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Budapest’s quest for independence

Like the legendary Phoenix, Hungary’s capital city has risen from the ashes of war
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It is sometime after midnight and except for the ship's running lights and the sliver of a new moon I am surrounded by total darkness. I find a deck chair on the top deck of the Viking Spirit, have another sip of wine and wait.

At first it is just a distant glow in the darkness to my right but as we draw nearer the glow morphs into a cluster of magnificent buildings. A church with a tall slender spire and the sprawling ramparts of a medieval castle seem to hang in the night sky like a luminous mirage. On my left the vast neo-Gothic Parliament building casts a reflection of its ornate turrets onto the inky black surface of the water. Ahead, the Chain Bridge forms a necklace of lights across the river and beyond the bridge, high above the city, the towering statue of a woman with raised arms, the Statue of Liberty, seems to glow with an inner light against the blackness of the sky. Coming into Budapest at night is a magical experience and, as the Spirit slips into her berth, I savor the moment for a long while before returning to my bunk.

The next morning we begin our exploration of the city with a trip up Gellert Hill to the Citadel where the Statue of Liberty stands atop a massive stone pedestal. Even without the illusion created by the floodlights of the night the 14-metre tall bronze figure holding a palm branch above her head is an impressive monument. "It was placed here in 1947 to commemorate the liberation of Budapest from the Nazis by the Red Army," says Armin, our tour guide. "It was first named the Liberation Monument but when the Russian 'liberation' turned out to be an occupation people began to hate the statue. The figure of a Russian soldier waving a flag was removed from its base in 1990 and the monument was renamed the Statue of Liberty. Hungarian history is very complicated," Concludes Armin. "But now everybody is happy."

From the terrace of the Citadel we get a panoramic view of the city and the river that divides it. Far below us the Chain Bridge is buzzing with morning traffic and our boat, tied up on the far shore of the Danube, looks like a child's toy in the distance. Until the Chain Bridge was built in 1849 Buda, on the west bank of the Danube and Pest on the east, were separate cities, linked by a small unreliable ferry. The two were finally united under the name Budapest in 1873, but Buda and Pest still retain much of their original identity. Buda, built on a cluster of hills, is a warren of narrow streets, tunnels, and steep stairwells reminiscent of its medieval beginnings while Pest, the modern part of the city with its broad boulevards and numerous parks, sprawls across the flatlands east of the river.

As we are leaving the citadel on our way to Buda's castle district Armin struggles to explain the city's history. The tangled web of intrigue, changing boundaries and shifting allegiances is much too complex to follow but one theme comes through loud and clear - the unrelenting quest for independence. From the Turkish occupation of 1541 to the brutal Russian incursion of 1956 Hungary has struggled vainly to throw off the yoke of foreign domination. "Even the Citadel, where we are standing, is a symbol of our struggle," says Armin. "It was built by the ruling Habsburg's of Vienna, not to protect Budapest from invaders but to intimidate and control the population."

From the Citadel we made our way to Buda Castle, a stately domed building that dominates Castle Hill on the west bank of the Danube. It was begun in 1242 but, like most of Budapest's classic buildings, it has gone through repeated cycles of destruction and rebuilding. The Turks destroyed the original in 1686. The Hapsburg ruler, Maria Theresa, rebuilt it in 1770 and retained a suite of 200 rooms there for use during her state visits from Vienna. The Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I repaired and enlarged it during the "Age of Dualism" when Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Ironically the "Age of Dualism" under Hapsburg domination was also Budapest's Golden age of progress. The half-century between 1867 and 1918 was one of unprecedented growth. The population more than doubled and the city's present-day skyline took shape. The dome on the Royal palace, the rambling walkways and turrets of Fisherman's Bastion, and the magnificent neo-gothic Matthias Church were all built on Buda's hills during this time. And across the river in Pest the New Parliament, a larger than life palace bristling with 365 slender columns took shape on the east bank of the Danube. With 10 courtyards, 691 rooms and 20 km of stairways its size and intricacy stagger the imagination. An underground railway, the first on the continent, was also built during this period and for a while, during the 1890s, Budapest was one of the fastest growing cities in Europe. But in 1914 it all ground to a halt.

The two world wars took a terrible toll on Budapest. Following its crippling defeat in the First World War Hungary was stripped of two thirds of its territory and Budapest was occupied, looted and plundered by Rumanian and Czech forces. During the interwar years the country formed an alliance with Germany and entered WW2 on the side of the Nazis. The result for Budapest was catastrophic. After being soundly defeated on the Russian front Hungary was invaded by Nazi troops who dug in for a last stand in Budapest, blocking Hungary's quest for a separate peace. The bombing and pitched battles that ensued left the city in ruin. What little was left, including the bridges, was blown up by the retreating Nazis. And Budapest's suffering didn't end with the Second World War.

In 1956 a popular uprising against the post-war Communist government was met with crushing military might. Russian tanks rumbled through the streets of Budapest and the city was razed again during bitter fighting between Hungarian civilian units and Soviet troops. The result was yet another foreign-controlled puppet government that pervaded every aspect of Hungarian life with communist ideology.

Today the Citadel, the Castle District, the bridges and the tree-lined downtown boulevards - the parts of Budapest shown to tourists - have all been meticulously restored. But we didn't have to venture far beyond the tourist beat to see the wounds of war - old buildings lashed by shrapnel and machinegun fire and shoddy communist-era tenements replacing those buildings that were totally destroyed. As a tourist it's hard to see beneath the smiling faces of our seemingly prosperous hosts but the more people we talked to the more we sensed a genuine feeling of optimism and national pride. The admission of Hungary to the EU in 2004 and its quiet shift from communist ideology to a free-market economy have given the country a sense of equality within the European community of nations. For the people of Budapest the new order may finally have given them the freedom that has eluded their city for almost a thousand years.