We found ourselves only 15 minutes south of Netanya last Thursday, so, of course, we did what you’d expect. We went to IKEA. It was a successful trip. We found almost everything we were looking for, and one thing we had given up looking for. Loyal and attentive followers of my blog (and I know, dear reader, that you are both loyal and attentive) will remember that we had, at one point about a year ago, visited IKEA principally to buy dividers for our wardrobe sock, tights and underwear drawers. It was there that we discovered that these items had been discontinued.

As we were going round IKEA this time, we saw the very dividers we had been wanting to buy and had given up hope of ever possessing. So, I am delighted to announce that the days of my blue and black socks surreptitiously co-habiting are well and truly over.

Of course, to compensate for the delight that we felt, and to maintain the overall balance of happiness and unhappiness in the universe, our journey back home from IKEA took three and a half hours, at an average speed of just over 28 kph. Three and a half hours! Good grief! You can fly from Hungary to Israel in less time than that!

I know this for a fact, since we had indeed, only the day before, done exactly that, in three hours and ten minutes, in fact. We were flying back from a mid-week city break in Budapest. Let me share with you some highlights of our trip.

Before we went, we naturally did some online research. One of the things we knew was that Budapest is famous for its many spas, and many people make a point of ‘taking the waters’. On our trip, we didn’t actually have to go out of our way to take the waters; the waters came to us without our seeking them out. Unfortunately, they came in the form of heavy rain, which was a major feature of two of our three days in the city.

It has to be said that no city, with the possible exception of Paris, looks good in the rain. There were times during our stay when Budapest looked a little less like Vienna and a lot more like Communist Eastern Europe because of the persistent drizzle. Nevertheless, we still kept expecting Orson Welles to appear, mysteriously, in the shadows of a doorway, at any moment. (Ah the zither! What an underestimated instrument.)

Both Bernice and I regretted the fact that our proper raincoats now live in Portugal, where they get a lot of use, and our Israel coats are designed more to keep out the cold than the rain. On our second day, we managed to find, and buy, a couple of umbrellas, which certainly made a significant difference.

On our second day, we took an excellent walking tour of the Jewish quarter entitled: Nazism and World War II. I was impressed both by the local guide’s excellent English and by his explanations of details of Jewish religious practice. He was able to provide accurate and clear explanations for the non-Jewish members of the group, of whom there were a surprising number, including couples from Malawi and India.

In the course of the tour, the guide made, as expected, several references to some of the non-Jewish Hungarians (and foreign diplomats) who have been recognised as Righteous among the Nations for their efforts in saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust. However, he in no way suggested that these actions were the norm among Hungarians. He explained very clearly that the Hungarian authorities welcomed the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, and were complicit with the Nazis in their actions against Jews. He spoke in detail about the ultra-nationalist Arrow Cross party’s antisemitic ideology, independent actions against Hungarian Jews and full and enthusiastic collaboration with the Nazis.

I must confess that the straightforward honesty of this account was both refreshing and surprising. Nevertheless, even this did not prepare me for an even greater surprise the following day, when we took another walking tour. This one was a general introductory tour of the city.

In the course of this second tour, we were taken to Szabadsag (Liberty) Square. There we saw and learnt about the Memorial for Victims of the German Occupation. The memorial was approved in a closed cabinet session, and erected during one July night in 2014, to mark the 70^th anniversary of the March 1944 German occupation of Hungary. Budapestiek (inhabitants of Budapest) woke up one morning to discover this monument.

The plan to set up the monument was heavily criticised by the Jewish community, and also by opposition parties and Budapest civil society, as soon as it was announced. Those opposing it contended that it was aimed at distorting the nation’s role in the Shoah and absolving the Hungarian state and Hungarians of their active role in sending some 450,000 Jews to their deaths during the occupation.

Protests against the monument began in central Budapest on the very day it was erected. The protesters in Szabadsag Square formed a live chain that included several MPs, among them past and present leaders of the Hungarian Socialist Party, the leader of the Democratic Coalition and the co-chair of the Dialogue for Hungary party.

Democratic Coalition leader Ferenc Gyurcsany said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was “falsifying the Holocaust” by getting a monument “confusing the murderer and the victim” erected “under cover of the night.” He accused Orbán of dishonouring all Jewish, Roma and gay victims of the Shoah, and added that it was “characteristic of the regime that it did not dare set up the statue of falsehood during the day.”

Initially, the opposition campaigned for the monument to be removed since it “fails to serve objective and peaceful remembrance, and attempts to deny the responsibility of the Hungarian state.” However, when these attempts failed, the opposition took another, innovative, approach, one which has effectively transformed the installation into “a memorial to the arrogance of the Hungarian government”. The entire 30-metre stretch of path in front of the statue is lined with photographs and documented accounts of Hungarian victims of the Shoah. A large QR code is displayed, that links to a site that declares, inter alia: “Did you know? Between 1920-1945 600,000 Hungarian people were outlawed, robbed and sent to death by the Horthy authorities. Not the Germans! This statue is a lie!” The authorities appear to have decided that their most prudent policy is to tolerate this protest, and they have done so for the last nine years.

I had a conversation with our guide, a young man who has dual Canadian-Hungarian nationality but who has spent most of life in Budapest. He explained that the bulk of support for Orban is in the provinces. Budapestiek are typically more liberal and more left-wing, as well as better educated and more affluent, than other Hungarians. When I asked whether the average Budapesti ‘buys into’ the monument, he assured me that, since Hungarian schools teach the truth about Hungarian complicity with the occupation and the Shoah, nobody is fooled by the monument.

I suspect that part of the motivation for the vehemence of the reaction to the monument is socialist opposition to the right-wing government of Viktor Orbán. Nevertheless, the fact that our tour guide chose to include this monument, and the concomitant readiness to accept the fact of Hungarian complicity, are very impressive to experience first-hand, not least because this is not a readiness echoed, in my experience, in many East European, nor even some Western European, capitals.

This fact alone made Budapest, for me, a surprisingly much more comfortable city to visit than Warsaw or Vienna. Although, in advance of our visit, I had decided that I would not wear my kippa in public when in Hungary, in the event I wore it all the time, and attracted no attention whatsoever. We both felt Budapest to be a safe city to walk in, by day or night, and a very friendly place.

Indeed, there was only one fly in the ointment of our trip. I apologise in advance to the half or more of my readership for whom the next couple of paragraphs might as well be written in Hungarian.

(Just a quick aside. I have now spent time in Helsinki, Istanbul and Budapest, and I have yet to be convinced that Finnish, Turkish or Hungarian are anything more than gibberish spoken to disconcert foreigners. During a week in Helsinki, the only word I ‘recognised’ was ‘apteekki’ for ‘pharmacy’ (presumably related to ‘apothecary’). Incidentally, the Turkish and Hungarian equivalents are ‘ekzane’ and the even less plausible ‘gyógyszertár’.)

Budapest is one of the trendiest cities in Europe. Many abandoned buildings in the Jewish quarter have been converted into so-called ‘ruin bars’, indulging the Hungarians’ fabled love of food and drink and having a good time. The area has also been given character by the municipally-sponsored street art. We were proudly shown one magnificent mural portraying the Match of the Century, 70 years ago.

This was, of course, the moment in 1953 when the myth of English national football supremacy died. The world’s number one ranked team, on a run of 24 unbeaten games, beaten at home only once in history, the inventors of the game: of course the England team didn’t take Hungary seriously as opponents before the game!

Hungary won 6–3. Our guide pointed out to us that the only non-royal buried in Budapest’s magnificent St Stephen’s Basilica is Ferenc Puskas, the legendary star of that 1953 team. The basilica contains, we were told, two relics: the miraculously undecomposed sacred right arm of King Stephen, and the sacred left foot of Puskas.

To dispel the bitterness of those still fresh wounds, here are Tao and Ollie on holiday on a boat ride (to be honest, they look a bit as if they need convincing they’re having a good time, but Micha’el assures us everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves) and Raphael greeting Nana again enthusiastically after our holiday.