each session. However, we chose to devote a single day to the conference so that we could spend the rest of our week getting to know Hungary and the Hungarians.
Below are photos with additional descriptive comments about our great adventure.
we explored the art colony of Szentendre, once a multicultural refuge for Slavs of many religious backgrounds who fled the Turkish empire (6, 7, 8). Around five p.m. on a blistering hot day we took a cool, breezy boat down the Danube (9) and back to Budapest.
