7-13. September 2022. Hungary. Budapest. For this visit to Budapest, the focus is on remnants of the Hungarian People’s Republic (Hungarian: Magyar Népköztársaság), such as the first Hilton in Communist Europe, various communist monuments (many are in Memento Park) and anti-communist monuments (1956 Revolution), and structures erected during the era, including Dogaly Spa, the socialist realist Former HQ of Hungarian Shipping Co, the brutalist Elisabeth Bridge, the Labor Movement Mausoleum in Kerepesi Cemetery, Electrical Distribution Station of Dob Street, and the All Saints Roman Catholic Church (the first church in Budapest that the communist regime allowed to be built). And food, as always. And drink. Wine, in particular, thanks to the fortunate timing of the Budapest Wine Festival up at Buda Castle.
HPR was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949 to 23 October 1989 governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Union thanks to the 1944 Moscow Conference in which Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had agreed that after the war Hungary was to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence. The HPR remained in existence until opposition forces brought the end of communism in Hungary.