A story to tell our grandkids...

Last evening was one of those experiences that you never forget.

It was a beautiful St. Stephen's Day in Budapest. With the summmer sun shining, we made our way to the city center to Horizont Mozi, an old cinema that has been converted into a very comfortable space for Calvary Chapel Budapest to meet. Great worship and rich teaching. Pastor Greg Opean teaches in English, and as he teaches it is translated into Hungarian.

After church we had lunch at Dennis' flat and then headed back into the city on public transport to take in the festivities along the banks of the Danube, including a Red Bull airplane race over the river. If you've ever heard of the "Blue Danube Waltz" by Strauss, this may come as a shock to you and I'm sorry...

The Danube is not blue. It's muddy brown. Always has been. Always will be.

From what I understand, it was a joke that Strauss named it "Blue".

For the evening fireworks show, which is shot from two bridges over the Danube and from nearby Gelart Hill, the bridges are closed to both motor and foot traffic. We needed to get to the other side. BTW - if you never knew this -- Budapest is one city formed from two. Buda is on the West side of the river and Pest one the East. We were in Buda, heading for Pest.

Once in the city center on the Pest side of the river, we found a nice little Italian restaurant called Replay Cafe. This is apparently a chain, kind of like we have in the states with TGI Friday's or Olive Garden.

Then we headed back to the riverfront to stake out a spot from which to watch the fireworks. We found a place on the Metro rail tracks at about 8 pm. The fireworks were slated to begin at 9 and go until 9:30. The crowd continued to grow until by 9 about 1 million people were lining either side of the Danube.

As I was shooting video of the castle on the Buda side of the river, I noticed lightning behind the Castle. The Castle sits atop a hill that extends north to the bend in the river and south to Gelart hill. The lightning became more numerous and I got some really great footage.

The fireworks began with a bang (Ha) right at 9:00 and we immediately become enthralled. At 9:10 the rain started lightly falling and I thought, "Oh this may not be so bad." HA!

At 9:15 I looked across at the Castle to see it becoming enshrouded in heavy rain, giving it an earie, ghostly appearance. I turned to say, "Look how cool the Castle looks," turned back toward the river and WHAM -- the rain and wind hit us full force. Shrieks went up from the crown around us and people began to huddle together in their own little groups. When the intensity increased, there were more shrieks.

It soon became apparent that this was no small rain storm. The crowd turned from the river and began to surge back in to the city streets. There was a metal rail fence about 12 feet behind where we had been standing. It took us about 3 or 4 minutes to get to that fence, which we had to climb over to get out of rail right-of-way and towards the Marriott Hotel, where friends of Dennis were staying.

Beth's glasses were worthless in the driving rain and her vision is very poor without them, so for all intents and purpose, she was blind. By this time, we were soaked through to the skin and with each wave of rain came more shrieks from the crowd around us. People were pressing in on every side, scrambling to escape the storm. Then we were pelted with either sleet or small hail and the crowd once again screamed.

Once we got over the fence, we joined the river of people streaming away from the waterfront. All the while the fireworks were still going off. The Marriott was a mere 50 yards away, but we had to go across the flow of people to get to it. We formed a human chain and made our way through the masses.

Earlier in the day, the hotel had placed a fence around its property to keep the crowd out. By now the fence had several breaches and people were streaming into the restaurant. On the terrace outside the hotel, broken plates and glasses were crunching under our feet. It was actually a humurous site to see people, who had just moments bfore had been enjoying a quiet dinner, now watching as hoards of dripping wet people made there way through the restaurant.

In the lobby, the floors were puddled and the hotel staff was scrambling to control the crowd. We could still hear the fireworks exploding and looked to see a live broadcast of the them on the TV in the bar.

We were safe.

It didn't take long for the hotel to send out housekeeping staff with towels and sheets to hand out to their uninvited guests. There was announcement over the loud speaker in broken English which went something like, "We are having an emergency situation. Please to stay on the hotel until the thunderstorm ends. And please be a little quieter."

We hung out at the hotel in the room where Dennis' friends were staying for awhile and after finding out that traffic was not moving at all out of the city, we decided to walk to the metro (subway). We took two trains and a bus and ended up in the Dennis' neighborhood. From there we walked home.

The fireworks stared at 9.

We arrived home at midnight.

God's protection was with us. We found out later that 2 people were killed when a tree fell on them at the riverfront and two are missing from two boats that collided on the river.

Now it's warm and cozy and looks like another beautiful day.