Ten years ago, I was on a bus in Hungary, heading from Herend back to my hotel on Lake Balaton. I was helping to shepherd a group of 26 American porcelain collectors who had just toured the Herend Porcelain factory. We finished our tour and left the factory at 2:30 PM to return to our hotel on the lake in Balatonfured. A little while later, our tour guide, Norbert, took a phone call. When he hung up and put his cell phone back into his pocket, he said that he had just heard from his office that a plane had crashed into one of the WTC towers in NYC. We all assumed that it was a small plane, like a Cessna or Piper Cub, and asked if he had any details, but he said that was all they'd told him, in case any of our tour members had any business connections with the WTC.
A few minutes later, Norbert's phone rang again. As he answered, I saw his face turn as white as a sheet. "Thank you," he said quietly and replaced the phone in his pocket.
"Norbert - what is it?" I asked.
"That was my office again," he said. "A second plane just hit the other tower, and it was a commercial airliner, not a private plane."
The passengers collectively gasped; the man seated in front of me turned around and we stared at each other for a moment and then simultaneously said, "It's like Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor. We're under attack."
When the bus pulled into the hotel parking lot, we all rushed for our own rooms. I managed to get the TV on to the BBC channel just before the second tower fell. My brain was trying to process the fact that there was one tower visible, not two, as I saw the burning second tower - and then it, too, began to collapse.
I thought I was watching a movie - a terrible disaster movie that had somehow come to life. I couldn't wrap my mind around those images.
I spent the next three hours trying to call the US while I watched the events unfolding on the TV. I learned that there was a fourth missing plane that might possibly be headed for DC - or, as some said, Camp David. Since I had just moved into my new house that was rather close to Camp David (but on the PA side of the state line) I was concerned for my neighbors and family nearby. A little later, when I heard that Flight 93 had gone down "somewhere east of Pittsburgh", I was terrified for my friends and family who lived in the Altoona-Johnstown region, and my friend Linda who lived in Somerset. About the time that I finally got through on the phone to my mom, and then to my boss, I heard that the plane had crashed near Shanksville without killing anyone on the ground.
That evening, our group was scheduled to go to a csarda for dinner and some Gypsy entertainment. About half of the group still wanted to go, as a way to feel normal after the horrific events of the day. We all felt so helpless, though by then most of us had managed to reach our families and businesses back in the States, and no one in our group had lost anyone in the attacks. The other half of the group was reluctant to go out. My collectors' club manager volunteered to go to the csarda so that I could stay with the rest of our people.
We ate a light dinner in the hotel restaurant. The entire place was quiet and subdued. As we were seated with our food, an elderly Hungarian couple came over to us with a young woman. I stood up to greet them and the older folks were sobbing as the young woman said to us, "My grandparents don't speak English, but they want me to tell you that we are so very sorry for what happened in the United States today. My grandfather was involved in the 1956 revolution and says that he has always admired the freedoms of the United States and he is so sorry that you have been attacked by these terrorists." As she finished speaking, her grandparents grabbed me and another member of our group and hugged us as they cried. Pretty soon everybody in the restaurant was crying with us.
We were scheduled to return to Budapest the next morning. When we checked into the Hotel Intercontinental, the manager pulled us aside and told us that the hotel had set up a special lounge area for all Americans who were staying there. They had newspapers from the States, a special TV feed, internet connections, phones to call home, and refreshments - all for free - so that we could keep in touch with our families and friends.
That Friday, we were to take a tour of the House of Parliament building at 1:00 PM. Norbert told us that we were going to go there early because there was a special ceremony going on in the plaza out front, and we would view that prior to our tour. When we got to the plaza about 11:30, there were barricades set up all along the front of the plaza and officials milling about on the other side near the Parliament building. Our group managed to get spots right up front against the barricades, but we didn't really know what it was for. Norbert went to check on the particulars and when he returned, he told us that the original ceremony was to have welcomed the new American ambassador, but she could not leave the States due to the air travel restrictions, so the outgoing ambassador was going to participate in a different ceremony there.
Around 11:45, the Hungarian army band marched out and stood in front of us and began playing the dark, dramatic and stirring Hungarian songs. We saw a man in a dark suit and a taller man in a trenchcoat walk out of the building with some aides and some men in uniform, and proceed to a small flag plaza to our right. Norbert informed us that the shorter man was the president of Hungary and the taller man was the outgoing American ambassador. They went over to the flagpole and conducted a short flag-raising ceremony with the Hungarian flag as the army band played the Hungarian national anthem. By then, the area behind us had filled with a few thousand people and we were pressed against the barricades, but we had a great view.
Then we noticed that the Hungarian flag, which had just been raised, was being lowered again. We couldn't see what was going on because the president and ambassador were between us and the bottom of the flagpole. The army band finished the Hungarian anthem and was silent for a moment. Suddenly, we heard the first notes of the Star-Spangled Banner and saw our flag being slowly raised up the pole. Twenty-eight Americans burst into tears as we heard our own national anthem and saw our flag traveling slowly up to the top of the pole, and then back down to half-staff. Weeping Hungarians were patting our shoulders and handing us handkerchiefs and tissues. When the flag reached half-staff, the crowd seemed to heave a collective sigh, and the president spoke a brief phrase as church bells began to ring. It was noon in Budapest. Norbert leaned over to me and said, "The president said that there will be three minutes of silence."
We were in the center of a city of one and a half million people - and it was dead silent except for the bells. When they had tolled the twelfth hour, the only things that could be heard were the bells' echoes and the sound of a dog barking several blocks away. Traffic had stopped on the spot at noon and no one spoke. Faint weeping could be heard throughout the crowd, and we tried to stifle our sniffles because they sounded like thunder to us in the silence.
When our plane safely landed at JFK the following Tuesday, everyone on board burst into applause.
On the flight back to DC, our jet had to go way out over the ocean to avoid flying over the city. As it banked, we looked down and saw the smoke rising from the WTC site like ghost towers reaching into the sky.
Back at home, suddenly I was living in the "no fly zone" that extended for eight miles around Camp David. The lights of the aircraft that used to be seen at night on their approaches to Dulles, Reagan National and BWI were no longer visible - their flight paths had been moved outside the zone. The constant thunder over my house came from the fighter jets who patrolled 24-7, unseen but not unheard. And if you went out on my deck at night and looked up, you would see slow-moving lights far, far up in the sky - the AWACS plane on its high-altitude mission. Dick Cheney became our temporary new neighbor over at Site R, the "underground Pentagon" just down Rt. 16. And air travel was not so much fun anymore.
