Bela Lugosi used to terrify me as Dracula and as the sinister butler who opened the door to haunted houses in films umpteen years ago.
Once inside these Lugosi mansions you were finished. The hero and his girlfriend usually got out after mayhem ensued, but every other guest was a write-off.
So it was a shock to discover that Bela Lugosi had not always been a ghoul. Before he worked in Hollywood, he was a minister for culture in the Hungarian government of 1919. His political career was nasty, brutal and short.
He was part of the group of Hungarian Communists who seized power in March that year as Hungary was trying to come to grips with being on the losing side in the first World War.
Terror tactics
His boss was the better-known Bela Kun and they tried to turn the defeated remnant of the Austria-Hungary dual monarchy into a Communist paradise through purges and terror tactics.
But by the following August Bela Lugosi and Kun were chased out of Hungary by Romanian troops and sought asylum in Vienna.
Lugosi headed for Hollywood to frighten children instead of the Hungarian bourgeoisie and did a good job of it.
I learned all this from a guide-book on the flight to Budapest with the Blackrock Society. We had a great time, even if Eoghan Harris tried to defect by mislaying his passport and getting turned back at the airport for an extra night in Budapest.
I also discovered that other Hollywood stars such as Tony Curtis and Eva and Zsa-Zsa Gabor were also Hungarian. And the man who invented the Rubik's cube.
Other vague Hungarian items lodged in the memory included the show-trial of Cardinal Mindszenty after the Communist takeover and the shock that in some countries a cardinal could be put on trial.
Then there was the recollection of the heroic uprising by Hungarians in October 1956 against Communist rule. We in the West cheered them on but did not lift a finger to help. Attention was focused instead on the British and French invasion of Egypt and the conspiracy with Israel to seize the Suez Canal.
Ireland took in some Hungarian refugees after the Red Army tanks crushed the uprising. But they did not seem too happy with being lodged in a barracks near Shannon Airport and headed for the US as soon as they could. Perhaps some stayed.
The Hungarians got some kind of revenge on their Communist masters by cutting the electric fence separating them from Austria in 1989 and precipitating the domino collapse of the Iron Curtain regimes, though former US President Ronald Reagan takes most of the credit.
The whole of Hungarian history is laid out in the National Museum, from the arrival of the Magyar tribes in the ninth century, when Buda and Pest were villages on opposite sides of the Danube.
Baffling history
But you could visit the museum a dozen times and still be baffled by the country's complicated history under kings and emperors.
From 1920 to 1943, it was actually run by an admiral, Miklos Horthy, who took the title of regent. This led to the oft-quoted remark by a puzzled President Franklin D. Roosevelt when being briefed on Hungary:
"Let me see if I understand you right. Hungary is a kingdom without a king run by a regent who's an admiral without a navy?" Got it in one, Mr President.
Are the 10 million Hungarians happy today? To the outsider they come across as a bit down. The weekend we were there was a large demonstration in Budapest against the social policies of the present conservative government.
Wages are so low that the goods in the shops seem out of reach of most people, who are already heavily taxed. There must be a black economy to help the average workers to survive.
Our guide paused in the magnificent Matthias Church on Buda Hill overlooking the Danube to talk about the effect on old and even younger Hungarians of the present economic insecurity compared with the Communist period, when all the essential needs were assured.
Finding religion
This was making more people of all ages turn to religion to seek some certainty in their lives, he said.
Many find some solace in the city's series of thermal baths where everyday cares can evaporate amid steam, massages, or just floating around while chatting or even playing chess.
The Szechenyi baths are in a building about the size of the RDS in Ballsbridge. You can roam for hours around the indoor pools, some medicinal for specific complaints, the outdoor swimming pools at about 25 degrees, get a massage and steam and sauna until you fear evaporation.
It is great value for money, but getting in and out is a bureaucratic jungle with the use of sign language. An man from the US embassy who happened to be there had to come to my aid twice as I fell foul of the rules and was threatened with fines.
He has tried to make the authorities make the baths more user friendly, but finds he is wasting his time.
"They are paid so badly, they simply have no interest in improving things for foreigners," he commented.
Bela Lugosi would have put the frighteners on them.