A Few Observations about Budapest

After spending a while in Budapest, a place with such a different language, in a former communist country, and strong traditions that do not resemble any we know from elsewhere, it seemed like time to reflect on some of the things we have seen and experienced here.

I went recently back to the ramshackle house not far from us and caught it just at sunset to set the bright red foliage on fire. This seems like a good image to represent much of what we see here. A place with its own beauty, but still in need of some care.



Lots of the buildings here are in poor repair. Certainly after 40 years of communist rule, it is reasonable to expect that lots of the grand buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries would be failing. But we do see many of the more important ones surrounded by scaffolding and undergoing repairs. Nearly all the grand buildings you've seen in this blog have been renovated in the last 20 years. Many are still in process.

It is interesting to see the admixture of english language and american commercialism here. Especially in the language. It is common to see adverts full of hungarian with a couple english words in there. Many stores have english names. You find 'Pubs' and 'Restaurants' here to cater to the tourists. Most of the younger people, say under 30 or so, speak at least some english. I go pretty regularly to the local mall to the Starbuck to get a coffee and so far every one of the young people working there have no trouble taking my order in english.

Older people, not so much. When buying flowers from one of the vendors at the cemetery, the old lady and I did not understand one another so she called to her son and we had a quite nice conversation about the sale of flowers in english.

Although we see lots of jeans and clothes of the sort you'd expect in the US, there are obvious differences. While there are a reasonable fraction of the women who dye their hair blonde, by far the most popular color to dye your hair is red. Pretty bright red is found on young women, old women, and all in between. Clearly there is something about the color red that appeals to everyone. I believe I've seen only one woman with hair dyed some funky color. Today, I saw a bright blue. That's it. Also, E notices that all the women under 30 wear beautiful shoes.

Interestingly, when we see a single woman in a taxi, she in invariably in the front seat beside the driver independent of her age. Don't know why this is.

Tatoos are very common on men (and some women, as well). None of the color stuff, always only black. Men universally have short hair. Many are very closely shorn or shaved. Mustaches are common but few beards.

When on the street, in the mall or on public transport, I notice a lot of men being very tender with their children - talking with them, kissing them, carrying them on their shoulders, taking them to the playground. But I never see a man pushing a pram, only women do this. The husband/sig-other will help get the pram in/out of the bus/tram but he will never be in charge of pushing it.

I believe crime is pretty low here. I see lots of women carrying these small stylish backpacks (such as the one E had her passport lifted from in London) with never a worry. Men also frequently carry a bag of some sort. I walked past a fellow today with a small bag of his stuff hanging from his belt and it would have been trivial to grab his phone as it was sticking out in plain sight. No one seems worried about this here. I'm sure there are places where this is a concern but we aren't going there.

Food is generally quite good. We tend to stay away from the pig knuckles and such, but on the whole it is all appetizing. In the center of the city, the restaurants provide photos of the food to help us interlopers. Much of the Hungarian food is peasant food, as you might expect. So potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and onions are common ingredients in nearly everything. You can find KFC, Burger King, Subway, and Pizza Hut here. But we don't go there. (I've already admitted that I go to Starbucks.)

Houses generally all have walls/fences about the lot and gates for the driveways. In addition to gaining privacy, folks here have lots of dogs. Some properties have 4 or 5 barking at me as I pass. But by far, most people live in large apartment buildings. We are surrounded by them. These people also have lots of dogs even though it is very rare to see unpoliced doggie-doo on the street.

One of the large apartment buildings I photographed early in our visit holds something like 700-800 families. Walking in our neighborhood, we see older couples (lots of them). When you see them walking along, you think, "there goes a farmer". You know the look. Our theory is that young people were moved to the city by the communist government to fill jobs in the factories they intended to build and now their parents are here to be near grandchildren. Sold the farm and moved to the city and now look a bit out of place. Could be any of a dozen other reasons, but that is what we strongly suspect.

For a place surrounded by large buildings filled with people, there are relatively few cars about. We seldom sit for long, even at rush hour, in a bus in the middle of town. Most zoom right along. It is clear that most people in the city use public transport and don't own cars. It is quite nice to be a city roughly the size of Seattle and have no issues with traffic.

Eating and drinking is not allowed on the public transit and you don't see it on the streets either. Many buildings and the transit system forbid smoking but there are lots of smokers here. National tobacco shops everywhere. The groceries are dominated by imports: Tesco (British), Spar (Dutch), Lidl and Aldi (German). There is also Prima, Coop, and ABC Roni (all Hungarian). Interestingly, groceries provide a space near the door after checkout for shoppers to put their basket of goodies and then transfer them to their shopping bags to carry home. If someone is buying anything more than a snack, they always bring a bag and then stop at the door to pack up for the trip home.

The best part about being here and the thing that makes being here so easy is the public transport. For about $19 each, we can buy a month travel pass that allows unlimited rides on any public transport in the city...trains, trams, buses, and metro. There are no gates at the entrance to the metro or train. No fiddling with money to ride a bus or tram. Occasionally the metros will have someone there asking to see your ticket/pass and once we saw the "ticket police" asking for tickets and pass on the bus. Mostly, you just get on and go where you are going. Easy. The transactions for purchasing tickets/passes is now universally done by machines found on the street or in a train/metro station. Push the button for "English" and Bob's your uncle.

Things are inexpensive here. We can buy a week's worth of groceries for under $100 and eat a nice meal out for under $30. If we have a pizza or a cheese board, it'll be more like $15. Tesco will deliver our groceries and this saves us from lugging heavy things home from the store. Today I had a venti cappuccino from Starbucks and it was $2.67.

Finally, I'll say that what really makes this a special place to visit are the arts. There are lots of them and they are quite affordable. We've been to two concerts at the Franz Liszt Music Academy and both were pretty amazing (as is the building). At the Erkel Theater, we saw Juan Diego Florez in concert with the orchestra from the opera house (which is currently being rehabilitated) and that was a phenomenal evening. We are booked to go back to the Erkel Theater for two operas - Rigoletto and La Boheme. A seat at the opera is roughly $50 each. Compare that with the $400+ we pay to go to the Opera House in London or the Met in NYC. The two orchestras we've heard here were both amazing and the night we heard Hungarian music at the Liszt Academy was overwhelming. If you like the arts, this is the place to be.