Magrit (“Margaret” to English speakers) Island, first called Rabbit Island, is in the middle of the Danube right in front of our home. It’s a 1.6-mile-long island well known for its attractions, so wanting some outdoor time/exercise, we made it our first exploration. A couple hours later, we were glad we had.
For starters, it’s a great place to walk. Around the perimeter of the 1.6-mile-long-island there is a rubber track for runners and bicyclists as well as a concrete pathway for walkers. Both were busy even mid-day on a Monday, and it’s not hard to tell why: the pleasure of running beside the river all the way around would be reward enough to ease the pain.
It’s also loaded with history. Our first stop was a beautiful sculpture commemorating the unification of Buda and Pest, surrounded by a dazzling array of flowering plants. The sculpture is photo-worthy from a distance, but more intriguing from the inside where there are dozens of symbolic bits and pieces representing something meaningful to the sculptor but not to us. Cool, even if not exactly informative for the uninformed.
We spent a long time trying to take perfect pictures, then later got home to discover that in none of them had we actually gotten the whole sculpture in the picture. Nora’s favorite snap was one of me lying on the ground taking a picture I wasn’t taking, so basically I was just lying on the ground. She doesn’t care.
Later in our walk, we saw the ruins of something on our left. We didn’t exlore but we did wonder what was ruined. Now thanks to Wikipedia we know it was the ruins of a 13th-century Franciscan church, a Dominican church, a Premonstratensian church (?), and some Augustinians’ quarters. Suddenly the island seems rather small. I mean, how many orders can actually get along and get anything done on one little island without disorder?
I’m no expert on the differences between the different orders, so I put my faith in one person’s explanation in response to a Quora question:
“There could be a way of dividing the religious orders into frat houses. The Dominicans are the nerd frat, always studying. The Franciscans are the hippy frat, with joy for peace and nature. The Augustinians are the party frat, always celebrating in community. The Jesuits would be the activist frat, attending to matters of social justice.”
Question: if the Franciscans are big on poverty, simplicity, and working with the poor, might they not spend all their time on the island working with the other orders that have taken vows of poverty? I may have missed something there.
Back to Margaret Island. “Margaret” was born to royal parents. Her parents vowed that if Hungary was liberated from the Mongols, they would dedicate the child to religion. Three-year-old Margaret was entrusted by her parents to the Dominican monastery at Veszprém in 1245. Six years later she was transferred to the Monastery of the Blessed Virgin founded by her parents on Rabbit Island. She spent the rest of her life there, dedicating herself to religion and opposing all of her father’s attempts to arrange a political marriage for her with King Ottokar II of Bohemia. She appears to have taken solemn vows when she was eighteen years old to prevent further attempts on the part of her father to have her vows dispensed by the pope for marriage.
According to legend, Margaret chastised herself from early childhood, wore an iron girdle, hairshirts, and shoes spiked with nails, and performed the most menial work in the convent. The people running past us on the rubber trail in their lycra pants and padded tennies know nothing of suffering. Margaret died at 27 years old. Centuries later she was granted sainthood.
Anyway, this island was dominated by nunneries, churches, and cloisters until the 16th century. During the Ottoman wars (a whole nother thing to research) the monks and nuns fled and the buildings were destroyed. In the 18th century, it was chosen to be the resort of “palatines,” who were high-ranking court and palace officials. It was declared a public garden in 1908.
During World War II and the siege of Budapest, the island was a site of fierce combat. Soviet troops attempted to cross from the Pest riverside by boats in January 1945, but the defending Hungarian and German units thwarted their attempt and sunk the rubber dinghies.
On the night of January 19, the ice on the river was thick enough for a few Soviet patrols to cross on foot, and as the sentries in the boat houses overlooking the river fell asleep, they managed to infiltrate and establish a bridgehead. The attack soon stalled as the defenders, now trapped in the northern end of the island, managed to stop their advance.
A Soviet marine platoon was also trapped in the northernmost tip of the island, among the half-finished pillars of Árpád Bridge. Several days of close-quarters battle followed for the buildings of the island, particularly in the bath houses where the opposing units spent days in their close vicinity.
During this time both sides pounded the island with artillery, the Soviets from the Pest side, the Hungarians from the Castle of Buda. Ultimately on January 28, the defenders managed to sneak out under the darkness of the night on rowboats and through the still-standing western span of Margaret Bridge to Buda, which was later blown up by Ukrainian SS troops.
It’s hard to believe all of this now. We walked by the Grand Hotel, the playgrounds, the Japanese garden, the sports complex, the dried-up fountains (open in the summer), and the beautiful woods. A lot of it, while still beautiful, shows its age and deferred maintenance. We’ll go back for more.
Of course while walking for a couple hours it is inevitable that we had to find a restroom. More to the point, we had to figure out how to get in one once we’d found it. A rather stern-looking woman stood guard at the entrance to the one we wanted to use. The fee was 250 forint, with no credit card option, and dollars clearly as unwelcome as the guard. I’m not quite sure what we would have done if it were more urgent, but we graciously followed her pointed finger to a concession stand where she was sure we could get forint or Euros. She was wrong on both counts, but we followed the next pointed finger to an ATM where I tried unsuccessfully to withdraw forint and we ended up banging on the machine because we were sure it had robbed us. It hadn’t.
A young couple of tourists proved the machine was working and a quick check verified that it hadn’t robbed us. I had simply entered the wrong PIN number. Again. Nora got the forint, we went back to the toilet guard, Nora got in, and all was well with the world. We ordered two icies to celebrate.
Margaret Island. We will be back. And as we sit on our terrace watching the sunset beyond it, we will see the beauty and reflect on its horrors. Like most places, it has been through both.
