tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42429634048167329742024-02-25T21:16:23.587+00:00Disappearing BudapestA series of articles on the undiscovered, yet sadly fast-disappearing features of Budapest - a city of neon signs, presszó bars, secret cemeteries, underground reservoirs, changing far too swiftly into yet another homogenous, mall-packed European metropolis.
More than 20 years' research by a Hungarian-speaking travel writer into the hidden heart of the city. Catch it now before it's too late.lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-37174131044297032052016-08-18T15:29:00.000+01:002016-08-18T15:36:11.998+01:00Steamed Up – The Ottomans in Budapest
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Two things that make Budapest a destination with a difference are the coffee houses and the thermal baths.
However, though the inventive Magyar can claim many things (Vitamin C, Rubik’s cube and the hydrogen bomb amongst others) as their idea, these two tourist attractions most associated with Budapest can both be attributed to the Ottoman Empire.
However, if you were taught history in a Hungarian school, that’s probably not the way the Turks were depicted.
"Decades of disinformation have told only negative aspects of the Ottoman occupation," said Victoria Hill, a dynamic American businesswoman who lives in Hungary and is determined to save the crumbling Turkish baths in Hungary’s capital and see them find their rightful place on the Unesco World Heritage list of outstanding natural and man-made treasures.
Hill has formed the tentatively titled Friends of the Baths, a cultural group which will meet regularly for lectures and discussions on Ottoman culture and its previously neglected influence on Hungarian life
"The widely-held belief that Hungary languished for a century and a half during the Ottoman occupation is simply not true," said Hill.
There was a thriving economy in Buda during the time, primarily due to its position on the caravan route.
Buda, with its remaining architecture and thermal baths offers, a flashback to Ottoman times. Hill hopes that this small collection of living, breathing monuments will be preserved for the enjoyment and fascination of generations to come.
The first meeting of the Friends was held in the wine cellar of the Gundel restaurant.
"It is difficult to get the Government or the city interested after more than 50 years of de-emphasised, dis-education about foreign cultures.
However,from my experience I have found that Hungarians are always interested in their history," said Hill. "This is a part of the cultural heritage of Hungary that has been ignored or neglected."
At the initial meeting, Hill gave an overview of the Ottoman Empire which lasted from 1302 to 1924.
"The Ottomans are very important to us in the West because they created forms of state administration; the ways in which they operated created the threads for democracy now," said Hill.
She illustrated her fascinating talk with slides showing maps, exquisite tiles and paintings which captured the moment as accurately as a camera.
There were pictures from the preparation for a circumcision of Mehmed in 1582, when the celebration lasted 52 nights and 52 days, and wrestling performances and tightrope walking revealed in miniature books which acted as a newsreel of the time.
A map of the Ottoman Empire at its height showed the rich trade routes and the extent of the power, north to Buda and Vienna, east to Persia and Georgia, south towards Saudi Arabia.
Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent brought the Empire to its zenith.
As the fourth Ottoman sultan, he presided over the most powerful state in the world, from 1520 to 1566. He was a cunning military strategist and more than doubled the territory inherited from his father.
He built elegant mosques, baths, schools, fountains and gardens. Few people know that Süleyman the Magnificent died on Hungarian soil on the way to the attack on Vienna.
Buda was once home to 26 mosques.
Today only the baths remain from Buda’s imarets (inns or hospices). Situated from south to north along the Danube these are the Rudas, pictured right, Rác, Király, Lukács and Császár baths.
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In addition to the baths there are two other Ottoman architectural relics that still exist in Buda: The Malomtó gunpowder mill and the Gül Baba Tomb.
Only the outer structure of the earlier building at the Malomtó remains.
The Gül Baba Tomb, however was completely renovated in 1962 and is preserved as a gift of the Turkish government.
The first baths on the site of the Rudas date from the late 14th century.
The exact date isn’t known, although renovation and expansion work was carried out in 1566.
The new building was constructed by the Pasha of Buda in the 16th century and his plaque remains in the main chamber.
The original cupola, vaulted corridor and main octagonal pool remain, although heavily restored.
There are several reasons to believe that this work might have been carried out by Sinan, a Greek architect and contemporary of Michelangelo who designed 30 mosques and lived to the age of 99.
He was a maths genius who revolutionized Muslim architecture and created incredible, huge domes.
Sinan was the royal architect at the time when Süleyman the Magnificent died.
The size of the Rudas cupola is unique.
It is the largest in Europe and only two of its size exist in Turkey.
The type of pillar used in the steam room of the Rudas matches Sinan’s style of work. He was also working on an aqueduct in Belgrade in 1565, only one year before the Rudas reconstruction, and it would have certainly been a much shorter trip to Buda than to travel back to Istanbul.
During the 1500s, the Rudas also housed either a <i>Tekke</i> (lodge) or a <i>zaviye</i> (hostel for travellers) run by Dervish monks. Only the ground floor of the former three-story building remains.
Bombing during the Second World War destroyed the upper two stories.
There has never been sufficient funding to fully restore the building.
Hill estimates that between $8 and $15 million are needed to renovate the Rudas Baths.
"It has not been touched since 1945 and is waiting for an investor like the Rác has found in Miklós Bornemisza’s Rác Nosztalgia Kft, who plan to enlarge the bath territory, build a hotel and restaurant complex and even create a chair lift leading from the Rác up to the top of Gellért Hill," said Hill.
The Rác Baths were originally built during the time of King Mátyás.
It is believed that an underground passageway connected the baths to the Royal Gardens in the southwest side of the Castle. Later in the 16th century, the Ottomans added the cupola that remains to this day.
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The Király Baths are in a small, beautiful building which possibly predates the work of Sinan.
Prior to Sinan, domes or cupolas were placed on top of the outer walls of a building or on broad, squat pillars. Sinan introduced large, graceful cupolas that rested on narrow, towering pillars, but the Király reflects the former style.
It has retained more of its original Turkish character than any of the other Buda baths. The Király is also unique because it does not have its own well.
Water for the Király is carried via a larchwood conduit system from the Lukács wells. Construction of the Turkish part began in 1566 and was completed by Pasha Sokoli Mustapha in 1570.
"The Király Baths also need a great deal of work as it may be sinking on Fô utca. The small volume of water flowing into the Király Baths dictates that the number of customers will never make it profitable, neither is the Rudas. The city operates the Rudas at a loss.
But the Pepsi bottling plant is a tenant so there is money flowing in. There is also a day hospital at the Rudas which provides another source of income," said Hill.
The Császár Baths are among the oldest thermal baths in Buda, having been known in Roman times.
In 1178, the Knights Templar of St John established a settlement at the site of the two baths.
The Knights built a monastery, church, hospital and bath at each of the two sites. During the time of the Ottomans, the baths were extremely popular and renovated by Buda Pasha Sokollu Mustafa in 1571-72.
The Rudas and Király are both national monuments. In 1987, the Cultural Ministry planned to register with the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) proposing that the Turkish baths be proposed for inclusion on the World Heritage List.
However, in 1989 the Cultural Ministry was split and the plan seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Hill’s goal is to create a Friends of the Baths movement and show City Hall and the Government that a non-profit or charity organisation can help.
First published in The Budapest Sun, 21 March 2002lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-20968792583623350812014-03-17T15:00:00.000+00:002014-03-17T15:09:01.097+00:00Eating between Cities
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Published in 'Wine 'n' Dine - Edited by Lucy Mallows, The Budapest Sun May 11-17 2000
At the beginning of the 20th century, rail travel meant romance: Riding across the European Continent in luxury and style on the Orient Express, taking tea in the dining car, swishing one's crinoline along the corridors.
These days, train travel does not always live up to those images, depicted in epic films.
Delayed trains, leaves on the line, the 'wrong kind of snow', sitting stationary for fours in the middle of a field with no explanation, squashed up between two salami-eating uncles in grubby second-class carriages while babies scream and teenagers listen to the relentless 'tshk, tshk, tshk' on their not-so-personal headphones.
However, on a recent trip back from a healing weekend in the spa resort of Hajdúszoboszló, we discovered that there were no seat reservations left for the over-crowded Sunday (back-to-Budapest) train, despite a first-class return ticket booked and paid for, and the only way of getting aboard and back home to the Hungarian capital would be to camp out in the restaurant car for the duration.
Now, I wouldn't recommend this, as signs posted all over state the threatening message that, "You can only stay/consume here for a maximum 45 minutes," and, terrified, we realised that our journey would take just over two hours. What to do? Attempt the world record for the slowest chewing in culinary history? Linger over the soup until the gobbets of fat congealed into a solid carapace? Sup enough beer until the Dutch courage inspired us to stand up to the waitress who looked as if she could take on the entire Welsh rugby team and come out the winner?
We girded our loins and decided to go for it.
Our carriage this time on the Hortobágy Express was more functional than fancy, with neatness rather than nostalgia the main theme.
Clean and painted white, the interior's best features were the giant windows, which afforded a much better view of the flat, endless fields of the Puszta than can normally be seen, even in first class. Framed by the pink curtains, the view of field after field sailed past as we examined the menu.
Multi-coloured, checked tablecloths had been placed at diagonals over white linen and artificial cloth flowers were a nice touch.
A whole range of nibbles awaited tempted fingers: pistachio nuts, salted almonds or peanuts, there were eight petit fours placed under cling film for those who couldn't bear the wait.
The waitress was brusquely efficient, however, bringing each freshly-fried meal within minutes of request.
This was not going according to plan...!
My companion and I both decided we deserved a bottle of Dreher lager (260 forints), just in case the authorities got bolshy about the time limit, and we studied the menu items.
It was encouraging to find a vegetable omelette (350 forints) and scrambled eggs with onions (250 forints) available, but I decided to try the fish fillets (700 forints), which arrived in an instant and were, actually, fish fingers.
However, I didn't mind. I was just grateful they weren't from the poor, polluted Tisza river, which we passed over at Szolnok just as I was tucking in.
The chips were home-made and oily but quite presentable on a long trip.
With a side order of some gherkin pickles (150 forints) to cut through the oil, everything went down nicely, with the main problem being trying not to wolf it down too quickly.
My companion was tempted by the humorous item on the menu, described as 'Utasmáj' ('traveller's liver), which conjured up images of unwitting voyagers being butchered in the back carriage by the Hannibal Lecter of the locomotive industry.
She settled instead for the turkey breast (700 forints) stuffed with cheese, breaded and fried. This came with chips and she also decided on a side orer of 'csalamádé' (150 forints), a piquant miture of cabbage, peppers and onions in vinegar.
Other items on the menu ranged from the usual breaded 'n' fried meats (700 forints) to rice with beef (650 forints). The most expensive offering was lemon chicken breast with stewed fruit (900 forints) and there was also consommé with egg yolk (150 forints) for starters.
My companion finished too early and, in a panic, decided to have a pancake with chocolate (120 forint) to delay the arrival of the bill and stern looks.
To keep her company, I had some chestnut puree, which was very rich but gave us another half-hour's breathing space as I slowly spooned the dense nutty pudding and created little artistic creations in the glass bowl. This didn't go down too well with the waitress.
I have been told off many times for commenting on the frightening aspect of many Hungarian waitresses, but those who criticise are always middle-aged expatriate men, who get quite a different reception and treatment to two young-ish females attempting to dine and communicate in a language not their own.
Ms Train Buffet raised her eyebrows in exasperation every time I attempted to order something, as if to say, "I really don't know why you bother."
Nevertheless, we managed to stick it out to the bitter end, and after an enjoyable meal in pleasant surroundings, tumbled out on to Nyugati Station platform, replete and relaxed, well, relatively...lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-35106732345984124342013-09-23T17:11:00.000+01:002013-09-23T17:20:37.853+01:00Home on the hill heals Hungarians' ills<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUB5-5Viu_MuBApqusGSd8fvun-qEsrVzpM2qq0_a7iRmobhyxmbEHqKNNKThT3Drm8iaqMKKl98CQs-r3mV8slxqPmgQaaKWSbwCtn6bKImC6wy4T8jKByxpMI5T-A0QZ4YeMvde5OQU/s1600/560560_10151864460346201_1666209917_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUB5-5Viu_MuBApqusGSd8fvun-qEsrVzpM2qq0_a7iRmobhyxmbEHqKNNKThT3Drm8iaqMKKl98CQs-r3mV8slxqPmgQaaKWSbwCtn6bKImC6wy4T8jKByxpMI5T-A0QZ4YeMvde5OQU/s400/560560_10151864460346201_1666209917_n.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSNikvSah0VOx8A41yvHPW0RUxWqMmnjhVOAg9wJ7lL2On_LqqY5D6FRBE75iEHQP0_-XPSKdTvNpQBB86D1jfcyKD9Z5DUN8twkQRNpeg7hMtEaXw-eYEFAefjYplT-1xXhV3KS2CHmc/s1600/31old-visegr2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSNikvSah0VOx8A41yvHPW0RUxWqMmnjhVOAg9wJ7lL2On_LqqY5D6FRBE75iEHQP0_-XPSKdTvNpQBB86D1jfcyKD9Z5DUN8twkQRNpeg7hMtEaXw-eYEFAefjYplT-1xXhV3KS2CHmc/s400/31old-visegr2.jpg" /></a></div>
European literature of the 19th century was crammed with sanitariums. The lovelorn heroes of Turgenev’s and Lermontov’s novels were forever creeping up and down the corridors, seducing frail, young countesses.
They declared their passion while taking the water cure in Baden-Baden or walking moodily about the garden in the film, ‘Last Year in Marienbad.’
Pale Hollywood heroines would divulge unrequited loves while dying of consumption in the rarefied air of the Swiss Alps as they pined away under a rug on the veranda.
Visegrád sanitarium is one of five remaining institutes in Hungary.
The others are at Parád, Sopron, Balatonfüred and Kékes, each specialising in treating different parts of the body. Patients come to Visegrád to convalesce after a serious illness or operation, usually connected with the digestive tract, although nervous complaints and psychosomatic problems can also be treated.
Some patients return year after year with chronic internal problems and treat the centre like a home away from home. Head nurse Sándorné Rácz says, “We receive patients like a long-lost family member. I see our dear patients returning again and again.
Around 35 percent ask specifically to come here.”
Bathed in sunlight, Visegrád certainly looks idyllic.
It sits on the side of a hill overlooking the Danube Bend, a 200-bed care centre surrounded by a flower garden.
In the shade of blossoming chestnut trees patients sit, chatting or reading, or, as Rácz says, they, “Stare out into the big void and contemplate life.
It is a peaceful place where people can relax and switch off. Many patients have nervous problems or are chronically depressed.”
Inside, the walls are a soothing pale green and there is a smell of boiled potatoes and disinfectant.
Patients sit in the corridors, dressed in track suits.
Dr. Ferenc Kocsis, senior consultant, says, “It is important that patients take an active part in their own rehabilitation in healing surroundings.
Relaxation is an important part, but they should not lie around in bed all day if they can get up.“
The sanitarium stresses the important of complete rehabilitation, both physical and spiritual.
There is a psychiatrist to look after the emotional recovery and a mysterious closed door marked “Human Politics Department.”
Patients can also visit the on-site hairdresser or dentist for confidence boosting.
A little church stands on the sanitarium grounds.
It is heated in winter to make praying more comfortable.
The Miklós Horthy Sanitarium – as it was then known – opened in 1929.
It became a state sanitarium under the control of the Ministry of Health in 1950 before it was taken over by Budapest local government a year later.
Patients are sent here from Budapest and the surrounding area.
A minibus service ships patients twice a day from Batthyány tér.
“Residence and treatment at the sanitarium is free for Hungarian citizens with a blue health insurance card,” says Péter Fodor, the financial director.
Patients stay in a three- or four-bed room, but for a daily fee of Ft900 they can have a single or twin room with a separate shower, toilet, colour television and refrigerator.
Married couples can even receive treatment together and stay in a twin-bedded, albeit fairly spartan, room.
Fodor says, “There are 12 in-hospital doctors and a further eight specialists; X-ray operators, dentists.
There are 69 nurses, which is the optimum staff number for 200 patients.
The yearly budget is Ft160 million, which comes from the Social Insurance.”
In the corridor between the wards stand three huge jars of mineral water – bitter water, alkaline hydrogen carbonate medicinal water and something called Glauber salty water.
Underneath is a big urn of chamomile tea. Patients can dip in at leisure.
Strangely for a health institute, smoking is allowed outside and many bare chested ‘bácsi’s sit in the sun playing cards in a cloud of ‘Multifilter.’
The sanitarium takes a pragmatic view that many have nervous or psychosomatic problems and they cannot be forced to give up smoking for the period of their three-week stay.
Swimming is possible in the Lepence thermal pool nearby, although a pool is also being dug for balneotherapy – physiotherapy in water for those with locomotive and other disorders who are not strong enough to exercise on dry land.
Relationships which sometimes develop between patients are not encouraged.
Nurse Rácz says, “Unfortunately, although the patients may have stomach problems, their emotions are still working fine.”
Matron Rácz is terrifyingly friendly and overenthusiastic.
She says, “We get severely depressed people coming here, but they all cheer up and smile back at me after three days and if not, well I just don’t say hello anymore.”
She greets everyone as she walks around, saying “Szia!” or “Puszi!” She says, “We are a big family here. There are no barriers, patients can come and go as they like.
All we ask is that they are in their rooms for two hours in the morning when the doctors visit.
It is like paradise here. We take the patients on day trips to Esztergom and Mogyoróhegy.
Next Monday, we are holding a cabaret evening in the social hut. One of our patients can play old nostalgic songs on the piano. We have musical evenings and joke competitions.”
At lunch time, most patients are in the spacious canteen.
Dr. Kocsis said the average patient age was 45, but most seem to be pensioners.
The lunch is tasty and all staff eat there, too, which is reassuring, although there is something ghoulish about eating fried liver in a gastro-intestinal hospital.
In the cool dark-green atmosphere of the day-room there is an aquarium, a television showing English-language classes on ceefax and lots of plants.
Through the window you can watch middle-aged ladies strolling past in curlers from the 1950s.
Two sisters, Bözsi and Rózsika, sit on a bench in the flower garden. Both in their 70s, they have come here many times with a frightening list of complaints.
The sanitarium now arranges for them to come at the same time and share a room.
Bözsi was on Margit Bridge when it blew up in 1945.
The average length of stay is 21 days. Dr. Kocsis says, “Many patients have chronic illnesses and need at least three weeks’ break. We work on the basis that we want to make people fit enough to return to work.
As they come back again and again, we need to establish a good relationship between the patient and the sensible doctor.”
Many hospitals in the countryside are facing bankruptcy and many resorts, like Hévíz, have had to be privatised.
The government intends to overhaul and restructure the health care programme in the autumn and health care institutes will be nervously looking over their shoulder.
Kocsis says, “I am an optimist. I am quite old and I have seen many changes.
The future now lies in Bokros’s hands.”
<b>Home on the hill heals Hungarians’ ills</b>
Lucy Mallows visits an oasis of peace where Budapest’s old and sick while away their hours.
Published in Budapest Week, June 1 -7 1995
Photographs: Katalin Széphegyi
lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-18065473058949554982013-05-18T17:59:00.001+01:002013-05-18T18:18:10.410+01:00The Attila József Museum - A poetic genius<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif4ocw_O9X7h5AnUEwjFmo1uv-Zuzuhp2jIgPT1nbfoPv1kEQif4sUmEFvKKa3IGMlGWuAuuD5nuxd9MEHWxo7ZNSqfJ1PD7rfse78K_gaoW0T8NsbSSFr1TxmbcjshPyzkGRpqZtpyi8/s1600/800px-Jo%CC%81zsef_Attila.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif4ocw_O9X7h5AnUEwjFmo1uv-Zuzuhp2jIgPT1nbfoPv1kEQif4sUmEFvKKa3IGMlGWuAuuD5nuxd9MEHWxo7ZNSqfJ1PD7rfse78K_gaoW0T8NsbSSFr1TxmbcjshPyzkGRpqZtpyi8/s320/800px-Jo%CC%81zsef_Attila.JPG" /></a>
The poetry of Attila József is said to be the most beautiful in the Hungarian language and has reached the hearts and minds of many people in Hungary and abroad.
It is possible to trace some of the events of his tragically short life at several sites throughout Budapest. József was born on April 11, 1905, in the poor working class district of Ferencváros.
The modest two-roomed apartment at Gát utca 3, where he was born, has been transformed into a fascinating museum by Péter Sára of the Petôfi Literature Museum.
It is easy to spot the apartment from a plaque, which was erected in 1965 and floral tributes and wreaths. The green door was ajar and a knock alerted Mrs Ferenc Soltész, the curator.
"We had a Swedish translator here yesterday.
People come from all over the world to pay tribute," she said.
Inside the small apartment the walls are lined with black and white photographs.
A picture of József’s father, Áron, in a military uniform is striking and a photo of his mother Borbála Pöcze reveals a pretty and delicate-looking woman.
In his poem, A Dunánál (By the Danube) József wrote:
"My mother was a Kun, my father was half Székely, half Romanian, maybe pure Romanian.
From mother’s mouth the food was sweet,
From father’s lips the truth was beautiful."
József’s father, a soap boiler, abandoned the family when his son was three years old. There is a photo of another house in the same street and a poignant inscription reads: "Papa disappeared from this flat."
His departure left his mother to care for József and his two elder sisters Jolán and Etelka on a small income she earned from taking in washing.
In 1910, aged five, József was sent away for two years to foster parents, the Gombai’s, in the village of Öcsöd where the young boy worked as a swineherd, like other poor children in the village.
At the age of seven, his mother took him back and with three children she again tried to make ends meet.
A map by the door shows the 19 different places, all in Ferencváros, where the family lived.
"Every time she had trouble with the rent, the landlord kicked them out and they had to move on," said Soltész, who supplemented the exhibition with stories and snippets of interesting information.
The writer Zsigmond Móricz once asked József how he had managed to finish school.
He expected him to say he sold newspapers to support himself, as many did.
However, he said his sister Jolán married Ödön Makai, a lawyer from Hódmezôvásárhely, and they paid his school fees.
József’s mother died of cancer in 1919 when he was 14 years old. Makai became József’s legal guardian and sent him to Makó boarding school.
The museum shows József’s first volume of poems, Szépség koldusa (Beauty’s Beggar), which he wrote aged 17.
The young poet furthered his education at Szeged university, but left after threats from Professor Horger who was disturbed by the publication of his poem Tiszta szívvel (With a Pure Heart) that began: "I have no father, I have no mother, I have no God and no country."
József then left for Vienna and Paris where he became a member of the Anarcho-Communist group.
When József returned to Budapest two years later he fell in love with Márta Vágó, who came from a very well-to-do family. But the romance failed and he wrote, "Osztálya elragadta tólem" ("Her class tore her away from me.")
József’s love life provided fuel for his poetry, as did his political leanings. He became involved in illegal left-wing movements and published his fourth volume of poetry, Döntsd a tôkét, ne siránkozz! (Fight capitalism, don’t whinge!)
The work was confiscated and József was charged with "political agitation and obscenity."
In 1933, the Fascists were in power in Germany and József continued with his work in the Communist movement.
József was very disappointed not to be invited to the Soviet Writers’ First Congress and in 1935, suffering depression, he entered a sanatorium for the second time.
When he left the institution a year later he became the co-editor, alongside Pál Ignotus, of the civil humanist periodical Szép Szó (Beautiful Word). He wrote and edited much of the publication in the Japán Coffeehouse, now the Írók Boltja book shop at Andrássy út 45.
Despite his work, József became more and more isolated and depressed.
His life was occupied by painful love affairs and periods in hospital with depression.
The poet’s sisters did their best to care for him, but to no avail - József ended his life in Balatonszárszó, on December 3, 1937.
There are many places in Budapest where you can find Attila József.
At Kossuth tér, by Parliament, a beautiful, melancholic statue of the poet sits facing the river, his hat in his left hand and coat at his side, as if exhausted after a long walk. An inscription in the style of József’s handwriting, taken from A Dunánál (By the Danube), reads:
”Mintha szivembôl folyt volna tova
Zavaros, bölcs és nagy volt a Duna”
”As if it flowed straight from my heart
Troubled, wise and great was the Danube”
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wQT4Z3y6YttCm3kRUQBn_cQ1Q3Z-88H01ms89aCxXV0TCpisL0Sil9MZ3k-9uNPWpKIxXMlXHUNBpriOFwL0igVr3kYi-wUSZUTvuitYj3rAbNr7aL8S4fF3xqNBGgyN2jt1RWYm448/s1600/548029_10151200794706201_183922239_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wQT4Z3y6YttCm3kRUQBn_cQ1Q3Z-88H01ms89aCxXV0TCpisL0Sil9MZ3k-9uNPWpKIxXMlXHUNBpriOFwL0igVr3kYi-wUSZUTvuitYj3rAbNr7aL8S4fF3xqNBGgyN2jt1RWYm448/s320/548029_10151200794706201_183922239_n.jpg" /></a>
At Mester utca 67, you can see a plaque marking the spot where József attended school between the age of seven and nine. The plaque was erected on May 1, 1957, to mark the 50th anniversary of his birth (actually 52 years earlier in 1905).
József was first buried in Balatonszárszó, then moved to Kerepesi Cemetery in 1942 to be united with his mother.
József was then claimed by the working classes and given a decorated grave in the Workers’ Pantheon, but finally moved back to be with his mother, sister Jolán and nephew Péter Makai at Kerepesi. Recently add to the gravestone is the name of Attila’s sister Etelka who died in April 2004 aged 101.
Former cemetery worker Antal Sinka added a theory to the many that surround the poet’s death. He said József did not commit suicide: "He left his sister’s house in a distracted state to buy two cigarettes. He was impatient for a train to pass and stepped out in front of it," said Sinka.
To find the grave, go through the main entrance along the avenue, through the arcade and past the graves of Endre Ady and Mór Jókai.
When you reach the next roundabout you will see a mausoleum with the words "Ave Domine" on your left. Turn right towards the Deák mausoleum and you will find Plot 35 where the great poet lies.
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU7I2rkkW61O5MM5QFt5Wh0vDwTgyg_Nb4PSEfMnuA6G_fQ0QvZMLt6s-ez19FHVy7FFqXNSEMnav0csP_-WytqNOHuMZ_H7-RKyuGBpvCHW-hm1nDMzTwHIHeQ5SyZi7K9MQYXJCVQE8/s1600/486779_10151200794851201_1706970317_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU7I2rkkW61O5MM5QFt5Wh0vDwTgyg_Nb4PSEfMnuA6G_fQ0QvZMLt6s-ez19FHVy7FFqXNSEMnav0csP_-WytqNOHuMZ_H7-RKyuGBpvCHW-hm1nDMzTwHIHeQ5SyZi7K9MQYXJCVQE8/s320/486779_10151200794851201_1706970317_n.jpg" /></a>
The author and her hero...
lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-81711935335790877412012-03-14T10:42:00.008+00:002012-03-20T12:39:35.116+00:00The Crowman<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPvUxtu73_BTX1B0ffksI4Nl7jLfuFbjs8tDgsADV_6XLy_VWskLrDjjeTeYpZ8u1MeogrqHiCdaHz6xbKT2RAwrIUkXek5mIB3BGqx_Rx-XpX4CQGXndoLsQnNzNUIE-cL5ukegPlYIY/s1600/DSCN5661.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPvUxtu73_BTX1B0ffksI4Nl7jLfuFbjs8tDgsADV_6XLy_VWskLrDjjeTeYpZ8u1MeogrqHiCdaHz6xbKT2RAwrIUkXek5mIB3BGqx_Rx-XpX4CQGXndoLsQnNzNUIE-cL5ukegPlYIY/s400/DSCN5661.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5719703280987826658" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Budapest's Bird Man of Deák tér</span><br />By Lucy Mallows<br />First published in The Budapest Sun, October 16, 1997<br /><br />“Louder, Louder”, orders Pisti Bácsi (Uncle Stevie) and four huge black crows squawk on demand, flapping their jet black wings and creating a terrifying spectacle. <br />Little children giggle nervously and huddle closer to their parents, but they are transfixed, and not only by the birds but by the sweet tiny kittens and mischievous black puppies, dozing in a pile on a deck chair nearby.<br />The scene comes straight from a 16th century Brueghel painting, as the old man feeds bread from his mouth to a gigantic black crow, named Ügyes (‘Skillful’). The three other birds, Pici (‘Tiny’), Csavargó (‘Vagabond’) and Csöves (‘Tramp’) line up to sit on his head. <br />He offers the birds to sit on the arms of those brave enough, as, he says, the birds bring good fortune.<br />Pisti Bácsi, or rather István Ferenc, to give him his official name, is 72 years old and has shared his caravan, parked on Határ út in the twentieth district, for the last ten years since retiring with four giant black crows, two enormous black dogs, nine puppies and five kittens.<br />Every day he travels to Deák tér, in the heart of Pest, riding the metro with a selection of animals in a cardboard box and cart arrangement, a friend brings the larger dogs in a car. He spends the day at the square opposite the plush Porsche salon, entertaining the crowds of tourists and Hungarians alike with his eccentric, medieval zoo.<br />A mound of intertwined tiny puppies and kittens of varying brown and black colours are dozing in a heap on a beach deck chair. <br />Unusually, all the birds, cats and dogs get along together, and the crows occasionally give the puppies a friendly peck.<br />Pisti’s teenage daughter, Anna-Mária sometimes comes along to help him. She spends her time chasing after the playful puppies who wander off in search of fun or food and one adorable fluffy ginger kitten, who modestly retires to a bush to relieve itself. The tiny animal can barely open its eyes. “His eyes wouldn’t open at all but I have been putting cream on them and they see better now,” says Pisti Bácsi attentively.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilO3ImbYyS7DWRLCSN5ZTtys23CSHwwqXfNRkFOKRasNGK2kG0C7XfCaVIq810popgIQS1cTgu12GLbhqzTaSKIByMk3HGfay5dTEoNWtUVG1wOFb0Yyde5YHBfvYcbux-I1_qC9BcwMI/s1600/DSCN5659.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilO3ImbYyS7DWRLCSN5ZTtys23CSHwwqXfNRkFOKRasNGK2kG0C7XfCaVIq810popgIQS1cTgu12GLbhqzTaSKIByMk3HGfay5dTEoNWtUVG1wOFb0Yyde5YHBfvYcbux-I1_qC9BcwMI/s400/DSCN5659.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5719703291675310914" /></a><br /><br />Pisti Bácsi has placed a modest message to say he lives with all these animals and needs money to feed them and buy medicine. <br />He needs a little extra income since he retired from working for Budapest Transport Company, digging up the streets and laying the tramlines. Most people, however, ask if they can buy the crows and the answer is always a firm ‘no’. <br />A shopper with two small children asks if the puppies are for sale and Pisti Bácsi asks for 1,500 forints each. “What breed are they?” asks the man. “Wait until they grow and you’ll find out then”, answers Pisti Bácsi. <br />The little kittens may be sold after the winter when they are stronger, he says, but he is not desperate to sell off his family. <br />The donations from the passers-by are enough to feed everyone.<br />Two huge black Rottweiler and German Shepherd cross-breeds sit behind like the dogs with eyes as big as soup plates, who guarded the tinder box in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. In a more modern touch, one wears plastic sixties sunglasses and looks super cool, lying quietly at the back, no doubt he could well protect his master if there were any trouble. <br />In the hustle and bustle of the modern world, many stop for a few minutes to gaze at this comically gothic spectacle, the diminutive ancient man with huge black crows on his arm looks more like an animal trainer at the court of an ancient king, offering birds that bring good fortune and money to those who dare to hold them.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiduBVimOGgiETjFe8HE_wzcz73WqD9h5o9E6a3Sh0Hq-WaoNBMh6KeaX60RzuSHvVQzSNQaeMaQKVOnnOJ39ShQxPhHzjXeZhO4_W4gqO8BrkXffoKyvS_uXf-ce7pQJU8lWsmE1Rl1DY/s1600/DSCN5660.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiduBVimOGgiETjFe8HE_wzcz73WqD9h5o9E6a3Sh0Hq-WaoNBMh6KeaX60RzuSHvVQzSNQaeMaQKVOnnOJ39ShQxPhHzjXeZhO4_W4gqO8BrkXffoKyvS_uXf-ce7pQJU8lWsmE1Rl1DY/s400/DSCN5660.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5719703296139631266" /></a><br /><br />Pisti Bácsi kisses two year-old Pici (Tiny) lovingly on the beak, offering the bird bread from his mouth. <br />The audience is transfixed. “They must be a hundred years old,” says one man and asks if Pisti Bácsi has ever tried making Crow Soup, “I know a recipe if you want to try”, he says. <br />Pisti bácsi is offended that he should ever try to eat his friends. “The animals are my biggest friends, I know some nice humans, but I also know some really wicked ones. Animals are always honest”.<br />Pisti bácsi thinks he may also have nine lives, like a cat. On Saint Stephen’s Day, August 20 he fell from a nine metre height in another of his haunts at the Fisherman’s Bastion up in the Castle District. “I lost consciousness, but I did not lose my life”, he says. This was extremely fortunate for all the dependents of this Magyar Doctor Doolittle.<br />“Why don't the crows fly away?” asks a tourist. Pisti bácsi’s reply says it all, “Because they have never known such love before”.lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-74325249038779701042011-06-19T15:19:00.003+01:002011-06-19T15:29:56.971+01:00Flea market heaven<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SqA7mV6NF5VkQl3DA-UCNLtGN47q16wSdNPUNYDtW1mYoze_0T9ZbgOSQ3_4iLm8aFzwA5Dp8cIAoFP6PDtsIQ8rDc8L0vqtaCYteAXF-spWQ8bModoJ0_dfkzxYCfSFDZMkXQQf9W8/s1600/Bottlessml.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SqA7mV6NF5VkQl3DA-UCNLtGN47q16wSdNPUNYDtW1mYoze_0T9ZbgOSQ3_4iLm8aFzwA5Dp8cIAoFP6PDtsIQ8rDc8L0vqtaCYteAXF-spWQ8bModoJ0_dfkzxYCfSFDZMkXQQf9W8/s400/Bottlessml.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5619937458289209842" /></a><br /><br /><br />The spring health regime is not complete without a spring wardrobe.<br />Having decided to take up jogging, tennis, healthy eating and Tai Chi, I knew exactly where I could purchase all the required items in the same location and for a very reasonable price too.<br />Budapest’s Józsefvárosi piac is known these days as the Chinese Market, from the large quantities of both goods and vendors that hail from the Far East. It is massive, now the biggest of all Budapest's market places.<br />The market can be found just past Kerepesi cemetery, behind the yard for Józsefvárosi railway station and is easy to reach by tram from Blaha Lujza tér. <br />If Budapest seems deserted on a Sunday morning, it is because most of the population has relocated to Józsefvárosi's acres of trading country, a mammoth site filled with endless lines of stalls, selling everything under the sun, but mostly trainers and sports wear.<br />There is no problem guessing which tram stop to alight at, since nearing the destination, a thousand varieties of the plastic super-strong Hong Kong laundry bag or those chemical hold-alls from Finland suddenly form a wall by the exit and petite Chinese grandmothers emerge from underneath and carry the load a few paces to the market's entrance.<br />The market's busy entrance even has a large sign in Chinese characters and there are also messages warning the visitor what is allowed and what not. <br />A grumpy security guard, dressed from head to toe in combat gear shows little interest when we pass through the metal detector and the accusatory whine starts up, 'It must be your umbrella' he says with little concern.<br /> No sooner are we inside, than a money changer shouts "Hello, hello, dollar, mark" in my ear and waves a wad of green Bartóks at me.<br />Józsefvárosi is not the place to come for an antique watch or an undiscovered master. <br />The vendors here concentrate solely on new stuff, mostly clothing, and in large quantities. <br />Besides selling to the general public, the traders also provide many Budapest family stall holders with wholesale goods - mostly clothes. <br />Every sign shows two prices - egy and sok (‘one’ and ‘many’) - price for one unit or bulk buying. <br />A Vietnamese lady tells us that 'sok' means twenty 'nagyon szép' (‘very beautiful’) t-shirts or more, but unfortunately I reach my limit after ten pairs of black striped sports socks.<br /> Working your way through the market requires strength, endurance and considerable patience. <br />A slow snake of customers winds its way along the narrow passage between stalls. This is made even more claustrophobic when it rains and sheets of plastic up above turn the passage into a tunnel. <br />A barrage of traders, dragging sharp, pointy trolleys in their wake continuously come the other way and the cries of ‘Vigyázz, vigyázz’ (‘watch out, watch out’) in a dozen different accents fill the air.<br />If you make it down to the far end you are rewarded with delicious smells which waft from the many food stalls that provide sustenance for those who spend their entire lives here. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmGBrhBFajve5QVEjeafPgocFjtvLWFRdq1wOeb1grdD5_M8k_guqnTy7qviHXOZ4GTHMILCzADBq1aCQPN-6Sk-Sa8RUvuP19lRJJ9vGjHoOlwh_R22KQKzsQHcjl7bJHI7rBIu0dyyA/s1600/toyssml.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmGBrhBFajve5QVEjeafPgocFjtvLWFRdq1wOeb1grdD5_M8k_guqnTy7qviHXOZ4GTHMILCzADBq1aCQPN-6Sk-Sa8RUvuP19lRJJ9vGjHoOlwh_R22KQKzsQHcjl7bJHI7rBIu0dyyA/s400/toyssml.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5619937461398346114" /></a><br /><br />The Gül Baba Turkish büfé makes an enticing meaty kebab for Ft300 - a pitta bread stuffed with meat, salad and a spicy sauce. Next door, a young boy is ladling an assortment of meat chunks, cabbage, noodles, mushrooms and what looks like seaweed into plastic bowls ready for reheating in the Kinai Büfé - Chinese eaterie. The third stall in the row, Nilus offers more Doner kebabs with Egyptian spices.<br />Diners stand at chin high stalls, trying to eat and not be mown down by traders pushing giant boxes on wheels. Many stand around smoking and chatting in this microcosm of human society. <br />The sound of Russian, Ukrainian, Slovak, Romanian, Serbian, Turkish, Chinese and Vietnami voices speaking their own languages as well as Hungarian creates a heady, exotic mixture.<br />Apart from one incident which was reportedly against heavy-handed security techniques, all the different nationalities appear to enjoy each others company and mix peacefully.<br />The trainers are on offer for ridiculously low prices, but a closer inspection reveals that many of the famous brand names have one or two letters different from the original, you can find tape-recorders by ‘Panasoanic’ and ‘Adiads’ jogging pants.<br />In the pouring rain, one customer asks the security guy where he bought his elegant long green plastic raincoat, which he wears over the regulation paramilitary outfit. <br />Between mouthfuls of kebab, the bouncers direct him to a stall nearby.<br />The market is the place to go for slippers, sports clothing, electrical goods, cheap T-shirts, jeans, pants, socks and sandals so you'll look like a local in the swimming pool. <br />There are many bargains among the clothes but no antique treasures or holiday souvenirs<br />We examine some black Adiads running shorts with bright yellow stripes around the leg. <br />They are only Ft1,000 but miles too big, ‘Nagyon szép, nagyon jó’ (‘very nice, very good’) insists the Chinese trader.<br />Józsefvárosi market is also a good place to find electrical goods. <br />Harassed Hungarian parents come here at weekends to buy their children the latest playground craze, the laser pens. ‘Both my sons have to have them,’ says a lady out shopping, ‘They aren't real lasers of course, for Ft1,500, but they are so popular now, I can't say no’.<br />Besides the pens, there are many versions of pocket computer games and food liquidizers on offer.<br />For more electrical goods, get back on the number 28 tram and head out to almost the end stop, where you find Kôbányi bazár, which used to be known by many as the Russian market, however it seems that now less traders come from such great distances and many have moved to Budapest.<br />Anya from Tblisi, Georgia has a stall selling electrical goods. <br />On offer is a plastic-looking juicer called Nushi. Made in China, it only costs Ft3,500, although it doesn't look like it would stand the strain of pulverizing too many carrots. Exotic looking and friendly, Anya she says she lives in Budapest now but brings the stuff over from Tblisi. When asked if this is legal, she shrugs, looks unconcerned and says, ‘Well, no not really’.<br />Near the entrance, which is guarded by a building with two-way mirrors and signs in four languages forbidding everything, an extended family of Romanians are having a party. It is Marius’s birthday and his mum Radika known as ‘the boss’, as she oversees many stalls down the right hand side of the market, has bought a big chocolate cake, which she slices up. Many customers are keen to buy a slice, but its only for family and friends. The group came from Nagyvárad but now live here in Budapest. <br />The birthday celebrations include a lethal plum pálinka, champagne, wine and cola, plus nibbles of pogácsa amongst the knickers and socks on display<br />The customers here seem quite poor, they stock up on clothes and household products, cleaning products and foods - packet soups, raisins and Turkish soap.<br />Many come from Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Croatia, all neighbouring countries by bus every day, it is a hard life and many of the older traders now appear to have given up and stay at home.<br />At one time, Kôbányai bazár was a good place to find unusual knick-knacks from Russia and Ukraine and resembled the lively market behind the cigarette factory in Debrecen. Nowadays, it seems to be all training shoes and tools. Long rows of covered stalls are regulated and there is no longer the heady excitement of the hunt for a treasure.<br /> In the middle is the food area, the Csülök csarda (‘Pig’s Knuckle Inn’) and the Dudó ételbar offer Hungarian foods, breaded and fried things, and delicious-smelling home-made sausages, washed down with a fröccs (white wine spritzer) or a mulled wine in winter.<br />Down at the far right hand corner, traders lay out pieces of curtain on the ground and display carved wooden objects, more spare parts and metal clockwork children's toys that have seen better days.<br />The mixture of languages is more Slavic here, although we also hear Romanian, Romany and some Chinese amongst the Hungarian. The mixture is sometimes charming, ‘Eto nye kisci, eto bolshoi’ (‘this isn’t small, it’s big’) one elderly Russian lady insists when I say the jumper for Ft1,700 looks abit too tight under the arms.<br />A customer buys a haversack off Irina who comes every day from over the border in Ukraine on the coach. It is a hard life and now she has nothing to carry her goods home in. <br />She will have to sell everything a little cheaper to get rid of it today, she says.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhFljnmVYLc0Tjpxj7NUU5GCkVbMYWKyLkJHW89H69iXelKPggDBT0Ek_f6gcgZHOyzHfkBJy9Y2LLR4FQ7mTXJ2lm0NEys3Wd-P7tRvUM28Da9KnYnuymopBkHZ3UrF8-SOsLYqkOPR4/s1600/bolhapiac.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhFljnmVYLc0Tjpxj7NUU5GCkVbMYWKyLkJHW89H69iXelKPggDBT0Ek_f6gcgZHOyzHfkBJy9Y2LLR4FQ7mTXJ2lm0NEys3Wd-P7tRvUM28Da9KnYnuymopBkHZ3UrF8-SOsLYqkOPR4/s400/bolhapiac.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5619937458746278114" /></a><br /><br />Treasure hunters usually try the Ecseri market, situated half an hour's bus ride away in a distant suburb of south-east Budapest.<br />The market is fairly deserted during the week, but comes alive on Saturday when serious collectors mingle with tourists.<br /> At Esceri you are less and less likely to find a bargain, the prices start in the thousands for beautifully-restored gramophone record players, china figurines, paintings and all manner of furniture. <br />Stalls selling jeans and leather jackets starting at Ft6,000 blend in with heaps of machinery spare parts, where a man with the lowest, smokiest voice in the world holds court and surprises German tourists when he croaks, ‘Tessék’ (‘can I help you?’).<br />Here, you can still find oddities like communist badges for Ft100, black and white picture postcards showing another, more elegant world. <br />Pleasures of the modern world are provided by the excellent lángos stall, where the hot doughy frisbees come with sour cream and grated cheese and the garlic liquid is dripped out of a jam jar using a feather strapped to a twig. <br />The stall in the middle of the covered section is also very popular for its pörkölt (stew) and palacsinta (pancake) selection.<br />Ecseri has a huge outdoor section where you can find all sorts of furniture, from chests of drawers, cupboards and cookers to bedsteads, chairs and lamp stands. <br />We even find a 12-inch bronze plaque of the late Lord Rothermere's father. ‘He was a great friend of the Hungarian people,’ says the trader when we inquire about the price.<br />For a less wallet-punishing Saturday morning, we head for the ‘flea market’ in Petôfi Csarnok (PeCsa), where hobbyists, collectors, traders gather at weekends. Until recently a lot of poor people also gathered outside on the vast concrete space, and sold goods laid out on the ground. <br />When the rules were tightened, the market shifted back inside the walls of the Petôfi Csarnok and those that couldn't afford the stall rental headed off somewhere where they did not have to pay rent, back to Hunyadi tér or the even more downtrodden Teleki tér.<br />With the individual traders now inside, both they and the customer have to pay a fee to get in. <br />PeCsa is a good place to find dinner plates, badges, children's toys and clothes.<br />On Friday afternoon there is no sign of the group of traders who gather in Hunyádi tér. Ildi néni says ‘I think it's disgusting the way the police kick these poor people out. Some people can't even buy a kilo of bread until they've sold something in the market. But the police don't let them sell here, because they don't pay any tax’.<br />Behind Oktogon, very poor people, scratching a living selling things scavenged from bins, other flea markets and allegedly a lot of stolen stuff, things taken from mum's sideboard or people's own personal property that they need to hawk for the price of a meal.<br />People trying to make a living this way, get moved on continually by the police. <br />The Batthány tér vendors, who mostly appeared to sell prescription drugs: packets of algopyrin (Magyar aspirin), contraceptives and dangerous looking heart pills, were moved on. <br />They went to the outside free part of PeCsa. <br />The ones that couldn't afford to move inside then went to Hunyadi tér and the really poor hang out in Teleki tér, where the homeless sit and drink from a communal giant Sprite bottle, oblivious to the lack of customer traffic in this area.<br />On Monday morning at 9am, a few people, all men stand around. <br />There are pieces of material on the muddy ground with a few squeezy plastic toys, electric cables and an odd left shoe. One trader Jenô says, ‘I come here most mornings, but don't sell much, mostly stuff that I find hanging around’. <br />He says he usually gets stopped by the police then gives up for the day, ‘I go to the market get some bread and something to drink then we sit around. That's free at least’.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">INFO BOX</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Józsefvárosi piac - the ‘Chinese market’</span><br />Kôbányai út 16<br />Tram No 28 to one stop past Józsefvárosi station<br />Open: Mon—Fri 06—18<br />Sat—Sun 06—16<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Kôbányai bazár </span><br />Maglódi út 18<br />Open- Mon—Fri 07—17<br />Sat—Sun 07—16<br />Tram no. 37 from Blaha Lujza tér, Népszínház út to Sibrik Miklós út<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">‘Ecseri’ - Használt cikk piac (‘used articles’ market)</span><br />XIX. Nagykôrösi út 156<br />Bus No. 54 from Boráros tér to Autópiac stop<br />Open: Mon-Fri 08—16; Sat 06—15; Sun 08—13<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Petôfi Csarnok - bolha piac (‘flea market’)</span><br />Városliget (City Park)<br />Saturday and Sunday 07—14<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">VI. Hunyadi tér </span><br />M1 to Vörösmarty utca<br />not legal, so opening hours vary, mostly early morning.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Novak piac -Versény utca</span><br />Open at weekends<br />bric-a-braclucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-54522883310815255342011-04-13T14:59:00.002+01:002011-04-13T15:05:44.448+01:00Houdini was Hungarian<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuh7CjK779twE_ASq9DJ8bWk6lXVaEkWS3fVSMUZb-3V0VhxV8yBWxabZNGyQSBVRfvYlP6OpdryVz18ejxy3hF2SnMvFnU_4VS3mUHECLdN_vt-N6ZL6ENcVBu5Algpp8Ex27G4KaX7s/s1600/Harry_Houdini_Historical_47ae76d55328d.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuh7CjK779twE_ASq9DJ8bWk6lXVaEkWS3fVSMUZb-3V0VhxV8yBWxabZNGyQSBVRfvYlP6OpdryVz18ejxy3hF2SnMvFnU_4VS3mUHECLdN_vt-N6ZL6ENcVBu5Algpp8Ex27G4KaX7s/s400/Harry_Houdini_Historical_47ae76d55328d.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5595067786523850226" /></a><br /><br />“The Genius of Escape who will Startle and Amaze!”<br /><br />On 24 March 2011, Budapest could have celebrated the 137th anniversary of the birth of one of its most famous sons, except that few people know that the world’s greatest escapologist, Houdini was Hungarian.<br />Harry Houdini was born Ehrich Weisz in Budapest on March 24, 1874, the third of five children born to Cecilia and her husband Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz.<br />Ehrich Weisz grew up to become Harry Houdini, the greatest escape artist, illusionist, magician and self-promoter in the world. When Ehrich was four, the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Appleton, Wisonsin. <br />His father became the Rabbi in the town and later Houdini told everyone that he was born in Appleton, hoping that the public would accept him as an American.<br />However, family life in the new country was not very settled, the family had to move house often and Ehrich and the other children tried to help out financially. <br />The eight-year-old Ehrich took a paper round and also shined shoes. Ehrich’s passion for magic and showmanship originated from watching the performance of a travelling magician, Dr. Lynn. <br />In 1883, aged only nine, he first appeared on stage as ‘Ehrich, the Prince of the Air’ performing on the trapeze and also as a contortionist.<br />Three years later, he ran away to join a travelling circus and tried to build a career as ‘Eric the Great’. <br />When his family moved to New York, a year later, he moved back home.<br />After his father’s death in 1892, Ehrich took a number of menial jobs; as a messenger, an electrician’s assistant and as a locksmith’s apprentice, which was to prove invaluable training for his future escapologist profession. He also was very interested in physical fitness and won awards in athletics and swimming. <br />Aged 15, Ehrich read the autobiography by the French magician Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin. <br />The book changed his life. <br />As a tribute to his hero, he called himself ‘Houdini’ with the Hungarian style adjectival ‘i’ form meaning ‘Houdin-like’, and started performing magic shows for $12 a week. <br />In 1892, Houdini formed a double act with his brother Ferencz, who had changed his name to Theo and later performed under the name Hardeen. The Houdini Brothers first performed the ‘Metamorphosis Illusion’ at Coney Island, Houdini repeated this trick more than 11,000 times during his career.<br />In June 1892, while working at Coney Island, in June 1894, Houdini met his future wife, Bess, a singer and dancer with the Floral Sisters. <br />They were married two weeks later and Bess replaced Theo in the double act, which then became known as The Houdinis.<br />The couple worked for P.T. Barnum’s museum, for circuses, at fairs and even on Native American reservations. <br />Houdini did complicated card tricks but mainly concentrated on broadening his repertoire of extraordinary escape stunts. Houdini developed the ‘handcuff challenge’ act, offering $100 to anyone in the audience if they could produce a pair of handcuffs he couldn’t get out of, he never had to pay out. <br />However, Houdini’s target of fame and fortune still eluded him.<br />Houdini’s luck changed when he met the top booking agent, Martin Beck. Beck put him as headliner on the vaudeville Orpheum tour, where Houdini concentrated on escapes and illusions, with one attention-grabbing novelty act. <br />In each city, that the Orpheum vaudeville show visited, Houdini got the police to lock him up in the city jail and then he would escape, with great publicity. His weekly wage packet immediately doubled to $125. <br />In 1900, the Houdinis sailed to London for their first tour of Europe. Houdini grabbed the public’s attention with daredevil stunts such as escaping from handcuffs in Scotland Yard, jumping into the river Seine with handcuffs on and emerging from the waters without them. <br />Houdini soon became a star and the highest paid entertainer in Europe. <br />The couple returned to New York and bought a home there. <br />Houdini was mentally, as well as physically, very strong. <br />One of his favourite catchphrases was “My brain is the key that sets me free.” <br />He devised more and more outlandish stunts and ever more ingenious methods of escaping. He escaped from padded cells, death row cells, coffins, sunken packing crates, a enormous paper bag which remained intact, a roll-top desk, burglar-proof safes, a giant football, an iron boiler, a diving suit, a mail bag, a plate glass box, and one of the most unusual, a preserved giant squid!<br />Combining his early training in swimming and as a locksmith, Houdini astounded the public by jumping into San Francisco Bay with a 75-pound ball and chain shackled to his ankles plus handcuffs on his wrists. <br />He emerged unscathed. <br />In New York he escaped from a weighted packing case dropped into the East River, and repeated the stunt nightly in a huge tank in a theatre in town. <br />When he went on tour, Houdini knew how to attract attention and draw crowds to his shows. Before the evening performance, he would escape from a straight jacket while suspended by a rope from a high building above the gathering crowd.<br />Houdini returned to London many times and there, in 1914, created the famous ‘Chinese water torture cell’ act, in which he was dangled upside down by his feet in a locked tank of water.<br />As Houdini’s fame grew, so did his stunts. One illusion, ‘Jenny the Vanishing Elephant’ was the world’s largest and needed a special gigantic stage at the New York Hippodrome.<br />An all-round entertainer, Houdini also acted in silent thriller movies, and produced several films with himself as the lead. <br />In 1926, Houdini began a crusade against spiritualists and mediums, whom he considered charlatans, out to swindle grieving families of their money. He testified before a congressional committee investigating spiritualists. <br />Houdini performed a series of death-defying stunts such as swallowing needles and threat and then pulling them from his mouth and lying underwater in a sealed casket for 90 minutes, breaking the world record. <br />However, it was ironic that his untimely death came as the result of a seemingly minor problem, appendicitis. <br />On October 22, 1926, Houdini was preparing for a show at the Princess Theatre in Montreal when a student from McGill University asked if he was strong enough to withstand a punch in the stomach. <br />Houdini tightened his stomach muscles and a young man hit him three times, causing his appendix to burst. At the time, Houdini didn’t realise what had happened and continued the tour, despite great pain. <br />Nine days later, after performing at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Houdini collapsed and died from peritonitis aged only 52. The date was October 31 – Halloween. <br />Despite Houdini’s distaste for spiritualism, to this day people still hold séances in an attempt to contact the great escapologist, and the first international superstar of the 20th century.<br /><br />(first published in 2004 in The Budapest Sun)lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-38934978456894885222011-03-05T19:39:00.004+00:002011-03-05T19:47:39.968+00:00Miksa Róth - genius of stained glass<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0fQpumkh8V45s-xqj7QBYuRzVMGlFAIAgxcGe_-dLwIKE04U2Vm-kfUxonkjRAQlp8c1x9b_BFuA8St84lT8q7P4hPp-hk_re-Jj-N8QTRxoVoZiyxyJPXJh8e-htfGUpCUgJ3nLaqRM/s1600/13iriszes.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 233px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0fQpumkh8V45s-xqj7QBYuRzVMGlFAIAgxcGe_-dLwIKE04U2Vm-kfUxonkjRAQlp8c1x9b_BFuA8St84lT8q7P4hPp-hk_re-Jj-N8QTRxoVoZiyxyJPXJh8e-htfGUpCUgJ3nLaqRM/s400/13iriszes.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5580684533003794402" /></a><br /><br />Walking through the rooms in the apartment where Miksa Róth once lived is a strange experience, as the man who spent his life making stunning stained glass windows and intricate mosaics in a myriad colours, apparently chose to live in surroundings that were entirely in shades of brown. <br />The bedroom, dining room and living room where the Róth family resided in Nefelejcs utca near Keleti Station have been preserved and restored to show visitors exactly how life was at the turn of the century. <br />Róth’s work can be seen in other rooms and the vivid colours, patterns and luscious designs of the glasswork and mosaics contrast with his day to day living conditions, the browns and beiges of the flocked wallpaper, tables, chairs, curtains and bed linen. <br />”After 10 years of expert work and dedication I think we can finally say we have a home worthy of the name of Miksa Róth,” said Mihály Ráday, head of the City Protection Association at the opening of the memorial house and museum. <br />Zoltán Szabó, Mayor of District VII said the collection contained “unparalleled value” but that more financial support would be needed to achieve the dream of creating a stained glass centre. <br />Born in 1865, Miksa Róth was 19 years old when he took over his father Zsigmond’s workshop and the craft of glass painting was still in its infancy. In 1855 English glass workers succeeded in creating an "antique glass" effect. <br />This coloured glass was suitable for the repair and restoration of the windows of medieval churches, as well as for decorating the new romantic, and the historically eclectic designs. By 1880, workshops were sprouting up in the capital, the most significant of which belonged to Miksa Róth, who at the turn of the century was providing work for 10 trainees, working on both public and private building commissions.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzf2lB8Mj9ig-o48VgBw8NdFPv4Ek-hk24F0H6mKVaJ9rXVjZtzJrXqqBhKVm3SUY40HYeC6t1rurvMy7UEpjLMEVks_KmOhGom9E9OdryKUnYFKImUMHTS6lojKgxgROD4oAad1GRQMk/s1600/03tulipanos.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzf2lB8Mj9ig-o48VgBw8NdFPv4Ek-hk24F0H6mKVaJ9rXVjZtzJrXqqBhKVm3SUY40HYeC6t1rurvMy7UEpjLMEVks_KmOhGom9E9OdryKUnYFKImUMHTS6lojKgxgROD4oAad1GRQMk/s400/03tulipanos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5580684526550206210" /></a><br /><br />Miksa Róth’s first significant work was in 1886 in Máriafalva (Mariasdorf, Austria) where Imre Steindl was leading the reconstruction of the Roman Catholic church. <br />Earlier Róth had studied the stained glass windows of Gothic cathedrals on a tour of Europe. <br />During the reconstruction of many other national monuments, Róth designed Gothic stained glass windows at Keszthely for the reconstruction of the Roman Catholic church led by Samu Pecz (architect of the main market hall in Budapest) in 1896. <br />In Budapest, you can see examples of his beautiful work in the Gresham Palace (now the newly opened Four Seasons hotel), the Agricultural Museum, the Music Academy and the Andrássy Dining<br />Room amongst many others. The plans for the stained glass windows of the Parliament building were<br />prepared in 1890. Róth took into account both the staircase’s light source and the building’s interior decoration, and decided to use the Grotesque style originating from the Renaissance period. <br />Reflecting the multi-coloured nature of Hungarian architecture at the turn of the century, Róth created windows in many styles: Historic, Hungarian Secession, Art Nouveau, Jugenstil and Viennese Secession.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4VVVNgUpt_T0soVnV6RlTkF2dFk3tNqLCR4NSBloC6bk34_oXUAYp8j7q-5Zdgwt2XnEUMEJW22xoDfY9mBbq4MGGhYpejdoYQZlZcSX7ST2kOBZQOcR0vpuXhNr4cgklPbP1f_ME6to/s1600/02pavas.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 349px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4VVVNgUpt_T0soVnV6RlTkF2dFk3tNqLCR4NSBloC6bk34_oXUAYp8j7q-5Zdgwt2XnEUMEJW22xoDfY9mBbq4MGGhYpejdoYQZlZcSX7ST2kOBZQOcR0vpuXhNr4cgklPbP1f_ME6to/s400/02pavas.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5580684523118383282" /></a><br /><br />Róth’s craft was given a new inspiration when he saw the "opalescent" and "favril" glass made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, whose display at the 1893 Chicago World Trade Fair, entitled Four Seasons featured shimmering,<br />iridescent colours and an immediately popular natural marbling effect of the glass. <br />Róth was also influenced by the work of the English pre-Raphaelite artists, in particular Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. In 1897, Miksa Róth bought a collection of opalescent glass from the Hamburg<br />glass painter Karl Engelbrecht, and began to regularly order glass from his factory. <br />At the 1898 Budapest Museum of Applied Arts’ Christmas Exhibition Róth displayed glass windows prepared using a type of Tiffany glass, seen for the first time in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. <br />Róth won the silver medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 with the Pax and Rising Sun mosaics made with opalescent glass. <br />The Róth workshop then made a large number of stained glass windows with floral designs, whose success could be attributed to the nostalgia felt by people living then in large cities for the lost world of nature.<br />In Budapest the stairwells and lifts were brightened up with luxuriant gardens in place of the drab partition walls and dark corridors. <br />Middle class citizens even decorated their parlours with the symbolic motives of flowers: Irises, lilies, sunflowers, poppies and roses, birds such as peacocks and swans, and fauns, nymphs, fairies and female figures frolicking in gardens, arbours and riverbanks to recall the lost period of the Golden Age. <br />One of Róth’s most significant creations using opalescent glass was for cupola of the Teatro Nacional in Mexico City, which he carried out according to designs by Géza Maróti.With this work he showed details of geometric design of the Jugenstil and Viennese Secession which he also used in windows for Bank Building (1905 Ignác Alpár), the Gresham Palace (1907 Zsigmond Quittner and József Vágó) and the Music Academy (1907 Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl) . Róth worked with many of the best architects, builders and designers of the time. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3NYsR17ILFHSukPxztFBokYbYwOc6oIY5YNZGnCXmddAyefd_ViMg3HsOCT4XsybofnldSsZFiUD7g4xK2SaaG7f2BG9Ftkdi7yra5vYiD1EA0H1sut3ff2TFHgrj60pCmjLVjlEpGCc/s1600/Glass+Mosaic_+Roth_25.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 190px; height: 379px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3NYsR17ILFHSukPxztFBokYbYwOc6oIY5YNZGnCXmddAyefd_ViMg3HsOCT4XsybofnldSsZFiUD7g4xK2SaaG7f2BG9Ftkdi7yra5vYiD1EA0H1sut3ff2TFHgrj60pCmjLVjlEpGCc/s400/Glass+Mosaic_+Roth_25.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5580684348152773362" /></a><br /><br />For Ödön Lechner's magnificent Post Office Savings Bank building, Róth created an unusual mosaic, embedded into cement. In 1910, Róth created the gorgeous windows of the Culture Palace in Marosvásárhely (Targu Mures in Romania). In the Hall of Mirrors, scenes from traditional Székely fairy tales, ballads and legends are featured in the 12 stained glass windows which fill the entire length of the long hall. It is worth a visit to Marosvásárhely alone to stand among these magical and colourful designs.<br />Róth worked for a long time in conjunction with two artists from the Gödöllô artists’ settlement, Sándor Nagy and Aladár Kriesch Körösfôi. Together they created the Hungarian Secession style windows for the National Salon and the windows and mosaics for the Hungarian House in Venice. For the<br />Marosvásárhely Culture House triptych, also based on Nagy’s designs, Róth used a special medieval technique, employing thick leading and strong lines. From the 1920s Róth mainly received commissions from the Church and State.<br />He died in 1944 after a lifetime of bringing joy and colour to the world with his beautiful creations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Miksa Róth’s apartment/museum- Róth Miksa Emlékház</span><br />VII. Nefelejc utca 26<br />Open: Tues-Sun 2pm-6pm<br />Tel: 341 6789<br />www.rothmuzeum.hulucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-14673534231028552102010-11-23T12:42:00.007+00:002010-12-28T19:46:43.129+00:00Kiss Tel Aviv<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/transylvaniaguide/4098127161/" title="Pozsonyi út by TransylvaniaGuide: Lucy, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2767/4098127161_c2a0869cf3.jpg" width="312" height="500" alt="Pozsonyi út" /></a><br /><br />KISS TEL AVIV<br />Pozsonyi út cover story (first published in 1998)<br />By Lucy Mallows<br /><br />Pozsonyi út – or ‘Bratislava Street’ to give it its vaguely anglicised equivalent - runs through the XIII district of Újlipótváros (New Leopold Town) leading north parallel with Margit Sziget on the Pest bank of the Danube<br />It is now known as Kiss Tel Aviv (Little Tel Aviv), as a large Jewish community is gradually moving back into the rather upmarket district, recreating the pre-war environment - a cultural, educated community of politicians, writers, actors and the small traders and menders who give it an unmistakable atmosphere.<br />Shops along the acacia-lined street offer flowers, jewels, fur coats and beauty products, blending in with the old style shoe repairers, zip menders and dingy borozós (wine bars). There is an abundance of hostelries with terraces on the pavements, squeezed in between parked cars.<br />Shop-keepers all stand on their doorsteps, gazing out at the traffic and greeting passers-by by name. “Csók életem,” (Kisses, my life) says furrier Ica Nagy, with time on her hands, since the fur trade is stagnant in the heat of summer. <br />Her red neon Szûcs sign has beamed out from No. 13 for 45 years.<br />She has seen many changes in her 65 years of living in Pozsonyi út, which she says had a tram running along it and cobblestones, and must have resembled a thinner version of today's Bartók Béla út in Buda, until 1958. <br />In 1956, the peaceful scene was rudely interrupted in the autumn by Russian tanks. Nagy stayed in the street throughout the revolution and witnessed much fighting from her doorway. There are bullet marks on the walls above the shop and Nagy says, "I was even shot at when I hurried across the road to a café opposite to buy biscuits."<br />István Nagy opened his furriers (szûcs) in 1932, when many of the buildings were newly built. He died twenty years ago, but his seventy-year-old wife has continued the fur business on these premises with her son helping. <br />She says life was better in the old days, "The old style of rich people were very different from the new style rich." <br />She says the area was typified by gentle folk, actors and politicians. Now she lives in fear of burglars, as robbers are working their way down the street. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsG8TcwcR809C4ODMf-k24W_vsv-9zJWLXePoyBYFoFGQh2qLGf_hsXWNINHpJBdhiGazf0k23ZOnFcf-7RHDNkja6ExgGdGJFiq87YaDCSQ0-atzaBlD1cnww6E5tA52SPx8nmYOgqj0/s1600/DSCN3986.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsG8TcwcR809C4ODMf-k24W_vsv-9zJWLXePoyBYFoFGQh2qLGf_hsXWNINHpJBdhiGazf0k23ZOnFcf-7RHDNkja6ExgGdGJFiq87YaDCSQ0-atzaBlD1cnww6E5tA52SPx8nmYOgqj0/s400/DSCN3986.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542734209357837154" /></a><br /><br />Much of Pozsonyi út's elegant buildings were erected in the thirties, and the style is inimitably square, solid, with the flats' interiors cavernous and spacious. Real estate prices in the area are soaring and the only reason Ica Nagy is not squeezed out is because she now owns the premises.<br />Another couple feeling the pinch are János and Éva Víg who have run the Víg-Vino Borkimérés at No. 5 (wine off-licence and specialty wine shop) for five years. <br />Before that, they sold spare parts, but like many of the small businesses which open and close every day on Pozsonyi út, they tried something different. It seems to be going well, on a Monday afternoon business is brisk, as customers pass under a beautiful claret and gold sign, which recalls past trading outlets.<br />The sign, Éva says is "Bordeaux for the wine and gold because gold comes from wine." János says he has over 300 hundred wines from all over Hungary, the best region he says is Villányi. "There is no better wine in the world than Hungarian," he says proudly. <br />Éva is not so enthusiastic, "If I could do it all over again, I would not open a shop here," she says, "People open businesses on this street every day because they think there's money in it, but we don't get so many customers passing through here and many close down soon. Only old people live here." <br />Besides specialist wines from private vineyards, they also measure out cheaper wine for pensioners who bring along recyclable bottles. "This used to be a very high class area in the past, but it's gone downhill lately," sighs Éva. <br />A sign engraved in stone above the door reveals that Ginczler Herman designed the building in 1939.<br />Pozsonyi út has a coffee pot mender, a watch mender, shoe mender, scores of bars and restaurants, you could live your whole life here and never have to leave.<br />Ágnes Asbóth, out walking her fox terrier, Samu has lived here all her 37 years, and has no desire to leave. She continues the literary traditions by proof-reading novels from her flat overlooking the park. <br />A walk down Pozsonyi út continually reminds us of the rich literary heritage, starting at Jászai Mari tér, named after great Hungarian tragedy actress, Mari Jászai, who played many Shakespearean roles in the now demolished National Theatre.<br />The street then crosses over Katona József utca, a plaque describes how he wrote Bank Ban. <br />Radnóti Miklós utca commemorates one of Hungary's best loved poets, a Jewish writer who died on his way back from a Hungarian labor camp. Some of his most moving poetry was found sewn into the lining of his jacket.<br />Not only Hungarian authors are credited. French writers Balzac and Viktor Hugo are also remembered in streets, as is Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.<br />Pozsonyi út begins in earnest after the Budai Nagy Antal utca where the two trolleys 76 & 79 have their termini, although in reality the route merely continues in a ring cycle all day long, leading along a back route over the Nyugati railway line to Baross tér and Keleti station.<br />On the corner at No. 3 is the Szamovár presszó (cafe), redecorated recently, and changed from the tradition brown presszó style into a hideous shade of kingfisher blue. <br />On the pavement outside is a little flower stall, one of the many flower vendors of Pozsonyi út, which while enjoying its fair share of busy traffic, can also claim to be one of Budapest's most green streets.<br />A little further on, the Piccolo Sörbár (beer bar) has a little terrace outside, where you can enjoy a cool korsó (half-litre mug) on plastic garden chairs under the trees. Many squeeze into its tiny premises, which still retains its sixties decor.<br />If you walked the length of Pozsonyi út and sunk a korsó at each of the many watering holes, you'd certainly not be able to walk straight back.<br />Over the road at No 4 is the Kandinszky bar. Inyenc ('taste treat') at No. 7 offers specialty teas and coffees and things in mayonnaise to take away.<br />Virágért ('For Flowers') recalls the socialist days when shops simply stated what you could buy - if it was in stock -virágért (for flowers), bútorért (for furniture), közért (for general goods).<br />Opposite at No. 10 is Villért (for lighting), still displaying the old, much the worse for wear, neon sign, where ‘lighting technology’ can be bought.<br />To illustrate Mrs Víg's statements, we next pass some empty show fronts, gathering dust, while opposite, a new, very chi-chi jeweller’s Grén offers special gold jewelry for graduation ceremonies.<br />Over the road at No. 10, the Kiskakkuk étterem (Little cuckoo restaurant) a famous old style Hungarian restaurant appears to be also in a state of transition and dust gathers in the windows.<br />Further along, István Gödör and György Takács run a hairdresser, where, to my horror, they once managed to tease my very short hair into a towering sixties beehive, which, no doubt took a certain skill and whimsy.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Z60bj_BdC9L9x5tmYFZZk-SSCWD6WTb3-EUkO9-sWVW0iRKxfg0uTc2nDvH9u4pGiweitS0-7w3vLmKTa5ueDl1-vkbKVYtr22ewIchwbGMxy4_q7dLp1vSkBMzD0-o_w_8MJKnPy98/s1600/DSCN3987.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Z60bj_BdC9L9x5tmYFZZk-SSCWD6WTb3-EUkO9-sWVW0iRKxfg0uTc2nDvH9u4pGiweitS0-7w3vLmKTa5ueDl1-vkbKVYtr22ewIchwbGMxy4_q7dLp1vSkBMzD0-o_w_8MJKnPy98/s400/DSCN3987.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542735591197124274" /></a><br /><br />We are now on the corner of Raoul Wallenberg utca where an elaborate and tasteful plaque and bust conglomeration commemorates the Swedish diplomat whose heroic acts saved thousands of Jewish people from the gas chambers. Many of the houses on the street, for example No. 14, were used as 'safe houses' under diplomatic protection for Jewish to hide in during WWII.<br />A TV Shop showroom sits next to Novaglobus, which is worth visiting to see its window display of sinister equipment and spare parts. One can barely imagine what the plastic tubing and oddly-shaped creations are used for. Over the road, the Pozsonyi Kisvendéglô offers a good list of soups and meaty dishes.<br />On the corner with Radnóti Miklós utca is a little patch of green in front of the Herman Ottó primary school. <br />A statue of a young girl in white marble sits outside the red brick school building.<br />Opposite at Number 26, a very beautiful building with elegant balustrades and wrought iron work sits among the rather square thirties' blocks.<br />The Ipoly Café, named after a river that rises in Slovakia, at Pozsonyi út 28 always has a crowd of shifty-looking men in sunglasses, sitting outside on the pavement enjoying Segafredo coffee and gossip, while their radio phones lie dormant, lined up on the metal tables. <br />At Pozsonyi út 31 we are approximately half way along the street, at the corner of Gergely Gyôzô utca. There is a strong wine smell from the mulberry tree and its overripe fruit lying crushed on the concrete pavement.<br />On the corner with Balzac utca, the Cipôjávító szalon (shoe mender's salon) is an excellent shoe repairer which also mends shoes, cuts keys, un-snags zips, lifts skirts and reattaches all manner of attachments.<br />Opposite is a beautiful old fashioned borozó sign featuring a bunch of grapes of the Móri borozó. The sign says the wine comes from grapes produced on a state farm. Inside, little square tables are covered with green checked tablecloths in a very atmospheric modest bar.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgled3-9jbK7zw58KMbQED29SuV_hZfdduBmnE_QlLjZAJ63Mz-dev3P1Okf9J06pDxoE5z4faY3D003y1Wid1pCArSegBFTe7xOQYR_8-lbZJg7d2pAhWLBjO4SEWhUeGPMxGL-arUZQs/s1600/DSCN3989.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgled3-9jbK7zw58KMbQED29SuV_hZfdduBmnE_QlLjZAJ63Mz-dev3P1Okf9J06pDxoE5z4faY3D003y1Wid1pCArSegBFTe7xOQYR_8-lbZJg7d2pAhWLBjO4SEWhUeGPMxGL-arUZQs/s400/DSCN3989.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542736222485888082" /></a><br /><br />Next door, a real estate agents offers a roof terrace on Balzac utca with 110 square meters, two and a half rooms and balcony for Ft120,000 per month rent. You can have a 55 square meter cellar on Szent István Park for 25 thousand forints a month<br />The traffic whizzes past in both directions and you have to pick your way gingerly through the cars parked all over the pavements too.<br />On Herzen utca, a beautiful building, designed by Hugo Gregersen in 1937, is decorated by a woman's face in stone watching over the door in the company of lions and griffins.<br />Crossing over Herzen utca, the Bébi Cukrászda (Baby Patisserie) has the traditional neon sign and some wonderful cakes and dolls made from icing in the window.<br />Szent István Park looks like a building site these days, which is basically what it has become. Hundreds of workmen bustle around, driving buzzing dumper trucks or shovelling earth mounds.<br />While restoration work trundles on, sad residents dolefully walk their dogs. Bereft of the once beautiful walking area, they wander over mounds of earth and rolls of wire. <br />Sándor Fegyverneky, chief builder for the XIII local government says the original style of the spacious, bushy park will not be changed. "The park will keep the original style, the pool, paths and bushes will all be renovated and replanted and it should be completed on September 1st." Fortunately, he says, the two empty temple stone buildings will not be removed. "The atmosphere of a park comes not only from its vegetation but from the buildings, so nothing will be taken away," says Fegyverneky.<br />Around the corner of the park, at Újpesti rakpart, a modest doorway leads to the ex-residence of ex-Prime Minister Gyula Horn. Just after he became PM, a dubious looking caravan tried to blend in with the bushy scenery in Szent István Park, and burly chaps in sunglasses sat all day watching something, while cables and wires lead to the apartment block.<br />On the left hand side overlooking the park, is a beautiful thirties block in white marble with arched doorways at Pozsonyi út 38. The Dunapark café used to be on the ground floor. Its modern, split-level interior is still visible through giant windows.<br />2010 Update: The Dunapark cafe has since reopened and its elegant Art Deco interior has been tastefully restored to its former glory. The cafe is very popular, especially in summer, when the tables and chairs spills out onto the pavement and almost into the bushes of neighbouring Szent István Park, also now renovated and restored (www.dunapark-kavehaz.hu).<br /><br />At the junction with Viktor Hugo utca and Wahrmann Mór an amazing triangular shaped building with six sunny yellow balconies (see main photo at the top) looks like it must have been where they filmed the advertisement for Crepto toilet paper - the scene when each resident comes out onto the balcony and simultaneously cuts a slice of toilet paper. <br />However, in the Cosmax beauty salon underneath, receptionist Ilona Csányi says its not the building featured, "Although many people come in and ask whether it is," she says, adding that she thinks the area is still very high class, judging from the clientele of actresses and politicians' wives who come in for expensive treatments. <br />2010 Update: The Cosmax beauty salon is now the Sarki Fuszeres (Corner Spicey), an elegant new cafe and delicatessen. On my most recent visit, I spotted the writer, Budapest-authority and self-confessed Pest 'egghead' Andras Torok, sitting outside, drinking coffee and reading a novel. No doubt by Peter Esterhazy or Frigyes Karinthy...<br />It's worth peeping in the hall of this building, a little further along the street, as it has a famous Art Deco hallway and staircase.<br />Pozsonyi út 40's hallway is featured in this blog http://csakaszepre.blog.hu/2010/02/25/a_kapukon_tul<br /><br />At Pozsonyi út 53 is the most beautiful doorway in the street. Peasant scenes are carved in stone above the door and the window frames are old brown wood offset by the dark green leaves of succulent pot plants in the lobby. Inside a rounded staircase leads up from an elegant hallway, lined with brown marble columns. It is the home of Mozsolits and Associates legal offices.<br />A smell of lecsó (Hungarian-style ratatouille) cooking pervades the heavy summer atmosphere, the paprika aroma is unmistakable. This is very much a lived-in street, despite all the offices and shops.<br />The Cheers sörözô at Pozsonyi út 52 is dusty and empty - it probably couldn't compete with the Tiszakecske Solohov borozó at No 48 where a korsó of draught beer costs only Ft95.<br />Further along, some of the housing estate apartment buildings are not so easy on the eye but at Pozsonyi út 63, the mood is brightened by a sign on the Hand in Hand (Kéz a kézben) delicatessen announcing “the sheep's cheese has arrived!”<br />On the left side of the road is the very blue, modern ÁPV Rt building, which looks out across the river to Margit Sziget. Next to the material is the spiritual. <br />The Pozsonyi út Reform church, where Bible classes, Sunday school and services all take place in the modern building, which looks marginally better from the river side. A separate Bauhaus-style tower recalls those in Pasaréti tér and Csaba utca.<br />Pozsonyi út started with a computer equipment shop and now ends with ABN Amro bank headquarters, within the high-tech commercial bookends lies a wealth of literary history.lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-85844838201085986092010-09-24T12:15:00.003+01:002010-09-24T13:36:05.030+01:00Katalin Karády - actress of action<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqo1VZtJ5BBdZ42Xo9kI8xceDdtbNqL7Uta-oHQaXKkt00H0BONhwebqbPG5NReF0qg6ZgEtMKleWf0Nr4XyCogV71rbL6izNHlLGEw8-KTsQz8W0bPw_PVF9rybgVNI4MafPeDiQCnMM/s1600/karady.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 326px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqo1VZtJ5BBdZ42Xo9kI8xceDdtbNqL7Uta-oHQaXKkt00H0BONhwebqbPG5NReF0qg6ZgEtMKleWf0Nr4XyCogV71rbL6izNHlLGEw8-KTsQz8W0bPw_PVF9rybgVNI4MafPeDiQCnMM/s400/karady.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520437819958561154" /></a><br /><br /><br />In this age of great cinematic ideas but scarce financial backing, Hungarian film makers often look back with wistful nostalgia to the 1940s - a golden age of Magyar cinema when such charismatic stars as Pál Jávor, Klári Tolnay and Zita Perczel graced the screen. <br />One star who shone particularly brightly was Katalin Karády, a brilliant actress whose life matched many of her roles for drama and intensity. <br />In 2001, director Péter Bacsó, maker of the wonderful satire 'A Tanú' (the Witness), shot the film, 'Hamvadó cigarettavég' (The Smoldering Cigarette End) in Budapest about the life of Karády and the interest in her career and life is as alive as ever. ‘It’s not a documentary, but a fictive work with history, tragedy and comedy. In fact, everything is in it,’ Bacsó said. <br />Karády is remembered fondly in the winter months. Her birthday falls in early December and her name day on November 25. On both days, wreaths are placed beneath a plaque outside her flat on District V’s Nyáry Pál utca. During the 1956 Revolution, a fan placed a wreath of fresh fir branches and red carnations with a message which read, ‘Your soul lives forever’.<br />Karády is remembered not only for her considerable thespian talent but also for her tremendous courage in standing up to oppressors. <br />The plaque placed by the local government in 1991 on the wall of the now-faded Art Deco building reads, ‘In this building lived Katalin Karády (1912-1990), popular actress in many Hungarian films and protector of those persecuted in 1944’. <br />During the Second World War, Karády owned three flats in and around Budapest and she used these places as refuges for Jewish friends to hide and escape the Nazi terror and deportation to death camps. In her autobiographical paperback, ‘Hogyan lettem színésznô?’ (How did I become an Actress?), Karády wrote, ‘My frail constitution could not bear the fact that tens of thousands were being taken away in wagons to their deaths’. If they were arrested, she would go out to the detention centre at Kistarcsa and attempt to bring them back. <br />Bacsó’s film honours her bravery and ends with a scene depicting how Karády was arrested in 1944 by the Gestapo while singing on the radio in her inimitable smoky voice. She was incarcerated, beaten and questioned for three months, but never gave in. <br />During the 1940s, Karády made some 20 classic films, from period costume dramas like ‘Erzsébet királyné’ (Queen Elizabeth) to brooding mysteries such as ‘Valamit visz a víz’ (The Water Brings Something) in which the role gave opportunity for her to display her dangerous, sensual intensity. Karády was compared to everyone from Rita Hayworth to Barbara Stanwick, Jane Russell to Greta Garbo, although she had a personality all her own and with her square jawline and determined character, could compete with Hollywood’s best. <br />It seemed there was no role she couldn’t play, from the suicidal rejected lover in ‘Ne kérdezd, ki voltam’ (Don’t Ask Who I Was) to the spoiled, disturbed maiden in ‘A szûz és a gödölye’ (the Virgin and the Kid Goat) or the faithful wife who turns vivacious vamp in ‘Alkalom’ (Occasion). <br />Karády’s humble childhood in the capital’s outer district of Kôbánya hardly gave clues as to the stage and screen actress of stature she was to become. Her strict father often used his belt or his fists on Karády and her six older siblings and forbade visits to the cinema or theatre. <br />Karády’s early appearance also gave little hints of the stunning, smouldering beauty which would emerge from the chrysalis. ‘How was I? Like all premature babies: Puny, weak, sickly in appearance, stunted in growth,’ wrote Karády . One aunt took a look at her and said cruelly, ‘Well, it will sure be difficult to find a husband for Kati without paying’.<br />However, by her teens Karády had blossomed with a natural, compelling charisma which never faded, even after she emigrated to Brazil in 1951 and from there to New York in 1977, where she made hats and lived until her death in 1990. <br />By the age of 14, Karády had developed a passion for clothes and with her slim, big-boned figure could wear them with panache. <br />A decisive moment came when she recited the ‘Little Cripple’ verse in front of her first significant audience and it was a success. <br />She wrote, ‘I felt this was my chosen path. They listened to me, they watched me, I am the centre’. <br />Karády dropped out of her second year of high school at 16 and married a much older man, but the marriage quickly floundered. <br />However, she appeared on the Vígszínház theatre stage in Budapest and soon attracted a host of admirers, for her personality as well as her acting abilities. <br />In 1939, Karády made her first film, ‘Halálos tavasz’ (Lethal Spring), and became an overnight star. <br />She attracted attention with her alternative lifestyle, threw great parties and was rarely seen without a cigarette between her full lips. The title of ‘Hamvadó cigarettavég’, with Eszter Nagy Kállóczy in the leading role, is taken from one of Karády’s songs, performed in her husky voice. <br />The Gestapo arrested Karády on April 18, 1944, allegedly for her relationships with Colonel Újszászy, played in the new film by popular actor György Cserhalmi. Karády had been attacked in the press for her ‘liberalism’ and she even wondered if the authorities had confused her with one of her roles - she played a Magyar Mata Hari in the 1943 film ‘Machita’. <br />In prison, Karády was beaten severely and was not released until late summer. <br />After the war, Karády made only one more film, ‘Forró mezôk’ (Hot Meadows), in 1948 and, three years later, she left Hungary. Katalin Karády died on 8 February 1990 and her ashes were brought back to Budapest a year later.<br />She lies in the artists’ plot in Farkasréti cemetery. <br />In 2004, Katalin Karády received the posthumour Righteous medal from the Yad Vashem Institute in recognition of her courageous acts during World War II.<br />Karády’s films are often shown on Hungarian television and videos of her work can be rented from Odeon film outlets in Budapest. <br />Bacsó’s docu-drama, which showed in cinemas in 2001, introduced a new generation to her electrifying presence: A consummate actress, a powerful personality and a very brave human being.lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-79220632719790183892010-05-04T10:41:00.008+01:002010-05-04T11:14:18.314+01:00Dob utca history<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvn54FkvThOAqo8ziehS4CTrdau7esE8WtaiV6n9-IBX5LJ7ktndoNBj574jH2fgZbblqo3bHGdq2gy4eZgoPo08b_rcRi6TzIZn4_fmREt4vO7gcu6ZdIBCMcklIdetVcZmGlKxGVv0c/s1600/DSCN2444.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 292px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvn54FkvThOAqo8ziehS4CTrdau7esE8WtaiV6n9-IBX5LJ7ktndoNBj574jH2fgZbblqo3bHGdq2gy4eZgoPo08b_rcRi6TzIZn4_fmREt4vO7gcu6ZdIBCMcklIdetVcZmGlKxGVv0c/s400/DSCN2444.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467348947482173394" /></a><br />©LRMallowsBpAug2009<br /><br />Dob utca begins at Károly körút and runs up to Rottenbiller utca along the length of the long narrow seventh district of Erzsebetvaros (Elizabeth Town) which continues up to Dózsa György út and the Városliget - City Park. <br />Within is long and varied length, a microcosm of Hungarian society and history can be found. <br />A wide variety of craftsmen still ply their trade. <br />Gold and silver smiths, engravers, dyers, tailors, watch-menders and stocking repairers all still try to eke out a living in the high-tech world. <br />The street also offers many different cuisine styles: Jewish, strict Kosher, traditional Hungarian through pizzas and pasta to even Indian curries.<br />The origin of its name Dob (Drum) utca is a mystery, but the assistant at the Philon Antique Book shop at Dob utca 32 says it has always been called thus. <br />According to some local historians, the street takes its name from a pub called The Drum, which used to stand on the street.<br />The entrance to the street starts on Károly körút with what was the Tuborg Viking sörözô at Dob utca 2, a green Danish beer hall and restaurant that has as its most interesting feature a tall, tube shaped lookout tower, plonked on its roof. <br />The premises was bought in early 2001 by the Wendys Burger Bar chain. <br />On the right hand side at Dob utca 1 is an IBUSZ travel agent, then we get into craftsman territory with hundreds of tiny shop fronts offering a range of unusual and useful services.<br />If you need a brush, head straight for Dob utca 3, where Katalin Smulovicsné Winter offers every possible kind. Her name appears like a merging of three cultures – Hungarian, Slav and German, and likewise Dob utca is very cosmopolitan.<br />Green’s Fôzelék Bar is at Dob utca 5 offers fôzelék, a traditional style of serving vegetables in Hungary. Take spinach, green beans, peas, lentils, carrots, kohl rabi even and boil it up until all the goodness has long gone and it is a mush of thick soupy consistency. <br />Then add a roux of sour cream and flour to thicken it even more so that the spoon stands upright to attention in the middle of the bowl. Then serve with a fried egg floating on top of the spinach or pea goop, a rudely carved sausage bobbing on the lentils or some frankfurter sausages lolling about on the light green kohl rabi. <br />It sounds quite terrifying, but in the bitter winter months provides a comforting and affordable lunch.<br />Opposite sits the Mob pizzeria and further along on the left we find the Arany Pince Vendéglô (Golden Cellar Restaurant). <br />The nonstop on the corner at Dob utca 7 is well-stocked and always has bread on Sundays<br />Opposite the Mini Cukrászda at Dob utca 11, where a lady waits for the shop to open and cool her down with ice cream, is the memorial to the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, who helped many Jews avoid deportation. <br />The inscription from the Talmud reads, “He, who saves one single person, could also save the whole world”. <br />A moving and unusual statue shows a gold angel figure suspended perpendicular to the wall holding out a lifeline - a long piece of cloth to a figure lying prone on a brick mound below.<br />Jutting out into the narrow street is the Kóser Rothschild supermarket offering matzo flour and kosher products, imported from Israel.<br />Dob utca 16 is the gateway to another world, the entrance to the Gozsdu udvar, decorated with signs for a <br />goldsmith, violin repair and engraving, although gold and silver smith György Falk says now only five residents and five workshops remain in the 230-meter-long chain of seven courtyards, built in the early 20th century, linking Dob and Király utca. <br />“A Romanian lawyer, Manuil Gozsdu had the apartment and craftsmen's workshops built”, says Falk whose workshop is opposite a Greek Orthodox chapel, open on Sundays. <br />He says until WWII, Romanian students studied here.<br />Like the Gozsdu udvar, Falk's future is also uncertain. <br />He says he has heard that the Israeli investors who have promised to turn the courtyard into a shopping leisure complex have now pulled out, and the local government who own the building have not yet offered him a suitable replacement. “I don't want to move to the back of beyond”, he says, “This place is perfect, and customers could park right outside before the guards locked up the courtyard”.<br />Falk has performed delicate surgery on priceless gold and silver artefacts for 30 years. <br />Then, there were 80 families living in the thriving old-style shopping centre, but gradually families left or were moved out and tramps moved in. <br />Classical music plays in the background and the walls are laden with diplomas and awards. <br />However, Falk was not always appreciated. “The communists didn't approve of my individual trade and called me the derogatory term ‘maszek’ (private sector worker) but I am proud to be a ‘kisiparos’- artisan. I work with my hands”.<br />Until two years ago, the oldest resident András Szlatki ran the gentleman's hairdresser in the part now demolished by the spread of the Madách center. <br />Over eighty, Szlatki had stayed in the courtyard throughout the terrible war period, when the Gozsdu formed one wall of the Ghetto. “Local government tried to move him out, but he died and his shop disappeared”, says Falk.<br /> Dob utca is a bustling lively street where the past and present mix almost unnoticeable, new galleries and burger bars appear every day but the sense of history is maintained. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLxX1r77vjkwNUW4Wcz7alY8UZfgy0qtab6FbvpscPbXK0DBB-64U9MpW40VFNGS6D1eOZndi8Z0Wpi9yg2nhESpEnPNcn7Mjf8icA9DM5qbwABnCNHnH1rp3MDmQNSuwuyHCGvYs8pJI/s1600/DSCN2445.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLxX1r77vjkwNUW4Wcz7alY8UZfgy0qtab6FbvpscPbXK0DBB-64U9MpW40VFNGS6D1eOZndi8Z0Wpi9yg2nhESpEnPNcn7Mjf8icA9DM5qbwABnCNHnH1rp3MDmQNSuwuyHCGvYs8pJI/s400/DSCN2445.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467349982436672162" /></a><br />©LRMallowsBpAug2009<br /><br />A modest sign at Dob utca 22 heralds one of the street's treasures. <br />The Fröhlich cukrászda has been producing delicious kosher cakes since 1962, although the establishment dates back to 1917. <br />Vera Fröhlich and her husband make the pastries in the back, specialties according to kosher rules on eggs, fat and no gelatin. <br />Vera’s husband has invented some unusual cakes, the Krakkói and the Szerelmes Levél (love letter) and the traditional Jewish Flódni a calorie-laden concoction of apples, poppy seed and nuts made with butter rather than margarine, although some favourites are off the menu at present because of the hot weather.<br />“An order was passed in the fifties, saying if the temperature stays over thirty degrees for more than three days, we are not allowed to make creamy deserts”, says Vera. <br />She hopes her children will continue the popular business, although the customers have gradually changed. “Many of our old customers have died, but this is still a friendly place, mainly visited by regulars and everyone talks to everyone else”, says Vera in between scooping out ice cream for workmen in the street and weighing out little cakes on antique red scales. <br />Fortunately business is booming, and the café doubled in size two years ago, replacing the hard stone floor with white tiles. <br />Some American Hungarians are visiting and have made this their first call on a tour of old favourites. <br />Vera's son, Robert Fröhlich, a Rabbi and teacher often holds meetings in the convivial surroundings, “The café's position, tucked away on Dob utca is a disadvantage for the owner, but an advantage for the customer”.<br />He says it is the only genuine kosher café in Hungary and possibly in Central Europe. <br />“The face of Dob utca and Klauzál tér has not changed, although in 33 years I have seen many new businesses move in”, he says. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWhXqYEia9fV8GuZExknc8OSa_CPCMgmnPvMwiJkewKqr33wog4mNhLBYIs0fh6YNhVMeSDvwsLTaGwusZfJOP5UEfuXU_IXEAamxVqYe51MKlZOtNiQg3tsdpU79NJyEM0Y1hsNsenJI/s1600/DSCN2443.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWhXqYEia9fV8GuZExknc8OSa_CPCMgmnPvMwiJkewKqr33wog4mNhLBYIs0fh6YNhVMeSDvwsLTaGwusZfJOP5UEfuXU_IXEAamxVqYe51MKlZOtNiQg3tsdpU79NJyEM0Y1hsNsenJI/s400/DSCN2443.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467351378960018194" /></a><br />©LRMallowsBpAug2009<br /><br />At the corner of Kazinczy look right to see Pest's Orthodox Synagogue, designed by Béla and Sándor Löffler in 1912, serving Budapest's small community of just over 3,000 Orthodox Jews. <br />The smashed windows look dark and forlorn but the Jewish lettering on the very top of the facade is still in very good condition<br />It is not normally open to visitors, but you can get a closer look around the corner at Dob utca 35 and through the courtyard by the kosher butchers still functioning since 1914 and the strictly kosher Hanna restaurant you can find the former orthodox school. <br />The Hanna restaurant has a heavy chocolate brown wooden gate<br />An Orthodox Jews in a wide-brimmed black hat and ringlets speaks Hebrew on the public telephone outside<br />Above telephone is the number 5673 carved into the stone. <br />This number refers to the date in Hebrew and iit also appears on the other side in Hebrew lettering<br />The wonderful Kiskacsa restaurant at Dob utca 26 offers “one plate home cooking Ft220 daily menu if booked ahead on a Wednesday”.<br />Opposite Kiskacsa is a walk way that resembles a monastery cloister, covered in unimaginative graffiti tagging. Kiskacsa (Little Duck) is the little sister of the more grand Kacsa (Duck) restaurant in Buda.<br />There follows a patch of bare ground where car parks utilize the temporarily flattened space, until another office block springs up.<br />A paper and colored metal recycling business on the corner of Holló utca and Dob utca keeps the spirit of the area with its shop front, which has the same design as the fading, scratched off shop fronts all along the street. A bright green placard reads, “60 kilos of paper equals one tree’s life”.<br />Looking back along Dob utca towards the river and you suddenly get a perfect view of the Liberation Monument on top of Gellért Hill and unexpectedly see things from a totally different angle.<br />Then for 200 yards, Dob is transformed into Klauzál tér and the street numbers run backwards, anti clockwise around the square. <br />At Klauzál tér 16, a traditional neon sign announces Mûhimzô - embroidery for flag making, emblems, tablecloths and sheets.<br />In the spacious shady park, one man has the unenviable task of shoveling up the dog excrement in the designated dog walking area. In the hot weather, the smell is overwhelming. <br />Unfortunately right opposite is the Óvoda - kindergarten.<br />Next-door, the deliciously-named Gasztroker sign offers catering equipment and trade shop<br />Children play in the park on new climbing frames and the air is filled with shouting and squealing.<br />In the early morning heat, bácsis in clean white vests are already setting out the dominoes, cards and chess. <br />It is maybe a little too early to go for refreshment in the Lépcsôs Sörözô although it open at 6am. <br />A wonderful yellow and purple sign shows the ancient prices: a kisfröccs (small wine and soda) can be édes or savanyú (sweet or sour) and appears to cost Ft10. <br />Édes nagyfröccs cost Ft25 and a savanyú Ft20. <br />Running at right angles to Dob utca is Klauzál tér numbers 13-8. At number 11 is one of Pest's five main markets which has virtually all been absorbed into a Kaiser supermarket now. <br />Just a few small stall holders remain offering limp lettuce wilting in the heat<br />Klauzál tér 10 is the home of one of the best lunch venues in town, the Kádár étkezde. <br />From Tuesday to Saturday locals and famous film stars sit side by side stocking up on real home cooking, goose legs and sólet - a hearty bean dish.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG_KHCoj4AVRPKdH5AgLgDYRWuAa5S0oCQ7XB2wpSBqOhgVimiiFvBh3XVPpZhMYtOhU9VAz_d_S6SjcDYFnN2i09ldsjhpQhQrdvAUSKYE0-quDuwcueT_Uh4rKZRy8crWnG7WAGT8mk/s1600/DSCN2446.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG_KHCoj4AVRPKdH5AgLgDYRWuAa5S0oCQ7XB2wpSBqOhgVimiiFvBh3XVPpZhMYtOhU9VAz_d_S6SjcDYFnN2i09ldsjhpQhQrdvAUSKYE0-quDuwcueT_Uh4rKZRy8crWnG7WAGT8mk/s400/DSCN2446.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467352383099825682" /></a><br />©LRMallowsBpAug2009<br /><br />Next door a plaque on the wall reminds passers-by that Klauzál tér was also a scene of confrontation in 1956. <br />A memorial tablet to Attila Gérecz who died, aged 27, reads “Only he who is bigger than his fate can win in the final push”. <br />The first grave of this poet of the revolution stood in the square and fading flags with the central communist motif burnt out are stuck behind the marble tablet.<br />By 1939 there were 200,000 Jews, living in Budapest, that number today is only 80,000, although they still constitute the largest community in Central Europe.<br />Klauzál tér represented the centre of the ghetto in 1944-45. Over 50,000 Jews were crammed together in terrible surroundings. <br />Local social worker Gábor Rotter says, "Many people died. First the bodies were kept in Klauzál tér market fridges, then when it was very cold they laid the bodies out in the square and buried them there."<br />Back toward Dob utca a nameless sörözô announces an interesting menu. <br />Things to eat are categorized as ‘before beer’, ‘with beer’ and ‘after beer’.<br />No prizes for guessing what is the main attraction.<br />Around the corner at Dob utca 45, a mini étkezde is more traditional about its offerings, proprietor József Karalyos offers home “home cooking, chilled drinks, speedy service and solid prices”. <br />The daily menu is mouth-watering - goose leg and cabbage for Ft600, roast duckling and parsley potatoes for Ft470 or stuffed pumpkin with dill sauce for Ft420. <br />The delicious ‘lucskos káposzta' (‘sloppy cabbage’) comes with a meat rissole and all the meals are typical of the area.<br />Over the road, above the gynecologist at Dob utca 46/b are six sculptured friezes, one on each floor, representing family life: a man, woman and child and a man gathering wheat to feed his offspring. <br />Further along, a beautiful old-fashioned sign, announcing Budapest Népruhazati -utility clothing- is covered by a cloth ‘for sale’ sign. Rotter says the interior layout is still intact and the territory is huge. <br />The district has produced a wealth of talented Hungarians and figures of contemporary Pest life. "The famous musician Gábor Presser was born just around the corner and his father used to have a stall, selling geese and ducks in Klauzál tér market," says Rotter. <br />Pop singer Szandi still lives around the corner in Akácfa utca and another local resident was the self-taught pianist Rezsô Seress who, in 1927, composed the melody to László Jávor's lyrics for ‘Szomorú Vasárnap, száz fehér virággal’ which became Gloomy Sunday, an international homage to melancholy, recorded by Billie Holiday, Ray Charles and Sinead O'Connor.<br />“Before the war, this area was 75 percent Jewish, now I would suggest the population is 50 percent Gypsy, with many living in the one-room, no comfort, outside-toilet flats that are so typical of this district”, says Rotter.<br />Despite the grime, Dob utca is known for its high proportion of restaurants and places of entertainment. At Dob utca 53, the Örökzöld Dallamok - Evergreen melodies restaurant you can listen to old-time music and dance on three levels in traditional surroundings. <br />On the other side of the road, at Dob utca 52, the Indian restaurant, Shalimar proves the cosmopolitan nature of this street. Next door is the stunning red shop front of the Háztatási Cikkek (Household Goods) shop owned by Éva Horváth. Next door to Örökzöld Dallamok is an ancient fur coat shop with the abrupt sign warning customers not to call.<br />Dob utca 57 parades the columns and yellowing yet intimidating walls of the Fészek Klub restaurant. Here, at the crossroads with Kertész utca, it is interesting to look around at the four different styles and shades of building in each corner.<br />A bright pink non-stop supermarket at Dob 61 holds all manner of foods you might need at three in the morning. <br />At Dob utca 60, György Lengyel operates one of the oldest men's tailors in the district and next door, Ferenc Kádár's decorative leather workshop is virtually a museum piece.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9r6zQYlIiS0dccOct9faxM3CSLob8PEr_Zc_LrksvMQ4KIS1xsE1OsEhhKoHwZzlzqZox7sDdz0Wfkhz9J9m9BRkzcrzwZ_yYilPU9eecJrvbxtZiC-iIY1td9Z_3SJVZQnEchJhHPsE/s1600/DSCN2447.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9r6zQYlIiS0dccOct9faxM3CSLob8PEr_Zc_LrksvMQ4KIS1xsE1OsEhhKoHwZzlzqZox7sDdz0Wfkhz9J9m9BRkzcrzwZ_yYilPU9eecJrvbxtZiC-iIY1td9Z_3SJVZQnEchJhHPsE/s400/DSCN2447.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467353407493703346" /></a><br />©LRMallowsBpAug2009<br /><br />At the corner of Dob utca and Erzsébet körút, a plaque reveals how in the Kör coffee house, now a fast food pizza and hot-dog büfé, Kálmán Teszársz started the socialist teachers' union which in 1918 became the national teachers' union.<br />Poet Mór Jókai also lived in this house from 1899 to the day he died, May 5 1904. The elegant spiky tower and weather vane that decorate this literary home is rather overlooked amongst the bustle of the ‘Nagy körút’.<br />Crossing the main boulevard, we pass the Örökmozgó cinema and from here on, according to Róbert Fröhlich, the character of the street changes, “This is not the real Dob utca, the real heart lies between the little and large boulevards. It is like comparing the two halves of Váci utca, only one is real”.<br />However, the first stretch maintains the mood with small craftsmen's' workshops, offering tailoring, a gargoyle-laden goldsmith and little watch repair shops.<br />On the left are two rather dodgy-looking bars, at Dob utca 70 the one-room cramped Talléros bar where five stools all face away from the door and stare at the shelves of pálinka. Further along, but also sharing number 70 is the Postakürt étterem, from where a stream of bleary-eyed customers totter out into the bright mid-day sunshine.<br />Over the road, an eye-catching group of István I and historical figures guard the entrance to the giant post office on the corner of Hársfa utca. <br />Gábor Boda's statues bearing more than a passing resemblance to mustachioed Aztec warriors. Next door, a philatelist's dream, since Magyar Posta produces the most beautiful stamps in the world, can be found at the Stamp Museum.<br />The Transport, Communications and Water Ministry building, an ugly concrete and glass mess takes up space next door, before you reach the much more eye-pleasing junior school at Dob utca 83. <br />The Art Nouveau building has a very colorful turn-of-the-century mosaic frieze by Ármin Hegedus showing children learning and frolicking. <br />Over the road, at Dob utca 80, the chemist's has original furnishings, including beautiful lamps.<br />Along this stretch, it is worth risking the wrath of a thousand néni's to peer inside a few doorways and see the hidden life of Pest, continuing in beautiful sunlit, leafy courtyards. <br />Children play football, harassed housewives beat carpets over specially-designed wooden racks and grannies watch the action from balconies high above. Dob utca 82 courtyard is particularly attractive.<br />As Dob utca progresses, it crosses Vörösmarty utca, Izabella utca and Rózsa utca, all streets which also cross the grand Andrássy út. <br />We are now running parallel with the elegant nobleman's street, however downtrodden Dob utca with all its dirt and dust seems to represent the real Pest much more pungently.<br />Looking left down Rózsa utca you can even see all the way to the hills of Óbuda. Hármashatárhegy appears as a distant mirage, shimmering in the heat and the dusty town centre and countryside are inextricably linked.<br />Eri néni's non-stop supermarket is at Dob utca 100. "The social level is the same the whole length of Dob utca. I had a non-stop at number 61 and the customers were just the same," she claims, after working here for a year and a half. <br />But, passing the Hearing Aid repair shop at Dob utca 85, life gets distinctly calmer. <br />The Erzsébet district Gypsy minority local government offices are located in a quiet courtyard at number 107.<br />Dob utca finally comes to an abrupt end when it meets Rottenbiller utca running at right angles. <br />On the left is Holmi Design and on the right, the central laboratories, botanical and zoological departments of the Veterinary University, and in just under a mile, we have completed a journey through Pest's history, culture and cuisine.<br />©LRM2000lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-36712810639662319072010-01-18T09:27:00.005+00:002010-05-04T10:29:11.615+01:00Gloomy Sunday<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5OU95T1mgAw0_z04BHwQPo9wodvlQyTBNGbYLcBt5eHdwr03kysCVN17kTZE5R7pzPweRdJkfuw59wZuaRA1oSYvRHCjzpPiR5YYxasTpxbBX1ARqgvLI16op-0cN1LPJfOwV99FJGb4/s1600-h/447169.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 252px; height: 304px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5OU95T1mgAw0_z04BHwQPo9wodvlQyTBNGbYLcBt5eHdwr03kysCVN17kTZE5R7pzPweRdJkfuw59wZuaRA1oSYvRHCjzpPiR5YYxasTpxbBX1ARqgvLI16op-0cN1LPJfOwV99FJGb4/s400/447169.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428009441259263154" /></a><br /><br />STOP PRESS<br />At the request of a Disappearing Budapest reader, Vanessa, I have added my literal English translations of Szomorú Vasárnap; the lyrics by Jávor László and also composer/pianist Seress Rezső's own war lyrics.<br />Both translations, along with the original Hungarian, are given at the end of this (long) article.<br /><br />Written November 15, 2001<br /> <br />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. <br />It was called Szomorú Vasárnap (Gloomy Sunday) and became known as “The Suicides’ Anthem”. <br />Jávor’s lyrics began, <br />“Szomorú Vasárnap, száz fehér virággal <br />Vártalak kedvesem templomi imával”<br /><br />(Sad Sunday, with 100 white flowers, I waited for you dear with a church prayer). <br /><br />Seress also wrote his own lyrics, which are even more gloomy and hopeless than Jávor’s; <br />“Ôsz van és peregnek a sárgult levelek <br />Meghalt a földön az emberi szeretet”.<br />(It is autumn and the yellow leaves are whirling, all human affection has died on this Earth). <br /><br />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. <br />It has been recorded in more than 100 languages, including Chinese, Icelandic and Esperanto. <br />Some of the lines are almost as melancholy as the originals’ <br />“Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless <br />Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless <br />Little white flowers will never awaken you <br />Not where the black coat of sorrow has taken you”.<br /><br />The rising and falling melody lines convey first hope, then disappointment, sadness and despair. <br />The song tells the story of a soul whose will to live has died along with her lover. <br />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. <br />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. <br />The suicides shocked the capital. <br />Inspired by the song, each decided to end it all on a Sunday. <br />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. <br />Hungary has always had a sad preoccupation with suicide and always featured high on the statistical tables, but the New York Times’ headline:<br />“Hundreds of Hungarians kill themselves under the influence of a song” was an exaggeration. <br />The song was published in 1935 when the world was suffering an economic depression on the eve of the Second World War. <br />Gloomy Sunday, with its mournful c-minor melody, voiced some of the hopelessness of the age. <br />Sigmund Freud regarded the song as a manifestation of his ‘Sonntagsneurose’ theory. <br />In the United States, Gloomy Sunday clubs appeared everywhere and one senator in Washington tried to have the song banned. <br />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. <br />The song’s composer Rezsô Seress was called the ‘Whistling Musician’ because he couldn’t read music and played piano with only two fingers. <br />Seress also committed suicide. <br />Despite a fear of heights, he jumped out of the window of his flat aged nearly 70 in January 1968. <br />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. <br />Hungary’s most talented poet, Attila József, threw himself under a train at Balatonszárszó in 1937, aged only 32. <br />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. <br />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. <br />Actor Artúr Somlay was driven to his death in the Rákósi period when the cultural minister József Révai refused to help him. <br />The country’s first beauty queen, Csilla Molnár (Miss Hungary 1985), took an overdose of lidocaine. <br />There are many many more examples.<br />Hungary’s romance with suicide is long and painful. <br />Until 1994, Hungarians were top of the list for suicides. <br />In 1986 the rate was 46 per 100,000. <br />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. <br />The suicides continue to happen, less frequently but still with the same result of shock and dismay. <br />For the family of 17-year-old Viktoria Éles, her early suicide was more than yet another number on a pile of statistics.<br />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).<br />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. <br />Viki had been very upset at the funeral. <br />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. <br />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. <br />‘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’. <br />She threw herself under the Budapest-Vác train. <br />Viki wrote that the answers to every question could be found in Zámbó’s songs. <br />Since the star’s death, she had filled two notebooks with lyrics, articles and photos. <br />The last page read in big letters VÉGE - the end.<br /><br />Kulacs restaurant review, November 15 2001<br />By Lucy Mallows<br /><br />A kulacs is a flask that a shepherd used to take with him to the fields. <br />It would be filled with water or, more likely, wine. <br />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). <br />Now Gypsy bands play more uplifting melodies, led by some of the most talented primás (lead violinists) in town. <br />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. <br />The smaller, darker room is appropriately called the Seress room and is lit by candles and the glow of a barrel-shaped ceramic stove. <br />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. <br />Together with huge crisp croutons it made a substantial opener. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />Starters include such delights as cold goose liver Mako style (1,390 forints) or the sailor fish salad (990 forints). <br />Unusual main courses include cabbage gnocchi in honey or catfish (1,890 forints) marinated in Tokaji wine. <br />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. <br />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. <br />My companion also selected a lighter dish, grilled chicken breast with salad, and commented on how well the meat was prepared. <br />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. <br />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. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Kulacs étterem</span> <br />Budapest district VII<br />Osvát utca 11, <br />Metro M2 to Blaha Lujza tér. <br />Tel: +36 1 322 3611 <br />Open daily, 10am to midnight<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Szomorú Vasárnap<br /><br />Lyrics by Seress Rezső </span> <br /><br />Ősz van és peregnek a sárgult levelek
<br />Meghalt a földön az emberi szeretet
<br />Bánatos könnyekkel zokog az öszi szél
<br />Szívem már új tavaszt nem vár és nem remél
<br />Hiába sírok és hiába szenvedek
<br />Szívtelen rosszak és kapzsik az emberek...
<br />Meghalt a szeretet!
<br /><br />Vége a világnak, vége a reménynek
<br />Városok pusztulnak, srapnelek zenélnek
<br />Emberek vérétől piros a tarka rét
<br />Halottak fekszenek az úton szerteszét
<br />Még egyszer elmondom csendben az imámat:
<br />Uram, az emberek gyarlók és hibáznak...
<br />Vége a világnak!<br /><br />LITERAL ENGLISH TRANSLATION:<br /><br />It is autumn and the yellowed leaves are whirling<br />All human affection has died on this Earth<br />The autumn wind sobs with bitter tears<br />My heart no longer waits or hopes for a new spring<br />In vain I weep and in vain I suffer<br />Heartlessly evil and greedy are people<br />Love is dead!<br /><br />It is the end of the world, the end of hope<br />Cities are destroyed, shrapnel makes music<br />The mottled meadow is red from human blood<br />Dead bodies lie all over the road<br />One more time I will say quietly the prayer:<br />Lord, people are fallible and they make mistakes<br />The world is finished!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Lyrics by Jávor László </span> <br /><br />Szomorú vasárnap száz fehér virággal
<br />Vártalak kedvesem templomi imával
<br />Álmokat kergető vasárnap délelőtt
<br />Bánatom hintaja nélküled visszajött
<br />Azóta szomorú mindig a vasárnap
<br />Könny csak az italom kenyerem a bánat...
<br />Szomorú vasárnap
<br /><br />Utolsó vasárnap kedvesem gyere el
<br />Pap is lesz, koporsó, ravatal, gyászlepel
<br />Akkor is virág vár, virág és - koporsó
<br />Virágos fák alatt utam az utolsó
<br />Nyitva lesz szemem hogy még egyszer lássalak
<br />Ne félj a szememtől holtan is áldalak...
<br />Utolsó vasárnap<br /><br />LITERAL ENGLISH TRANSLATION<br /><br />Gloomy Sunday with a hundred white flowers
<br />I waited for you, my dear, with a church prayer
<br />A Sunday morning, chasing after my dreams
<br />My sorrow’s carriage came back to me without you
<br />Since then my Sundays are always sad
<br />Tears are my only drink, sorrow my bread...
<br />Gloomy Sunday
<br /><br />On the last Sunday, my darling please come away with me<br />There will also be a priest, a coffin, a hearse and a mourning sheet
<br />Flowers await you, flowers and -- a coffin
<br />Under the blossoming trees it will be my last journey
<br />My eyes will be open, so I can see you for the last time
<br />Don’t fear my eyes, even in death I bless you…<br />The last Sundaylucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-38770771716723553242009-11-07T11:12:00.003+00:002009-11-07T11:16:58.528+00:00The Amazing Turk<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhai2vIBHDINJbFhhMFIVRyvfTBUnRC3U21WNE9wAGBg4ApWb3pyPBPgUe2FWnKqLW-shXmrngcQR0ct24ybMe78Ud6znU1yUGXFAtDqrmLld4RXIVXwbwHCRsfnAi3SJDVC0NS6_aRCnc/s1600-h/mechanical-turk-300x259.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhai2vIBHDINJbFhhMFIVRyvfTBUnRC3U21WNE9wAGBg4ApWb3pyPBPgUe2FWnKqLW-shXmrngcQR0ct24ybMe78Ud6znU1yUGXFAtDqrmLld4RXIVXwbwHCRsfnAi3SJDVC0NS6_aRCnc/s400/mechanical-turk-300x259.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401318702735018962" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Amazing Turk- Farkas Kempelen’s incredible chess-playing automaton</span><br /><br />In 1770, The Turk made its first appearance in front of the Viennese court. <br />On a signal from the Empress Maria Theresa, Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen slowly wheeled his creation forward. <br />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. <br />Behind the box sat a figure, dressed in Oriental clothing and a bulky turban. <br />Kempelen opened a door on the left of the cabinet to reveal an elaborate mechanism of cogs, wheels and levers. <br />Then, opening a corresponding door at the back, he held up a candle whose light flickered through complicated innards. <br />After closing the doors, Kempelen wound up the contraption by turning a large key in the cabinet. <br />Suddenly the figure came to life, reaching out with its left arm to move the chess pieces around the board. <br />Every dozen moves or so, Kempelen wound up the device again, but never actually touched the figure itself. <br />The Turk, so called due to its attire, managed to defeat a number of challengers. <br />The Turk’s sensational performance that day astonished and delighted the Empress and soon became the talk of Vienna. <br />The presentation changed Kempelen’s life. <br />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. <br />He was not actually a nobleman, although the title baron has often been attributed to him. <br />Kempelen was formally introduced to the Viennese court by his father, Engelbert, a retired customs officer. <br />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. <br />Kempelen’s translation was hailed as a masterpiece and he was soon appointed counsellor to the imperial court. <br />On the official document confirming his appointment, Maria Theresa wrote, “The Hungarian court will benefit greatly from young Kempelen.” <br />In 1757, Kempelen married Franciska, a lady-in-waiting at the court.<br />Tragically, she died suddenly a few weeks later and Kempelen retreated, shocked and grief-stricken, to his hobby of scientific experimentation. <br />Now a wealthy man, he could afford expensive tools, materials and scientific equipment for his workshop. <br />In 1766 Kempelen was appointed director of the imperial salt mines in Transylvania, by which time he had also remarried. <br />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. <br />Following the success of this project, he was asked to design the waterworks for the castle in Pozsony. <br />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. <br />Maria Theresa was particularly interested in science and had an unusually enlightened attitude toward it for her time. <br />She challenged Kempelen to explain Pelletier’s tricks to her. <br />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. <br />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. <br />In Paris, The Turk played and beat Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and scientist, who was a chess fanatic. <br />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. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCjIl7k6fAPzvELyvUBq_ERXcy7PH6MTENkarFm3vqoOGhn8G54BRa5BsgouxmUXaFrXNILBOxn9qbi3fL-liHc7f5Nw31xl31H_3152OUr87htTIA300uDsgcvrA__nj1P74cB1AimOQ/s1600-h/turk03.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 350px; height: 284px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCjIl7k6fAPzvELyvUBq_ERXcy7PH6MTENkarFm3vqoOGhn8G54BRa5BsgouxmUXaFrXNILBOxn9qbi3fL-liHc7f5Nw31xl31H_3152OUr87htTIA300uDsgcvrA__nj1P74cB1AimOQ/s400/turk03.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401318700145552354" /></a><br /><br />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. <br />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. <br />Kempelen next took The Turk to London, at that time a centre for chess and also renowned for public displays of technical marvels. <br />The Turk went on show in Savile Row and was a great success. <br />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. <br />This wonder could be seen in the halls of the Millennial Exhibition of Hungarian achievement. He also devised a writing machine for the blind. <br />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. <br />The Turk’s most famous encounter during this period came in 1809, when it was shown to Napoleon Bonaparte. <br />Napoleon tried to trick the automaton by deliberately cheating, but The Turk was not fooled and upset the board rather than beat him. <br />Napoleon’s valet Louis-Constant Wairy wrote: “The Emperor complimented it highly.” <br />In London in 1819 the computing pioneer Charles Babbage saw The Turk play. <br />The following year, he challenged it to a game. <br />He wrote, “Played with the automaton. Automaton won in about an hour.” <br />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. <br />“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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />He discovered that a person was concealed inside the cabinet. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />Interest waned in The Turk once its secret was discovered and Mitchell sold the automaton to the Chinese Museum in Philadelphia. <br />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.<br /><br />There is a non-working model of the Amazing Turk in the Roland Café in Bratislava – Kempelen’s home town.<br /><br />Update: Farkas Kempelen’s Amazing Turk is reconstructed at the Heinz Nixdorf Museum at Paderborn, Germany <br />In 1770, the Hungarian engineer Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen built a chess-playing machine for the amusement of Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa. <br />The mechanical device, designed to resemble a Turkish man, became the most famous chess-automaton in history.<br />In April 2004, the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Paderborn produced an incredible working replica of the Turk, 200 years after Kempelen’s death. <br />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.<br />Professor Ernst Strouhal gave an introductory lecture on The Turk, and the reconstruction was then wheeled into the room. <br />An actor took on the role of Wolfgang von Kempelen to demonstrate the operation of the machine. <br />First he opened the two compartments to show that they were empty. <br />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. <br />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. <br />The re-creators of the Amazing Turk then revealed its secret to the audience…lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-53638113005834239512009-09-17T16:51:00.005+01:002010-04-12T17:24:28.294+01:00Healing the Nation - the gyógyszertár and the patika<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72QjeR_7v8WgHkdgWdJf0qM6osSjkgAr6Eriu4boMvGCRVtkip_jyGOEea2Z0C7qvQJN8aTYx8tscpId_KwV83N7oBwInfYd8LHf1SO-U0oSCkObQtJspksaSxjjbZaaICgoMg9EoRSI/s1600-h/budapest-kobanya-faczanyi-gyogyszertar.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 270px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72QjeR_7v8WgHkdgWdJf0qM6osSjkgAr6Eriu4boMvGCRVtkip_jyGOEea2Z0C7qvQJN8aTYx8tscpId_KwV83N7oBwInfYd8LHf1SO-U0oSCkObQtJspksaSxjjbZaaICgoMg9EoRSI/s400/budapest-kobanya-faczanyi-gyogyszertar.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382465022806328818" /></a><br /><br /><br />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. <br />In Budapest many pharmacies date back to seventeenth century and often have original interiors intact. <br />“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.<br />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.<br />The Városi Gyógyszertár dates back to 1686, making it one of the oldest in Pest. <br />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.<br />There are records of the first Pest -Buda pharmacist dating from the beginning of the 14th century.<br />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.<br />“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”.<br />'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).<br />Similarly - for those interested in linguistics, Hungarians don't fall back on the Latin-based vocabulary to create words but 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!<br />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.<br />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.<br />The medieval patikas besides medicine sold herbs, perfumes, paints, candles, paper and silks, and functioned as a kind of general store.<br />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. <br />The husband makes gold and a custodian says, "It was considered a very good profession and highly thought-of members of society were chemists."<br />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.<br />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.<br />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)<br />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.<br />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.<br />At the end of the 18th century, in accordance with the growth in population, more pharmacies came into being.<br />The Kigyó (snake) Chemist's is at Kossuth Lajos utca 2 is one of the oldest working chemist's in the city. <br />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. <br />The original furnishings date from 1870 and are neo-Rococo. After the move, the interior was decorated further in the Secessionist style. <br />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.<br />The snake entwined around a tall goblet is now the recognized symbol for pharmacies in Hungary.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />One of the oldest pharmacies was found on Kristóf tér. The Nagy Kristóf Gyógyszertár was the first officially registered fiókgyógyszertár or dispensary in Pest.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />The Pesti Halász company put the fountain up in 1862 but because of bridge building it was moved to Népliget for a while.<br />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 <br />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. <br />She said the classic style of pharmacy must always have two trained chemists present.<br />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. <br />Solymári said that the wall painting by Kocsár Bretschneider in the Octogon pharmacy is of Hygieia and Asclepios<br />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. <br />The neo Baroque furnishings were made at this time.<br />A plaque on wall states that Gustav Mahler lived here when he was director of the Hungarian State Opera from 1888 to 1891.<br />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. <br />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. <br />The snake serum only keeps for a certain period of time and is very expensive to buy. <br />Hospitals do not always have it in stock, ready for an emergency.<br />The Arany Sas Pharmacy Museum at Tarnok utca 18, in the Castle District also displays some strange cures. <br />A mummified head was powdered up and the potion was drunk to relieve fevers and sore throats...!<br />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.<br />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. <br />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.<br />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. <br />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.<br /><br />Useful chemist's<br />Csillag Patika. VII. Rákóczi út 39<br />All-night chemist's <br />I. Széna tér 1 <br />II. Frankel Leó út 22<br />IX. Üllôi út 121 (Nagyvárad metro stop)<br />XII. Alkotás utca 3 - gives medicine out through a hole in the wall at weekends<br />VI. Dob utca 81 - original interior with very beautiful lamps<br />XIII. Pozsony út 2 - with the snake coiling around a beaker symbol.<br />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 visitlucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-29255257877707004472009-08-14T23:55:00.007+01:002009-09-02T09:11:19.875+01:00The Centrál Coffee House<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlgxxpAI4gbZk96Pi3xl0xXmUXpDJ46AqJ4EPdOuNo51A9fQUqHf1RUHcQeSBQBAdK4qRX_phh2IJT933hatjUftSZzujYE2dLDi4k0mJidFPrb8BbyQxhR3qKBLv-0ewT_MpDHreBLT0/s1600-h/central-kavehaz.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 289px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlgxxpAI4gbZk96Pi3xl0xXmUXpDJ46AqJ4EPdOuNo51A9fQUqHf1RUHcQeSBQBAdK4qRX_phh2IJT933hatjUftSZzujYE2dLDi4k0mJidFPrb8BbyQxhR3qKBLv-0ewT_MpDHreBLT0/s400/central-kavehaz.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369957138400174850" /></a><br /><br />I wrote this article on the wonderful coffee house more than ten years ago, however the historical details are still interesting, I think.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Renovation work is now beginning on the one-time Centrál Coffee House.</span><br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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.<br />The Central opened in 1887, in the freshly-constructed house belonging to Lajos Ullmann Erényi. <br />It was the heir to the Philosophus Kávéház which had stood a few blocks away a few decades earlier.<br />“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.<br />The Centrál soon became the centre of intellectual life, although it was almost exclusively male scholars and writers who made the Centrál their local. <br />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. <br />Kiss also taught young writers the secrets of language, verse and writing.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />Then, in the twenties the Nyugat paper moved back from the New York coffee house headquarters to its birthplace in the Centrál coffee house. <br />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. <br />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. <br />Cigar smoke spiralled up towards the chandeliers, mixing with the low mutterings of authors thinking out loud. <br />No business deals or loud noises disturbed the creative atmosphere.<br />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.<br />Loud words, disruption of order, or snobbishness were not tolerated in the Centrál, which was open day and night. <br />The coffee house was philanthropic in its actions as well as its principles. <br />Those in need were helped with credit, small loans besides the moderately priced coffee, peaceful surroundings, and the Hungarian and international press. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />The Nyugat editor took his place without a sound, while Frigyes Karinthy and Dezsô Kosztolányi blustered in more noisily. <br />Aurél Kárpáti, Ernô Szép and Ferenc Molnár and the whole editorial team would spend hours discussing topics. <br />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. <br />Other scholars frequented the Centrál with their books, librarians, museum curators, and university professors.<br />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”.<br />Many men of letters worked here day in day out, and went to the Centrál as if it were their office. <br />After the Second World War, the Újhold (‘New Moon”) editorial was formed and operated in the Centrál. <br />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.<br />In 1950 the Paprika Centre National Company took over the premises. <br />This company, which built the little yellow underground, made the premises its culture centre and canteen. <br />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.<br />The old stippling on the walls remained virtually intact. <br />However, the chandeliers made in Vienna were smashed and pawned at the MÉH - recycling depot. <br />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.<br />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.<br />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”.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Centrál Kávéház és étterem</span><br />1053 Budapest<br />Károlyi Mihály utca 9<br /><br />Table reservations: (+36 1) 266 2110<br />info@centralkavehaz.hu<br />www.centralkavehaz.hulucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-28063210527732900972009-05-13T11:23:00.005+01:002009-05-13T14:06:04.363+01:00BARTÓK BÉLA ÚT<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4de1zt62bmnw7pwrke9BbmWIEorRzGnGGQ5xrespBGEX5cpWQUJR69vT1exwHF0mDegdT-dbzu3L_56VsZIUU5MosJFOU4mG0L4oFIf1Vr2sy3zaCv3fuGbsXFzr_6EFUL6J-awREwmI/s1600-h/BartokBela03.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 278px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4de1zt62bmnw7pwrke9BbmWIEorRzGnGGQ5xrespBGEX5cpWQUJR69vT1exwHF0mDegdT-dbzu3L_56VsZIUU5MosJFOU4mG0L4oFIf1Vr2sy3zaCv3fuGbsXFzr_6EFUL6J-awREwmI/s400/BartokBela03.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335253616700771122" /></a><br /><br />©LucyMallows2004<br />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. <br />The cobbles have gone now, but Bartók, like Mester utca in the ninth district has that unique Magyar street ambience.<br />Others with their flashy palaces of denim and burger bars could be confused with streets running through other great cities of Europe.<br />The cobblestones are called <span style="font-style:italic;">macskakővek</span> in Hungarian, meaning 'cat stones'.<br />However, this all changed in 2003. <br />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.<br />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. <br />Although the street looks a bit smarter, and the trams run more smoothly, the atmosphere has changed little.<br />Bartók Béla út, the street named after Hungary’s greatest composer doesn¹t actually contain much in the way of musical heritage. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3mp3-dg4F88cxRJshBFO3gNoVUqIJ2uX1-b3vO-MAoDM6eezu34aVhFbH2jvw3zI9Bzj_yyC3qQnZdyBgkngKmqO-KvirfYxNobhua5j0dZIwbRYOavavMiXhZCxLAtGZOWY3D0-pR-E/s1600-h/BartokBela02.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 236px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3mp3-dg4F88cxRJshBFO3gNoVUqIJ2uX1-b3vO-MAoDM6eezu34aVhFbH2jvw3zI9Bzj_yyC3qQnZdyBgkngKmqO-KvirfYxNobhua5j0dZIwbRYOavavMiXhZCxLAtGZOWY3D0-pR-E/s400/BartokBela02.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335253615230070626" /></a><br /><br />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. <br />A statue of Bartók (1881-1945) by József Somogyi stands beside the lake, under a frame of bells.<br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />The doorway is guarded by two winged sphinxes with Cleopatra hairstyles. <br />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. <br />The unusual decoration on the beige building resembles the stitching on the side of a blanket.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinEBqt0qQhlPmFYtOi2sQIEULBIlq4AuoWDtGmXL2HLlhxo-DuKX38NnGS1PdQahtCb7cfNZ7yiuDR4X73U5fzPFNfF95sEGpRosOL6bplkrJBeQmbDUOv2EKlrari28IPC1mAps-ThnY/s1600-h/BartokBela01.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinEBqt0qQhlPmFYtOi2sQIEULBIlq4AuoWDtGmXL2HLlhxo-DuKX38NnGS1PdQahtCb7cfNZ7yiuDR4X73U5fzPFNfF95sEGpRosOL6bplkrJBeQmbDUOv2EKlrari28IPC1mAps-ThnY/s400/BartokBela01.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335253609808365330" /></a><br /><br />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). <br />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.<br />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.<br />A plaque to Móricz Zsigmond (1879-1942) reads “A Hungarian realist. The first to depict the realities of life of the Hungarian peasants”.<br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />At No. 62 a faded sign still bears witness to the one-time glories of the Bartók cinema. <br />This was part of an apartment block designed by Gábor Preisich and Mihály Vadász in 1934. <br />Preisich was a member of the Ciam group and was very influential in introducing modernism to Hungary. <br />This building is one of his best creations.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIrUGuUCk65VGtxzjjlROKz2uwQX1YUwYCWcltBRItRBRw_MdrkOymnC4bF8QNW6tns8CH1hf3aJQVQT478gNFHEpODfsGQp07GN8-LXfIM2ML29VrSPU2XmNwa_pE1N2RsxBSqq8Wx6U/s1600-h/BartokBela05.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIrUGuUCk65VGtxzjjlROKz2uwQX1YUwYCWcltBRItRBRw_MdrkOymnC4bF8QNW6tns8CH1hf3aJQVQT478gNFHEpODfsGQp07GN8-LXfIM2ML29VrSPU2XmNwa_pE1N2RsxBSqq8Wx6U/s400/BartokBela05.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335253609756128434" /></a><br /><br />The street becomes more and more rural as it continues to Kelenföld, the ‘fields of Kelen’. <br />Outside No. 98 a pile of steaming horse manure on the pavement helps the village atmosphere. <br />Nearby is a horse tackle shop, a ‘Daisy’ gun shop, a knife shop and a garden equipment shop. <br />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). <br />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.<br />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. <br />Jesus cradles Gellért in big silver wings with embossed metal decoration and carries him up to heaven.<br />In Brussels, a statue of Béla Bartók by Imre Varga stands in a forgotten square between the Grand’Place and the Centraal Station.<br />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.<br />At No. 133 a huge tram depot stands with a yawning gate. <br />A group of static No. 19 trams gaze out from their shed. <br />As we approach Etele tér, we are now in the heart of Kelenföld. <br />It is somehow reminiscent of Szeged with wide tree-lined cobblestone streets and a sleepy Sunday afternoon ambiance.<br />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. <br />The area received the name Kelenföld in 1847. <br />Prior to that it was called Tabán. The area became populated in the middle of the 18th century when grape workers moved in.<br />The origins of the name are argued about. <br />Some attribute it to ‘Krenfeld’ which is ‘Horseradish field’ in German and all the agricultural workers there at the time would bear this out. <br />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.lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-83588946419549248362009-01-28T10:04:00.004+00:002009-01-29T12:49:48.308+00:00The Gellért hotel and pool<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAHV0JVFYKf0Xea2Su5Vx1KcOty4AWbGZpIujDPmKk4hZpvIaiCMZhg7Mu3diLEEFBe4kEEpKa14AUaxjBCRRP9SoIE0S3-zkwj08zPUthsqX9Y87KiPinyViioIYeoPOlWqEajHFFpss/s1600-h/CIMG6473.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAHV0JVFYKf0Xea2Su5Vx1KcOty4AWbGZpIujDPmKk4hZpvIaiCMZhg7Mu3diLEEFBe4kEEpKa14AUaxjBCRRP9SoIE0S3-zkwj08zPUthsqX9Y87KiPinyViioIYeoPOlWqEajHFFpss/s400/CIMG6473.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5296284009414824226" /></a><br /><br /><br />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. <br />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. <br />It’s also a good excuse to treat myself. <br />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. <br />The Gellért is the oldest Hungarian spa hotel. <br />The springs that supply the baths with hot healing waters have been flowing for at least 2,000 years. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />The Ottomans built baths here and they were mentioned at the time by Evliya Celebi, a well-known Turkish travel writer. <br />During the Turkish occupation (1541-1686) a grand bathing establishment stood on the site where the Gellért Hotel now stands. <br />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). <br />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. <br />The present building, with its glass dome, terraces, open-air pool and bathhouses, took six years to complete. <br />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. <br />In 1927 Károly Gundel took over the restaurant. <br />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. <br />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. <br />In January 1945 the hotel was bombed so badly that only its walls were left standing. <br />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. <br />However, both the hotel and the public swimming pools to this day retain the atmosphere of a more glamorous era. <br />Enjoy a coffee and cake in the hotel café after your wallowing and admire the stained glass windows halfway up the grand staircase. <br />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. <br />The water surges from its source at a temperature of 43°C. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />There are also changing rooms with cabins on the level of the indoor pool, but upstairs is drier and warmer for changing. <br />Keep a hold of your ticket as the cloakroom attendant sometimes asks to see it. <br />She will secure your locker and give you an aluminum tag with a number on it that must be guarded safely. <br />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.<br /> Lined with marble columns and trailing plants, it resembles something from the heady days of the Roman Empire. <br />Its retractable glass roof is often opened in summer to let shafts of sunlight in on the hedonistic scene. <br />At one end is a thermal pool with hot jets of healing water spouting from statues. <br />Doors lead off at either side to the single sex Turkish thermal baths. <br />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. <br />There is also a steam bath amongst the intricate designs of the blue and brown tiled walls. <br />The sauna comprises three largish rooms, each getting hotter and hotter until the third approaches something akin to Dante’s Inferno. <br />The women’s section also features changing rooms and showers. <br />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. <br />These areas can be visited separately from the main pool for a slightly cheaper ticket. <br />Outside, there is a small thermal pool which is crowded full all summer long with visitors. <br />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. <br />Waves crash onto the very shallow far end and bodies fly in all different directions. <br />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. <br />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. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Gellért Medicinal Baths </span><br />IIII. Budapest <br />Kelenhegyi út 2-4 <br />Tel: 466-6166 <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pool hours</span>: <br />October 1 - April 30 <br />Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Thermal pool hours:</span> <br />October 1 - April 30 <br />Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-2pmlucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-8376339887889558092008-11-25T17:13:00.007+00:002009-05-12T12:43:37.098+01:00The Pioneers and the Children's Railway<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-PhoLT3K-2h9hZCYuWE4B0jbbzzYcMm-ffaeA4kA53BCQ1y-UoVIHWCPj8gK6nq9usPHadLAi7u98N3zlnjvpZf6JJiR6TBUX-lHwxhOCupDgon745QbEuaFWLbq3PPz0RSlWcDHOmis/s1600-h/%C3%BAtt%C3%B6r%C5%91+plak%C3%A1tOK.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 160px; height: 215px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-PhoLT3K-2h9hZCYuWE4B0jbbzzYcMm-ffaeA4kA53BCQ1y-UoVIHWCPj8gK6nq9usPHadLAi7u98N3zlnjvpZf6JJiR6TBUX-lHwxhOCupDgon745QbEuaFWLbq3PPz0RSlWcDHOmis/s400/%C3%BAtt%C3%B6r%C5%91+plak%C3%A1tOK.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272645043805333490" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">ÚTTÖRÔ</span> = (literally) path-breaking, trail blazing, pioneering out into unknown territory.<br /><br />This year the Hungarian Pioneer is 62 years old and thinking more about claiming his/her pension than playing with trains in the forest.<br />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.<br />Many people believe the Pioneers disappeared like most organizations of the socialist state under the ideological rubble of the Berlin wall. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />“There is a parallel between the freedom kids have today and the rise in juvenile delinquency.<br /> 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.<br /> 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.<br />From 1946 to 1988, the Pioneers were a mass movement. <br />They were present in schools, sports clubs and housing estates. <br />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)<br />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. <br />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.<br />In the second half of the sixties not all children were members, leading up to now when it is voluntary. <br />Csillebérc is the only Pioneer camp left of the more than 40 once operated in Hungary. <br />Most of them were sold off, some under dubious circumstances, during the previous government of the Democratic Forum. <br />Rácz acknowledges it is difficult to shake off the old reputation. “We kept the name because the movement itself developed through the years.<br /> In the seventies the leaders were those who like being with children, not those in it for political gain.”<br />The Pioneers gave all kinds of benefits to children. <br />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.”<br />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.” <br />The children decide their own names, symbols and under what conditions their local group will operate. <br />They can wear a uniform if they want and many chose a different colored necktie. <br />Some stick with the traditional red tie, others go for brown, white or Hungarian flag colors.<br />However, the new slogan is “Pioneers for the friendly third millennium” which still rings of Socialist propaganda.<br />Four major events have been organized this year, a Pioneer Olympics, a Magyar Settlement commemoration, Environmental protection and the anniversary celebrations.<br />The Pioneers are members of the International Falcon Movement (IFM) involving 60 countries. <br />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.”<br />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..”<br />The member ship card is a striking example of the inner change. <br />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. <br />It is plastic with a cartoon squirrel. <br />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.” <br />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.<br />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.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />The Star Seeking Game.</span><br /><br />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. <br />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.”<br />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. <br />It was seen as another form of oppression. <br />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.”<br />However, others did not want to be different and enjoyed the sense of community that the Pioneers created.<br />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. <br />There was no concrete discrimination but I felt some vague threat. <br />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. <br />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. <br />The Soviet presence in the camp confused some children.<br />November 7 was the big celebration to celebrate the Russian Revolution. <br />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. <br />We heard tales of rape, robbery and gulags- it was disturbing for a child.”<br />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. <br />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.<br />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. <br />Parents on low incomes were glad they could send their kids out of the city for two weeks at a minimal fee. <br />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. <br />Authorities may have hoped it would be breeding ground for young communists, the first step on the ladder to full party membership. <br />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.<br />Anikó Somsits is now a lawyer. In 1976 she was a Little Drummer and remembers struggling with the political questions. <br />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.<br />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 .”<br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />The songs ranged from happy Pioneer songs<br />“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.’<br />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. <br />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.<br />“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.” <br />The intention was to introduce politics with singing and games and hopefully stimulate an interest in later life.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCKbba8YPg-nRXn41rfcjH4t2w8qfJaWONT9e8vTddFsyKo0-OkRytHLB0Nolx6mwzbF5qS1WNlOHB5LBeD5vUnhdHqp7Pb7oY-K8h5huFUdfaks7oMsI6DAkr2kTNxYD5ulFx-9bUQ0/s1600-h/gyermekvasut_08.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCKbba8YPg-nRXn41rfcjH4t2w8qfJaWONT9e8vTddFsyKo0-OkRytHLB0Nolx6mwzbF5qS1WNlOHB5LBeD5vUnhdHqp7Pb7oY-K8h5huFUdfaks7oMsI6DAkr2kTNxYD5ulFx-9bUQ0/s400/gyermekvasut_08.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272648333881595570" /></a><br /><br />The Pioneer’s 12 points for life were seen as guides to teach the child how to live correctly. <br />The was a strong emphasis on learning how to be a responsible member of society.<br />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.”<br />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. <br />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.<br />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). <br />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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />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.” <br />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.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRaTIMAS9rC7HUpQ01BeJ46GiU2ZM4YZ5o1HwMzEJdZWtR2oTWqWJ-Vp0MCYh7Q0JWZW82p_6Qtl_S04XV4PFeaTlrNkXCHQCKnKNzeAdkyWHKmWi8kwSSo9bt93SOG52Ka0LXbPz812w/s1600-h/gyermekvasut_uttorovasutas_1973.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRaTIMAS9rC7HUpQ01BeJ46GiU2ZM4YZ5o1HwMzEJdZWtR2oTWqWJ-Vp0MCYh7Q0JWZW82p_6Qtl_S04XV4PFeaTlrNkXCHQCKnKNzeAdkyWHKmWi8kwSSo9bt93SOG52Ka0LXbPz812w/s400/gyermekvasut_uttorovasutas_1973.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272647750098460898" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">All aboard the Socialist Ghost train </span><br />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.<br />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.<br />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<br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc2VAeuoPokzMYiU89Njkun87XvF4aq66RKtMBODOPTrOqmPSYmc1cNejV8JtIXzHRfYbeOocDs_V0j96tmLxBM1I3fGysohIA1SXWPC3D4zHhcn1LJjvOiXNDzWYxKGwW5RUCPfW3LgI/s1600-h/uttoro.preview.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 378px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc2VAeuoPokzMYiU89Njkun87XvF4aq66RKtMBODOPTrOqmPSYmc1cNejV8JtIXzHRfYbeOocDs_V0j96tmLxBM1I3fGysohIA1SXWPC3D4zHhcn1LJjvOiXNDzWYxKGwW5RUCPfW3LgI/s400/uttoro.preview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272647164198054450" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">THE HUNGARIAN PIONEER ASSOCIATION LITTLE DRUMMER MEMBERSHIP BOOK (age 7-11)</span><br />The 6 points- the law of the little drummer’s life.<br /><br />1. The Little drummer is a faithful child of our Hungarian homeland.<br />2. The Little Drummer loves and respects his/her parents, teachers.<br />3. The Little Drummer studies diligently and helps his/her companions.<br />4. The Little Drummer always tells the truth.<br />5. The Little Drummer is clean, tidy and punctual.<br />6. The Little Drummer lives so as to be worthy of the Pioneers’ red neckerchief.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">THE HUNGARIAN PIONEER ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIP BOOK (age 11-15)</span><br /><br />“For the working people, for the homeland, forward -steadfastly!” <br />The 12 points - the Pioneer life law <br /><br />1. The Pioneer is a faithful child of the homeland, the Hungarian People’s Republic <br />2. The Pioneer fortifies the friendship of the People, protects the honor of the red neckerchief.<br />3. The Pioneer develops knowledge without rest, faithfully completes his/her duty.<br />4. The Pioneer, where he/she can, helps.<br />5. The Pioneer works with a good spirit.<br />6. The Pioneer always speaks the truth and acts fairly.<br />7. The Pioneer loves and honors his/her parents, teachers and respects his/her elders.<br />8. The Pioneer is a true and faithful friend.<br />9. The Pioneer is brave and disciplined.<br />10. The Pioneer exercises his/her body and preserves his/her health.<br />11. The Pioneer loves and protects nature.<br />12. The Pioneer lives so as to be worthy of the Communist Youth Association membership. (KISZ)lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-4204928481545383162008-09-16T17:02:00.004+01:002008-09-16T17:10:12.137+01:00Art Nouveau architecture in Budapest<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj49GBd8bDRYY2SZxjWtGSNuNEi_uZZi0tFB9BR0XWoF2Q2Yq5FCb43jHuT7P3TlSxYVrK0y59LQ51FSEENA10gCA3VfveanfKaAgF3f9_Rc4PXx_cgLK5hcL7PAawOUNC26XuUrvejFro/s1600-h/Bp+Bem+rakpart+gatepuke2.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj49GBd8bDRYY2SZxjWtGSNuNEi_uZZi0tFB9BR0XWoF2Q2Yq5FCb43jHuT7P3TlSxYVrK0y59LQ51FSEENA10gCA3VfveanfKaAgF3f9_Rc4PXx_cgLK5hcL7PAawOUNC26XuUrvejFro/s400/Bp+Bem+rakpart+gatepuke2.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5246650926620791218" /></a><br />©LRMallowsBemrakpart2006<br /><br /><br />Art Nouveau as a style always provokes a reaction and it is impossible to remain indifferent. <br />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.<br />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.<br />Emerging more than 100 years ago, the Art Nouveau movement was an attempt to create a modern, international style based on decoration. <br />It spread rapidly and could be found everywhere from public buildings to biscuit tins. <br />The sinuous coiling forms and elaborate features brought colour and verve to brighten up drab pre-war European streets. <br />The late 19th century on was a time of social change and political ferment. <br />A restless mercantile class pushed out the old aristocracy. <br />The revolution left its mark on many European capitals, as it spawned a building style that swept across the continent.<br />It was called Art Nouveau in Glasgow, Paris and Brussels, Jugendstil in Riga, Berlin and Munich, and Secession (Szecesziós) in Budapest, Vienna and Prague. <br />Today, Budapest is home to buildings that are some of the best examples of this ornate style. <br />At the end of the 19th century, Budapest grew from a small town to a great metropolis with a burgeoning middle class. <br />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. <br />The “father” of modern Hungarian architecture, Ödön Lechner, wanted to “Shape a new age in art, to give birth to a new style.”<br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />Structures often were organic in form, with curving facades, a dramatic departure from the austere, classical regularity. <br />During this fertile period, applied arts took on added importance. <br />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. <br />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. <br />Lechner, the most famous Secession architect, led the way “We shall not rediscover a Hungarian form. We shall make one!” he declared. <br />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. <br />Throughout his career he displayed a practical interest in new building materials and techniques as well as historical languages of form. <br />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”.<br />Lechner imagined that he could conceive of a properly Hungarian style by fusing suitable languages of form. <br />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. <br />Lechner’s reputation was made by the buildings he designed from the early 1890s. <br />The Applied Arts Museum and the Geological Institute are credited as being the first examples of Art Nouveau in Hungary. <br />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.<br />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.<br />Lechner was well informed about the roots of Hungarian culture. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />The Budapest Zoo and Botanical Gardens opened in 1866. <br />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. <br />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.<br />The ornamental gateway to the zoo, featuring elephants gives a sense of exotic fun to Art Nouveau.<br /><br />14 (+2) places to find Art Nouveau:<br /><br />1. Gellért Spa Hotel, XI. Gellért tér.<br />2. Geological Institute, XIV. Stefánia út 14, Open Mon-Fri 9am-4pm<br />3. Hungarian Institute for the Blind, XIV Hermina út 74<br />4. The School for the Blind, XIV Ajtósi Dürer sor 39<br />5. Academy of Music, VI Liszt Ferenc tér 8<br />6. Four Seasons Gresham Palace Hotel (Gresham Insurance Co), V. Roosevelt tér<br />7. Párizsi Nagyáruház (Grand Parisian Department Store), VI. Andrássy út 39.<br />8. Church of the Philanthropic Foundation, X. Cserkesz utca 7<br />9. Primary school, mosaics by Zsigmond Vajda, VII. Dob utca 85 <br />10. Philantia Flower Shop, V. Váci utca 9<br />11. Róth Memorial Museum, VII. Nefelejcs utca 26<br />12. Post Office Savings Bank, V. Hold utca 4<br />13. Szent László church, Kőbánya<br />14. The Schmidl family mausoleum, Kozma utca Izraelita cemetery, Kőbánya<br /><br />And a little further afield, check out<br />15. The ‘Little Blue Church’ of Saint Elizabeth in Bratislava, Slovakia by Ödön Lechner 1910-1913<br />16. Also in Bratislava, the high school at Grösslingova ulica 18 by Ödön Lechner also in 1906-08lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-78576080269825355442008-06-25T14:25:00.002+01:002008-06-25T14:34:14.409+01:00Kerepesi Cemetery, Budapest's garden of history<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/transylvaniaguide/2610433656/" title="Kerepesi temető - my favourite by TransylvaniaGuide, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3111/2610433656_f5a44cbf17.jpg" width="356" height="500" alt="Kerepesi temető - my favourite" /></a><br /><br />MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL<br />Kerepesi temető<br />©LRMallows2008<br /><br /><br />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.<br />One-hundred year old chestnut avenues offer a silent haven and the crisp April morning becomes suddenly cold and dark. <br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />Antal Sinka is now retired, but worked for many years as a guide and knows the stories behind every grave. <br />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. <br />Grave robbers, like pollution, continually threaten the tombs. <br />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."<br />This cemetery has witnessed many funerals of historic importance.<br />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. <br />After World War II he was Hungary's Minister of the Interior, and later foreign minister. <br />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. <br />The reburial became a mass demonstration, giving a hint of the Uprising which would break out 17 days later. <br />The most recent major burial in Kerepesi was that of Democratic Forum (MDF) Prime Minister József Antal who died in office in 1993. <br />His funeral took place on a bitterly cold Saturday evening in December 1993, thousands holding candles and singing mournful hymns in the floodlit dusk.<br />The grave looks different now, alone in the middle of a bright, sunny meadow. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br /> The slogan "A KOMMUNIZMUSÉRT A NÉPÉRT ÉLTEK" (They lived for Communism and for the people") dominates the spacious white stone piazza. <br />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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />The name and dates, 1917-1945 are identical to Hitler's mistress."<br />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."<br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/transylvaniaguide/2609597589/" title="Kerepesi workers' monument by TransylvaniaGuide, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3078/2609597589_475c7739d7.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="Kerepesi workers' monument" /></a><br />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.<br />At the four corners are stunning frescos on the ceilings, depicting Biblical scenes interwoven with Transylvanian -style buildings.<br />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. <br />Two tiny black wild kittens play on the graves, showing a healthy disrespect for death.<br />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.<br />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.<br />The sculpture Géza Maroti (1875-1941) designed his own gravestone, which is unique in Hungary. <br />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.<br />The grave site is situated in the undergrowth, the untended wild land towards the top right-hand corner of the cemetery.<br />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. <br /><br />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.<br />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."<br />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. <br />Actress Lujza Blaha (1850-1926) lies just across the way. <br />A crowd of mourning cherubs and a balladeer surround her death bed.<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/transylvaniaguide/2610431338/" title="Lujza Blaha having a lie down by TransylvaniaGuide, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3104/2610431338_f0efd33385.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Lujza Blaha having a lie down" /></a><br />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."<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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. <br />She had a particularly beautiful naked figure with rounded buttocks.<br /> 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.<br />Coming out of the main gates, you are hit by a blast of smoke and fumes from the lorries thundering along Fiumei út. <br />It is quite a contrast from the quiet, cool green seclusion of the graveyard. <br />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.lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-21168336099977553302008-05-22T12:45:00.008+01:002008-12-12T07:15:05.810+00:00Angyalföld, the (working class) Land of Angels<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcvKHpRS1UYiFiU_-V-gbXgICGTp3xWpCQiI4SKcrYpUEL9GAHabNhGST2DRSXSC3rcyA5bG7h8M6qrn8AYtpo9wf2uoNkB6xHlmYIONknvVP5vpO3S_-cr15nj0-T_Mh9moWcOsQgHs0/s1600-h/angyalfold.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcvKHpRS1UYiFiU_-V-gbXgICGTp3xWpCQiI4SKcrYpUEL9GAHabNhGST2DRSXSC3rcyA5bG7h8M6qrn8AYtpo9wf2uoNkB6xHlmYIONknvVP5vpO3S_-cr15nj0-T_Mh9moWcOsQgHs0/s400/angyalfold.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5204625754833019394" /></a><br /><br /><br />Angyalföld (Angel Land) in District XIII is one of those parts of Budapest always referred to by name rather than number. <br />As with other working class districts such as Csepel or Ferencváros, people living there have a strong sense of identity and community.<br />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. <br />The territory changed in shape and size over the decades. <br />In 1949 the northern side of Szent István körút was added, plus Újlipótváros and Margitsziget. <br />The territory has been occupied on and off since the time of the Avars, remains of whom have been found. <br />Archeologists have also discovered fortresses from Roman times and remains of medieval mills and walls.<br />At the turn of the 19th century, Budapest developed and expanded rapidly.<br />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.<br />Theses alternated with poor cottages, lower middle class dwellings and overcrowded tenements.<br />A degree of modernization began in 1910 and smaller individual houses were built in one story rows.<br />During the 19th century, all the undesirable city facilities were moved out to the outskirts, of which Angyalföld was a significant constituent.<br />The district became the location for the cemetery, madhouse, night shelter, powder mill, barracks and other military institutes.<br />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.<br />From the beginning of 1900, the area known as Újlipótváros started to transform, as it was the closest to the up-and-coming centre.<br />Reconstruction began and it became an elegant middle-class living quarter by the 1940s. <br />Vizafogó was so-called because it was the area of District XIII by the Danube where fish were caught.<br />'Sturgeon used to swim up this far from the Black Sea and in the 18th century there was local Hungarian caviar production',<br />explained Attila Molnár, owner of the Arany Kaviár restaurant.<br />It was filled with country cottages and lodgings, but these disappeared in the 1980s with the construction of high-rise housing districts.<br />Váci út cuts right through the middle of District XIII. <br />The first horse-drawn tram route travelled along here, between the-then Széna tér (now Kálvin tér) and and Újpesti Indóház. <br />It took just 37 minutes to reach the First Hungarian Pest-Fiume Shipyard Company Works.<br />All along Váci út the factories have been replaced by modern buildings, office blocks and fancy showrooms for cars and mobile telephones providers.<br />The swanky Duna Plaza shopping mall hunches on a site where the Ganz Ship and Crane Factory once stood. <br />The 100-year-old office and store buildings were painted red and called the Vas gerenda (Iron beam) by workers.<br />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.<br />The Rákos patak (stream) runs along beside Vizafogó utca from Váci út leading towards the river. <br />The Ördögmalom (Devil Mill) used to stand here, but now the housing estate of Béke-Tahi-Fiastyúk rises up.<br />Much of Angyalfold was once a marshy bog on the banks of the Danube.<br />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. <br />The land frequently flooded and Város (Town) magazine noted in December, 1931, 'It was not unusual to find a<br />block of houses completely barricaded off by knee-high water, that the only way to get there was by raft'.<br />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. <br />Workers and peasants arrived to take up jobs in new factories opened by entrepreneurs from across Europe. <br />One of the first was a Herr Engel and the area was renamed Engelfeld in his honour.<br />Other names are also synonymous with the area: Láng, Ganz and Schlik. <br />László Láng, born in Bratislava/Pressburg/Pozsony in 1868, opened a factory making parts for the mill industry in 1925. <br />The site is now used by a company making electronic products. <br />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. <br />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'.<br />Angyalföld developed in a pattern similar to working class communities across Europe, but after the First World War, the peaceful evolution was shattered. <br />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.<br />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. <br />Repression and poverty became particularly bad in the area of Angyalfold around Gyöngyösi utca which became nicknamed Tripolisz.<br />The area remained notorious and poverty-stricken until the slums were cleared after the Second World War.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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.<br />Ironically, it was the Kádár-led government that started to change the character of Angyalföld. <br />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.<br />Workers arrived from the countryside and stayed in hostels around Fay utca.<br />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.<br />József Tóth, once district secretary of the Communist Youth League, now Socialist Party mayor of Angyalföld is positive about the future of the area.<br />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.<br />Walking along Váci út, the impression is of a constantly developing part of town which has successfully attracted significant foreign investment.<br />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.<br />[First published May 2003]lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-17870177374457113832008-04-22T16:44:00.008+01:002008-12-12T07:15:06.190+00:00Budapest's Szent Lukács gyógyfürdô & uszoda<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV6nGZNtZRkEANggOEudXl45AlRuGR85AEj_fcQTQjppGyjuc-khh1bx53j04a1xiMTCHjsHQuMJEIn_57tGqM9pG6zydzKXa_mZaUhldLBmUJh_-iXAfjC1gfxe1wQK6xRZmTkdJmMzw/s1600-h/100_0793.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV6nGZNtZRkEANggOEudXl45AlRuGR85AEj_fcQTQjppGyjuc-khh1bx53j04a1xiMTCHjsHQuMJEIn_57tGqM9pG6zydzKXa_mZaUhldLBmUJh_-iXAfjC1gfxe1wQK6xRZmTkdJmMzw/s400/100_0793.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192772866880490498" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZfwFwhqL-dBjpJpgfulcIoMbIN3mURDaiCmNBr1tmzf7-fQywr6-jc91dY9zjAOhYFLWhGAEqKCpQ4QHVo1kBM-eS60a_uJHbabPWysCDWHKB7ESsGvBZsEU-rbw1yc7HyXP_lGbDFdA/s1600-h/Lukacs+gyogyfurdo_2.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZfwFwhqL-dBjpJpgfulcIoMbIN3mURDaiCmNBr1tmzf7-fQywr6-jc91dY9zjAOhYFLWhGAEqKCpQ4QHVo1kBM-eS60a_uJHbabPWysCDWHKB7ESsGvBZsEU-rbw1yc7HyXP_lGbDFdA/s400/Lukacs+gyogyfurdo_2.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192096598509931506" /></a><br /><br />©LRMallowsLukacsBp2007<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Szent Lukács gyógyfürdô</span><br /><br />The Szent Lukács gyógyfürdô is the most beautiful medicinal thermal bath complex in Budapest. <br />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).<br />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.<br />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.<br />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’. <br />However, to the right is a dark grey marble basin and patrons can fill up jugs from a golden dragon tap.<br />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. <br />Half a litre is considered the optimum daily intake, needed for the minerals and salts to be effective.<br />‘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. <br />Renovation started in November 1997, at a cost of Ft25 million, mainly financed by revenue from tourism.<br />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.<br />However, since the turn of the century, thermal water has been bottled in green glass bottles and distributed around the world. <br />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.<br />The bath suffered severe damage during the Second World War and a lack of funds prevented refurbishment. <br />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.<br />The Lukács thermal water contains calcium, magnesium and hydrogen carbonate, a significant amount of fluoride and the eggy, sulphurous compounds. <br />Drinking the water is good for stomach and intestinal problems, gallbladder, kidney stones and lung airway disorders. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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. <br />On the walls, stone tablets thank the saint in many languages. <br />‘Stubborn lumbago tortured me for years, Saint Lukács cured me immediately’, wrote Benô Sághy in 1899. <br />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.<br />The earliest appears to be from 1898.<br />When it opened in 1894, the Szent Lukács was the biggest at 1,800m2, and the most popular spa in Budapest. <br />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. <br />It was an informal literary salon, more recently with a dissident flavor from the 1950’s to the mid-1980’s. <br />The stone sunbathing terrace on top of the building is particularly atmospheric.<br />During the Turkish occupation, the Lukács territory held a four-towered castle which had been adapted into a medieval gunpowder mill.<br />The Turks called it Barutháné and the Buda Pasha Arszlan redecorated the building in 1565-66. <br />West of the mill building, a warm spring rose up from the hillside and the resulting millpond water drove the wheels to grind powder.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />In 1893 Palotay took over the running of services in the Szent Lukács and built mud baths, steam baths, a sanatorium and swimming pools. <br />The Szent Lukács medicinal and thermal pool opened its doors to the public in 1894.<br />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. <br />Water of a temperature of 17 -65 degrees comes from natural sources and drilled wells. <br />The calcareous, hydrogen sulfuric water is good for rheumatics, muscle and nerve illnesses and joint. problems.<br />The Lukács is one of the few thermal baths in Budapest which offers mud treatments. <br />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.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Saint Lukács gyógyfürdô & uszoda</span> (thermal 'health' bath & pool)<br />District II. Budapest, <br />Frankel Leó utca 25-29. <br />Tel 326-1695<br />www.lukacsfurdo.hu <br />Open daily 06.00—19.00<br />Day ticket with locker (2006) Ft1,500 – leave within 2hrs you get Ft400 back, within 2-3hrs Ft200<br />Day ticket with changing cabin (2006) Ft1,700 – leave within 2hrs you get Ft400 back, within 2-3hrs Ft200.<br />Hang on to your tickets!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Facilities include</span><br />Steam baths<br />Pool (06.00—19.00)<br />Underwater jetstream massage<br />Doctor's massage<br />Mud and weight baths<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Drinking fountain ivókút</span> open 06.00—18.00 Mon-Fri, 06.00—12.00 Sat/Sun. <br />You can drink korsós of healthy water full of minerals on the spot. <br />Half a liter costs Ft5…..yum, yumlucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-22048054569573868442008-03-17T15:58:00.008+00:002008-12-12T07:15:06.385+00:00Trabant - the little car that could<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP7mhgGiwQ8jV8wMMq412sVhkt3GoE1YRh1LmQzY_XtxJ8iFSylHvqgx74RpxS_rvAzlhO57ddbRNABXJrkjX9CAq-x2wIUCZkLtRbbkDXPHim5jU0i0F9v8IYMJR4MTyamdy2_w9RIR0/s1600-h/high_trabant.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP7mhgGiwQ8jV8wMMq412sVhkt3GoE1YRh1LmQzY_XtxJ8iFSylHvqgx74RpxS_rvAzlhO57ddbRNABXJrkjX9CAq-x2wIUCZkLtRbbkDXPHim5jU0i0F9v8IYMJR4MTyamdy2_w9RIR0/s400/high_trabant.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5178743197333087714" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Tale of the Trabi<br />©LRMTrabantTales2008</span><br /><br />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.<br />However, although the Trabant and Communism shared many similarities: clumsy, smelly, uncomfortable, and some say unattractive, there is one major difference.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br /><br />Demszky did not bargain on three things:<br />people with small businesses needed their Trabants,<br />a painter and decorator could not take his equipment on the metro,<br />you can pack the contents of a small flat into a Trabant.<br /><br />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. <br />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.<br />Gábor Muczán runs the Trabant-Wartburg club from his home behind Farkasréti cemetery. <br />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.<br />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. <br />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."<br />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.<br />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. <br />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."<br />The Muczáns' kitchen is decorated with number plates of cars, mostly Trabants that Gábor has owned or renovated.<br />A brown bottle, once filled with Trabant beer, produced in Zwickau-home of the Trabi, sits on the table. <br />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.<br />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. <br />No car starts in the cold like a Trabi and once going, it just keeps rolling along.<br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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. <br />All cars in the 50's were large and heavy. "The Trabant was an innovation, a world class car then," says Muczán.<br />The life and times of the Trabi make interesting reading. <br />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. <br />The name Trabant derives from the German word for satellite or escort henchman, the verb 'trab' means to trot along.<br />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. <br />"Now everything is automated, the Trabant would be too expensive to make," says Muczán. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />There were Trabants that resembled the modern Fiat Uno, although no record of them exists.<br />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. <br />Story has it, that they began work for Volkswagon and turned the Trabi 603 into what is now the highly successful VW Golf 1.<br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />Several makes of car were tested, the Mercedes turned over. <br />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. <br />On November 9, 1989, the Berlin wall came down, and unforgettable images were seen throughout the world media. <br />A cacophony of honking echoed down Berlin's Ku'damm. <br />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. <br />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.<br />However, when consumerism took hold, Trabis were out, Audis, Fiats and Renaults were in. <br />The star of the liberation reverted to the sad epitome of socialism, inefficient, slow, dog-eared and dull and nobody wanted it.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />Bono has his own light blue P601.<br />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. <br />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. <br />To be sure of having a car in your thirties, you had to put in your application as soon as you turned 18.<br />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. <br />Even then, your Trabant wasn't ready to drive away. <br />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. <br />The Trabi traditionally has only one item on the dashboard, under the flat windscreen, a combination speedometer and odometer.<br />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. <br />Prospective car owners would pray they were not alloted a P601 in beige. <br />The choice of colours was limited to beige, bathroom tile light blue and olive green which was used by the German army border patrol.<br />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!<br />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.<br />It had all the acceleration of an overweight slug and might be capable of reaching 100kmph going downhill with a strong wind behind.<br />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.<br />Muczán raced Trabis for years and says Trabants and Wartburgs raced in the Monte Carlo rally, a Wartburg even won in its category.<br />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. <br />However, Zwickau remains a place of pilgrimage for the annual Trabi rally, last year attended by 10,000 people from across Europe. <br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Trabant jokes </span><br />How do you double the value of a Trabi ? <br />Fill it with petrol.<br /><br />Why does a Trabi have safety belts?<br />So that you can use it as a rucksack if it breaks down.<br /><br />What does a Trabi owner do about potholes?<br />Park in them<br /><br />What does the P601 stand for?<br />600 order it, but only one gets it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">April 2004</span><br /> 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.<br />Information from the KvVM department Tel 477-7400. or on the website http://sansz.ngo.hu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2362lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-75634147982456367652008-03-03T12:02:00.004+00:002008-12-12T07:15:07.232+00:00New York Palace history<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLTKh_eDEFN4-DFjTXt-m8QgPIvcjW9AvxA1i4AXJjslDBnOVPBErj2OLsmtSzGDNepgSFn-s9oCl95pDByFKlTr-u5SLygkKx3_04eBfsn4dIJp40pwaaPqNcJ-VCjHkdpb2AS49mdUM/s1600-h/NYP.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLTKh_eDEFN4-DFjTXt-m8QgPIvcjW9AvxA1i4AXJjslDBnOVPBErj2OLsmtSzGDNepgSFn-s9oCl95pDByFKlTr-u5SLygkKx3_04eBfsn4dIJp40pwaaPqNcJ-VCjHkdpb2AS49mdUM/s400/NYP.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173486514090339522" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPkbsfsL8zKorRYq8F-RzEBDNbHg57eHM-Hb_ARtbFcha01Gz-cZcKEx4xZ4CfQsLawFifQhKkKAFNXCpSFUM8RMMWUfO6rRQhhwq0ZoUE1VKOGOukCFI2Nzo7y41Av8QKmeVyXQDqgwk/s1600-h/NYCafe.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPkbsfsL8zKorRYq8F-RzEBDNbHg57eHM-Hb_ARtbFcha01Gz-cZcKEx4xZ4CfQsLawFifQhKkKAFNXCpSFUM8RMMWUfO6rRQhhwq0ZoUE1VKOGOukCFI2Nzo7y41Av8QKmeVyXQDqgwk/s400/NYCafe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173486522680274130" /></a><br /><br />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. <br />The Boscolo Group acquired the building in 2001 for €2.5 million and has invested a further €80 million in extensive renovation.<br />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.<br />Writers, artists and intellectuals flooded in and gazed around at the opulence, hoping for literary inspiration.<br />At the re-opening of the legendary watering hole, Pest district VII mayor György Hunvald said it signified a 'turning point' for the district.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />It's interesting how the dullest jobs get the most gorgeous locations.<br />The building was designed by Alajos Hauszmann, and built by Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl in an Italian Renaissance style with eclectic ornate elements. <br />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.<br />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.<br />The New York was concocted in a spectacular melange of styles with curly gilded marble columns, bronze details, colourful murals and ornate chandeliers. <br />It immediately attracted Budapest’s literary society; authors, poets, journalists, intellectuals and Bohemians all filled its tables. <br />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. <br />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.<br />The maitre d’ during the period, Gyula Reisz, known to all as the ‘literary head waiter’ gave endless credit for his select literary guests.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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”.<br />It must have been pleasant to while away the afternoon in the spacious rooms, among the curly columns, winding staircases, and statues.<br />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.<br />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.<br />The New York can be considered the birthplace of modern Hungarian literature. Almost immediately after opening in 1894, the Pesti Napló editorial moved in.<br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />Dezső Kosztolányi even immortalised the literary venue in a poem, which began, <br /><br />“Newyork, you are the coffee house,<br />where I sat so often,<br />Let me open your door,<br />and maybe I can sit down for a while,<br />Just like a beggar who rests on a bench,<br />And look around at what remains within me and all around...”<br /><br />Ferenc Molnár wrote most of his great work ‘Liliom’ here. <br />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.<br />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. <br />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.<br />During the Socialist period, the café was renamed the Hungária kávéház, and was famous for the slowest and most surly staff in town.<br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">New York Palace Kávéház (and hotel)</span><br />Budapest - District VII<br />Erzsébet körút 9-11<br />Getting there: Metro 2 (red line), tram 4, 6 to Blaha Lujza tér<br />Tel (+36 1) 886-6111<br /><a href="http://www.boscolohotels.com/eng/hotels/new_york_palace/5star_hotel_budapest.htm">New York Palace website</a>lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242963404816732974.post-65015076207178481362008-01-25T16:51:00.000+00:002008-12-12T07:15:07.775+00:00Fő utca story<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDz3A5oElv_bGI_lL6ksiZi22ujH3rSr-IZzMULeMVFVCT0sBbm86UxhDzBQeOOewiZydcUpIX8-4-OMdmCHyRnqknozHXamlWh6xIO9PjUGHNXTKRqlXLVP_pS9Qzq9LrkBZ6SO7D20c/s1600-h/100_2102.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDz3A5oElv_bGI_lL6ksiZi22ujH3rSr-IZzMULeMVFVCT0sBbm86UxhDzBQeOOewiZydcUpIX8-4-OMdmCHyRnqknozHXamlWh6xIO9PjUGHNXTKRqlXLVP_pS9Qzq9LrkBZ6SO7D20c/s400/100_2102.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5159458947485907778" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">©LRM2007 Szent Anna templom</span><br /><br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />Fô utca 1 on the right-hand side belongs to the Central Court of the Buda District. <br />It was designed by Ybl in 1867-69. <br />On the left-hand side at Fô utca 2 is a three-sided Romantic building designed by Hugó Máltás (1860-61). <br />It was built for the widow of Dutch shipbuilder J A Majson who came to Hungary at the invitation of Count István Széchenyi. <br />Fô utca 3 was also designed by Máltás in 1861-66, in a neo-Classical style. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />The District I Cultural Center (Mûvelôdési ház) stands at Fô utca 11-13. <br />A plaque on the wall reads that a Polish team of doctors occupied this house and many were killed on March 19, 1944. <br />The building was designed by István Lánzbauer and built in 1880 for Count Gyula Andrássy. <br />At Fô utca 14-18 you can see an old portion of wall in front of a modern, all-glass building. <br />These are the remains of a medieval house which was reconstructed in the 17th century. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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). <br />Fô utca then opens out into the bare and muddy Corvin tér. <br />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. <br />You can see a Turkish door on the southern wall. <br />At the north of the square is the Buda Vigadó building, built by Mór Kallina and Aladár Árkay in 1900. <br />This is the home of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble and Civil Rádió. <br />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. <br />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. <br />The Hungarian-Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941) was born at Szilágyi Dezsô tér 4.<br />Another plaque reveals the interesting detail that composer Béla Bartók lived in the same building from 1922-28. <br />Opposite stands the red-brick neo-Gothic Calvinist church whose roof is adorned with ceramic Zsolnay tiles from the Pécs factory. <br />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. <br />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). <br />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. <br />Lack of funds and an earthquake in 1763 hampered the building work and consecration only occurred in 1805. <br />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. <br />Batthyány refers to Count Lajos Batthyány, the Prime Minister of the 1848 Hungarian Government. <br />On the left is Market No VI, now occupied by a modern supermarket.<br />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)<br />Next to the pancake shop is a beautiful Baroque building with Rococco ornamentation at the lower level, marred somewhat by a neon "Casanova" sign. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />Fô utca crosses over Csalogány utca and there is a wonderful, leafy florist’s shop on the corner. <br />Opposite at Fô utca 68, a socialist constructivist relief shows three stonemasons struggling with a block of stone. <br />The street then reaches Nagy Imre tér where the Foreign Ministry stands facing the river. <br />The square was previously called Bolgár Elek tér, and one old sign is still in place. <br />The forbidding building on the north side of the square is a prison.<br /> 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." <br />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. <br />In July 1999, Attila Ambrus, the "Whiskey Robber", escaped from an upper story window using bed sheets tied together. <br />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. <br />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. <br />Fô utca ends at Bem József tér.<br />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. <br />The statue commemorates the Battle of Piski.<br />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.<br />Article filed April 2002.lucyrmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09992580308147659697noreply@blogger.com3