Gloomy Sunday

Written November 15, 2001

In 1927, László Jávor wrote the lyrics to a melody composed by Rezsô Seress, a self-taught pianist who played in restaurants Kulacs and Kispipa in Pest’s District VII.
It was called Szomorú Vasárnap (Gloomy Sunday) and became known as “The Suicides’ Anthem”.
Jávor’s lyrics began,
“Szomorú Vasárnap, száz fehér virággal
Vártalak kedvesem templomi imával”

(Sad Sunday, with 100 white flowers, I waited for you dear with a church prayer).

Seress also wrote his own lyrics, which are even more gloomy and hopeless than Jávor’s;
“Ôsz van és peregnek a sárgult levelek
Meghalt a földön az emberi szeretet”.
(It is autumn and the yellow leaves are whirling, all human affection has died on this Earth).

The world-famous English version has been recorded by many artistis, among them Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr, Paul Robeson, Elvis Costello, Sinead O’Connor, Ray Charles, Acker Bilk, Tom Jones, Oscar Peterson, Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker.
It has been recorded in more than 100 languages, including Chinese, Icelandic and Esperanto.
Some of the lines are almost as melancholy as the originals’
“Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless
Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless
Little white flowers will never awaken you
Not where the black coat of sorrow has taken you”.

The rising and falling melody lines convey first hope, then disappointment, sadness and despair.
The song tells the story of a soul whose will to live has died along with her lover.
It is so full of dejection and misery that it comes as no surprise to learn the original was Hungarian, a people with an ingrained melancholy and alarming propensity for suicide.
In Hungary five people: a young lady Eszter Kis, a young clerk from the country, a young waiter, Margit Kovács a 23-year-old maid and László Ledik a ministry officer, took their own lives soon after the song was published.
The suicides shocked the capital.
Inspired by the song, each decided to end it all on a Sunday.
According to legend, Gloomy Sunday has such a strange, magical atmosphere that those listening become so depressed they feel the urge to leave this world.
Hungary has always had a sad preoccupation with suicide and always featured high on the statistical tables, but the New York Times’ headline:
“Hundreds of Hungarians kill themselves under the influence of a song” was an exaggeration.
The song was published in 1935 when the world was suffering an economic depression on the eve of the Second World War.
Gloomy Sunday, with its mournful c-minor melody, voiced some of the hopelessness of the age.
Sigmund Freud regarded the song as a manifestation of his ‘Sonntagsneurose’ theory.
In the United States, Gloomy Sunday clubs appeared everywhere and one senator in Washington tried to have the song banned.
Coco Channel’s new creation, the pitch black "death costume", became world famous and a "Gloomy Sunday pianino" was built with two huge skulls as decoration.
The song’s composer Rezsô Seress was called the ‘Whistling Musician’ because he couldn’t read music and played piano with only two fingers.
Seress also committed suicide.
Despite a fear of heights, he jumped out of the window of his flat aged nearly 70 in January 1968.
He joined a long list of Hungarian writers, politicians, singers and actors who took their own lives. Count István Széchenyi, ‘the greatest Hungarian’ killed himself in an Austrian mental asylum.
Hungary’s most talented poet, Attila József, threw himself under a train at Balatonszárszó in 1937, aged only 32.
Actor Zoltán Latinovits, who was brought up in a District X flat near one of József’s homes and appeared to feel a link with the sensitive poet, also died in 1976 aged 44 under a train’s wheels at Balatonszemes, only a few kilometres away.
In 1941, Prime Minister Pál Teleki, despairing at the future of Hungary, shot himself in the head in the Sándor Palota in the Castle District.
Actor Artúr Somlay was driven to his death in the Rákósi period when the cultural minister József Révai refused to help him.
The country’s first beauty queen, Csilla Molnár (Miss Hungary 1985), took an overdose of lidocaine.
There are many many more examples.
Hungary’s romance with suicide is long and painful.
Until 1994, Hungarians were top of the list for suicides.
In 1986 the rate was 46 per 100,000.
Now, with the release of figures from the former Soviet Union, the country has dropped significantly in the charts, but this small nation, linguistically isolated with a complex history of occupation and intimidation and a severe alcohol problem, still has a strange fascination with suicide.
The suicides continue to happen, less frequently but still with the same result of shock and dismay.
For the family of 17-year-old Viktoria Éles, her early suicide was more than yet another number on a pile of statistics.
Viki was a fan of Jimmy Zámbó, the pop singer who tragically shot himself in the head in an accident on January 2 this year (2001).
Viki had been a fan since she was 14. For three weeks after the star’s untimely death, she sat in her room with the curtains drawn to keep out the light, playing his records.
Viki had been very upset at the funeral.
She went to Csepel where the star was buried. She said her life was meaningless without Jimmy and that it was particularly distressing that he died on her birthday.
Then on Monday, January 22, she left her room, a candle still burning on a bedroom table. As she left her flat in Káposztásmegyer (a housing district north of Óbuda, known as the “Harlem of Budapest”), Viki pressed a suicide note into a neighbor’s pocket.
‘I write to you all for the first and last time, don’t be sad that I have gone. I will always be with you in spirit’.
She threw herself under the Budapest-Vác train.
Viki wrote that the answers to every question could be found in Zámbó’s songs.
Since the star’s death, she had filled two notebooks with lyrics, articles and photos.
The last page read in big letters VÉGE - the end.

Kulacs restaurant review, November 15 2001
By Lucy Mallows

A kulacs is a flask that a shepherd used to take with him to the fields.
It would be filled with water or, more likely, wine.
The Kulacs restaurant on the corner of Dohány utca and Osvát utca is famous because here self-taught pianist Rezsô Seress wrote the melody to László Jávor’s lyrics in 1927. Szomorú Vasárnap became Gloomy Sunday, a haunting hit for Billie Holiday amongst others. A pink marble plaque in the entrance hall commemorates the song and the first line ‘Szomorú Vasarnap, száz fehér virággal’ (Sunday is gloomy with one hundred white flowers).
Now Gypsy bands play more uplifting melodies, led by some of the most talented primás (lead violinists) in town.
The Kulacs has two rooms in which to sample hearty Hungarian fare. The vast well-lit dining hall, where the band holds sway, seems more appropriate for large tourist groups and wedding feasts. It actually seats 120 guests.
The smaller, darker room is appropriately called the Seress room and is lit by candles and the glow of a barrel-shaped ceramic stove.
Whips, tankards, cartwheels and farm implements decorate the walls and the wooden fencing and red embroidery gives the impression you are on the Hortobágy plains. For our light business lunch, my companion and I both plumped for the cream of celery soup (390 forints), which was a gigantic bowl of piping hot soup with a good celery flavour which wrestled for attention with the taste of the sour cream.
Together with huge crisp croutons it made a substantial opener.
We sat in the larger room on this occasion and admired the redecorated walls. The light yellow colour is very uplifting and with the contrasting blue carpets makes a stylish atmosphere.
If the smaller room is a rustic home on the Puszta, the larger room recalls the boardwalk at Coney Island with the yellow wood slats all around.
However, an assortment of agricultural accoutrements can be found here too: A collection of kancsó (pitchers for sloshing out the wine), hollowed-out pumpkin water carriers, plates and dried sunflowers, strings of paprika and garlic dangling from the beams. The menu offers a vast range of traditional Hungarian fare.
The dishes are described evocatively, with references to the region or to some historical or fictional character who particularly enjoyed his grub. Rezsô Seress’s favourite roast goose (Ft2,190) can be sampled and one wonders why he composed such melancholy melodies when surrounded by such delicious food.
Starters include such delights as cold goose liver Mako style (1,390 forints) or the sailor fish salad (990 forints).
Unusual main courses include cabbage gnocchi in honey or catfish (1,890 forints) marinated in Tokaji wine.
The dishes are all very reasonably priced: Poultry costs between 1,500—2,000 forints, fish goes for 1,700—2,000 forints, while pork, veal, beef and game concoctions all weigh in at around 2,000 forints. With salads for 390 forints and side dishes at 290 forints, you can eat like a king without breaking the bank.
I had the white fish with grilled vegetables which was perfectly cooked pieces of sole and an assortment of tasty huge mushrooms, spring onions, peppers, aubergines and courgettes. This was perfect for a healthy lunch that didn’t send me straight into a siesta afterwards.
My companion also selected a lighter dish, grilled chicken breast with salad, and commented on how well the meat was prepared.
Although famous for its traditional Magyar setting, history and cuisine, the Kulacs is branching out and organizing a series of gastronomic weeks featuring the food of different countries. From tomorrow (Friday) until November 25, a Gallic ambiance takes hold and each evening guests can enjoy Coq au Vin, Roquefort soufflé, salmon cooked in foil with tomatoes and herbs and an unusual combination of goose liver with brown rice. A photo exhibition of Parisian scenes will adorn the walls and the music will also add to the atmosphere. Desserts on offer will include crepes Suzette, Tahiti exotic fruit salad with Gran Marnier and the famous French chocolate mousse.
A quotation on the back of the Hungarian menu announces ‘Nem titok az erôsségünk, háziasan sütünk, fôzünk’ (Our strength is not a secret, we bake and cook in a homely manner) and if they approach the French cooking with as much zest and enthusiasm as the traditional Hungarian dishes, then we are surely in for a feast.

Kulacs étterem
Budapest district VII
Osvát utca 11,
Metro M2 to Blaha Lujza tér.
Tel: +36 1 322 3611
Open daily, 10am to midnight

The Amazing Turk

The Amazing Turk- Farkas Kempelen’s incredible chess-playing automaton

In 1770, The Turk made its first appearance in front of the Viennese court.
On a signal from the Empress Maria Theresa, Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen slowly wheeled his creation forward.
The one-meter-high wooden cabinet with a large chessboard screwed to its top ran on four brass casters that not only allowed it to move freely, but also raised it slightly off the floor so that the audience could see that there was nothing hiding underneath.
Behind the box sat a figure, dressed in Oriental clothing and a bulky turban.
Kempelen opened a door on the left of the cabinet to reveal an elaborate mechanism of cogs, wheels and levers.
Then, opening a corresponding door at the back, he held up a candle whose light flickered through complicated innards.
After closing the doors, Kempelen wound up the contraption by turning a large key in the cabinet.
Suddenly the figure came to life, reaching out with its left arm to move the chess pieces around the board.
Every dozen moves or so, Kempelen wound up the device again, but never actually touched the figure itself.
The Turk, so called due to its attire, managed to defeat a number of challengers.
The Turk’s sensational performance that day astonished and delighted the Empress and soon became the talk of Vienna.
The presentation changed Kempelen’s life.
The 35-year-old civil servant was born Farkas Kempelen in January 1734 in Bratislava, then Pozsony, capital of the Hungarian part of the dual monarchy.
He was not actually a nobleman, although the title baron has often been attributed to him.
Kempelen was formally introduced to the Viennese court by his father, Engelbert, a retired customs officer.
The young man was very handsome, spoke several languages and made an immediate impression. He was given the important task of translating the Hungarian civil code from Latin into German, the official language throughout the newly united kingdom of Austria-Hungary.
Kempelen’s translation was hailed as a masterpiece and he was soon appointed counsellor to the imperial court.
On the official document confirming his appointment, Maria Theresa wrote, “The Hungarian court will benefit greatly from young Kempelen.”
In 1757, Kempelen married Franciska, a lady-in-waiting at the court.
Tragically, she died suddenly a few weeks later and Kempelen retreated, shocked and grief-stricken, to his hobby of scientific experimentation.
Now a wealthy man, he could afford expensive tools, materials and scientific equipment for his workshop.
In 1766 Kempelen was appointed director of the imperial salt mines in Transylvania, by which time he had also remarried.
He felt confident enough to put his scientific knowledge into practice and soon devised a system of pumps to drain the mines when they became flooded with water.
Following the success of this project, he was asked to design the waterworks for the castle in Pozsony.
In the autumn of 1769, Kempelen was invited by Maria Theresa to attend a scientific conjuring show presented to the court by a visiting Frenchman named Pelletier.
Maria Theresa was particularly interested in science and had an unusually enlightened attitude toward it for her time.
She challenged Kempelen to explain Pelletier’s tricks to her.
He was so unimpressed by what he saw that he declared he could do better. He returned to the court six months later, this time as a presenter, with his Turkish wizard.
Kempelen eventually took his invention on tour, travelling around the world and sparking vigorous debate about the extent to which machines could emulate or replicate human faculties.
In Paris, The Turk played and beat Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and scientist, who was a chess fanatic.
The Turk also played Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, the best chess-player in Europe and, although The Turk lost, the match was considered a triumph.



To modern eyes, in an era when it takes a supercomputer such as IBM’s Deep Blue to beat the world grandmaster Garry Kasparov, it seems obvious that Kempelen’s chess-playing machine had to have been a hoax - not a true automaton at all but a contraption acting under the surreptitious control of a human operator.
Using 18th century clockwork and mechanical technology it now seems impossible to have built a genuine chess-playing machine, but at the time automata of extraordinary ingenuity were being constructed and exhibited across Europe, including Jacques de Vaucanson’s mechanical duck, Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz’s harpsichord player and John Joseph Merlin’s dancing lady.
Kempelen next took The Turk to London, at that time a centre for chess and also renowned for public displays of technical marvels.
The Turk went on show in Savile Row and was a great success.
A year later, Kempelen returned to Vienna, packed The Turk away into wooden crates and turned his attention to other inventions, such as an ambitious attempt to build a machine capable of imitating the human voice.
This wonder could be seen in the halls of the Millennial Exhibition of Hungarian achievement. He also devised a writing machine for the blind.
When Kempelen died in Vienna in March 1804, The Turk was sold to John Nepomuk Maelzel, an engineer and musician who wanted to make money from displaying the automaton to a curious public.
The Turk’s most famous encounter during this period came in 1809, when it was shown to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon tried to trick the automaton by deliberately cheating, but The Turk was not fooled and upset the board rather than beat him.
Napoleon’s valet Louis-Constant Wairy wrote: “The Emperor complimented it highly.”
In London in 1819 the computing pioneer Charles Babbage saw The Turk play.
The following year, he challenged it to a game.
He wrote, “Played with the automaton. Automaton won in about an hour.”
Maelzel also took the Turk to the United States where the author Edgar Allan Poe was so intrigued by the ‘Automaton Chess Player’ that he published a lengthy thesis containing his own theories on how it worked.
“Perhaps no exhibition of the kind has ever elicited so general attention as the chess player of Maelzel. Wherever seen it has been an object of intense curiosity, to all persons who think.
Yet the question of its modus operandi is still undetermined,” wrote Poe, noting also that The Turk played with his left hand, a matter Poe considered highly significant.
The secret of The Turk was finally revealed in January 1857 in an account written by Silas Mitchell, whose father Dr John Mitchell had bought the automaton when Maelzel died in 1838, to satisfy his own curiosity.
He discovered that a person was concealed inside the cabinet.
The clockwork machinery visible on its left-hand side extended only a third of the way along, so that the covert player could hide behind it, then slide along to the other end for the remainder of the demonstration.
The human chess wizard would play by the light of a small candle, whose smoke was dispersed up a pipe to an aperture in the top of The Turk’s turban. The operator watched a chessboard in front of him and moved a metal pointer which was connected to The Turk’s arm using a system of levers to move the corresponding piece on the external board. An ingenious system of magnets helped the operator follow the opponent’s moves.
Kempelen probably used a series of operators in this elaborate trick, but one thing is certain, all were strong players, taking on some of Europe’s finest chess masters and losing to only the very best.
Interest waned in The Turk once its secret was discovered and Mitchell sold the automaton to the Chinese Museum in Philadelphia.
Some years later there was a fire at the museum and The Turk was totally destroyed. The reconstruction of The Turk at a German museum shows that, more than 230 years later, the ingenuity of the chess-playing ‘automaton’ still has the power to charm and intrigue.

There is a non-working model of the Amazing Turk in the Roland Café in Bratislava – Kempelen’s home town.

Update: Farkas Kempelen’s Amazing Turk is reconstructed at the Heinz Nixdorf Museum at Paderborn, Germany
In 1770, the Hungarian engineer Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen built a chess-playing machine for the amusement of Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa.
The mechanical device, designed to resemble a Turkish man, became the most famous chess-automaton in history.
In April 2004, the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Paderborn produced an incredible working replica of the Turk, 200 years after Kempelen’s death.
Hundreds of chess fans and curious visitors gathered there on the presentation day to relive a scene that duplicated what the audiences had witnessed in Maria Theresa’s day.
Professor Ernst Strouhal gave an introductory lecture on The Turk, and the reconstruction was then wheeled into the room.
An actor took on the role of Wolfgang von Kempelen to demonstrate the operation of the machine.
First he opened the two compartments to show that they were empty.
Then he opened the left door to reveal a mass of cog-wheels, shafts and levers. The maestro closed the doors and wound up the machine.
The Amazing Turk started to play chess. The figure standing behind the table was obviously artificial and could not conceal a human; however it executed chess moves with mechanical precision.
The re-creators of the Amazing Turk then revealed its secret to the audience…

Healing the Nation - the gyógyszertár and the patika

If the stormy weather is giving you a headache - and who, in Budapest, hasn't felt the brain-fogging effects of a 'hideg front' (cold front)? - it is always worth popping into the local chemist's for some aspirin and, while there, have a look around.
In Budapest many pharmacies date back to seventeenth century and often have original interiors intact.
“There are 16 pharmacies in Budapest which are considered historical monuments and 36 throughout the country, including a beautiful chemist’s in Sopron and establishments in Gyôr, Kôszeg and Debrecen,” said Szilvia Solymári, manager of the Városi Gyógyszertár (chemist's) at the corner of Váci utca and Kigyó utca.
The history of a society can often be illustrated by what medicines it used, what potions and pills were swallowed in the search for longevity and good health.
The Városi Gyógyszertár dates back to 1686, making it one of the oldest in Pest.
Unfortunately much of its beautiful interior was destroyed during World War II, but restoration has been made faithfully according to old photographs and the dark brown cabinets and drawers, ancient chairs and the black metal chandelier look like the furnishings of a medieval banqueting hall.
There are records of the first Pest -Buda pharmacist dating from the beginning of the 14th century.
In 1303, a Buda doctor and pharmacist named Péter is mentioned as he was granted exemption from paying a tenth of the wage tax. At this time doctors prepared medicines, and so were considered pharmacists in a way themselves. The two professions only started to separate in the 14th century, but the separation of the two professions had still not completed by the end of the 17th century.
“Patika” is the old name, coming from the word “apothecary” and many of the older generation still refer to the patika. However, many now use the more Hungarian word “gyógyszertár”.
'Gyógyszertár' is a wonderful, tongue-twirling word, describing a store place (tár) for medicine (gyógyszer), which itself is one of those loveable, prosaic Hungarian words describing factually what something is: 'health' (gyógy) 'stuff' (szer).
Similarly - for those interested in linguistics, Hungarians don't fall back on the Latin-based vocabulary to create words buty make up their own, logical, descriptive versions. A 'bicycle' in Hungarian is 'kerékpar' - a pair (par) of wheels (kerék) and a camera is a 'fényképezőgép' (a 'light picture making machine')! Fantasztikus!
The pharmaceutical business is booming in Hungary and customers come in with a wad of prescriptions and leave with all manner of pills, potions, salves and unguents in brown paper bags, green glass bottles and phials.
An old lady in the Városi Gyógyszertár illustrated the prominence of the chemist's in daily life when she said if we want to find her again we needn't ask her address, “You can find me in this patika, I come here every day,” she said.
The medieval patikas besides medicine sold herbs, perfumes, paints, candles, paper and silks, and functioned as a kind of general store.
The pharmacists were some of the city’s most accomplished citizens and many belonged to the city council. A painting by C17th Dutch artist David Hyckaert in the pharmacy museum in Tarnok utca shows a very well-to-do married couple who were alchemists.
The husband makes gold and a custodian says, "It was considered a very good profession and highly thought-of members of society were chemists."
They did not have university diplomas, this set them apart from doctors, but they could heal those poorer members of society who could not pay an official doctor.
At the end of the 17th century, the patikas in operation were the Arany Sas in Buda, the Fekete Medve Gyógyszertár in Buda and the Szentháromság Gyógyszertár in Pest These three dealt with Pest-Buda's needs for nearly one hundred years.
In 1760, in the newly-formed Medical department of the Nagyszombat university there was a pharmacist training facility, known as the Generale Normativum in Re. Sanitaria. (1770)
The oldest chemists in Pest was the Váci utca 34 Szentháromság Gyógyszertár. It was founded in 1686 by Herold Henrik Siegfried and for a long time it worked alone to serve the medicinal needs of Pest citizens.
In 1701, Osterwald Zakariás received permission to found a new patika, however in 1705 he bought the Szentháromság Gyógyszertár and amalgamated it with his new patika. The patika at the beginning used the Városi Gyógyszertár name, and it was known as this until 1928 when it became the Városi Gyógyszertár a Szentháromsághoz.
At the end of the 18th century, in accordance with the growth in population, more pharmacies came into being.
The Kigyó (snake) Chemist's is at Kossuth Lajos utca 2 is one of the oldest working chemist's in the city.
It originally existed under the name of Csillag when Károly Stehling opened the premises on the now-demolished Kigyó tér 1 in 1784. It moved to its present site in 1899.
The original furnishings date from 1870 and are neo-Rococo. After the move, the interior was decorated further in the Secessionist style.
A grey marble tablet near the entrance to the Kigyó displays the dates, and opposite on the left hand side, another shows a statue of a snake coiling around a cross.
The snake entwined around a tall goblet is now the recognized symbol for pharmacies in Hungary.
Unusually, here in Hungary the snake is seen as a symbol of healing. “Snake venom was often used as a cure and the snake is considered a doer of good things,” explained Solymári.
In the underpass that joins the two stretches of Váci utca you can see a giant black and white photo of the original Kigyó Gyógyszertár, A large painting in the shop window shows a huge boa constrictor coiled around a tree.
To see this in colour, visit the Kiscelli Museum where a whole room is devoted to the Arany Oroszlán Patika. The Golden Lion Pharmacy was lifted in its entirety from the centre of Budapest (it opened in 1794 by Kálvin tér), with drawers and jars of herbs and poisons all labelled in ceramic plates. Mortars and pestles sit by the silver cash register and the frightening painting dominates the entrance.
One of the oldest pharmacies was found on Kristóf tér. The Nagy Kristóf Gyógyszertár was the first officially registered fiókgyógyszertár or dispensary in Pest.
It was founded in 1791 by Ignác Schwachhofer, the owner of the Szentlélek gyógyszertár on Király utca, in a building at Váci utca 6/Kristóf tér 2, which was named after Kristóf Nagy.
In 1833, the owner at the time Imre János Prégardt was the first to write the words ‘gyógyszertár’ instead of ‘patika’, and the first to give the medicines on offer names in Hungarian as well.
The Nagy Kristóf Gyógyszertár in 1909 moved to Kristóf tér 7 then in 1914 it moved to the one time Váci utca 1-3 but you cannot go there for your cough mixture now, as it was demolished in 1909.
Since 1985, the square has been decorated with a fountain and statue of the Fish-selling Girl by László Dunaiszky. The ‘Haláruslány kútja’(the well of the fish-selling girl) had previously stood at the Inner City fish market at the Pest end of the Erzsébet Bridge.
The Pesti Halász company put the fountain up in 1862 but because of bridge building it was moved to Népliget for a while.
Budapest City Council made Kristóf tér into a pedestrian square and put the fountain back in 1985, restored by sculptor Sándor Lovas and builder László Wild
In 1963, the then Ethnographic Ministry made 16 Budapest pharmacies protected buildings. All state pharmacies were privatized after the change of political system and Solymári said that the classic chemists all keep a corner of the shop devoted to the old style of pharmacy with an arrangement of old bottles, pestles and mortars, to distinguish the from the many ‘drogeries’ that have sprung up. “There are now so many chains of stores that strict new laws will be introduced this year to keep things under control”, said Solymári.
She said the classic style of pharmacy must always have two trained chemists present.
Solymári said that other chemist's worth visiting are one at Dísz tér, on Pannónia utca, a very old pharmacy next to the Opera House that escaped fire damage and has original furnishings and one with black furniture on the corner of Nefelejcs utca and Garay tér.
Solymári said that the wall painting by Kocsár Bretschneider in the Octogon pharmacy is of Hygieia and Asclepios
Standing on the corner of Szófia utca, the Oktogon Gyógyszertár was originally founded in 1786, in the Tabán district in Buda and moved to its present site in 1924.
The neo Baroque furnishings were made at this time.
A plaque on wall states that Gustav Mahler lived here when he was director of the Hungarian State Opera from 1888 to 1891.
There are some interesting cures. At Teréz krt 41, there is a pharmacy with an interesting sign that reads “The fresh snake venom antidote is now in” - Budapest is now gripped by a mania for collecting dangerous and deadly pets. Besides baby turtles and the odd hamster, pet shops stock tarantulas, lizards and deadly snakes.
Newspaper back pages are filled with stories about the “cobra that went berserk in a tiny flat”, and doctors say it is only a matter of time before a fatality occurs.
The snake serum only keeps for a certain period of time and is very expensive to buy.
Hospitals do not always have it in stock, ready for an emergency.
The Arany Sas Pharmacy Museum at Tarnok utca 18, in the Castle District also displays some strange cures.
A mummified head was powdered up and the potion was drunk to relieve fevers and sore throats...!
The museum was originally a genuine pharmacy called Arany Egyszarvú (Golden Unicorn), established in 1688 by Ferenc Bôsinger. It was the first pharmacy in Buda Castle after the expulsion of the Turks, and moved here in the mid-18th century.
The building was formerly a merchant's house and dates from the early 15th century. Inside, an alchemist's laboratory is recreated and strange creatures hang from the ceiling, a dried, stuffed crocodile and a large lizard.
The tiny museum is crammed full of bottles and jars, C18th handwritten notebooks and some pictorial records of Kozma and Damján, Arab chemists who died martyrs and became the patron saints of pharmacists.
The Semmelweis Museum of Medical History at Apród utca 1-3, behind the Tabán church is the resting place of physician Ignác Semmelweiss (1818), known as the 'savior of mothers' because of his discovery of the causes of puerperal fever - sepsis during childbirth.
The museum exhibits the furnishings of another old Pest pharmacy, the Szentlélek Patika, founded in 1786 and also on display are skulls, strange remedies, mummies and a shrunken head.

Useful chemist's
Csillag Patika. VII. Rákóczi út 39
All-night chemist's
I. Széna tér 1
II. Frankel Leó út 22
IX. Üllôi út 121 (Nagyvárad metro stop)
XII. Alkotás utca 3 - gives medicine out through a hole in the wall at weekends
VI. Dob utca 81 - original interior with very beautiful lamps
XIII. Pozsony út 2 - with the snake coiling around a beaker symbol.
Kossuth Lajos 10 - Azur Drogerie- is not a pharmacy but it has a long, narrow interior, lined with cabinet and drawers made of brown wood that resembles a pharmacy and is worth a visit

The Centrál Coffee House

I wrote this article on the wonderful coffee house more than ten years ago, however the historical details are still interesting, I think.

Renovation work is now beginning on the one-time Centrál Coffee House.
Work started on the reconstruction on June 29 and will continue for a year and a half, with completion date pegged in at July 15 1999.
Dr. Somody Imre, director Pharmavit Rt. bought the building and is financing the 1,100 million forint project through a private company, which he established specifically for the coffee house renovation.
When it opens its door again in October 1999, the building, which stands at the southern left hand corner of Ferenciek tere will have office buildings on the upper floors, while the ground floor will recreate the former glory of the famous coffee house.
Together with the renovation work on the Ybl Palota opposite, this will make Ferenciek tere, the square of the Fransiscans, an elegant place of learning once again.
The university library stands on one corner, the Ybl Palota and the Károlyi Mihály literary museum further down the road, when the Centrál Kávéház is ready, the only corner with not quite such a high-brow reputation will be the northeast nook, where the Bonnie and Clyde bar offers roulette and darts.
The Central opened in 1887, in the freshly-constructed house belonging to Lajos Ullmann Erényi.
It was the heir to the Philosophus Kávéház which had stood a few blocks away a few decades earlier.
“The lamps and the whole interior decoration, like the marble tables, sofas, billiard tables, the whole games room and the coffee kitchen, moreover even the cups and the pots are so beautiful that it is impossible to imagine anything more beautiful,” wrote a critic at the time.
The Centrál soon became the centre of intellectual life, although it was almost exclusively male scholars and writers who made the Centrál their local.
It was the place where József Kiss edited the Hét (‘Week’) weekly literary paper, for which many big names worked before the Nyugat (‘West’) paper was formed. All the 400 coffee houses of the capital had subscriptions to Hét.
Kiss also taught young writers the secrets of language, verse and writing.
Famous writers worked here in the Centrál around the so-called “big writers’ table” - among them Kálmán Mikszáth, Sándor Bródy, Gyula Krúdy, Andor Kozma, Zsigmond Justh and Zoltán Ambrus.
Even Endre Ady, who had different home-from-home cafe, the Három Holló (Three Ravens) (now the Goethe Institute) was known to frequent the Centrál.
In 1907, younger writers in the Hét group formed Nyugat and soon moved their headquarters to the New York coffee house, on the corner of Erzsébet körút and Dohány utca, near what is now called Blaha Lujza tér.
Then, in the twenties the Nyugat paper moved back from the New York coffee house headquarters to its birthplace in the Centrál coffee house.
From 1905, the Centrál was run by former bank offers Gyôzô Mészáros, who was also the head of the Budapest coffee house association and he, as a professional protected the high standard of the artistic institution for many decades.
The atmosphere was conducive to writing, as wafts of coffee brewing aromas occasionally reached the writers, who sat hunched over scraps of white paper, waiting for inspiration.
Cigar smoke spiralled up towards the chandeliers, mixing with the low mutterings of authors thinking out loud.
No business deals or loud noises disturbed the creative atmosphere.
Mészáros put the men of letters on a special gallery so that the ordinary citizens would also be able to witness the shining examples of intellectual life, literature, science and fine arts.
Loud words, disruption of order, or snobbishness were not tolerated in the Centrál, which was open day and night.
The coffee house was philanthropic in its actions as well as its principles.
Those in need were helped with credit, small loans besides the moderately priced coffee, peaceful surroundings, and the Hungarian and international press.
The First War World disrupted the clientele of the Centrál as many young writers were conscripted. Zuboly (Elemér Bántai) became the first casualty amongst the writing regulars in 1915, two years later the poet Géza Gyóni also lost his life. “The only remaining piece of Pest was the Centrál,” wrote Mihály Babits.
It was somewhat shaken by the fighting, some of the tables’ marble tops were split, the mirrors had grown hazy, the porcelain buttons on the armchair coverings also showed the marks of time.
On the wall was a memorial tablet to Zuboly, with a bronze relief, under which was engraved some lines of verse by his friend Ady.
During the twenties, the Nyugat once again had its special table in the Centrál. Babits’s Sons of Death novel gave a role to this much-loved place where, “through the nonsensical cafe house smoke, the aroma of delights of days gone by fluttered”. Coughing slightly, the ‘sad poet’ Árpád Tóth, scuttled in, his lungs ruined by the damp air of his rented room, the printing room and the smoke from his own and surrounding cigars.
Zsigmond Móricz would make his slow dignified procedure over to the Nyugat table, sit down, drink a coffee, light a cigar and hide himself away in his thoughts and a thick aromatic cloud.
The Nyugat editor took his place without a sound, while Frigyes Karinthy and Dezsô Kosztolányi blustered in more noisily.
Aurél Kárpáti, Ernô Szép and Ferenc Molnár and the whole editorial team would spend hours discussing topics.
And so life continued in this bastion of literary life, “In the Centrál, where along with many famous or now forgotten men I also rocked my cradle”. wrote János Kodolányi.
Other scholars frequented the Centrál with their books, librarians, museum curators, and university professors.
Artists also sipped coffee in the Centrál, although they did not have a particular separate circle of their own here. József Rippl-Rónai signed one of his paintings with the words, “I drew this in the Centrál Coffee House”.
Many men of letters worked here day in day out, and went to the Centrál as if it were their office.
After the Second World War, the Újhold (‘New Moon”) editorial was formed and operated in the Centrál.
Ágnes Nagy Nemes, Pilinszky, Balazs Lengyel, Mándy, Sándor Rákos and others worked here on Tuesday afternoons until late at night, preparing the paper and editing.
In 1950 the Paprika Centre National Company took over the premises.
This company, which built the little yellow underground, made the premises its culture centre and canteen.
Then, from 1967, it became the Eötvös club - the popular ELTE students' club, where groups like Omega entertained the college crowd and Zorán and the Metro band began their careers.
The old stippling on the walls remained virtually intact.
However, the chandeliers made in Vienna were smashed and pawned at the MÉH - recycling depot.
Then the premises became home for the Wizards amusement arcade with an unspectacular and less literary tenancy until recently when Dr. Imre Somody bought the building.
Now, it is hoped, a thriving literary life will return to the heart of Pest. “That special place has now disappeared, the place that was neither club, nor pub, neither an association nor a restaurant, neither a casino nor a presszó, but something more democratic than all of these - a coffee house,” wrote Dóra Pataky, the interior designer for the new Centrál.
The Centrál will again be a place where, “fascinating discussions will whirl on all topics by a company of people who will talk and argue late into the night on politics, art and ideologies while women decorate the scene with their beauty”.

Centrál Kávéház és étterem
1053 Budapest
Károlyi Mihály utca 9

Table reservations: (+36 1) 266 2110
info@centralkavehaz.hu
www.centralkavehaz.hu

BARTÓK BÉLA ÚT

©LucyMallows2004
With its cubic cobble stones and plane trees standing guard along the way, ancient Hungarian craftsman’s workshops and fading neon shop signs, Bartók Béla út, in the eleventh district of Buda, was one of the few streets near the centre of town that looked typically Hungarian.
The cobbles have gone now, but Bartók, like Mester utca in the ninth district has that unique Magyar street ambience.
Others with their flashy palaces of denim and burger bars could be confused with streets running through other great cities of Europe.
The cobblestones are called macskakővek in Hungarian, meaning 'cat stones'.
However, this all changed in 2003.
In November, work began to remove the cobbles over which rattled the second largest stream of downtown-headed traffic. Every day 600,000 people jiggled along the painful route. The builders moved in and replaced the ancient electricity, gas, water and sewage systems.
After an agreement on the fourth metro line, the station diaphragm walls were sunk at Gellért tér, Móricz Zsigmond körtér, Kosztolányi Dezsô tér and Tétény út. Tram tracks and sidewalks were replaced and the green areas were given new park benches, flower pots and bollards.
Although the street looks a bit smarter, and the trams run more smoothly, the atmosphere has changed little.
Bartók Béla út, the street named after Hungary’s greatest composer doesn¹t actually contain much in the way of musical heritage.



At Móricz Zsigmond körtér there is a piano repair workshop and at the Budai Parkszínpad beside the Bottomless Lake (Feneketlen tó) at Kosztolányi Dezsô tér there are concerts by widely varying popular artists from Roma rap Fekete Vonat to guitar troubadour Péter Gerendás.
A statue of Bartók (1881-1945) by József Somogyi stands beside the lake, under a frame of bells.
Bartók Béla út begins at Gellért tér, graced by the beautiful Art Nouveau Gellért spa hotel and curves around the base of Gellért Hill to Móricz Zsigmond körtér. The fading Szabó photographer’s studio, second hand fur coat store and faded Cipôbolt share the wide, cracked pavements with more modern mobile phone outlets and optical showrooms.
The tiny, cramped book antikvarium (antique shop) front is almost hidden at 10am every day by the lines of pensioners who rob their own book-shelves to sell another selection of first editions for groceries.
On the right-hand side, some of the imposing buildings are worth a closer look, for the amazing stucco facades in pastel blues and greens and the hidden courtyards behind.
At No. 23 there is a fabulously grand yellow courtyard with Classical pillars, while No. 33 is a walk-in shopping area with a grotto and steps leading up to a leafy glade.
At the Bertalan Lajos utca tram stop, many homeless gather and sip wine take-outs from the countless borozós (wine bars, more proletarian than posh) on the street.
They sit under the statue to Géza Gardonyi who wrote Egri Csillagok (Under a Crescent Moon) and the building behind (No. 36-38) resembles a giant cinema Wurlitzer organ rising up in orange stone out of the street.
The doorway is guarded by two winged sphinxes with Cleopatra hairstyles.
A little further along at No. 40 is an interesting building designed in 1899 by Ödön Lechner, the father of Hungarian Art Nouveau, to accommodate his brother Gyula, a writer and painter.
The unusual decoration on the beige building resembles the stitching on the side of a blanket.



When Bartók died in New York in 1945, he left a condition in his will that no place in Budapest could be named after him, so long as there were still places like Hitler tér (now Kodály körönd) and Mussolini tér (now Oktogon).
Thus, immediately after the Second World War, the city decided to rename Horthy Miklós út after him along with eight other Bartók Béla út and utca dotted about Budapest.
Móricz Zsigmond körtér (circus) named, like the following Kosztolányi Dezsô tér, after one of Hungary’s great writers, is one of the busiest, most atmospheric squares in Buda, rivalling Mozskva tér for life and colour, noise, birds, flowers, trams, homeless, drunks and dog faeces.
A plaque to Móricz Zsigmond (1879-1942) reads “A Hungarian realist. The first to depict the realities of life of the Hungarian peasants”.
A neon sign high on the rooftops advertises the services of the Manfréd Weiss factory on Csepel Island and looks down on the simpler stylistic designs of a Mcburger bar’s golden arches.
The circus is a rickety wood circle around which trams rattle, the 18 and 47 on their way to Budafok, the 19 and 49 rumble all the way along Bartók Béla út to Kelenföld.
In the middle, a statue to Prince Imre by Zsigmond Kisfaludy Strobl portrays King Saint Stephen’s son who died in a hunting accident aged 24. Interestingly, this statue managed to remain as a resting place for tired pigeons throughout the Communist period.
The circus was designed in the late 19th century to the grand American plan, with wide streets and huge squares, continuing in style at Kosztolányi Dezsô tér which is quite a terrifying road junction where broad radial roads meet.
After Kosztolányi Dezsô tér, the road runs in an almost entirely straight line, cobbled all the way to Etele tér, in Kelenföld, the end of the line also for the famous No. 7 bus.
At dusk, the Bottomless Lake is one of the most atmospheric parts of Buda. The Szent Imre church is illuminated at night and shadows are thrown across the reeds and water of the former quarry pit, which is actually only a few metres deep.
At No. 62 a faded sign still bears witness to the one-time glories of the Bartók cinema.
This was part of an apartment block designed by Gábor Preisich and Mihály Vadász in 1934.
Preisich was a member of the Ciam group and was very influential in introducing modernism to Hungary.
This building is one of his best creations.



The street becomes more and more rural as it continues to Kelenföld, the ‘fields of Kelen’.
Outside No. 98 a pile of steaming horse manure on the pavement helps the village atmosphere.
Nearby is a horse tackle shop, a ‘Daisy’ gun shop, a knife shop and a garden equipment shop.
At No. 125 the Nagyon Kis Vendéglô (Very Small Bistro) is a family-run bistro offering ‘cheap home cooking’ and just along the way is the Melódiás Haladás Eszpresszó (Melodic Progress).
These types of establishments have died out in the centre of town but can still be found along the far reaches of Bartók Béla út, along with a wonderful workshop at No. 112 that will do everything from picture framing, to mirror cutting, zip repairs, bag lining and patches, as announced on a stylised brown sign.
The Karinthy Theatre at No. 123-130 has one of those ancient cinema signs, where you can click the letters into the lines to show what’s playing this week. A little further along the Szent Gellért church is a modern building, but look around the side to catch one of sculpture Imre Varga’s stunning works.
Jesus cradles Gellért in big silver wings with embossed metal decoration and carries him up to heaven.
In Brussels, a statue of Béla Bartók by Imre Varga stands in a forgotten square between the Grand’Place and the Centraal Station.
A group of Japanese tourists take photos and ask their guide who the statue depicts. “Bartók, a German composer I think,” says the young guide.
At No. 133 a huge tram depot stands with a yawning gate.
A group of static No. 19 trams gaze out from their shed.
As we approach Etele tér, we are now in the heart of Kelenföld.
It is somehow reminiscent of Szeged with wide tree-lined cobblestone streets and a sleepy Sunday afternoon ambiance.
Kelenföld was the centre of horseracing in the 16th century, introduced by the young King Lajos II in 1525 and the area was still fields and vineyards up until only 100 years ago.
The area received the name Kelenföld in 1847.
Prior to that it was called Tabán. The area became populated in the middle of the 18th century when grape workers moved in.
The origins of the name are argued about.
Some attribute it to ‘Krenfeld’ which is ‘Horseradish field’ in German and all the agricultural workers there at the time would bear this out.
Other say that there was a tribe leader called Kelen at the time of the occupation of the Carpathian Basin in 896 and they made their camps here and named it after him.

The Gellért hotel and pool

When friends visit me from abroad, one of the places definitely on the list for an unmissable, real Budapest experience is the Gellért thermal bath complex.
It’s more pricey than most, but no other bath gives quite the same feeling of history, culture, unusual fun and sybaritic soaking all in one.
It’s also a good excuse to treat myself.
Despite living only one tram stop away, I restrict myself to the occasional Sunday afternoon wallow in the thermals and the sauna or, in summer, a refreshing splash in the wave pool followed by a vigorous foot massage.
The Gellért is the oldest Hungarian spa hotel.
The springs that supply the baths with hot healing waters have been flowing for at least 2,000 years.
Saint Iván, a healing hermit whose talents were known far and wide, once lived beside the Sáros fürdô (mud bath). He was one of the first naturopaths whose sermons and "miracles" attracted many sick people to the area.
Due to the great heat of the water gushing from the spring it was known as Purgatory, but later the name was changed to the more virtuous Bath of the Virgins.
The earliest reference to the existence of healing waters at this spot dates from the 13th century during the reign of King András II and in the Middle Ages a hospital stood on the site.
The Ottomans built baths here and they were mentioned at the time by Evliya Celebi, a well-known Turkish travel writer.
During the Turkish occupation (1541-1686) a grand bathing establishment stood on the site where the Gellért Hotel now stands.
After the Turks left a bath house was built with courtyards and plane trees for shade, but the mud baths were filled in to make way for the construction of Szabadság híd (Freedom Bridge).
In 1912 work began on a brand new spa hotel to be named Gellért after the hill behind it, down which the Venetian bishop-monk Szent Gellért was pushed in a barrel lined with nails by pagans in 1046.
The present building, with its glass dome, terraces, open-air pool and bathhouses, took six years to complete.
In the 1920s, the Gellért became the center of upmarket social life. In 1927, the open-air pool with artificial waves was constructed and, seven years later, the indoor thermal pools were added.
In 1927 Károly Gundel took over the restaurant.
This was a time of high society banquets for which Gundel created ever more delicious culinary inventions to delight visiting dignitaries from all over Europe.
All these elements helped to promote Budapest as an international spa city in the 1930s. Members of Europe’s royal families, artists, foreign politicians and millionaires all stayed within the Gellért’s elegant walls.
In January 1945 the hotel was bombed so badly that only its walls were left standing.
The curly Secessionist balconies and the oriental rounded turrets and towers of the exterior were restored, but the present interior furnishings are not faithful to the original plans.
However, both the hotel and the public swimming pools to this day retain the atmosphere of a more glamorous era.
Enjoy a coffee and cake in the hotel café after your wallowing and admire the stained glass windows halfway up the grand staircase.
The indoor and outdoor baths are supplied with water from a source deep within Gellért Hill. Its chalky, slightly acidic, hydrogen-carbonate, radioactive water contains many minerals.
The water surges from its source at a temperature of 43°C.
When you enter the grand Secessionist hall, lined with pink marble pillars, floral motifs on the walls and bronze curlicue decorations, you are faced with a range of facilities to choose from.
Move along and hand over your ticket on the right and follow the stairs down to a tiled subterranean passage way that leads past the outdoor pool.
Circular portholes offer a view of the swimmers’ legs and aging photos on the wall opposite show aspects of the hotel. Then up more stairs to the changing rooms.
There are also changing rooms with cabins on the level of the indoor pool, but upstairs is drier and warmer for changing.
Keep a hold of your ticket as the cloakroom attendant sometimes asks to see it.
She will secure your locker and give you an aluminum tag with a number on it that must be guarded safely.
On leaving, it is also a good idea to tip her, and also the masseuse, as you get a wonderful smile and special service next time. Inside, the 33 meter pool is the height of luxury.
Lined with marble columns and trailing plants, it resembles something from the heady days of the Roman Empire.
Its retractable glass roof is often opened in summer to let shafts of sunlight in on the hedonistic scene.
At one end is a thermal pool with hot jets of healing water spouting from statues.
Doors lead off at either side to the single sex Turkish thermal baths.
In the ladies’ section there are three thermal plunge pools of slightly differing temperatures, where naked women rise up out of the steam, revealing flesh in all shapes and sizes.
There is also a steam bath amongst the intricate designs of the blue and brown tiled walls.
The sauna comprises three largish rooms, each getting hotter and hotter until the third approaches something akin to Dante’s Inferno.
The women’s section also features changing rooms and showers.
The men’s section is arranged as a mirror image of the women’s on the right hand side, looking down from the thermal pool end.
These areas can be visited separately from the main pool for a slightly cheaper ticket.
Outside, there is a small thermal pool which is crowded full all summer long with visitors.
The elegant outdoor pool has chilly water, but temperatures rise on the hour when the fun wave pool cranks up into action for about 10 minutes.
Waves crash onto the very shallow far end and bodies fly in all different directions.
In summer a terrace buffet provides snacks, soft drinks and the ever popular bottles of beer from which some guests choose to slurp while in the thermal pool.
The Gellért also features a major treatment center and has salt baths, mud baths and inhalation rooms, all of which utilize the rich mineral waters gushing from Gellért Hill.

Gellért Medicinal Baths
IIII. Budapest
Kelenhegyi út 2-4
Tel: 466-6166

Pool hours:
October 1 - April 30
Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm

Thermal pool hours:
October 1 - April 30
Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-2pm

The Pioneers and the Children's Railway

ÚTTÖRÔ = (literally) path-breaking, trail blazing, pioneering out into unknown territory.

This year the Hungarian Pioneer is 62 years old and thinking more about claiming his/her pension than playing with trains in the forest.
There is hardly a family photo album in Hungary that doesn’t contain a picture of a child in a red nylon neckerchief over a white shirt and aluminum belt buckle, standing proudly to attention at a ceremony to mark April 4, March 15, May 1, November 7, or other Socialist holidays.
Many people believe the Pioneers disappeared like most organizations of the socialist state under the ideological rubble of the Berlin wall.
However children are still lighting camp fires and singing songs, albeit with less political lyrics, up in the Buda hills, at one of Hungary’s biggest Pioneer camps at Csillebérc.
Most socialist state organizations disbanded or changed their names and identity, but somehow the Pioneers survived. After radical changes, the youth group still has an impressive membership of 76,000, making it the largest youth group in Hungary.
Today, there are no uniforms, no red neckerchiefs, no pledges of loyalty to the socialist state and no military ranks. But the spirit of the pioneers lives on and provides a very necessary function.
“There is a parallel between the freedom kids have today and the rise in juvenile delinquency.
In the past, the Pioneers taught children a kind of behavior, although there was not much freedom of choice. However today, children have no feeling of community.
In the early 1990’s there was a huge vacuum, but now more and more people are turning to us.” says Péter Rácz, leader of the Magyar Úttörôk Szövetsége - the Association of Hungarian Pioneers which this year celebrated its 50th anniversary on June 2 1996.
From 1946 to 1988, the Pioneers were a mass movement.
They were present in schools, sports clubs and housing estates.
Children could join at 7 and become a Kisdobos -Little Drummer, then progressing to úttörô -pioneer until 15 when it was hoped he or she would join the Communist Youth Association, (KISZ)
Today, there are 450 local Pioneer groups in every county in Hungary, involving kids aged 6 to 14, and Rácz expects the numbers to continue to grow.
After 1956 the Pioneers became an all-inclusive youth club as part of the state party, “Ninety-nine percent of children were members,” says Rácz.
In the second half of the sixties not all children were members, leading up to now when it is voluntary.
Csillebérc is the only Pioneer camp left of the more than 40 once operated in Hungary.
Most of them were sold off, some under dubious circumstances, during the previous government of the Democratic Forum.
Rácz acknowledges it is difficult to shake off the old reputation. “We kept the name because the movement itself developed through the years.
In the seventies the leaders were those who like being with children, not those in it for political gain.”
The Pioneers gave all kinds of benefits to children.
Rácz says, “The summer camps, which still exist were a typical kind of socialist idea, providing a way for poor children to escape the smog in the long break.”
The strong central leadership of the Pioneers has now evolved into one of many children’s group organizations. “We do not try to force the kids to do anything and there is a strong appreciation of local autonomy in groups.”
The children decide their own names, symbols and under what conditions their local group will operate.
They can wear a uniform if they want and many chose a different colored necktie.
Some stick with the traditional red tie, others go for brown, white or Hungarian flag colors.
However, the new slogan is “Pioneers for the friendly third millennium” which still rings of Socialist propaganda.
Four major events have been organized this year, a Pioneer Olympics, a Magyar Settlement commemoration, Environmental protection and the anniversary celebrations.
The Pioneers are members of the International Falcon Movement (IFM) involving 60 countries.
Rácz explains, “Before there was a rigid order, now the emphasis is on free time. We try to stay away from politics. Our duty is to help the children’s personalities develop into responsible adults in the democratic world.”
One thing they still try to maintain is the “Left wing sensibility” of solidarity and responsibility to society, but Rácz says, “Tradition is not so important, we don’t want to live in the past..”
The member ship card is a striking example of the inner change.
Before, every Pioneer had a little book, like a junior Communist party membership card with the twelve rules of conduct. Now the membership card resembles a credit card for children.
It is plastic with a cartoon squirrel.
Rácz says, “The difference is that now we are more playful, more jolly. We stress that adults and children are partners. It is grown-ups and kids together, with the adults helping in the background, rather than the old way of adults demonstrating and children listening.”
In the Csillebérc camp high in the Buda hills almost all traces of the old Socialist order have been removed. Only a circle of flag poles remains in the center, while alone in the undergrowth stands the statue of a pioneer boy, holding aloft a flag with the motto, “Elôre” (‘Forward!’) and flowers in his strangely huge hands.
He is ignored by the hundreds of children coming for class at the American school which shares the building with the Pioneer’s Csillebérc headquarters.

The Star Seeking Game.

A young pioneer in the eighties, László Sáfrány was brought up in Rózsadomb, where the richest families lived and where there was the greatest opposition to the Communist system.
Even so, these parents did not stop their children from signing up to be a Pioneer. “No one told their child not to join, it would have made things awkward at school.”
At summer camp, Pioneers had to wear the itchy uniform on the first day when the flag was raised and on the last when the flag came down.
It was seen as another form of oppression.
Sáfrány says, “The scarf was 100 percent nylon, we wanted to wear our own clothes. In the eighties, everyone wanted to have the best sports shoes from abroad and we wanted to be different.”
However, others did not want to be different and enjoyed the sense of community that the Pioneers created.
University student Krisztina Farkas, 22, said, “At the beginning of the year, every pioneer had to fill in a form saying both parents were members of the communist party, but mine never were.
There was no concrete discrimination but I felt some vague threat.
As a child I did not want to stand out. I wanted to be part of the group, so I was very proud they let me be a Pioneer and I organized lots of competitions and games.
One day the whole group went into the forest and we hid little red stars and pictures of Lenin in the trees, grass, everywhere and if you found five you got a chocolate.
The Soviet presence in the camp confused some children.
November 7 was the big celebration to celebrate the Russian Revolution.
Computer programmer Mihály Sándor, 25, says, “But even as children, we knew that the stories we heard at Pioneer camp were different from what our grandparents told us about Russians.
We heard tales of rape, robbery and gulags- it was disturbing for a child.”
Bank assistant Edit Somodi, 25 remembers the initiation ceremony when an older Pioneer removed the red scarf which had been hanging from a shoulder strap on her shirt and tied it proudly around her neck.
The knot has to be tied in a specific way with the lump at the front and Somodi loved the pomp and ceremony and still remembers how to tie the knot.
Some children enjoyed the rousing patriotic songs, others said, “Why do we have to sing this rubbish every morning?” One thing they all agree on is the summer camp was a great opportunity to go on holiday with their school friends.
Parents on low incomes were glad they could send their kids out of the city for two weeks at a minimal fee.
In the early fifties, the aim was to find loyal workers for the Communist cause, but after 1956 it became more of a youth club, organizing sports, cultural and educational activities.
Authorities may have hoped it would be breeding ground for young communists, the first step on the ladder to full party membership.
Some became group leaders for KISZ (Communist Youth Association) and they were they most enthusiastic and knowledgeable at political quizzes. Others were not so interested.
Anikó Somsits is now a lawyer. In 1976 she was a Little Drummer and remembers struggling with the political questions.
The group leaders asked, ‘Who is János Kádár?’ and if the child answered correctly, points could be collected towards a little piece of chocolate or some other reward. “I was eight and had no idea who they were talking about.
One of my companions said, “Oh, Jáncsi bácsi” and we were worried that she would be punished but the teacher only said, “It’s so good that you have a family relationship with our leader .”
Somsits also has rose-tinted memories of her time at Pioneer camp, “I remember singing all the time,” she said. Though at some times the life was not for the faint-hearted.
The alarm sounded at six every morning, then children had to run three times around the camp without being allowed to visit the bathroom first.
Then a military style bed inspection and a quick wash in freezing cold water before the daily raising of the flag. Only after all that could they have breakfast. Then it was more singing.
The songs ranged from happy Pioneer songs
“Mint a mókus fenn a fán, Az úttörô oly vidám” (“Like the squirrel up in the tree, the Pioneer’s life is just as happy,”) to the more ideological workers’ movement songs, like ‘Red Csepel’ with the lyrics, “More, more, more, never enough for the bourgeois” ‘Amur Partisans’ ‘Lenin the Hero’ and the ‘Internationale.’
The last gave Somsits many problems as she did not understand the words, “In ‘A Nemzetközivé’ I thought it was ‘Nemzetközi V’ and couldn’t find out what the ‘V’ stood for.
Like most of the songs it was not explained.” It was just a subtle form of information about the Socialist cause that dripped into the young child’s consciousness.
“I did not sense a big political influence as a child, but now looking back, I can see that the songs and the games were quite a subtle way of preaching the party line.”
The intention was to introduce politics with singing and games and hopefully stimulate an interest in later life.
Like almost every ex-pioneer, Somsits looks back on the two weeks spent in the country with friends with great affection. It was a time of childhood innocence when the biggest worry was whether the campfire would light or how to remember all twelve points in the Pioneer’s Rules for Life membership book.
However, one summer camp was not such a haven, and Somsits caused a big scandal by leaving a week before the end. “It wasn’t the usual camp with my school friends, but a specialist bird-watching Pioneer camp in Tatabánya. It was very regimental and the food was diabolical.
I had to go on night watch patrol at four in the morning and I could not stay awake.” After a week, Somsits could bear it no longer and secretly wrote a letter, pleading her parents to come and collect her. “My parents had to invent an excuse that we had to visit a dying relative. It caused a big confrontation with the group leaders, who said I had cut myself off from the group and could never go on such a Pioneer camp again.”



The Pioneer’s 12 points for life were seen as guides to teach the child how to live correctly.
The was a strong emphasis on learning how to be a responsible member of society.
Somsits says, “If anything happened at the camp, the leaders informed the school. Naughty children did not get to go to fun camps at the Balaton and there was much community work, giving us a sense of discipline.”
Discipline is something that teacher Erika Csikós, 25, says is now missing in the lives of her students today. “When we were Pioneer, there was always a goal to be reached, today’s children do not have any aim or motivation.” She says the children have no sense of patriotism for their country and many cannot recite the National Anthem. “At the Pioneer camp we learnt to respect our elders and contribute to the community.
Patriotism was mixed in with Communism, of course, but when we said we were working ‘for the homeland’ it was for Hungary, not for the Soviet Union.
Csikós tells of a friend who had to go to compulsory Pioneer meetings, because, although her father was in the Communist party, her mother was from an aristocratic family, and so had been banned from higher education. (The authorities feared the next revolution would come from those who were intellectuals or thinkers and so denied further education).
The authorities worried that the young girl would not get a proper Communist upbringing and so she had to attend extra meetings, so that her mother would not be fired from her job.
Mária Völgyesi teaches at a secondary school in the twentieth district. In the fifties, she was one of the first Pioneers, then a youth leader and then a full leader.
She became a teacher as a result of good experiences at the Pioneer camps and still keeps the illustrated diary that the children compiled on the tours around some of the most picturesque parts of Hungary. “We walked 150 kilometers in 10 days and there was a wonderful group atmosphere, sitting around the campfire and sleeping in tents.
We prepared all year for the summer camp.” She says the self-discipline and initiative fostered in the camps is missing today, but hopes the Pioneer will re-establish itself again in the future as the nationwide network. “The Pioneers gave the child a backbone and a community. Now you see so many out on the streets in the evening with no sense of purpose.”
She says that, these days, no political party bothers with the children of high school age, “Not even FIDESZ which is supposedly a youth party.”



All aboard the Socialist Ghost train
Young Pioneers built the 12 kilometre narrow-gauge rail line in the Buda hills in 1950. It was built and run by people too young to get a driving license.
The museum at Hûvösvölgy station has a charming collection of memorabilia – socialist realist posters, cups and trophies, awards from youth movements in other Socialist countries, uniforms and old photos of Pioneers at work show the railway’s past.
In 1995, the railway celebrated 45 years of chugging through the hills and a nostalgia train ride visited different exhibitions at each of the eight stations
Pioneers no longer run it but a diligent group of child ticket collectors and conductors still takes tickets and salute as the train pulls out of the station from Hûvösvölgy to Széchenyi hegy about half and hour later.
On an autumn weekday morning, the train chugs along solitary with only one passenger. An adult driver negotiates the bends and tunnels and one child in an oversized uniform collects tickets. His hands are invisible under the huge navy blue sleeves, but he politely takes and punches the 60 forint ticket and bids a good journey.
The children’s enthusiasm and civility bears little resemblance to adult MÁV workers. A girl guard gives a half wave-half salute as we pull out of the next station, this is repeated along the track.
The mountain railway has two tiny carriages with wooden slatted seats and a stove in the back. Black and white pictures of Budapest sights decorate the walls.
Virágvölgy (which once bore the name “Elôre” -forward!) station has a weather beaten plaster plaque with three pioneers standing proudly pointing toward a brighter socialist future.
The Csillebérc station has two tiling tableaus on either side of the station building wall. One shows pioneers at play, the other shows pioneers raising the flag at the beginning of another day at summer camp, a ceremony that lasts to this day.



THE HUNGARIAN PIONEER ASSOCIATION LITTLE DRUMMER MEMBERSHIP BOOK (age 7-11)
The 6 points- the law of the little drummer’s life.

1. The Little drummer is a faithful child of our Hungarian homeland.
2. The Little Drummer loves and respects his/her parents, teachers.
3. The Little Drummer studies diligently and helps his/her companions.
4. The Little Drummer always tells the truth.
5. The Little Drummer is clean, tidy and punctual.
6. The Little Drummer lives so as to be worthy of the Pioneers’ red neckerchief.

THE HUNGARIAN PIONEER ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIP BOOK (age 11-15)

“For the working people, for the homeland, forward -steadfastly!”
The 12 points - the Pioneer life law

1. The Pioneer is a faithful child of the homeland, the Hungarian People’s Republic
2. The Pioneer fortifies the friendship of the People, protects the honor of the red neckerchief.
3. The Pioneer develops knowledge without rest, faithfully completes his/her duty.
4. The Pioneer, where he/she can, helps.
5. The Pioneer works with a good spirit.
6. The Pioneer always speaks the truth and acts fairly.
7. The Pioneer loves and honors his/her parents, teachers and respects his/her elders.
8. The Pioneer is a true and faithful friend.
9. The Pioneer is brave and disciplined.
10. The Pioneer exercises his/her body and preserves his/her health.
11. The Pioneer loves and protects nature.
12. The Pioneer lives so as to be worthy of the Communist Youth Association membership. (KISZ)

Art Nouveau architecture in Budapest

©LRMallowsBemrakpart2006


Art Nouveau as a style always provokes a reaction and it is impossible to remain indifferent.
The style is considered by many to be stunningly beautiful, with shimmering colours and imaginative forms, while others find it the height of bad taste.
Architecturally it radically altered the face of many cities of North America and Europe - with Budapest being a leading example - at the beginning of the 20th century and left an indelible mark on our collective cultural consciousness.
Emerging more than 100 years ago, the Art Nouveau movement was an attempt to create a modern, international style based on decoration.
It spread rapidly and could be found everywhere from public buildings to biscuit tins.
The sinuous coiling forms and elaborate features brought colour and verve to brighten up drab pre-war European streets.
The late 19th century on was a time of social change and political ferment.
A restless mercantile class pushed out the old aristocracy.
The revolution left its mark on many European capitals, as it spawned a building style that swept across the continent.
It was called Art Nouveau in Glasgow, Paris and Brussels, Jugendstil in Riga, Berlin and Munich, and Secession (Szecesziós) in Budapest, Vienna and Prague.
Today, Budapest is home to buildings that are some of the best examples of this ornate style.
At the end of the 19th century, Budapest grew from a small town to a great metropolis with a burgeoning middle class.
After the Compromise (Ausgleich in German, Kiegyezés in Hungarian) of 1867, which secured a degree of autonomy for Hungary within the Dual Monarchy, many artists, architects and designers wanted to form a cultural identity and embraced the Art Nouveau movement.
The “father” of modern Hungarian architecture, Ödön Lechner, wanted to “Shape a new age in art, to give birth to a new style.”
Art Nouveau became a force for liberation from the Viennese allegiances and pressures and Lechner gave buildings such as the Post Office Savings Bank and the Applied Arts Museum a singular Magyar identity.
Budapest's architecture provides a lasting and vibrant record of Art Nouveau and there are many places where exotic facades by Lechner still brighten up the dusty back streets.
Architects used playful ornamentation on their buildings in reaction to the stultifying restraints of Historicism, the previously popular style in which grand buildings from the past were copied.
Structures often were organic in form, with curving facades, a dramatic departure from the austere, classical regularity.
During this fertile period, applied arts took on added importance.
Architecture and interior design were blended to create buildings of a consistent whole, or Gesamtkunstwerk (complete work of art). Art Nouveau forms appeared not only in architecture but in the organic furniture of Ödön Faragó, Miksa Róth’s gorgeous stained glass, Béla Lajta’s fabulous mosaics and József Rippl Rónai’s Oriental-inspired multi-coloured paintings. Hungarians created their own distinctive Secession style.
They resented the Germanic influence of the Habsburg¹s domination in bilingual Budapest. They feared their Hungarian identity was in danger of being submerged by the growing population of ethnic minorities - Serb, Croat, Slovak, Greek – in the expanding capital. They wanted to make a political statement through art.
Lechner, the most famous Secession architect, led the way “We shall not rediscover a Hungarian form. We shall make one!” he declared.
Although the style Lechner developed was not without contradictions or critics, his influence over a generation of young architects starting out around 1900 was very strong.
Throughout his career he displayed a practical interest in new building materials and techniques as well as historical languages of form.
His early commissions such as the Town Hall in Szeged (1881-1883) drew heavily on the French Renaissance revival style. Lechner acknowledged at the time that he wanted to “harmonise” the “primitive crudeness of Magyar folk art and the refinement of French culture”.
Lechner imagined that he could conceive of a properly Hungarian style by fusing suitable languages of form.
After seeing the Calcutta railway station, he claimed that the archetypal model of this kind of synthesis was to be found in the way imperial British architecture had accommodated Indian architectural forms.
Lechner’s reputation was made by the buildings he designed from the early 1890s.
The Applied Arts Museum and the Geological Institute are credited as being the first examples of Art Nouveau in Hungary.
The Applied Arts Museum was built between 1893 and 1896, in line with plans prepared by Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos. The steel structure above the main hall is stuccoed, and the stuccos follow and demonstrate the logic of the structure while making it more graceful.
The unconventional, exotic appearance of the Applied Arts Museum was enhanced by glazed tiles, wrought ironwork, richly coloured pyrogranite tiles and Orientalist figures by the Zsolnay factory in Pécs and majolica bricks covering the street-facing facade and wings.
Lechner was well informed about the roots of Hungarian culture.
He knew the work of József Huszka, a pioneer of ethnography and he adapted peasant art designs such as the elaborately decorated felt cloak (cifraszûr) worn by men in the villages on special occasions, wooden dowry chests, tables and chairs hand-painted with tulip motifs and embroidered pillow cases.
Lechner preferred as natural motifs the flora and fauna of the Hungarian “peasant countryside”, including tulips and bees over the more exotic and literary orchids and Medusas found in many West European Art Nouveau buildings and interiors.
The tulip design, seen on the Geological Institute and the Postal Savings Bank, went on to become a symbol of Hungarian identity, with its roots in the countryside.
The Zsolnay factory chemists had perfected a lustrous eosin glaze that could withstand the effects of rain, snow and extreme cold. Lechner and others eagerly adopted the ceramics, using them extensively for decorative emphasis.
The blue tile roof of the Geological Institute, the yellow and green roof of the Postal Savings Bank and its exterior tulip design, the underwater vision of the Applied Arts Museum and Róth’s mosaic “painting” at the top of Szervita tér 3 show off the best of the creations.
Lechner’s disciples, christened the Fiatalok continued the Hungarian style, but varied the form. Károly Kós reached back to Transylvanian peasant architecture for inspiration, evident in the bird and pheasant houses at the Budapest Zoo.
Stained glass windows also enhanced many buildings during the Secession, most of them crafted in Miksa Róth’s workshop, in Nefelejcs utca near Keleti station.
The colourful circular window that frames the dome of the Applied Arts Museum displays Róth’s expertise and artistic acumen. Béla Lajta, another student of Lechner at the Budapest Technical University, employed the latest construction methods, using reinforced concrete with floral and geometric designs incised on the facades.
The beautiful, yet crumbling mausoleum that Lajta designed for the Schmidl family in the Kozma utca Izraelita cemetery in District X is a good example of his work.
The Budapest Zoo and Botanical Gardens opened in 1866.
Tens of thousands of animals and plants originating from all over the world are on display here in romantic artificial lakes, among the rocks, in aquariums and glasshouses, and buildings that bear an exotic, eastern influence.
The planners aimed to create living spaces for the animals that correspond to their original environment, and hence established an "international open-air architectural museum", which is significant in itself, even without the dwellers. The elephant house, whose roof is decorated with Zsolnay majolica, is a fine example of sensitive reconstruction.
The ornamental gateway to the zoo, featuring elephants gives a sense of exotic fun to Art Nouveau.

14 (+2) places to find Art Nouveau:

1. Gellért Spa Hotel, XI. Gellért tér.
2. Geological Institute, XIV. Stefánia út 14, Open Mon-Fri 9am-4pm
3. Hungarian Institute for the Blind, XIV Hermina út 74
4. The School for the Blind, XIV Ajtósi Dürer sor 39
5. Academy of Music, VI Liszt Ferenc tér 8
6. Four Seasons Gresham Palace Hotel (Gresham Insurance Co), V. Roosevelt tér
7. Párizsi Nagyáruház (Grand Parisian Department Store), VI. Andrássy út 39.
8. Church of the Philanthropic Foundation, X. Cserkesz utca 7
9. Primary school, mosaics by Zsigmond Vajda, VII. Dob utca 85
10. Philantia Flower Shop, V. Váci utca 9
11. Róth Memorial Museum, VII. Nefelejcs utca 26
12. Post Office Savings Bank, V. Hold utca 4
13. Szent László church, Kőbánya
14. The Schmidl family mausoleum, Kozma utca Izraelita cemetery, Kőbánya

And a little further afield, check out
15. The ‘Little Blue Church’ of Saint Elizabeth in Bratislava, Slovakia by Ödön Lechner 1910-1913
16. Also in Bratislava, the high school at Grösslingova ulica 18 by Ödön Lechner also in 1906-08

Kerepesi Cemetery, Budapest's garden of history

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL
Kerepesi temető
©LRMallows2008


In the warm spring sunshine, plum and nut trees burst into blossom and the grass grows long and lush in verdant green meadows. A striking lime green woodpecker with a crimson head searches for ants. He potters, undisturbed across the lawn. Fifty -four hectares of beautiful park land are criss-crossed by paths, running on compass lines. Geometrically ordered in the style of a French garden, there are also 400 different types of trees, dotted all over, in the haphazard English style.
One-hundred year old chestnut avenues offer a silent haven and the crisp April morning becomes suddenly cold and dark.
A Transylvanian long-eared owl awakes from his doze in the branches overhead and directs one eye at the people below, dressed in black and moving slowly in procession.
We are only 600 meters away from the polluted bustle of Budapest's Keleti station but we could be on the other side of the world. Kerepesi cemetery is a nature reserve, a botanical garden and a history museum - the perfect place to escape for a moment of peace and reflection when the city hysteria becomes overwhelming.
In 1841, Count István Széchenyi decided that there should be a Hungarian national pantheon. Eight years later, burial began in Kerepesi. Until then several smaller cemeteries had been used to bury the dead. In 1885, it was declared a decorative cemetery and Rákoskeresztúr public cemetery was opened to relieve the burden.
Antal Sinka is now retired, but worked for many years as a guide and knows the stories behind every grave.
Acrid smoke comes from Fiumei út over the high surrounding wall. We go down into a crypt while a stone mason examines the damage. Images spring to mind of spirits lurking in the shadows or vampires waiting to pounce, but in broad daylight no self-respecting vampire would leap forth, only three stone sarcophagi sit in a state of dust and decay.
Grave robbers, like pollution, continually threaten the tombs.
Sinka says, "Lajos Batthány was executed in the revolution in 1849 with three bullets. His body was hidden in the church on Rákóczi út and he could not rest in peace until 1867. He was disturbed again in 1993, when grave robbers stole his Ft 22 million sword. They overlooked his wife's Ft 11 million earrings, which have now been placed in the National Museum for safekeeping."
This cemetery has witnessed many funerals of historic importance.
On 6 October 1956, the reburial of László Rajk took place. Rajk (1909 -1949) was an underground communist leader in the 1930's who fought in the Spanish Civil war.
After World War II he was Hungary's Minister of the Interior, and later foreign minister.
Falsely accused of "Titoism," he was arrested and executed in 1949, becoming the most famous victim of the Hungarian purges. In the thaw that followed Stalin's death, he was posthumously rehabilitated and re-interred in Kerepesi cemetery.
The reburial became a mass demonstration, giving a hint of the Uprising which would break out 17 days later.
The most recent major burial in Kerepesi was that of Democratic Forum (MDF) Prime Minister József Antal who died in office in 1993.
His funeral took place on a bitterly cold Saturday evening in December 1993, thousands holding candles and singing mournful hymns in the floodlit dusk.
The grave looks different now, alone in the middle of a bright, sunny meadow.
A modest wooden cross, covered in flower tributes, contrasts with the resting place nearby of a statesman of another time, Ferenc Deák, honored by an ostentatious mausoleum.
The greatest statesman, Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894) has an immense mausoleum currently being restored. Fenced off, the bronze statues of Genius, the Hungarian crest and several white marble lions by the architect and designer Alajos Strobl sit in the grass, instead of on the roof.
Situated in a corner, away from the statesmen and nobility is the workers' pantheon, designed by József Körner in 1958, and fast becoming a museum piece. It is one of the few places in Budapest where you can see the word "Communism" written out in bold letters.
The slogan "A KOMMUNIZMUSÉRT A NÉPÉRT ÉLTEK" (They lived for Communism and for the people") dominates the spacious white stone piazza.
Giant statues of two young men and a woman holding hands in Socialist Realist style gaze out boldly into the future. Six massive white blocks of stone bear reliefs of workers in the field or at war, and remembrance plaques testify to the bravery of socialist workers.
The cavernous two-level crypt underneath can be visited if the unpredictable attendants are on duty. Here, the ashes of politicians and artists find eternal peace. Leo Frankel, Gyula Derkovits and Ferenc Rózsa are just some of many names, recognizable from Budapest street names.
Black ceramic urns stand on shelves carved from Austrian red limestone. One of the urns contains the ashes of a certain Éva Braun. Sinka says, "It was often pointed out to visiting officials to test if they were paying attention. She really lived and, ironically, was a young Jewish member of the partisans.
The name and dates, 1917-1945 are identical to Hitler's mistress."
Behind the Worker's Pantheon is a plot for the heroes of the 1956 uprising. The plot for the "upholders of the system" in 1956 - the secret police or ÁVO - is also in Kerepesi, but Sinka explains, "The two groups were buried on opposite sides because if there was a memorial service for both groups on the same day, there would be fights."
In the workers' movement plot, crimson rose bushes grow on black marble tombs decorated with a gold star. Former Hungarian President János Kádár and his wife, Mária Tamáska, share a modest red marble gravestone in the middle.
Kádár and Antal represented diametrically opposed political systems, but they both share equal amounts of floral tributes and are the two most visited graves in Kerepesi.
Fossilized ammonites can be seen in the polished stone on Kádár's grave. Nearby are some unusual tombstones from the baroque period 1600-1700, featuring skulls and crossbones.
Many of the stones have bullet holes where, "Our Russian brothers" as Sinka adds ironically, were taking pot shots from the steps of Deák's mausoleum, or trying to destroy landmarks to make it difficult for German troops to parachute in.
Poet Endre Ady has what looks like a bandage around his arm but it is a stone plaster, covering a real bullet wound from a Russian gun.

The Arcade is two walls of elaborate graves and statues bought for posterity by wealthy families. One such resident of this eternal avenue of Hungarian elite is the Gundel family, "The kocsma (pub) brothers," as Sinka calls them.
At the four corners are stunning frescos on the ceilings, depicting Biblical scenes interwoven with Transylvanian -style buildings.
Russian soldiers are fenced off in a separate plot. Those who died in 1945, "Saving Hungary from the German fascists," and those who were killed in 1956, "Saving our land from the attacking anti-revolution" as the plaques say. It is one of the few places in Budapest where you can still see a red star.
Two tiny black wild kittens play on the graves, showing a healthy disrespect for death.
Poet János Arany worked under an oak tree on Margit Island and wanted to be buried there, but the authorities forbade it. Instead, he lies on an island of grass. In 1886, the gardener Emil Fuchs planted two acorns from Margit Island next to Arany's grave.
The writer Albert Pákh had a star above his name. This does not always mean a communist worker, Sinka says it also signifies the Hungarian symbol for death. Gyula Baghy, an Esperanto poet, has an "E" in a star on his headstone.
The sculpture Géza Maroti (1875-1941) designed his own gravestone, which is unique in Hungary.
A white marble slab depicts the back view of a naked woman, surrounded by lots of cavorting and canoodling folk and was considered very brazen at the time.
The grave site is situated in the undergrowth, the untended wild land towards the top right-hand corner of the cemetery.
The neighboring Jewish cemetery (entrance 600 meters down Salgótarjáni út) has some very old but impressive large tombs, it has suffered from neglect for many years and is currently undergoing restoration. It is not possible to enter, two giant black dogs as terrifying as Cerberus, guard the gates.

People are warned against going down toward the wall dividing the main cemetery with the Jewish cemetery. In the top right hand corner the grave yard is overgrown, and neglected graves crumble. Dodgy types lurk in the bushes, so women would be best advised to avoid this part.
The writer Mór Jókai (1825-1904) lies in a very simple grave, as he wished, surrounded by a circular colonnade, covered in ivy. On the inside of the ring, sculptures of doves sit as if in the rafters, and round the outside run Jókai's words, "The spirit within me goes with you, it will be there among you all, you will always find me among your flowers, when they wither, you will find me in the leaves, when they fall down, you will hear me in the evening peal of bells, when they die away and when you remember me, I will always be standing by you face to face."
A pair of adult owls live in the tree nearby, keeping watch over the colony of poets. Endre Ady (1877-1919) has a simple stone in the shade of chestnut trees opposite Jókai.
Actress Lujza Blaha (1850-1926) lies just across the way.
A crowd of mourning cherubs and a balladeer surround her death bed.

Mihály Károly, the first president of the Hungarian republic in 1918, is sheltered by a tent-like structure with incredible acoustics.. Like an open whispering gallery, you can send secret messages from one corner to the other. Sinka says, "Károly's daughter, an aged countess came to visit the grave but left in a huff, saying she would only return when all the cobwebs have been removed."
Poet Attila József (1905-1937) lies in a modest grave with his mother and sister, not far from statesman Ferenc Deák's imposing mausoleum. The authorities said it was suicide, and Hungarian law states that a body must be buried in the same town or area as the death. However, the Kisfaludy Society saved money and brought the body to Budapest. In 1955, József was first buried in the Workers' Pantheon section then moved to his present resting place, where a simple white stone marks what is, hopefully, the final resting place of Hungary's best-loved poets.
Near the Russian memorial is the grave of teenager Mária Csizmarovits who died in the 1849 revolution. She disguised herself as a man to get into the army.
The prima donna Mari Jászai bought stone form the first Hungarian theater when it was demolished, to use as her grave stone. The theater stood on the corner of Múzeum körút and Rákóczi út where there is now a business center.
Adam Clark, the Scottish supervisor of the Lánchíd construction is buried in a family tomb. He married the widow Aldasy from a German family. The wording on the tomb is in German.
Nearby is a grave that just says "Léda" She was Adél Brüll, "Léda" in reverse, a married woman who was poet Ady's lover and muse. Their love affair was public knowledge and caused a scandal. When they split up in 1913, Ady wrote a famous farewell letter. She died of syphilis in 1934.
The artists' plot is full of imaginative graves, pianos, theatrical masks and handwritten signatures. Writer Zsigmond Móricz is buried with one of his daughters, the other is about ten meters away. They quarreled and now remain forever not on speaking terms.
Weeping willows hang over the grave of Vilma Hugonai who became the first female doctor in 1903. János Pásztor , a sculptor, used his wife as a model. You can see her likeness in statues on his and many other graves.
She had a particularly beautiful naked figure with rounded buttocks.
An important man was to be buried in the same plot, just behind, but his widow threw a tantrum, complaining that the grave could not face such a peach-like bum. She would not allow his body to share the same graveyard and he was moved to Rákoskeresztúr cemetery in the 17th district.
Coming out of the main gates, you are hit by a blast of smoke and fumes from the lorries thundering along Fiumei út.
It is quite a contrast from the quiet, cool green seclusion of the graveyard.
Kerepesi is a peaceful sanctuary in the heart of the city and one of the best parks for walking and quiet contemplation in Budapest. It is a good place to spend an afternoon or maybe eternity.

Angyalföld, the (working class) Land of Angels

Angyalföld (Angel Land) in District XIII is one of those parts of Budapest always referred to by name rather than number.
As with other working class districts such as Csepel or Ferencváros, people living there have a strong sense of identity and community.
District XIII only became an independent administrative unit 65 years ago on June 1, 1938, and was first called Magdolnaváros (literally 'Magdolna Town') after the wife of Governor Miklós Horthy.
The territory changed in shape and size over the decades.
In 1949 the northern side of Szent István körút was added, plus Újlipótváros and Margitsziget.
The territory has been occupied on and off since the time of the Avars, remains of whom have been found.
Archeologists have also discovered fortresses from Roman times and remains of medieval mills and walls.
At the turn of the 19th century, Budapest developed and expanded rapidly.
Angyalföld ('Angel Land/field'), Ujlipótváros ('New Leopold Town') and Vizafogó ('Sturgeon Catcher') became colourful, crowded living quarters on the outskirts of town, with timber yards, factories, scrap metal yards, ploughed fields and gardens.
Theses alternated with poor cottages, lower middle class dwellings and overcrowded tenements.
A degree of modernization began in 1910 and smaller individual houses were built in one story rows.
During the 19th century, all the undesirable city facilities were moved out to the outskirts, of which Angyalföld was a significant constituent.
The district became the location for the cemetery, madhouse, night shelter, powder mill, barracks and other military institutes.
By the 1920s it was the largest industrial district in Budapest. Many people moved into the there from all parts of Hungary. German, Polish and Slovak immigrants came to find employment, giving the district an eclectic, cosmopolitan, yet hard-working character.
From the beginning of 1900, the area known as Újlipótváros started to transform, as it was the closest to the up-and-coming centre.
Reconstruction began and it became an elegant middle-class living quarter by the 1940s.
Vizafogó was so-called because it was the area of District XIII by the Danube where fish were caught.
'Sturgeon used to swim up this far from the Black Sea and in the 18th century there was local Hungarian caviar production',
explained Attila Molnár, owner of the Arany Kaviár restaurant.
It was filled with country cottages and lodgings, but these disappeared in the 1980s with the construction of high-rise housing districts.
Váci út cuts right through the middle of District XIII.
The first horse-drawn tram route travelled along here, between the-then Széna tér (now Kálvin tér) and and Újpesti Indóház.
It took just 37 minutes to reach the First Hungarian Pest-Fiume Shipyard Company Works.
All along Váci út the factories have been replaced by modern buildings, office blocks and fancy showrooms for cars and mobile telephones providers.
The swanky Duna Plaza shopping mall hunches on a site where the Ganz Ship and Crane Factory once stood.
The 100-year-old office and store buildings were painted red and called the Vas gerenda (Iron beam) by workers.
From the 1950s and 1960s along streets called Béke, Tahi and Fiastyúk, there were ancient factories, which have now been replaced by modern office blocks and houses with gardens.
The Rákos patak (stream) runs along beside Vizafogó utca from Váci út leading towards the river.
The Ördögmalom (Devil Mill) used to stand here, but now the housing estate of Béke-Tahi-Fiastyúk rises up.
Much of Angyalfold was once a marshy bog on the banks of the Danube.
It was a spooky wasteland and there was a rumour that the revolutionary poet Sándor Petôfi's lover was buried under the earth where Lehel tér market now stands.
The land frequently flooded and Város (Town) magazine noted in December, 1931, 'It was not unusual to find a
block of houses completely barricaded off by knee-high water, that the only way to get there was by raft'.
When the land was drained and building work began, Angyalföld rapidly became the centre of the mid-19th century industrial revolution that swept into Hungary.
Workers and peasants arrived to take up jobs in new factories opened by entrepreneurs from across Europe.
One of the first was a Herr Engel and the area was renamed Engelfeld in his honour.
Other names are also synonymous with the area: Láng, Ganz and Schlik.
László Láng, born in Bratislava/Pressburg/Pozsony in 1868, opened a factory making parts for the mill industry in 1925.
The site is now used by a company making electronic products.
The area around the site of the First Hungarian Screw Factory, now the venue for a shopping mall, was a rough and tumble part of town.
The newspaper Népszava warned in January 1910, 'There are no honourable, negotiable streets to be found here, and there is not enough lighting, so that you don't dare venture out into the street in the evening without a revolver or a big stick'.
Angyalföld developed in a pattern similar to working class communities across Europe, but after the First World War, the peaceful evolution was shattered.
In 1919, Béla Kun's Council of Republics was set up, workers' committees took control of the factories and the Party of Hungarian Communists began organizing in Angyalföld.
The defeat of the short-lived Republic and the White Terror which followed, drove many leaders of the workers' movements underground or away from Hungary.
Repression and poverty became particularly bad in the area of Angyalfold around Gyöngyösi utca which became nicknamed Tripolisz.
The area remained notorious and poverty-stricken until the slums were cleared after the Second World War.
A certain young János Kádár worked as a machinist in an Angyalföld umbrella factory and his first project in the then-illegal Communist Party was to distribute leaflets outside a local textile factory.
After the Second World War, Kádár became leader of the district party (and later ruler of the country) and was officially the area's MP for nearly 25 years.
Kádár called Angyalföld, 'the beating heart of the working class movement' and returned to his old textile factory to meet the workers every year until his death.
Ironically, it was the Kádár-led government that started to change the character of Angyalföld.
The community was broken up, the slums of Tripolisz were cleared and the workers shifted out to Békásmegyer on the Buda side and new residents moved in from other parts of town.
Workers arrived from the countryside and stayed in hostels around Fay utca.
The area which is now a center for the Chinese community with a market and many wholesale shops, was notorious for drunken parties on Friday nights when the workers drank away their wages.
József Tóth, once district secretary of the Communist Youth League, now Socialist Party mayor of Angyalföld is positive about the future of the area.
He says that many Western companies were interested in the district because of good communications and the vacant space left by the old State factories.
Walking along Váci út, the impression is of a constantly developing part of town which has successfully attracted significant foreign investment.
The socialist workers may have gone, but the drones of the free market economy have taken their place. District XIII is a place of regeneration and renewal.
[First published May 2003]

Budapest's Szent Lukács gyógyfürdô & uszoda

©LRMallowsLukacsBp2007

The Szent Lukács gyógyfürdô

The Szent Lukács gyógyfürdô is the most beautiful medicinal thermal bath complex in Budapest.
The Széchenyi has history and all the chess-playing bácsis (crusty old uncles) for the tourists, the Gellért has fin-de-siecle glamour and that wave pool (keep away from the wandering hands of crusty old uncles here!) and the Király and Rudas have their daring, quasi homo-erotic, steamy sense of danger (after all, think of all those verrucas you could catch).
The frumpy old Lukács isn’t a tourist destination, it’s a place for locals to kick off their papucs (slippers), soak their creaking joints and have a right old gossip within the crumbling, yellowing Baroque walls of the most atmospheric spa facilities in Central Europe.
The medicinal thermal bath recently opened its doors to show off a brand new ivócsarnok - drinking hall, where visitors can buy a korsó (half-litre stein) of mineral and salt-rich water to refresh their palates and help them live longer.
The building resembles a Greek temple and in pride of place is a pink marble fountain, from where gushes forth water, strangely labelled ‘not drinking water’.
However, to the right is a dark grey marble basin and patrons can fill up jugs from a golden dragon tap.
For five forints you can drink a korsó, filled with the warm, slightly eggy-tasting water and go away feeling you have done something good for your system.
Half a litre is considered the optimum daily intake, needed for the minerals and salts to be effective.
‘Budapest is really the capital of spas, and we hope the Szent Lukács will be a symbol of better times’, said Budapest deputy mayor Pál Vajda at the opening.
Renovation started in November 1997, at a cost of Ft25 million, mainly financed by revenue from tourism.
Gábor Horváth, CEO of Budapest's Thermal Baths and Spas Rt said the drinking hall was originally opened in 1937 when the first conference of the International Bathing Association was held in Budapest, acknowledging the thermal bath potential of the Hungarian capital. ‘This was really a peak in Budapest thermal bath life’, said Horváth.
However, since the turn of the century, thermal water has been bottled in green glass bottles and distributed around the world.
By the time the drinking hall was opened, more that five million bottles per year were being produced and exported to many counties around the world. Szent Lukács water can be bought in Buenos Aires, Mexico, Hong Kong and Sydney.
The bath suffered severe damage during the Second World War and a lack of funds prevented refurbishment.
Now the hall has been reconstructed according to original plans, ‘and there will be more opportunities to drink the healthy water on the spot’, said Horváth.
The Lukács thermal water contains calcium, magnesium and hydrogen carbonate, a significant amount of fluoride and the eggy, sulphurous compounds.
Drinking the water is good for stomach and intestinal problems, gallbladder, kidney stones and lung airway disorders.
Bathing in the water, in one of the many facilities: mud baths, medicinal weight baths, underwater jet stream massage or just relaxing in the warm water is effective in the treatment of degenerative joint diseases, spinal problems or for rehabilitation treatment after an accident.
If you go further into the main courtyard of Szent Lukács, you are confronted with what must be the most beautiful courtyard in a city blessed with many stunning courtyards.
The crumbling, yellow Baroque walls surround a shaded place where tall century-old maples rise up through the tiles and succulent lilies create an oasis of cool calm health and relaxation.
On the walls, stone tablets thank the saint in many languages.
‘Stubborn lumbago tortured me for years, Saint Lukács cured me immediately’, wrote Benô Sághy in 1899.
There is a tablet in Serbian deciated by Militsza Jankovitseva in 1906, one from Viennese Carl Horak in 1902, and one offering thanks from a Romanian lawyer Petru Caliunariu.
The earliest appears to be from 1898.
When it opened in 1894, the Szent Lukács was the biggest at 1,800m2, and the most popular spa in Budapest.
Besides those coming for cures, the Szent Lukács was also a favourite wallowing hole for writers and artists and it still remains popular in literary circles.
It was an informal literary salon, more recently with a dissident flavor from the 1950’s to the mid-1980’s.
The stone sunbathing terrace on top of the building is particularly atmospheric.
During the Turkish occupation, the Lukács territory held a four-towered castle which had been adapted into a medieval gunpowder mill.
The Turks called it Barutháné and the Buda Pasha Arszlan redecorated the building in 1565-66.
West of the mill building, a warm spring rose up from the hillside and the resulting millpond water drove the wheels to grind powder.
The building was also used in the manufacture of felt material, the mill still operated in the winter, because the warm water did not freeze over.
In the 1686 struggle to regain territory the place was returned unharmed to the possession of the Emperor, although they still used it as a gunpowder mill for long after.
Given the Turks’ fondness for hot baths, the hot waters surrounding the millpond were used for the creation of a pool, and in the vicinity of Barutháné were several other hot baths.
In the 1850's the Lukács baths functioned in the courtyard of the Emperor Mill ‘in whose tubs agricultural workers from the country bath as a curative method’, read a periodical of the time.
In 1863 the baths’ territory was enlarged, and in 1884 Rezsô Palotay bought the baths from the state treasury. The Emperor mill was demolished, one of the towers was used to build a new pool.
In 1893 Palotay took over the running of services in the Szent Lukács and built mud baths, steam baths, a sanatorium and swimming pools.
The Szent Lukács medicinal and thermal pool opened its doors to the public in 1894.
In 1946, the Lukács united with the Császár Baths, which has also reopened its pools and excellent sun-bathing terraces recently on the banks of the Danube.
Water of a temperature of 17 -65 degrees comes from natural sources and drilled wells.
The calcareous, hydrogen sulfuric water is good for rheumatics, muscle and nerve illnesses and joint. problems.
The Lukács is one of the few thermal baths in Budapest which offers mud treatments.
Trained attendants will slap on revitalizing mud, rich in minerals, salts and massage away you aches and illnesses as you sit among Budapest¹s literary society, who come here to gossip and heal.


Saint Lukács gyógyfürdô & uszoda (thermal 'health' bath & pool)
District II. Budapest,
Frankel Leó utca 25-29.
Tel 326-1695
www.lukacsfurdo.hu
Open daily 06.00—19.00
Day ticket with locker (2006) Ft1,500 – leave within 2hrs you get Ft400 back, within 2-3hrs Ft200
Day ticket with changing cabin (2006) Ft1,700 – leave within 2hrs you get Ft400 back, within 2-3hrs Ft200.
Hang on to your tickets!

Facilities include
Steam baths
Pool (06.00—19.00)
Underwater jetstream massage
Doctor's massage
Mud and weight baths

Drinking fountain ivókút open 06.00—18.00 Mon-Fri, 06.00—12.00 Sat/Sun.
You can drink korsós of healthy water full of minerals on the spot.
Half a liter costs Ft5…..yum, yum

Trabant - the little car that could

The Tale of the Trabi
©LRMTrabantTales2008

The image of Hungary's most popular, populist car, the noisy, blue-smoke belching Trabant was so linked with the system that many now see it as a symbol of the Communist era in Eastern Europe.
However, although the Trabant and Communism shared many similarities: clumsy, smelly, uncomfortable, and some say unattractive, there is one major difference.
Communism collapsed with the Berlin wall in 1989, but the Trabi is still rolling along. In 1997 enthusiasts, nostalgists and those who use their Trabi every day as a trusty method of going to work, celebrated the fortieth birthday of the beloved Trabi.
The Trabant turned 50 in 2007, and although a brief mid-life crisis threatened its existence, it continues to cough and splutter through the streets of Budapest.
Love it or loath it, the Trabi won't go away. Budapest mayor Gábor Demszky tried unsuccessfully in 1995 to rid the capital of the Trabant. The Green program offered two years' free BKV transport pass, worth Ft30,000 for those who traded in their Trabi's.

Demszky did not bargain on three things:
people with small businesses needed their Trabants,
a painter and decorator could not take his equipment on the metro,
you can pack the contents of a small flat into a Trabant.

Despite the low fuel-mileage ratio, Trabants are relatively cheap to buy and workers could not afford anything else and thirdly, people loved their 'soap-dish' Trabis.
The company that won the tender to clear the Trabants from the streets of Budapest, allegedly recycled the cars as spare parts and out of 200 Trabants that were traded in, 120 were back on the streets in some shape or form.
Gábor Muczán runs the Trabant-Wartburg club from his home behind Farkasréti cemetery.
It started in 1994 with a few auto-enthusiasts and has grown to a membership of nearly 400 Trabant and Wartburg fans, who meet five times a year, and make annual pilgrimages to the Trabant factory in Zwickau.
He says although the Trabants were made in the former NDK -East Germany, "Out of all the Communist countries, Hungary had the most, other countries like then Czechoslovakia had the Skoda, Romania the Dacia, the Soviet Union the Lada and East Germany also had the Wartburg.
In Hungary, there are still 300,000 Trabants on the road, it seems like there are less because there are so many other brands too, but the Trabants are not disappearing."
Muczán's car collection at present stands at 14 automobiles, crowding his garage and the road in front of his house. Muczán often visits Germany, where he can, "Buy a Trabi for the price of a burger," because the German environmental tax on the Trabi makes it now as expensive to run as a Mercedes.
Fortunately, his wife Kriszti shares his love for Trabants and when they married in 1993, they drove off in a decorated P601, "There is no limit to the silliness, " says Kriszti, showing off her trophy she collected in the 1997 Trabant and Wartburg slalom race, for first place in the "remodeled" category.
She used to work in an environmental protection agency, and said it's true the Trabi smells bad, "But look at all the other cars on the road, a 20-year old Zhiguli is much worse, it's just the Trabi's blue smelly smoke is so obvious."
The Muczáns' kitchen is decorated with number plates of cars, mostly Trabants that Gábor has owned or renovated.
A brown bottle, once filled with Trabant beer, produced in Zwickau-home of the Trabi, sits on the table.
Many people use the Trabant-Wartburg club as an information service, as members try to get the original spare parts. "Not everybody treats their Trabi as a hobby, for many it is a useful tool, taking them to work and back," says Muczán.
The Trabant is not as beautiful as an Italian car, not as fast as a Japanese, not as road-worthy as a Swedish or filled with character like a French model, but it is reliable.
No car starts in the cold like a Trabi and once going, it just keeps rolling along.
The Trabant may appear boring to some, but riding in it involves an element of danger, "If you crash, it's the end," says Muczán.
The panels were made from Duroplast, a compressed mixture of resin and polyester, which was light, easily available, rust-proof and cheap. However, on impact it would crumble.
Only the equally tiny and tinny Polski Fiat has such a high-risk impact factor. Interestingly, early American Pontiacs also used Duroplast. However, from an environmental point of view, the Duroplast is totally non-recyclable and although a crash may reduce it to smithereens, those little mosaic tiles of blue, beige and olive green will never disappear.
Because it was so light, it only required a two-stroke engine, 26 horsepower, giving the Trabi its unique cough and splutter, similar to a Budapest pensioner after 50 years of Munkás cigarettes.
All cars in the 50's were large and heavy. "The Trabant was an innovation, a world class car then," says Muczán.
The life and times of the Trabi make interesting reading.
It had an imperfect birth, in fact it was never meant to be a car, but a rain-proof motorcycle with a boot, thus cheap transport for all the family.
The name Trabant derives from the German word for satellite or escort henchman, the verb 'trab' means to trot along.
Trabant production ceased in 1990, because the hand made cars suited the socialist system, where everybody had a job and labour was subsidized by the State.
"Now everything is automated, the Trabant would be too expensive to make," says Muczán.
Communism ran according to "Plan economics - nothing like what people actually want," says Muczcán, and he calls it a miracle that the Trabant, a product of plan economics actually works.
Trabant engineers were some of the most talented in the business, but their creativity was often stifled by the system. In the early days, the car's shape was considered both innovative and beautiful, and it was one of the first of its type to have the engine in the front.
In 1972, Trabant engineers designed a super Trabi like a future Renault 5, but East German president Honnecker didn't allow anything special, he said the people only needed the most basic car to get them from A to B, to work and back every night, not something to go gallivanting across borders in. "Communism did not allow fancy models in anything, although some special Trabants were built, they were locked in museums and their blue-prints burnt," says Muczán.
There were Trabants that resembled the modern Fiat Uno, although no record of them exists.
The normal type was the P601, in 1969 the talented Trabant engineers designed a 603 model, but after a resounding "No" from Honnecker, the engineers left the country.
Story has it, that they began work for Volkswagon and turned the Trabi 603 into what is now the highly successful VW Golf 1.
It is said that they developed a special fuel additive so that Trabants and Wartburgs appeared to run faster in East Germany. There are reports that the Trabant know-how and machinery has been sold to Egypt, Ecuador and India.
Trabants were first used in East Germany as a military vehicle, and one of many Trabant jokes says the Trabants are great for attack because of the terrifying noise they make, but you cannot escape in one as they are too loud.
In 1991, the Trabant 601 was fitted with a four-stroke, 50 horsepower engine, originally used in the VW Polo, the result was a shaky and unmanageable bomb.
The Trabi has had its moments. Recently VW Golf conducted a Reindeer Test (so called because it simulates the swerving necessary if a reindeer jumped out in front of the car on an icy road) as a marketing ploy.
Several makes of car were tested, the Mercedes turned over.
German journalists took a two-stroke Trabant to Sweden and it passed the reindeer test at 75 kmph, the Mercedes turned over at 60 kmph. This was the greatest humiliation for the supercilious western engineers.
On November 9, 1989, the Berlin wall came down, and unforgettable images were seen throughout the world media.
A cacophony of honking echoed down Berlin's Ku'damm.
Described by some as a "horn concerto," it was the sound of hundreds of Trabants. For months a trickle of these had escaped to the West with their East German owners, when the then Hungarian foreign minister Gyula Horn allowed them an exit route through the more liberated Hungarian territory.
The tiny hole in the wall turned the trickle into a flood, and the Trabant, the most rickety vehicle known to man became a symbol of freedom.
However, when consumerism took hold, Trabis were out, Audis, Fiats and Renaults were in.
The star of the liberation reverted to the sad epitome of socialism, inefficient, slow, dog-eared and dull and nobody wanted it.
Then, the Trabant production line at the Zwickau Automobile factory was nearing its three millionth car, but it never made it. Work faltered and then stopped. Outside, rows of new vehicles waited for thier owners tocome to pick them up, but they waited in vain.
At that time you could barely give a Trabi away. So shattered was the market that there were even small ads in local papers, offering to swap cars for packets of cigarettes.
However, in the West, the Trabi's cult status spread as museums, galleries and even rock groups picked up cars for a song. In the early 1990's, U2 took a fleet on tour as part of their Achtung Baby set.
Bono has his own light blue P601.
In the sixties and seventies, at the height of Trabi-mania, the car still had a fuel tank perched on top of the engine, with a dipstick instead of a fuel guage.
It had, however, developed a mystique based on a huge waiting list. For most families, getting a Trabant was a far, far longer process than having children.
To be sure of having a car in your thirties, you had to put in your application as soon as you turned 18.
After 13-15 years, customers would receive a letter announcing that their P601 was ready. If they then had any particular requests - a radio, go-faster stripes - these were then put in the pre-contract, and would add a further six months to delivery.
Even then, your Trabant wasn't ready to drive away.
The body had to be sealed, and you were advised to tighten all the screws you could see, as well as grease and oil all the working parts.
The Trabi traditionally has only one item on the dashboard, under the flat windscreen, a combination speedometer and odometer.
It was precisely the Trabant's "primitivity" that made it the people's car, "It is easy to drive, easy to mend, you just get in it and go," says Muczán.
Prospective car owners would pray they were not alloted a P601 in beige.
The choice of colours was limited to beige, bathroom tile light blue and olive green which was used by the German army border patrol.
Muczán shows off one of his collector's items, an early model that was considered quite racey as the side panels were beige, but the roof was light blue!
When, in the early 1970's the average salary of a Hungarian worker stood at around Ft 3,500 a month, a Trabant was selling for Ft48,000. In the 1980's you could get one for Ft100,000, a relative increase much smaller than that of other Eastern cars. For your money, you received a 500cc, 620-kilo sticking plaster bomb, or soap dish, which did 0-80 kmph in little more than 20 seconds.
It had all the acceleration of an overweight slug and might be capable of reaching 100kmph going downhill with a strong wind behind.
The engine itself was so light, that it could be lifted out by one man and rally-racing Trabants often carried a spare one in the boot.
Muczán raced Trabis for years and says Trabants and Wartburgs raced in the Monte Carlo rally, a Wartburg even won in its category.
In Germany now there are Trabant clubs all over the country and a huge Trabant sculpture is planned as a symbol of the past regime. The last Trabi was made in 1992 and the factory was transformed into a modern plant for Opel.
However, Zwickau remains a place of pilgrimage for the annual Trabi rally, last year attended by 10,000 people from across Europe.
The Trabant in its proud ugliness has outlived the system and the factory's demise and rolls along, remaining the most communist car of all, a true car for the people.

Trabant jokes
How do you double the value of a Trabi ?
Fill it with petrol.

Why does a Trabi have safety belts?
So that you can use it as a rucksack if it breaks down.

What does a Trabi owner do about potholes?
Park in them

What does the P601 stand for?
600 order it, but only one gets it.

April 2004
Those who trade in their two-stroke Trabis for one with a catalytic converter will now receive Ft200,000 incentive. After May 1 and entering the EU, only cars with catalytic converters will be considered road-worthy. Old-style Trabi lovers have until July 15 2004 to swap their beloved set of wheels, or at least update their mechanics. Disabled Trabi owners can get either Ft200,000 cash back or a Ft400,000 loan from the Environment and Nature Protection, Water Authority. (Orszagos Kornyezetvedelmi, Termeszetvedelmi es Vizugyi Foigazgatosaghoz). The financial reward will only go to those who promise to take their smelly, smoky Trabis out of circulation and buy a car, younger than ten years old, four-stroke, catalytic converter fitted set of wheels. Pensioners who refuse to give up their tried and trusted Trabis will be able to buy the catalytic equipment for Ft20,000.
Information from the KvVM department Tel 477-7400. or on the website http://sansz.ngo.hu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2362

New York Palace history

When it opened in 1894, the New York Palace was home to a coffeehouse reputed to be ‘the most beautiful cafe in the world’ and a renowned centre for Budapest literary life. Fast-forward a century or so, and the building was a sorry sight, devastated by war and regimes not interested in aesthetics.
The Boscolo Group acquired the building in 2001 for €2.5 million and has invested a further €80 million in extensive renovation.
In May 2007, after a five-year restoration effort, overseen by Maurizio Papiri, Ádám Tihány and the lighting designer Ingo Maurer, the Boscolo Group, a small yet sophisticated Italian hotel chain, reopened the ‘palace’ as Budapest's latest luxury lodgings: a clear attempt at unseating the five-star monarch, the Four Seasons Gresham Palace.
Writers, artists and intellectuals flooded in and gazed around at the opulence, hoping for literary inspiration.
At the re-opening of the legendary watering hole, Pest district VII mayor György Hunvald said it signified a 'turning point' for the district.
Those with an interest in architecture, Hungarian history or literary coffee houses can sit, sip a coffee in the legendary kávéház (coffee house) and admire the sensitive restoration work on the ceiling murals, and the freshly gilded marble columns of the historic coffee house.
The ceiling tableaux, depicting muses, have been carefully restored to their former glory while respecting the original colours and technology of the period. In the ‘ladies room’ the gilding of the stucco is a sight worth powdering one's nose for.
The gorgeous 112-year-old building, which was a legendary meeting place for the Pest artistic world, later functioned as a sports equipment shop and an Ibusz office.
The investors, the Italian Boscolo group hoped to recreate the turn-of-the-century ambience with a luxury, five-star, 180-room hotel and coffee house.
The new building occupies the site of New York Palace and the demolished former Athenaeum Nyomda (Printing House) on Osvát utca behind the New York Palace.
At the turn of the last century, Budapest was known as the ‘City of 500 Cafes’One of the grandest of these was the New York Kávéház (Coffee House) standing at Erzsébet körút 9-11, near Blaha Lujza tér in the heart of Pest.
The New York Palace was built in 1894, to plans by Alajos Hauszmann, as a showcase for the New York Insurance Company. The Gresham Palace (soon to open as the Four Seasons Gresham Palace) and the Adria Palace (now Le Meridian Budapest Hotel) were also built for insurance companies.
It's interesting how the dullest jobs get the most gorgeous locations.
The building was designed by Alajos Hauszmann, and built by Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl in an Italian Renaissance style with eclectic ornate elements.
The frescos in the corridors and rooms were created by Gusztáv Magyar-Mannheimer, Ferenc Eisenhut and the celebrated artist Károly Lotz.Locals were struck by the interior’s resemblance to the Bayern King Lajos II’s palace.
Inside were the insurance company’s offices (their motto at the end of the 19th century was ‘the best of everything’), and the ground floor was rented out as the New York Cafe.
The New York was concocted in a spectacular melange of styles with curly gilded marble columns, bronze details, colourful murals and ornate chandeliers.
It immediately attracted Budapest’s literary society; authors, poets, journalists, intellectuals and Bohemians all filled its tables.
The artists and intellectuals would sit at their appointed alcove tables while visitors were relegated to the ‘deep end’ (the mélyvíz), a lower floor surrounded by galleries on the ground floor, thus resembling an indoor swimming pool.
Impoverished writers could linger all day over the special ‘writers’ dish’ a bargain-priced plate of bread, cheese and salami. Regulars were even provided with pens, paper and unlimited ‘fekete leves’ (‘black soup’ the local term for coffee) and spend entire days within the inspirational walls, ruminating over a manuscript.
The maitre d’ during the period, Gyula Reisz, known to all as the ‘literary head waiter’ gave endless credit for his select literary guests.
Like Gyôzô Mészáros at the Centrál Coffee House in Pest's district V, he was not a great businessman, but he earned his place in Hungarian literary history.
Dr Miksa Arányi was the Hungarian representative of the New York Insurance Company. The first leaser of the coffee house was Sándor Steuer, who was a member of a large cafe house family dynasty.
The grand opening was held on October 23, 1894 in time for the excitement of the Millennium celebrations in 1896.The coffee house’s literary scene really blossomed when the Harsányi brothers took over the management.
Lajos Nagy remembered the literary atmosphere in his work ‘Budapest nagykávéház’. He wrote, “There are some guests who do their books here, some who write verse, some sell their books, look for a job or churn out articles”.
It must have been pleasant to while away the afternoon in the spacious rooms, among the curly columns, winding staircases, and statues.
There were two game rooms, one decorated in Rococo style, the other in Renaissance. The gigantic glass separating walls were painted by Gedeon Walther in different styles; with Japanese, Turkish, Baroque, Pompeii and Renaissance elements.
The tables and chairs were bronze and the game rooms’ furniture was made from wood. The tasteful light fittings were a special attraction and unique to the New York.
The New York can be considered the birthplace of modern Hungarian literature. Almost immediately after opening in 1894, the Pesti Napló editorial moved in.
Writers Sándor Bródy, Endre Nagy and Simon Kemény set up their regular tables alongside luminaries from the film world, including the young Sándor Korda and his associates.
Actors, journalists and aspiring writers all gathered to soak up the atmosphere and browse through the impressive collection of some 400 periodicals and papers which arrived regularly.In 1908, the legendary literary journal ‘Nyugat’ set up home here, and Magyar Hírlap also operated from one of the offices on the floors above.
Regular visitors were Kálmán Mikszáth, Endre Ady, Gyula Krúdy.Zsigmond Móricz came here to seek out the editor of Nyugat, Ernő Osvát, always to be found at his table in the gallery.
Dezső Kosztolányi even immortalised the literary venue in a poem, which began,

“Newyork, you are the coffee house,
where I sat so often,
Let me open your door,
and maybe I can sit down for a while,
Just like a beggar who rests on a bench,
And look around at what remains within me and all around...”

Ferenc Molnár wrote most of his great work ‘Liliom’ here.
Soon after the coffee house opened, legend states that Molnár hurled the main door key to the New York Café into the Danube saying that it should never close.
However, one day it was forced to close for renovations. The cafe flourished until the First World War, enjoyed a brief revival in the thirties, and then went into decline.
It suffered significant bomb damage during the Second World War and was ignominiously rammed by a Russian tank during the 1956 Uprising. In the 1950s, the New York was turned into a sports equipment shop and an Ibusz office, then, after closing in the late 1990’s, its blackened exterior was shrouded in protective sheets and wooden scaffolding for years, with only the spire soaring unhindered skywards.
During the Socialist period, the café was renamed the Hungária kávéház, and was famous for the slowest and most surly staff in town.
Now it sits on the regenerating Nagykörút (Grand Boulevard), just along from the newly-refurbished Corinthia Grand Royal Hotel, and urges the progress of the great revival.

New York Palace Kávéház (and hotel)
Budapest - District VII
Erzsébet körút 9-11
Getting there: Metro 2 (red line), tram 4, 6 to Blaha Lujza tér
Tel (+36 1) 886-6111
New York Palace website

Fő utca story

©LRM2007 Szent Anna templom

Fô utca, or Main Street, cuts through the Water Town district of Buda, running in a long straight line from Clark Ádám tér north to Bem József tér.
Fô utca was previously called Alsó Fô utca (Lower Main Street) in 1874, before 1695 it was Ország út (Land Strasse) and before that, around 1440, it was called Duna utca.
The busy traffic-crammed street begins at the nearly permanently blocked roundabout at Clark Ádám tér. The gaping hole where Miklós Ybl’s Budai Savings Bank building once stood is soon to be developed into an ultra-modern office complex.
Fô utca 1 on the right-hand side belongs to the Central Court of the Buda District.
It was designed by Ybl in 1867-69.
On the left-hand side at Fô utca 2 is a three-sided Romantic building designed by Hugó Máltás (1860-61).
It was built for the widow of Dutch shipbuilder J A Majson who came to Hungary at the invitation of Count István Széchenyi.
Fô utca 3 was also designed by Máltás in 1861-66, in a neo-Classical style.
The premises are now occupied by the Ferenczy István Visual Workshop, named after a well-known 19th century sculptor who had a studio here until 1834.
The next stretch of the street is well-supplied with food and drink. A sörözô, the new Belgian Abbey restaurant, Korean food at the Seoul House and the Ping Chinese restaurant all share a 50-meter length.
The laundromat at number 10 has an atmospheric old-style neon column advertising Patyolat (laundry) in blue and white letters contrasting with the yellowing tower on this elegant building.
The District I Cultural Center (Mûvelôdési ház) stands at Fô utca 11-13.
A plaque on the wall reads that a Polish team of doctors occupied this house and many were killed on March 19, 1944.
The building was designed by István Lánzbauer and built in 1880 for Count Gyula Andrássy.
At Fô utca 14-18 you can see an old portion of wall in front of a modern, all-glass building.
These are the remains of a medieval house which was reconstructed in the 17th century.
The French Institute, designed by Frenchman George Maurios and opened in 1992, stands at Fô utca 17, opposite the Jardin de Paris restaurant which is situated in the most beautiful building on the street, the historic Kapisztory House, built in 1811 for a Greek merchant.
György Békesy (1899-1972), the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and experimental physicist, worked and lived at number 19 until 1946, commemorated by a black marble plaque on the wall.
The Horgász Tanya at number 27 is a good place to enjoy fish dishes and opposite, at number 25, is a new coffee shop, the Soho Coffee Company (see cafe review on page 2).
Fô utca then opens out into the bare and muddy Corvin tér.
The church on the south side was formerly a Capuchine monastery in the 18th century and, prior to that, the original medieval church on this site was used as a mosque by the occupying Ottomans.
You can see a Turkish door on the southern wall.
At the north of the square is the Buda Vigadó building, built by Mór Kallina and Aladár Árkay in 1900.
This is the home of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble and Civil Rádió.
Along the right-hand side of Corvin tér is the back of the Art’otel, occupying four fishermen’s cottages in custard, pink, pale green and sun yellow.
If you’re getting thirsty by now you can pop into the Ampelos Kisvendéglô at Corvin tér 6. Fô utca emerges for a few paces then disappears immediately into Szilágyi Dezsô tér.
The Hungarian-Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941) was born at Szilágyi Dezsô tér 4.
Another plaque reveals the interesting detail that composer Béla Bartók lived in the same building from 1922-28.
Opposite stands the red-brick neo-Gothic Calvinist church whose roof is adorned with ceramic Zsolnay tiles from the Pécs factory.
The church was designed and built in 1893-96 by Sámuel Pecz, who created the Main Market Hall, also with Zsolnay tiles. There is a tiny statue by Béla Berán of Pecz dressed in medieval master builder’s clothes on a drinking fountain in the tiny park surrounding the church.
The building suffered bomb damage in the Second World War and was restored in the 1980s. Outside the church on the river bank is a memorial to the March 15, 1848 revolution with the message 'Hazádnak rendületlenül' (steadfastly for your homeland).
Fô utca leads onward to Batthyány tér and on the right is one of Budapest’s important Baroque monuments, the Szent Anna Church (1740-62). It was built for Jesuits by Kristóf Hamon, Máté Nepauer and Mihály Hamm.
Lack of funds and an earthquake in 1763 hampered the building work and consecration only occurred in 1805.
Batthyány tér was once called Bomba tér because a cannon and ammunition depot was situated here. In the 18th century it was the site of a market and thus called Upper Market Square.
Batthyány refers to Count Lajos Batthyány, the Prime Minister of the 1848 Hungarian Government.
On the left is Market No VI, now occupied by a modern supermarket.
Next door is Nagyi Palacsintázója where you can eat pancakes with dozens of assorted savoury or sweet fillings. (2004 -San Marzano, the Hungarian version of English pizza chain Pizza Express, have just opened their third Budapest venue next door)
Next to the pancake shop is a beautiful Baroque building with Rococco ornamentation at the lower level, marred somewhat by a neon "Casanova" sign.
Two hundred years ago it was the White Cross Inn, a popular place of entertainment to which a marble plaque in the bar testifies. According to legend, the serial seducer Giovanni Jacopo Casanova once stayed there when he came to Buda to take the water cure after many years languishing in prison.
Casanova is also famous as the place where high-pitched pop singer Jimmy Zámbó (who accidentally shot and killed himself at a New Year’s party at his Csepel home on January 2, 2001) began his musical career.
In 1795 stonemason Hikisch Kristóf built the house next door at Batthyány tér 3 for himself. This is also a three-story Louis XVI-style house.
On Batthyány tér the big red building on the north side was once a Franciscan Monastery, then a hospital run by nuns. It was built in the 18th century.
Outside it is a statue of Ferenc Kölcsey created in 1939 by the sculptor Ede Kallós. Kölcsey (1790-1838) wrote the Himnusz, the Hungarian national anthem.
Carrying on along Fô utca on the right, renovation is taking place on the pastel blue Wounds of Saint Francis church. Deemed a national monument, the church was built in Baroque style by Hans Jakab 1731-1757.
Fô utca crosses over Csalogány utca and there is a wonderful, leafy florist’s shop on the corner.
Opposite at Fô utca 68, a socialist constructivist relief shows three stonemasons struggling with a block of stone.
The street then reaches Nagy Imre tér where the Foreign Ministry stands facing the river.
The square was previously called Bolgár Elek tér, and one old sign is still in place.
The forbidding building on the north side of the square is a prison.
A gold-coloured plaque on the wall reads, "In this building operated the Buda uprising groups and the organizers of the new democratic, national revolutionary forces."
At the northwest corner another plaque commemorates the martyrs and heroes. On June 15, 1958, Imre Nagy and other martyrs were sentenced to death in this building.
In July 1999, Attila Ambrus, the "Whiskey Robber", escaped from an upper story window using bed sheets tied together.
Back on Fô utca the upmarket Kacsa Vendéglô, specializing in duck dishes, stands opposite the faded green peeling walls of the Király Thermal Baths, also situated down some cobbled steps at a lower level.
At Fô utca 88 stands an egg yolk-yellow church built in 1759-1760. Churches are this colour because it was Maria Theresa’s favourite colour. It was built with money from Antal Christ and given to the Greek Catholics. The church was found to be sinking and in 1937 it was raised by 1.40 meters by Fridrich Lajos.
Fô utca ends at Bem József tér.
The Polish General "Papa" Bem fought with the Hungarians in the 1848 Revolution against the Habsburgs, scoring victories over the Austrian and Russian armies in Transylvania.
The statue commemorates the Battle of Piski.
When the uprising collapsed, Bem fled to Turkey and died in 1854 bearing the name of Amarut Pasha after converting to Islam. In 1956, students rallied by Bem’s statue.
Article filed April 2002.

Andrássy út - a street of dreams

©LRM2007 Kodály körönd

Politician and nobleman Count Gyula Andrássy returned to Hungary in the 1880s after a period in France, with his head full of ideas. Like most visitors to Paris, he was impressed by the grandeur of the Champs Elysées and decided that Budapest also needed a grand boulevard to complement the boom in building, transport and cultural life in the city at the end of the 19th century.

"However, Andrássy út turned out even better, and under its length in 1896 we created the first underground railway on the European continent, three years before Paris," said Éva Tétényi, chief architect for District VI.

Budapest's most elegant boulevard leads north east from Deák Ferenc tér to Hôsök tere, the square of heroes and gateway to the Városliget (City Park). The 2.5km boulevard resembles the Champs Elysées in grandeur, atmosphere and layout. Previously the only route was along Király utca which was narrow and crowded.

When the avenue was renovated in 1995, the candelabra lamps, cobblestones, antiquated phone booths and metro and bus-stop signs were the result of campaigning by the City Protection Office and leader Mihály Ráday.

The street was first called Sugár út (Radial Strasse) in 1883, Andrássy út in 1886, Sztálin út (1950) the Magyar Ifjúság útja (Hungarian Street of Youth) in October 1956, Népköztársaság útja (People's Republic) in 1957, returning to the name of its founder, Andrássy in 1990.

A stroll along the beautiful boulevard is a chance to peer into the city's architectural, musical and literary history. The literary world of the coffee house is well-represented by the Muvész (No 29), the Eckermann (No 24) - formerly the Három Holló, a dirty dive frequented by poet Endre Ady - and the Media Club (No 101) on the terrace of the headquarters of Múosz, the Hungarian Association of Journalists. Others have gone or metamorphosised: The Reitter in the Dreschler Palace is now the Ballet Institute (No 25). After a stormy history the Lukács cukrászda occupies a corner of the CIB Bank (No 70).

The Írokboltja (Writers' Shop) at Liszt Ferenc tér used to be the Japán coffee house, named because of its decorative tiles, and the Abbázia coffee house at Oktogon is now a K & H Bank.

Musical geniuses Ferenc Erkel, Ferenc Liszt and Zoltán Kodály are also well-represented on Andrássy út. Kodály lived at Kodály körönd, where his memorial museum is now, and Liszt started up the original Music Academy in his own apartment at Andrássy út 35, where all three composers are remembered in marble plaques on the wall.

Foreign influences can be felt around the junction with Nagymezô utca, Pest?s Broadway, as the cultural centers of Bulgaria (No 14), Germany (No 24) and Poland (No 32) all have doorways onto the tree-lined avenue. Between Kodály körönd and City Park, the stretch of elegant villas are occupied by the embassies of Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Bulgaria, multi-national advertising agencies and law offices.

The recently-renovated Postal Museum occupies the first floor in a seven-roomed apartment (No 3). Károly Lotz created the frescos in the stair well and on the ceilings.

In 1884, Miklós Ybl designed the Opera House at Andrássy út 22. It took nine years to build and the then 26-year-old sculptor Alajos Strobl carved the marble for the sphinxes that guard the front portals.

The eclectic Dreschler palace (No 25) is now occupied by the Ballet Institute. Soon to be converted into a luxury hotel, a plaque on the wall reads "1893-1966 Ferenc Nádasi ballet master 'Let them love dance the way I loved it all my life'."

One of the most fascinating buildings stands at Andrássy út 39. Párizsi Nagyáruház (Parisian Grand Department Store) opened in 1911 with an imposing Art Nouveau facade. This seven-story building, built in 1882, was formerly the Teréz Town Casino and when textile magnate Sámuel Goldberger bought the premises he kept the ballroom, the Lotz Room, which still exists. The roof terrace even had a skating rink in the winter.

Oktogon, once on the path of a deep stream, has also been through a series of names. In 1936 it was named after Mussolini and from 1950 called November 7 tér after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. On one of the eight sides is the giant Burger King, situated in a former cafe and restaurant, called the Savoy.

The address Andrássy út 60 has a sinister significance for many older Pest residents. A plaque explains, "Here József Mindszenty was tortured and humiliated by Gábor Péter, Gyula Décsi and other traitorous henchmen serving foreign powers." The building was known as the Green House, from the shirts of the Arrow Cross who detained mainly left-wing activists in 1939.

After the Second World War, the Communist party inherited the building and, with the bitter irony of history, the AVÓ (State security) also held and tortured left-wing activists and Communists. When it was opened recently, people queued to see their records.

On 24 February 2002, the building opened as a museum of dictatorship, called the Terror Háza (House of Terror, see article appearing soon).
The director is Dr Mária Schmidt.
The museum was set up under the former right-wing Fidesz government of Viktor Orbán. In December 2000, the Public Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Society had purchased the building with the aim of establishing a museum in order to commemorate these two bloody periods of Hungarian history.

Opposite, at Andrássy 69, the Báb Színház (Puppet Theater) and the Hungarian College of Applied Art occupy a sooty black building, constructed in 1877 to the designs of Adolf Láng, who included as many features of Italian Renaissance as physically possible.

At Andrássy út 73 there is a very impressive tableau by János Zsákosdi Csiszér (1932) commemorating the railway worker heroes of the 1914-1918 world war.

Kodály körönd is possibly the most stunning, atmospheric circle in Budapest, and one in the worst state of repair. Four statues grace each corner park: Poet Bálint Balássi, Miklós Zrinyi, Vak Bottyán, a 17th century general who fought the Turks, and György Szondi, the Drégely castle captain and hero.

After the körönd, the boulevard is lined with grand embassy villas each in separate, fenced off gardens. At Andrássy 103 is the Hopp Ferenc East Asian Art Museum. Ferenc Hopp (1833-1919) used his wife's family money to travel around the world five times and bring back treasures.

The Russian Cultural Center at Andrássy 102 is in a renovated building, designed by Imre Benes in 1915. Exhibitions, concerts and language classes all take place here and excellent pelmenyi (Russian ravioli) is served in the top floor cafe.

Andrássy út winds to a close at No 129 with the Yugoslav Embassy in the former Babócsay villa. In November 1956, Imre Nagy sought asylum here with his colleagues and family members.

The stretch between Liszt Ferenc tér and Hôsök tere has been nominated for the Unesco World Heritage List, a decision which will be made this summer. Andrássy ends at the the statue of Archangel Gabriel, who appeared to King Saint Stephen in a dream and brought him the crown, a fitting finale to a grand boulevard.

The Tale of the Trams

With the devastating news that the 19, 41, 47 & 49 trams will all be gone by the end of 2007, I have found an article I wrote in 1998 after interview a gentleman at Budapest's Museum of Transport.
For many years, I travelled to work everyday on the 47/49, on those days when I didn't walk, because - in truth - the tram rattling and sudden jerking nearly put my spine right out and I have to admit it wasn't that pleasant being coughed on by alcoholics and homeless (who virtually live on the 47/49) at 8.30am. It's not a great start to the day.
NB. Budapest trams SHOULD always STAY YELLOW!
Confine those nasty orange German Combino-monsters to the depths of Hades. It is impossible to breathe on a Combino, how come they spend huge amounts of money and then bugger up the air-con?
NEM SZERETEK KOMBIZNI !!!

The Tale of the Trams

The yellow tram is a distinctive feature of Budapest's urban landscape.
Visitors to Budapest will undoubtedly have had a ride on the "négyes-hatos" (the 'four and six') and maybe a run-in with the terrifying "ellenôr" who whips out his red armband, causing scores of Magyar youths to suddenly decide they want to stand somewhere else, namely at the other end of the narrow yellow metal snake that winds its way through Budapest streets.
Trams play a vital role in the city's transport system, "Without the four-six tram, Budapest would die," said Miklós Merczi, a research worker at the Transport Museum in Városliget.
This role was recognized 111 years ago, when the first tram line from Nyugati station to Király utca was inaugurated.
"Its operation makes less noise, it's easier and safer to stop quickly than other trains, and it does not pollute the streets, does not produce smoke and does not induce sparks either," said the record of the event.
The "négyes-hatos" no longer bumps and grinds its way around the nagy körút but since the renewal of the tracks in 1994/7, it glides like an Olympic ice-skater.
The "négyes-hatos" is the perfect sightseeing ride for visitors, although like the No. 2 tram, it is plagued with pickpocket gangs in the summer.
These gangs target those who obviously look like tourists or who look too eagerly at the stunning view- difficult to avoid on Margit híd or the Pest embankment.
The view can be seen when "négyes-hatos" circles from Moszkva tér across Margit híd, revealing Parliament, the Castle, the Liberation monument, the Chain Bridge all in one panoramic swoop.
Then the tram traverses the vast arc of the nagy körút with Nyugati, Oktogon, Blaha Lujza tér, Rákóczi tér, Boráros tér, across Petôfi híd.
From there, the six half of the eternal tram pair goes on to Móricz Zsigmond körtér, where you can complete the circle by taking the No. 61 tram back to Moszkva tér, along Villányi út past the bottomless lake.
At present, 30 tram lines operate in Budapest on working days, with 762 tram cars transporting approximately 370 million passengers a year on the 155km long network..
The environmentally-friendly tram was first introduced in Budapest in 1887. The first public trams in the world were introduced only six years earlier in 1881, near Berlin.
"In fact, Budapest was the first city in the world with a permanent town central tram system," said Merczi.
Before electric trams, horses pulled the carriages along the tracks, through Budapest.
Pest's first horse drawn tramway car, which departed from outside the Lutheran church in Deák tér on 30 July 1866, was the third of its kind in Europe.
It connected the two termini at Szénapiac ('haymarket'- today Kálvin tér) and the shipyards of the First Pest-Fiume Shipbuilding Co. in outer Újpest, with stops at the National Museum, the Café Zrínyi (now Astoria), Saint Stephen's Basilica and The Railway Station (today Nyugati-western station).
The horse tramway's first terminus building, the "Hunter's Manor" by the Northern Railway Bridge survives to this day.
The Szénapiac -Újpest line was built by the Pest Street Railway Company, a firm established by Sándor Károlyi & Co., the same entrepreneurs who constructed the Városliget (City Park) and Kôbánya lines two years later, in 1868.
At first, the horse tramway only had single track lines with passing places, but by 1870, traffic had become so busy that parallel tracks had to be built.
At the same time the company opened its Rákospalota route and another running to the Municipal Slaughter House.
In Buda, entrepreneur József Szekrényessy took out a license in 1852 to build a tramway line between the Császár Baths and Zugliget, but the route was not actually constructed until another contractor, the Buda Street Company, realized the project.
This route had several steep rises, where an auxiliary team of horses was needed.
"Over are the days of the battles which cost us so many broken necks, sprained wrists, flattened feet, fractured noses and ribs, battles only fought by those reckless enough to brave the dangers involved in forcefully occupying an omnibus seat," wrote the periodical Magyarország és a nagyvilág, reporting the opening of the new tram line.
The other Buda line, also opened in 1868, connected the Buda side of the Lánchíd and Óbuda's main square.
It was the last horse tramway line to be built in Buda.
Margit Bridge, opened in 1876, provided a connection between the Pest and Buda networks and made changing trams possible.
There were often heated disputes over whether the Pest or the Buda company's cars should cross the bridge and enter the other's territory.
These were only settled when the richer Pest Street Railway Company bought up its Buda counterparts.
The new company was named the Budapest Street Railway Company.
There was a setback during the depression of 1873, but by 1890, the number of journeys by horse tramway had reached 18 million a year.
Initially a first class ticket between Kálvin tér and Újpest cost twenty krajcárs, while a third class ticket cost ten krajcárs (this amount could buy three eggs).
In the 1890's the idea arose that a new street railway equipped with engine -drawn carriages should be installed in Budapest.
The first electric tramway in Budapest ran between Nyugati Station and Király utca and was opened on 28 November 1887.
"Budapest's first tramway had a narrow track and the electric current was supplied from below, since the authorities said overhead lines were too ugly," said Merczi.
Similarly to the system used in today's metro, there was a third rail underneath one of the rails on the which the cars actually ran and this was connected to the 300 volt DC power supply, insulated inside a porcelain holders.
"This device made travel rather unreliable, as mud or snow could get into the power line, upsetting traffic for half a day," said Merczi.
Prompted by the success of the experiment, entrepreneurs decided to build the Podmaniczky utca and Stáció (today Baross ) utca routes as electric tram lines in 1888, even though these were first designed for steam engines.
The route was owned by the first Budapest City Railway Company (BVVV). Its former headquarters in Akácfa utca today houses the head office of the Budapest Public Transport Authority (BKV).
The first central electric generator can still be seen in the courtyard. In 1890 the Budapest electric tramway system had 4.5 million passengers while horse-drawn trams carried 18 million. The builders of the tram system made many masterly technological and architectural innovations.
One of these was the track mounted on iron supports and viaducts, which was built along the promenade on the Pest embankment.
During the period of idyllic peace before the first world war, Budapest experienced rapid growth and became a real metropolis.
Overcrowded trains with "full" signs crawled along with clusters of passengers, hanging on to the bars by the steps.
Writer Andor Gábor wrote the following cabaret song, supposedly sung by a passenger on giving up his soul as he was squashed flat in a tram car.

Two hundred were there in the tram
I couldn't move them with a ram
Pushed and shoved thus in keen fever
Having with me no steel lever
So sighed a man in pain and sore
Your knee in me a hole will bore
Revenge he took with no more sigh
And broke my leg bone in the thigh
I knew not how to heavens cry
Jesus my Lord shall I here die?

The total length of all the tracks in the network had reached 175.5 kilometers by the end of the First World War and the number of passengers carried annually exceeded 300 million.
"Tram routes in those days were always incredibly long, it was quite usual for a journey from terminus to terminus to take well over an hour," saidMerczi.
Under government supervision, all companies were centrally controlled for a while even after a decree to nationalize them, passed by the Revolutionary Government Council on 31 October 1918 was annulled on 10 August 1919.
To improve the deteriorating conditions the Budapest Capital City Transport Co. was formed - known by its Hungarian acronym BSZKRT, pronounced "besscart."
The second World War saw an even greater damage to the transport system than had been experienced in 1914-18.
However, the first post-war tram running between Forgách utca and the Újpest water tower, started very soon , on 7 February, just a few days before the city was liberated from the German occupation.
On 20 August 1946, the first tram links (routes 48, 49 and 63) were reconstructed between the two sides of the river Danube across the reconstructed Szabadság híd. The tracks stretched for 490 km.

The poet László Benjámin wrote about the tram system in his poem
From Vadaskerti út to Kálvin tér
First on the 56
Then on the 63
and on and on
Whichever number....
Doesn't bother me

Fare dodging has been a custom in Budapest, ever since the first trams appeared.
This custom has even left a trace in the language.
The slang term to describe the activity is 'tujázni' from 'hátulja' meaning its rear, or to travel on the tram's rear.
'Tujázni' now means to go by tram and a 'tuja' is an affectionate slang word for a tram.
During the period 1945-1967, people were far-dodging so regularly that the takings of the conductors slumped so it became necessary to simplify the fare system and abolish transfer tickets.
The Budapest Transport Company BKV, founded in 1968, has increased its fares by 2500 percent over the past ten years.
Throughout the world, there are not a lot of real tram cities.
There are cities that have streetcar service, but only a few in which trams are essential, where they are a part of the character of the city.
On the European mainland, Merczi said, "More than one hundred towns have tram services." In pre-Trianon Hungary, more than 20 Hungarian towns had tram services - Sopron, Szombathely, Nyíregyháza, and also Timesoara, Kosice and Zagreb. Nowadays, only four towns in Hungary use trams, Budapest, Miskolc, Debrecen and Szeged.
In Central Europe, three real tram cities are the ones that were the largest settlements of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: Vienna, Prague and Budapest.
Tram cities have a special atmosphere, because trams are special, and give a sense of rattling through history, taking part in a journey through time with others, witnessing mini-dramas and participating in life, rather than just sitting, isolated in a metal box getting road rage.
Trams themselves defy definition, they are different from buses, as they go on rails. They are different from trains and subways, as they go on the streets.
To travel the tram is a unique feeling; in some ways you are in the flow of traffic and in others you are out of it.
A famous Hungarian poet wrote of the feeling of traveling on streetcars:

O streetcars your yellow
Makes my heart mellow.
From your current collectors sparks fly
With them my soul rises high.
On you let me take a ride,
My spiritual guide.

The trams of Budapest are usually yellow, as is obvious from the poem, but they were not always so.
The yellow color of the Budapest trams had to vie for predominance for a long time with the brown of competing cars, as there were times when tram color or flags enabled passengers to tell one of the innumerable tram company's lines from another's.
Trams run by the Budapest Street Railway Company were brown, patterned ones belonged to BUR Railway Company.
Yellow, although not the same shade as today, was the color of trams owned by the Budapest City Electric Railway Company. "Historians now argue as to whether certain trams were Bordeaux-colored or bottle green, since the only photographic record we have is obviously in black and white," said Merczi.
These days, there are some exceptions to the yellow BKV color.
One of these is the famous pink Barbie-tram, covered by advertisements for the doll, which ran through Budapest in the early nineties, attracting a lot of attention.
Technical University students once persuaded all the passengers to get off at the stop in front of their dormitory and cry out loud: "We all love you Barbie!"
There is now a blue Pepsi tram which chugs slowly along the Danube river bank on the Pest side, on the No. 2 route.
Most trams run in Pest rather than the hilly windy streets of Buda - exceptions - the 56, 61,59, 17.
"The steepest tram route is the number 59 up to Farkasréti cemetery. If it gets any steeper you have to use a cog-wheel railway, like the train that runs up to Szechényi hegy," said Merczi.
He explained that trams are not suitable for the treacherous bends of Buda roads.
The streetcars in Budapest come in four types, although as late as 1980, there were 20 types of tram car.
Type One is the oldest and the dearest to the true tram-lover's heart. It is a Hungarian make, known as a U-V. It is quite slow, very noisy and a bit uncomfortable.
The relays are constantly clicking, and the middle carriages have wooden seats and wooden paneling.
The 'pót kocsi' - auxiliary coach in the middle of the three on the 47,49 route, starting from the middle of the city at Deák tér, and crossing the Szabadság Bridge, is the last surviving example of a much older, fourth type of car.
The middle car "shakes like inhumane danger" said Merczi.
The 19 is another favorite, running by the Danube on the Buda side. It is a good tram for showing visitors a view of Pest, and also fun is the switchback effect when the tram rattles under the Chain Bridge and spins around the corner, dipping down into the curved tunnel, filled with wild techno-acid graffiti.
Line 17 running up to Old Buda gives a bit of the feeling of the heroic age of streetcars. It goes on small streets and some stops have no safety islands.
Sometimes, it has only one carriage and rattles off into the night like a ghost train.
Line 17 tram cars have mostly been renovated, and now feature plastic and material upholstery.
If you long for solitude, try the night tram 49E at around 3am, when you can be alone in the coach running in the cold night.
For a glimpse into infinity, get on line 50 which runs in a straight line, without a bend for kilometers.
The design of the cars also changed much before today's enclosed shape, typified by the Type Two -"négyes-hatos" style evolved.
This style tram was nicknamed the "Stuka" as the engine gave the same whining sound as dive bombers of that name.
Type Two is the pride of the Hungarian transport industry.
Built by the Ganz factory it is known as the 'Ganz csuklós' or articulated. This type was introduced in 1968.
In the rush hour the "négyes-hatos" is packed like a box of sardines.
In the summer, the atmosphere can get quite pungent as the commuters proudly display their sweaty armpits whilst clinging onto the straps.
Some of the cars on the No 2 and No 17 lines have been renovated with wide spaces for push chairs, and buttons to press to announce intention to descend.
The No. 2 has a dot display to announce coming stations and a mysterious recorded voice that announces the connecting lines.
Moszkva tér is the greatest tram junction of the city, with six lines meeting there: numbers 61, 59, 18, 4, 6, 56. The square is not for the faint hearted or the weak-chested as the air quality is one of the worst in town.
However this is not the fault of the environmentally friendly tram -there are at least ten smelly bus routes terminating here or passing through.
Type Three is the newest, the Czechoslovakian Tatra T5 C5. It is used on lines, amongst others: 1, 18, 61, 28, 36, 59 and 56. Until the recent introduction of Prague's new trams, these represented the state-of-the-art in tram technology.
There are 320 trams of this sort in Budapest.
These trams are fast, relatively quiet and the tone of their ring to announce door shutting has a very annoying nasal quality. Tram purists look down on these types.
The only exception is maybe line 56, which goes out to the Buda Hills and in summer takes on a holiday atmosphere as it is full of people going for a picnic in the woods.
In 2002, a new breed of trams arrived from Germany, bought half-price in Hannover, and a very orange series of trams run on route 69 from Mexikói út.
However Budapest residents like their trams yellow.
In November 2003, Budapest Transport Company (BKV-Budapesti Kőzlekedési Vállalat) conducted an Internet survey in which people could vote on the interior and exterior of the new Siemens tram to be introduced in 2006 running along the Nagykörút (Great Boulevard) on the famous “négyes-hatos” (the “four and six”) route.
The internet survey was posted for a week and 12,000 people logged on to state their opinion with 37% in favour of the traditional yellow colour and simple design.
The Nagykörút is one of the busiest thoroughfares in Europe and the 53-meter-long Siemens Combino trams, purchased for 37 billion forints, are the longest on the Continent.
The German company designed these new style trams especially for Budapest.
BKV posted 13 versions of the prospective tram design on the Internet and Hungarians were asked to vote on their favourites.
Most of the votes for the traditional yellow tram came from women, aged over 45 and living on the Buda side. Internet users could also vote on the interior design of the trams with the majority choosing the green seating as the preferred choice.
Although, with the building of the fourth metro line, many tram routes will be discontinued, the future of the tram is still assured.
"We have come the end of the backward trend of closing tram lines, factories are just waiting to build new trams, all we need is more investment," said Merczi.
Although slightly lagging behind city development, the tram network will be extended with several new lines in the future.
A direct tram connection will be established to Káposztásmegyer, the line extension of tram No. 1 will be continued, and the connection of tram lines No. 13 and 62 at the Örs vezér tere terminus will effectively establish the external tram line ring around Budapest.
Then, two tram lines will run rings around Budapest, making any region of town accessible on a pleasant, civilized and environmentally friendly form of transport.

The Death of the Presszó

Digital photos ©LucyMallows2007

The Death of the Presszó

By Lucy Mallows ©1997


The presszó or eszpresszó occupies a mysterious limbo link in the types of hostelries in Budapest.
It is a step up from the rough and ready borozó (wine bar, but nothing like a brasserie, this is a dingy, mouldy cellar where cheap rot gut wine is ladled from a metal drum for around 30 forints a shot) or sörözô (beer hall), haunts of men drinking on their own, alcoholics talking to themselves, where women on their own are considered of easy virtue or desperate for a drink.

The eszpresszó hovers between the borozó/sörözô and the more upmarket cukrászda - coffee house, where solitary readers sip a cappuccino; a group of tourists pore over their guide books and soak up the traditional atmosphere. or friends gather for a Sunday afternoon chat.

The eszpresszó is more the local of the working class, ladies in groups eating cakes, gangs of workmen playing dominoes and eating somlói galuska, chocolate and cream pudding with their beer and young teenagers enjoying a moderately priced cappuccino.

However the eszpresszó is an endangered species.
The Fény (Light) presszó on Margit körút has been gutted by workmen and is now a pawn brokers, trading in jewellery.
It used to have one of the first juke boxes in Buda.
One by one, they gradually close as the rent soars and the fast food chains buy up all the best-situated premises.
The style of the presszó is socialist brown.
Outside, there is almost always a neon sign offering such unique - and socially inspiring - names as Terv -the (five year) Plan, Béke –Peace, Haladás –Progress and even the incongruous but somehow strangely comforting Májas -Liver Sausage.

Inside a typical presszó, a washable stone floor is usually adorned with a crazy paving style mosaic or beige linoleum, net curtains, little yellow, brown and green tiling on the walls, fake red leather seats or little gnome stools.
The waitresses still wear the long, white lace up boots with cut away heels and toes.
These look strange but give much support during the long hours of standing.
The standing helps contribute to the attitude which is almost always one of disdain or lethargic surliness.
To be a proper old-style presszo, it must have the original neon squirly writing outside, with a few of the letters hanging off, or missing entirely.
Check out the Alkotás (Creation) or the Pingvin söröző on Bocskai út in the eleventh district.
If the cukrászda is the coffee house, the eszpresszó is more the coffee bar.
The eszpresszó is more homely, friendly, less imposing than the cukrászda whose tradition of writers, poets and now tourists frightens off the locals.
Budapest was once the city of eszpresszó bars. 
In 1937, the Quick in Vigadó utca was the first coffee bar to open; its premises was planned and created by interior and industrial designers. The building is an office now.
From the 1930’s one eszpresszó opened after another and by 1950 many new ones joined the already established café's: The Mocca, American, Parisien, Joker, Intim and the Darling.
After 1956, the social realist architecture began to wane and a younger, fresher generation of enthusiastic interior decorators was given a free hand in the planning of public catering.
Shops reduced to rubble during the uprising were rebuilt in the modern style.
There was a craze for neon, both inside and out.
The trend to use English names gradually died out, in neon lights above the new revolutionary eszpresszós displayed radical slogans - Plan, Prosperity and Spartacus.
The post war eszpresszós still exist, the 1950s style is harder to find.
The red and green neon lights are now fading, some switched off forever, the Traubi (grape) and Márka (cherry) soft drinks are hard to find, the Bambi pop has disappeared, the wheels of progress grind on.
At the Kisposta eszpresszó by Moszkva tér, Friday night is party night, an old guy plays the Casio organ, with built-in drum machine and customers dance when the mood takes them.
The waitress continually arranges the heavy greeny-grey swivel chairs and tells off customers who push them out of line.
The Kisposta is full of elderly couples enjoying the old time songs, singing along, looking wistful and drinking brandy. Romanian and Russian young men, workers from Moszkva tér spend their daily wage on beer.
I say to my companion, ‘I wish a handsome Russian man would ask me to dance,’ and two seconds later one does.
Alexei dances with almost everyone in the bar, even waltzing with a old lady from the cake-eating table.
Alas the Kisposta is now a savings bank, gone the way of so many wonderful presszós, disappearing faster than a Siberian tiger.
The very popular Bambi Eszpresszó on Frankel Leó utca’s semi-pedestrian streets serves ‘warm sandwiches’, omelettes, cakes and coffee.
Also on offer is ‘Soviet’ champagne for only 480 forints a bottle and.
Kadarka red wine, a bargain at 27 forints a deciliter.
The Bambi has one of the few interiors dating back to the sixties, that remain untouched, a fairy tale ceramic city adorns the walls.
Old men play dominoes on a Sunday afternoon, sitting on red leatherette seats.
The mosaic floor has geometric box shapes in yellow, green and brown. 
The Sziget cukrászda is a presszó and cukrászda in one.
It has a varying prices scheme for those who stand at the tables in the presszó part, marked pointedly ‘II osztály’ -second class or move through the heavy plum-colored velvet curtains into the more chi-chi inner sanctum.
At the Sziget you can taste one of the best chestnut purees in town - little brown worms of nutty sweetness covered in whipped cream. The waitresses keep up the aloof grumpiness, required for the job.
The Sziget is now the Europa Coffee House, an anal Austrian style upmarket cafe, with waitresses in push up bras and peasant outfits, a la Mozart (formerly the wonderful Palma on the Nagy Körút).
Nádor utca, the street of philanthropists and learning boasts two presszós.
The Terv Eszpresszó or (five year) Plan has been smartened up recently with white paint and shiny lamps, it almost has pretensions to being a cukrászda, were it not for the clientele, working men in pairs, drinking beer and spirits in the morning, and, of course, the linoleum is still beige and dog-eared. 
The Tulipán, belonging to the group of fifth district flower-christened presszós, the Ibolya (Violet) student favorite on Ferenciek tere and the Muskátli (Geranium) tourist trap on Váci utca.
The outside of the Tulipán is misleading, the white plastic chairs and navy umbrellas give a Mediterranean terrace café feel, but move inside and the back room has a stark, naked beauty.
The gnome high stools surround little mushroom tables and the walls have turned beige from Sopianae cigarette smoke. 
Outside the Mignon eszpresszó, a neon sign at night reveals a girl with a sixties bob about to nibble on a tasty morsel, a mini cabbage roll or one of those little pink cakes bought by the deka.
The eszpresszó occupies a space on that strange incongruous row of one story shops on Károly körút, that have surprisingly still survived the bulldozer of town-planning progress.
On a personal note, the Mignon was the first establishment I entered in Hungary in 1984, coming off the metro from Keleti palyaudvar to Deák tér.
A man sat in the corner playing a Casio organ and the atmosphere was like a wedding party in Transylvania.
Old bácsi’s danced with little girls, néni’s danced together, everyone was off their heads on cheap wine and lethal pálinka. The air was almost impenetrable with the thick white fog of Munkás (worker) cigarettes.
It was heaven.
The Mignon is still very brown and gloomy even during the day. Gloom is important so that artists can compose and drinkers can drink in peace.
The only light comes from a fruit machine which flashes garishly where once the band played. 
The Majakovskij on Király utca has a huge Eszpresszó sign and placards in the windows offering coffee, cakes, soft drinks and ice cream. Enter the bar and you step back in time, two very brown rooms are decorated by pictures of alpine scenes and a five-pronged brown wood fan hangs immobile from the smoke-stained ceiling.
Bright red Christmas lights line the top of the bar and the radio plays ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale.’
Király utca was also called Majakovskij utca after the Soviet Constructivist poet until 1990, and the presszó attracted those of an artistic inclination.
The dour waiter in a black cardigan could be one of the original poets. 
The Mester eszpresszó on Mester utca, the street of craftsmen and artisans, is announced by wonderful tableau signs.
This is a real eszpresszó with wood paneling and old linoleum.
Groups of men sit, drinking fröccs in the afternoon and bustling waitresses take no nonsense from behind the huge sixties counter. The bar is crowded with loud, bright fruit machines and a gigantic beige ceramic stove takes up half the floor.
Whereas the borozó is often the haunt of the solitary drinker, the presszó is much more communal and sociable. 
The Tik Tak on Böszörményi út has a sweet neon cuckoo clock above the doorway.
Refined, silver-haired gentlefolk of the vicinity use to drop in for coffee an cognac.
A piano once stood on a platform at the back and lamps with parchment shades gave an atmosphere of old Hungarian films. Böszörményi út is almost a museum street itself with many of the old neon signs still remaining.
Nearby, the Májas - Liver sausage calls itself a vendéglô now and offers food, but the peppermint green exterior, neon Májas sign and crazy paving stone floor are definitely ‘Espresszó-land’.
There are a few too many coke signs in the window but the whole presszó is redeemed by the wonderful walls inside.
The knobbly walls are like the inside of a sixties recording studio and help the conversation on horse-betting, the lottó and the fortunes or misfortunes of Fradi, to reverberate around the room, increasing in volume and urgency.
After a few pálinkas, you half-close your eyes, drift off and move back in time.
You can imagine Mária Gardonyi (from the heavenly Palma -now revamped as the Mozart) is playing the piano and couples are dancing cheek to cheek while others hum along to the favorites tunes, documenting a more gentle graceful time.
In his homage to the coffee-house, Ferenc Bodor wrote, ‘In the present depopulated, impoverished hamburgerized realm of catering, hostile to customers, those more advanced in years recall the smoke-filled cafés with their yellowed silk lampshades and tinkling pianos with wistful nostalgia.
Coffee houses and cafés have had their day, in present-day Budapest at least.’


Where to sip presszó coffee and pear pálinka, once....long ago.....in presszó land

UPDATE - this article dates from the late 1990s. Many have now disappeared, gone forever.

Please let me know if you have any news on some of these national treasures, listed below:


1. Kisposta - XII. Krisztina krt 2/4 GONE, NOW SAVINGS BANK, sob

2. Bambi - II. Frankel Leó út 2/4

3. Sziget - V. Szent István krt 7 GONE, NOW the vile 'theme-café' EUROPA CUKRÁSZDA, waitresses in costume

4. Terv - V. Nádor utca 19

5. Tulipán - V. Nádor utca 32

6. Mignon - V. Károly krt 28 GONE – the entire parade has been demolished, a gem is lost forever

7. Majakovskij - VII. Király utca 103 NOW THE INNOCUOUS ‘MAYA’

8. Mester - IX. Mester utca 45, still pretty rough at last glance

9. Tik-Tak - XII. Böszörményi út 17/c, with the wonderful clock on the facade

10. Májas - XII. Tartsay Vilmos utca 21 GONE, NOW ‘ARCADE BISTRO’

11. Naná - V. Királyi Pál utca, very dusty and gloomy but with an 'Another Way' [Egymásra nézve] ambience.

12. Híd cukrászda - IX. Ferenc krt by Mester utca...on the way out

13. No 1. - V. Sas utca

14. Ibolya - V. Ferenciek tere

15. Akadémia - üllõi út opposite med school

16. Gourmand – now the Gourmand Sports Bar (flagging fast)

17. Alkotás – XII Alkotás út - DERELICT

18. Szonáta - XI Bartok Béla út is now Wang’s Chinese Food. It used to be the place where the Magyar Narancs editors gathered to drink beer and play on the solitary pinball machine.
19. Grinzingi borozó – Irányi út, foofed up a bit lately, and not the same dowdy, dusty and very smoky atmosphere…prices went up, students and alcies moved out

20. Angelika - Batthyány tér - renovated, original furnishings dumped, gone are the ladies in hats eating cake, in come techno teenies and horrible loud music. Atmosphere annihilated.

Budapest market hall history

©LucyMallows2007 digital photos of Hunyadi tér market hall, taken in June 2007

FIVE 110-YEAR-OLD MARKETS IN BUDAPEST

As Budapest's outer limits become swamped with ever more American style shopping malls, the traditional market halls of the city's heart modestly celebrated their 110th birthday this year.
In 1897, the Nagycsarnok (Big Market) No I, as the Vásárcsarnok was then called, opened its portals onto Fôvám tér the same day as four smaller roofed markets: No. II Rákóczci tér, No. III Klauzál tér, No. IV Hunyadi tér and No.V Hold utca.
These five markets are numbered I-V, and you can see if you look up at the beautiful facades above the 'csarnok' (market hall) sign and the Bejárás-Kijárás (entrance-exit) carved into stone or forged in metalwork.
In 1897, the Royal Health Ministry of the Austro-Hungarian Empire decreed that five markets should be built because until then food was sold from horse wagons along Andrássy út and the banks of the Danube. 'The health authority said food should not be sold on the street and so five markets were built,' said István Horváth, the market supervisor at Hold utca market.
Market No.1 is the showpiece, the Vásárcsarnok where Margaret Thatcher haggled for paprikas and lectured bemused shoppers on the rights and wrongs of a centralized economy in 1984.
When it opened in 1897, Emperor Franz Jozef paid a visit.
Samu Pecz designed the huge iron framework and its 10,000 square meter was originally built as the city's main wholesale market. After war damage and disrepair, Budapest City Council decided to renovate.
The market reopened in 1994 after three years of renovations costing Ft4 billion, and some 30,000 shoppers a day now come to visit 180 different stalls. The roof has tiles by ceramist Vilmos Zsolnay, which beckon local shoppers and tourists alike.
To celebrate the centenary year, stall holders whose stalls had been in the family for many generations were presented with a special diploma. Some were also entered into a competition, judged by experts and local shoppers.
The winner was Attila Tóth for his beautiful presentation.
In an Aladdin's cave of pickles, Tóth's shelves are lined with bottles and jars, filled with peppers, cucumbers, baby melons and green tomatoes in vinegar.
'I like the market better now after the renovation, it is more orderly. I understand how old people liked the previous jungle where they could rummage for bargains,' he said.
Tóth's stall can be found in the basement which was previously a warehouse for the traders upstairs. Tóth's stall is just past the Ázsia oriental food shop which has proved so popular it tripled its floorspace in April 1997.
On the ground floor, the stunning Minôségért Bt. came second in the competition with its displays of dried peppers and corn cobs festooned from the roof. Pensioner Chaim Pucz came back to work after previously working twenty years in the market selling confectionery.
She preferred the market in its pre-renovation state. 'I can't put my finger on it, but it just had a better atmosphere then, now many stallholders have left or died, it's not the same,' said Pucz and complained the new slippery floor tiles were a hazard in winter.
In 1924 Anna Bocsi started the cheese, túró and milk products shop. It has stayed in the family for three generations and is now tended by Ági and Zsuzsa Király.

No II Rákóczi tér.
The Józsefvárosi market hall was designed by the city engineering department and opened in 1897.
After reconstruction following severe fire damage, it reopened in 1992 as a traditional yet modernized market hall.
Rákóczi tér has always traditionally been the center of prostitution in Budapest and although brothels were officially closed down in 1948, the square continues to be the center of a down-market red light district.
This reputation diverts attention from the market which is a shame as it has some great bargains.
The market offers meat, fruit and vegetables. Fish open and close their mouths, jostling in black water. Many of the stall holders are in their teens and stand listlessly smoking behind the butchers' counters. There is also a section at the back for 'ôstermelôk' - the individual farmers who bring in their own produce.
A large eating area is the heart of the market. Shoppers stand at chest-high marble circles, devouring huge plates of blood sausage, fried chicken and fish, all washed down with a refreshing 'nagy fröccs' (white wine and soda spritzer) costing only Ft37.
Imre Farkas has run a fruit and vegetable stall here for twenty years. 'It was good then and it still is now. We are better and more beautiful than the Vásárcsarnok and we have parking space,' he said.

No III Klauzál tér market has now been almost entirely taken over by the Skála supermarket.
Only a few pickled vegetables stall linger on around the back
Katalin Hír is 80 years old and has seen the changes, in the 40 years she has worked here.
She is one of only two individual traders who offer bottled vegetables, 'deadly poisonous hot' chili peppers and apricot preserve at only Ft40 a jar.
'It used to be a gold mine for people shopping here. You could find anything you want here, now people have no money, if they do have money they buy they own land and grow their own,' she says.

Hiding behind the McFridayKing circus at Oktogon is a gem, the last surviving market hall, still in its original, fading condition.
Market Hall No IV on the dilapidated Hunyadi tér was designed by Gyôzô Csigler, and although the outer stone work is crumbling, traces of the unusual masonry work of animal heads remain.
The vegetables are laid out in beautiful colorful designs, corn, grapes and paprikas all jostle for space.
The smells of pickles, smoked meats and the hum of voices bargaining make the market a tantalizing, sensual experience. On Hunyadi tér itself is an open air trading area.
The dusty square has been transformed into a lively flea market full of vegetables at cheaper prices, knick-knacks and odd treasures.
Katalin Kovácsik has been tending the 'savanyúság' (sourness = pickles) stall in the corner for 14 years and her mother worked for 17 years before that. She and her husband run the business which follows the cucumbers, pumpkins and baby melons through from seed to pickle stage.
'We have a piece of land where we grow the vegetables, then we process them at home on the kitchen table, then I sell them here,' she said, ladling huge handfuls of white cabbage from a bucket for a lady who wanted to make Székely káposzta (Transylvanian cabbage).

No. V Hold utca 13 still has the old signs revealing that the street using to be called Rozenberg házaspár utca (Rozenberg married couple executed for spying in USA)
The market was recently renovated and is now very smart.
The packed büfe selling sausage and 'csalamádé' (mixed pickles) and the cupboard-sized early morning wine bar is packed and sits next to an empty upmarket fish stall, offering paella and salmon.
The Hold utca market is good for fish and there is an excellent cheese stall, but upstairs on the new balcony, created in the 1994-96 renovations, are the real treasures.
For anyone working in the Bank center or around Szabadság tér, lunchtimes are now a culinary expedition around the world. The Mexikoi Sarok offers gaspacho, burritos, fajitas and taco salads, next door is the Spagettigyár with all kinds of Italian delicacies, after that comes the Chinese büfe where a chef can been seen chopping a mountain of fresh carrots, cabbage, onions, peppers and mushrooms from the stalls below.
There is also a salad bar in the corner, a 'rétes' (strudel) bar offering something sweet to follow.
For the health conscious, you can buy an ishler biscuit covered with carob rather than chocolate in the Biocentrum Biobolt and Teaház opposite.
On the ground floor amongst all the gleaming metalwork and polished floors, you can still find the traditional Hungarian foods. Huge buckets of white lard, slabs of 'szalonna' -bacon fat, fish and reconstituted chicken in breadcrumbs and mountains of goose crackling.
The stalls were passed down from generation to generation, an old lady recently retired but was working here since 1914 selling 'savanyúság' (pickles).
One stallholder said the new market looked lovely but old stallholders had been squeezed out by the high rent, no place was made for them when renovated, and the whole atmosphere of the traditional market could be lost forever.
She complained that the mall culture was taking over Budapest with another mall going up soon on Csepel island and more along the entire length of Váci út.
'They should build housing instead,' said supervisor András Vámos.
However István Horváth, market supervisor at Hold utca market said he did not fear competition from the malls. 'Fortunately, we still don't have that American tradition of shopping only once a week, we like to buy fresh products every day.'

Budapest's Gresham Palace history

Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace

The 179-room Art Nouveau Gresham Palace is an essential part of the city’s effort to bring Budapest’s belle époque back to life

©LRM2007

The Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace, which opened again in 2004, started life as a temple to capitalism, created in 1907 for the London Gresham Life Assurance Society.
In 1999, the Canadian-based Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Gresco Investments Ltd. signed a development agreement the District V local council to restore the building to its former glory and create a luxury, 179-room (including 14 suites) five-star hotel at a cost of some $84 million.
The site where the Gresham Palace now stands originally housed a neo-classic palace called the Nako House, designed by József Hild and built in 1827 by wholesale merchant Antal Deron.
In 1880, the London Gresham Life Assurance Company bought the Nako House as its foreign headquarters on this site but then, in 1903, decided to demolish the Nako House and build from scratch.
The Gresham Palace was designed by Zsigmond Quittner and the Vágó brothers and took three years to build, finally opening its grand gates in 1907.
The building was conceived as a kind of monument to Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579) the 16th century financier to Queen Elizabeth I, founder of London’s Royal Exchange and inventor of Gresham’s Law which states that, “Where legal tender laws exist, bad money drives out good money”.
The time of completion occurred during Hungary’s Golden Age and some of the most famous artists and craftsmen of the time worked to make the Gresham Palace one of the most glamorous buildings in Pest, and one of the finest examples of Art Nouveau architecture in the world.The artist Géza Maróti created many original sculptures for the building.
Sculptor Ede Telcs created the relief of Thomas Gresham looking a bit like a jaunty sea captain at the top of the facade (shown in the picture at the top of this article), staring out at a slight angle to the Danube and across the Chain Bridge towards Buda.
The Gresham Palace was one of the first buildings in Budapest to have its Art Nouveau exterior illuminated at night and no expense was spared on the decor and the embellishments inside either.
Every bathroom and kitchen was fitted with ceramic tiles from the Pécs Zsolnay porcelain factory and Miksa Róth was commissioned to make the gorgeous stained glass windows on every landing.
The wrought iron peacock gates came from the prestigious Gyula Jungfer workshop and furniture maker Endre Thek was commissioned to fill the rooms with his elegant creations.
The Gresham building also featured state-of-the-art technology, full electrical wiring, central heating, two-meter-thick cellar walls to prevent flooding and something known as a ‘central vacuum system’ which was a kind of communal vacuum cleaner which wound its way around the building.
Cleaners only had to connect a tube to a nozzle in the wall of the apartment and there was instant suction.
The ground floor and first floor hosted the Gresham Company’s offices, the Gresham Café and a finishing school for daughters of the aristocracy called “English Young Ladies”.
The second and third floors were comprised of around half a dozen luxury apartments where many of the country’s elite took rooms. Government minister Count Gyula Andrássy took rooms in the Gresham Palace, his brother Géza was conveniently chairman of the board of the Gresham Company’s Hungarian subsidiary.
The fourth floor contained more modest apartments for the company’s traveling insurance salesmen while the fifth floor just under the roof housed the servants’ quarters.
Between the wars, the Gresham Café was the meeting place for the Gresham Circle of artists. The Podium Cabaret in the basement was the place where Bohemian artists rubbed shoulders with fur-clad aristocrats while they watched the risqué and satirical shows.
The cabaret was closed for a time in the twenties for being too ‘daring’ but enjoyed a second lease of life between 1936 and the outbreak of the War.In the Café above, important figures such as István Szőnyei, József Egry, Pál Pátzay and Jenő Barcsay discussed new movements in art.
The radical Nagybánya school gathered here as did writers and artists, all followers of a movement that urged a humanist, respectful approach to art, one that preserved the values of the past.
The Gresham Circle ceased to exist in 1944.
During World War II, the building was hit bombarded from across the river by revolutionaries trying to dislodge the Russians from the Interior Ministry next door.
During the winter of 1944-45 Soviet soldiers occupied the Gresham Palace and burnt much of the furniture to keep warm while the residents huddled in the cellar.
When the Chain Bridge was blown up during the German retreat, the shock waves blew the peacock gates on Mérleg utca right off their hinges.
In 1948 the Hungarian Communist Government nationalized Gresham Palace and scores of new tenants moved in, sub-dividing the palatial apartments into smaller flats.
The Gresham Café managed to keep going through the grim fifties and sixties, and in 1957 even had the first Wurlitzer organ in the country.
Between 1948 and 1990, the building declined into a sad state disrepair.
The café closed and a Chinese restaurant took its place, then a casino moved in.
Small businesses, a hairdresser and a locksmith moved into the arcade but all around the walls were crumbling.
In the seventies, the building was listed as national protected landmark in the late 1970s and in the 1976 list of protected monuments the Gresham is described as being 'of monument character'.
With the change of political system in 1990, the Government transferred ownership of Gresham Palace to the District V Council.
Oberoi, an Indian hotel chain offered to restore the palace in return for permission to turn it into a hotel.
A deal was announced in 1991, however the Council had not considered the 38 remaining tenants of the building.
Much legal wrangling ensued and four years later, Oberoi had lost patience and sold its interests to Fejér & Associates.
In 1997, Gresco entered the picture and arranged for the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts to manage and operate Gresham Palace.
Gresco agreed to the National Board for the Protection of Historic Monuments (OMVH) which had earlier granted license on condition that the exterior, the ceramic decorations, the glass interior arcade and the stained glass windows on every staircase be restored in a sensitive manner.
To see the stunning interior in all its glory, indulge in a calorific chocolate cake at the elegant Gresham Kávéház (coffee house), sip a Martini from a soup tureen-sized glass at the alabaster and black marble bar before dining in style at the superb Páva restaurant where the menu is overseen by Moroccan executive chef, Abdessattar Zitouni.
The Páva restaurant serves a contemporary fusion of Italian and Hungarian cuisine complemented by a list of 140 Hungarian wines, selected monthly by a group of independent wine writers.
The Szepsy Tokaji dessert wine, the 'king of wines and wine of kings', according to Louis XIV, makes a truly aristocratic accompaniment to the house’s foie gras.
Save a tiny wiggle of your digestive tract for the gourmet delight of carpaccio of pineapple for dessert.
Then strut off to bed like the aforementioned peacock.

*Readers in Brussels might be interested to learn that a building in Belgium's capital has a hallway devoted to Thomas Gresham. You can see a relief of and tribute to the insurance salesman par excellence in the café and shop entrance hallway of the Palais des Beaux-Arts on Rue Ravensteinstraat.

Four Seasons Gresham Palace
Budapest - District V
Roosevelt tér 5-6
Getting there: Tram 2 to Roosevelt tér
Tel: (36 1) 268-6000
Fax: (36 (1) 268-5000
Four Seasons Gresham Palace website

Páva (Peacock) Restaurant
Budapest - District V
Roosevelt tér 5-6
Getting there: Tram 2 to Roosevelt tér
Tel: (36 1) 268-6000
Fax: (36 (1) 268-5000
Open for dinner only, 6pm-11pm daily

Ratings
Décor 9/10
Cuisine 9/10
Service 8/10
Wine List 9/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Overall rating 9/10

Budapest lomtalanítás

October sees the last chance lomtalanítás
©LucyMallows2007

No wonder they invented the term and the ritual: ‘spring cleaning’.
Once the sun finally peeps through, it is the best time of year to sweep away the dust accumulated during the winter, throw open the windows, take a deep breath and access the situation.
An essential part of the vernal rejuvenation is the desire to clear out all the unwanted excess baggage surrounding our lives and start again.
Purging the cupboards and chucking out all the junk we’d long forgotten gives an intense feeling of pleasure and rebirth, before it all accumulates again over the coming year.
In North America, the Saturday garage sale is an old tradition and in Britain car-boot sales are an important part of community life.
In Budapest, the 'spring' clear-out lasts from March to October and brings as much joy to the treasure-seeker as to those who throw out.
In Hungary, the ritual is known as lomtalanítás, which is literally the act of liberating oneself from lom - lumber, or unwanted household articles.
'I think all nations like to throw out stuff and start afresh', said sociologist Zsuzsa Éles.
'In Naples at New Year they throw out unwanted furniture from upstairs windows which can be quite dangerous. In Hungary we are more organized with different districts at different times'. Lomtalanítás occurs on prearranged days, notice of which is usually posted by letter boxes in the apartment block.
Residents are advised to put their trash out on the pavement during the evening before collection.
Sometimes these are hasty affairs, finished within a 24-hour period.
If you live in Downtown District V, there is a load of fascinating junk, but this year you have already missed the kukások (rubbish collectors) who arrived on the morning of Saturday 28 February and had everything swept up by 9am.
On Friday evening, 16 April, Bródy Sándor utca in District VIII was completely blocked from the Nagykörút to the Kis (Múzeum) körút with ironmonger’s items bargains blocking access and a wealth of heavy oak furniture for whoever fancied such a thing.
Lomtalanítás cuts across borders and class-divides, uniting everyone with the joy of finding a little nugget of treasure for free.
Even French screen legend Catherine Deneuve entered into the spirit of the event.
Last year, she was reportedly spotted in District V indulging in the traditional Hungarian treasure-hunting sport while in town for the Opera Ball.
She obviously has a keen eye for a bargain and, I heard, she crammed four chairs into the back of her chauffeur-driven Audi in the district V chuck-out, taking a little piece of Hungary back to her Provence farmhouse.
Larger districts can take three to four days to get everything cleared away.
Residents happily put beds, cupboards and mattresses, never mind those rotting fridges and quasi-sputnik washing machines outside without fear of local busybodies accusing them of anti-social behavior.
At first glance most of it appears to be junk.
But within minutes, the mounds become a magnet for antique collectors, scrap metal or cardboard merchants, gangs of traders and curious passers-by.
Teams go around the district in gangs, commandeering the best piles and sitting guarding them, while others seek out more tempting mountains of garbage.
They can be quite intimidating these days.
It seems that trash (scrap metal, possibly an antique chair or picture frame ) is big business, particularly in upmarket neighbourhoods like Rózsadomb (District II) with tasty pickings to be found.
During the lomtalanítás in District V one year, I was kept awake all night by enthusiastic groups of hunters.
People rummaged though the piles and argued over territory.
Peering over the balcony in the early hours, I witnessed an elderly gentleman carefully taking apart an ancient television.
He removed certain pieces meticulously, only he knew which bits were worth keeping.
For many, lomtalanítás represents an essential source of income. Just after the change of political system, I once witnessed evolution, if not revolution, in progress through lomtalanítás in District XIII.
Among a mountainous pile of cupboards, fridges and mattresses were strewn copies of a leather-bound book series entitled Sztálin I - XX, and the owner had decided it was time to relieve himself of all of them.
When I first walked past, the collection was complete.
Later in the afternoon, some issues were missing - obviously the more exciting episodes in the dictator’s life.
Eventually, by evening all the books had been snapped up.
Nearby, two students unfurled what must have been a very luxurious Persian carpet, but now only a few worn threads testified to its once-glorious past.
They seemed quite delighted with the find, however, rolled it up and headed off home. Lomtalanítás used to be quite a gentle pursuit, akin to sorting through dusty old books at a Sunday morning village fete.
Now with the growing gap between rich and poor, an element of desperation has crept in.
'A vaguely-regulated war has broken out in many districts, as groups of organized gangs tour the streets with their Ladas snapping up all the scrap metal and threatening those who converge on their patch', said Éles.
Tortured by incessant banging on those old-style drum washing machines, I wondered if I could make a sociological survey, during the metallic hammering which went on all day in my district’s appointed cathartic weekend.
It seemed that everyone in District XI was chucking out their top-loading East German models en masse, then possibly buying a swanky new brand, to keep up with the Kovácses.
The lomtalanítás ritual is like a giant recycling effort catering to the various needs of the population.
Unlike enforced recycling in Western Europe, based on guilty consciences, lomtalanítás represents a more local, evolutionary method which works just as efficiently as bottle banks. Those who take items home today will probably place them back on the pavement at some future date, nothing is really being thrown away and so the process perpetuates itself.
To the eternal horror of my Hungarian partner, I can never resist a quick look through the piles, which loom high in front of my door.
I shall be on the lookout in September when District XI has its regular purge and now I have the perfect excuse - if a superstar like Madame Deneuve doesn’t mind having a rummage for a bargain, then who are we to be so fastidious!
Go on, chuck out then get stuck in, who knows what you’ll discover.

The website of the Fővárosi Közterület-fenntartó Zártkörűen Működő Részvénytársaság (Zrt)
at http://www.fkf.hu/a_lomtalanitas.html
has a list of what districts chuck out on what dates, with maps and everything!!