Ark of the Covenant Statue

Here’s a hint for deciphering some of the titles I place on these journal entries. If I title one “Ark of the Covenant Statue,” it’s probably not going to be an exciting, sight-packed post. Then again, it’s presumptuous of me to think that anyone finds any of them exciting.

The Ark of the Covenant Statue isn’t the only thing I saw, or even the highlight, but, hey, this journal doesn’t get much traffic. Maybe “Ark of the Covenant Statue” will result in search engines sending me some Judeo-Christian religious folk and Indiana Jones fans. If so, glad to have you here. I welcome people of all faiths, and particularly none, to this journal.

I didn’t see much this morning. It turned out that I could view only the exteriors of the sights I visited. If you’ve been following along, you know that it’s been very hot while I’ve been in Hungary. Today and tomorrow are predicted to be the peak, at least here in Győr. I leave Győr tomorrow, and my next destination is a couple of degrees cooler (but only a couple).

But there’s today to get through. I didn’t want to do nothing in Győr, but plodding extensively through the oven that the town has become was something I didn’t want to do much of. At 11:00 a.m., it was already 35°C. The forecasted high is 39. I considered buying some eggs so I could entertain myself by frying them on the sidewalk. But the authorities probably frown on that.

So what did I do this morning? Let’s skip to the end. At about 11:00, I found a nice cafe with indoor tables in glorious air conditioning. I ordered an iced lemonade and a small cake. I lingered long over them.

Now, let’s skip back to what I did before that. But let’s not skip too vigorously. It’s too hot for that.

Győr City Hall

The Győr City Hall is only a few blocks from my hotel. I didn’t expect to go into Győr City Hall, and I didn’t. I think it’s just a building to admire from the outside. Although I imagine civil servants go in.

It’s a grand old building. Or maybe it’s a grand new building designed to look like neo-something. I didn’t look hard, but I did do a bit of a web search and couldn’t find out when it was built.

The building has lots of columns and three fancy-schmanzy towers. Two of the towers are on either side of the main entrance. They are short and protrude slightly from the rest of the building. The other tower is a little taller and is centred between the other two towers, but set back somewhat from the building.

It’s a stone building that’s mostly grey, but horizontal pinstripes decorate the protruding towers and the lower portion of the building.

I quite liked it, but I didn’t stay long because I felt embarrassed about leaving a small lake of perspiration in front of the city hall.

Benedictine Church

TripAdvisor calls this sight “Benedictine Church.” A sign by the door has an overarching name of “SZENT MÓR BENCÉS PERJELSÉG,” which Google Translate tells me means “BENEDICT XVI.” Um. Okay.

The sign lists some things in the building, this time in Hungarian and English: Visitor Centre, Benedictine Shop, and Church of Saint Ignatius.

I think it was the church I wanted. Reviews on TripAdvisor spoke highly of it. One said it is even more beautiful than Győr’s cathedral.

I went into the visitor centre, which is also the Benedictine Shop. I asked to buy a ticket to the church. Both Google Maps and a sign in front of the building said that something in the building should be open, but I might have been mistaken about what the sign referred to.

The woman at the counter said, “No. Church closed.” She also made some negatory motions with her hands. I asked her if it was closed all day. She responded, “No. Closed.” And she made the same gestures. I think “No. Church closed.” might be the only English she knows. She left out “church” in her second response, perhaps for brevity.

Thus, I got to see the church, or perhaps the building the church is in, only from the outside, from the mostly unshaded square in front of it. I didn’t spend long there either.

The building is primarily off-white. Most of it is quite plain. The exception is the middle section, which I think is the church portion.

In that section, two clock towers with nicely shaped spires flank a facade that rises above the bulk of the building in an, I’m going to say, tabernacle shape. (I’m going to say it because someone recently reminded me about the word tabernacle. I wanted to use it, and I thought it was vaguely appropriate here. Please look at the picture. You’ll see what I mean even if I didn’t use the right word.)

Ark of the Covenant Statue

I promised you an Ark of the Covenant Statue. You’ll get an Ark of the Covenant Statue.

Yes, it’s that Ark of the Covenant, the one made famous by the 1981 movie directed by Stephen Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” I hear there was also an ancient book that might have mentioned the Ark too. However, I’m much less familiar with the book.

Anyway, the Ark of the Covenant Statue in Győr commemorates the Ark.

It has a listing on TripAdvisor as just that, Ark of the Covenant Statue. Google Maps, on the other hand, marks it as “Frigyláda szobor.” Google Translate says that means, wait for it, …, “Ark of the Covenant Statue.” Okay, so TripAdvisor got that one right.

There’s a stone tablet with a crucified Jesus carved in relief. On either side of him, there is another person on a cross. Below them, there is a small cast of characters doing I don’t know what. All of that is done in relief.

I have questions. Or at least one. Jesus on an Ark of the Covenant Statue? What’s up with that? Didn’t they lose track of the Ark before Jesus’s time? What’s he doing on a statue honouring it? But maybe I’m wrong about the alleged timing of the Ark going missing. I don’t remember if that was mentioned in the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I guess I’ll have to watch the film again.

Above that stone tablet, in full 3D this time, there are a couple of angels. Real angels, I tell ya. They’re holding up a black platform. A gold starburst halo sits on the platform with what I think is a lamb at its centre. So now you know.

Across the street from the Ark of the Covenant Statue, there’s another monument. I couldn’t find any information on it, so I’ll extrapolate a best guess from what I saw. It’s a monument celebrating seltzer.

A larger-than-life green seltzer bottle with a dark metal nozzle continuously spouts water into a small circular pool.

To my mind, we don’t celebrate seltzer nearly enough. So, bravo, Győr. Bravo.

Jesus is probably thirsty up on that cross in this heat. Someone should give him some seltzer to tie the two monuments together.

Győr Old Town Area

The Ark of the Covenant Statue is in Győr’s Old Town area, so I took a bit of a stroll trudge there. I did this for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s pretty. For another, TripAdvisor reviewers recommend it, so I needed to tick it off my list. (I have a dearth of tourist information about Győr, so I’ve been depending on TripAdvisor to help me with that far, far, far more than I usually do elsewhere.)

The truth is, I’d been in the Old Town Area yesterday, but it was worth a short repeat visit. The streets are almost all pedestrianized. The buildings are low-rise. Many, but far from all, had shops and restaurants on the ground level. Most of the restaurants set out tables on the sidewalks or extend a bit into a public square if they’re by one. Some people were actually eating at them. I didn’t see any mad dogs at the tables, but I don’t know if any of the people were Englishmen. The advantage of outdoor tables in today’s heat is that restaurants can bring food out uncooked, leave it on the plate outside, and the meal will be cooked in no time.

Oh, about that heat. I should mention that I passed a couple of misting stations in different spots that the city set up so people can cool off before dying of heat prostration, because there’s no point in cooling off after you’ve died of heat prostration. I don’t know how many more, if any, of the misting stations there are. But I walked through them a couple of times.

And that brings me back to the lemonade I led with, and to the end of this entry.

Slideshow of pictures of Győr's Old Town area: