From Asters to Astoria

Asters are star shaped flowers with tube like petals that come in a variety of dazzling colours. I was given a bright pink bunch a couple of weeks ago and I delighted in their cheery presence, especially in this bleak and wintery weather. Sadly, their stems soon began to droop, but the flowers retained their sunny disposition. That’s when I decided to cut off their stems and float the flowers in a bowl of water. They have continued to bring joy for two weeks and still look fresh.

Their flower heads remind me of daisies, so I wondered whether they were related. It turns out they are. Like a daisy, the disk florets in the centre of the flower are bright yellow, which is why we think of them as being sunny. Asters bloom late autumn and provide an important food source for bees and when there is little nectar to be found. My pink asters are native to Australia but as a species, there are more than 250 varieties in the world.

While researching the humble aster, I learnt that the Hungarian revolution of October 1918 was also called the ‘Aster Revolution’. The name was derived from soldiers removing the Austro-Hungarian symbols from their caps and replacing these with asters.

The ‘headquarters’ for the revolutionaries was at the Astoria Hotel in Pest, on the eastern side of the Danube of the dual city of Budapest. This stunning seven storey hotel, featuring fin-de-siècle architecture is still one of the best loved hotels in the heart of the city. However, at the time of the revolution, it was only four years old and without a doubt one of the most elegant places in Budapest. It was from one of its balconies that the leader of the First Hungarian People’s Republic, Mihály Károlyi, announced the end of the Hapsburg empire and the foundation of the republic to jubilant supporters below. This was the only revolution that Hungarians have ever won.

Reading about the significance of the Astoria took me back to the 1980s, when during a particularly cold winter, I arrived in Budapest to find the transport in the city had ground to a halt. Metre high snow lay frozen on the side of roads; there were abandoned cars and trams everywhere, and the occasional taxi or bus that was still operational wouldn’t stop.

I stood at a bus stop with dozens of commuters needing to get out of the cold. They were locals, while I was a tourist with a 30kg backpack that I could barely carry. When a bus finally stopped, they roughly pushed past me to get on board. I slipped on the ice, fell on my back and was transformed into a giant beetle, like Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. By now the bus had left, and I lay on the ground, legs in the air, crying, asking for my father’s intercession to get me out of this mess. After all, I was in his hometown, chasing ghosts.

Getting up seemed to take an eternity. I was cold, miserable and lonely. My only contact was my aunt who lived in a Soviet style high-rise in Buda. It was miles away. That’s when I spotted the Hotel Astoria on the other side of the road. Surely, someone could help me there.

I trudged across the road, entered the building and was greeted by a friendly face. I wiped away my tears. The woman behind the counter took pity on me and called my aunt who immediately took charge of the situation. All I had to do was to wait outside until she bribed a taxi driver to drive back into the city to collect me. Within half an hour the taxi arrived, and I arrived safely at my aunt’s place fifteen minutes later.

The weather improved the next day. I took the bus into town, found a florist and bought a pot of chrysanthemums. These I delivered to my saviour at the Astoria. At the time I had no idea of the hotel’s history. Nor would I have known that chrysanthemums are closely related to asters.