Home. It’s where the cats hate me in a very specific, familiar way. An antagonistic yet friendly way. They acknowledge I belong to the landscape, organically, like the trees, the asphalt, the houses, and the metal gates. I am one with their surroundings, and they hate me with passion, because they are cats. They turn…
Tag: architecture
What We Do in the Lockdown
It’s been a year now of this liminal state, when walking in the bright sunshine of the deserted city feels like the odyssey of a vampire sneaking in the dark, alone with ghosts and shadows. The dark itself doesn’t even seem to exist anymore; we’re locked out of it by the night curfew. We’re locked…
(Post) Lockdown Budapest Rambles
This talk about locals reclaiming their cities now that the throngs of tourists are gone, well, it is real. Forced by circumstance, we took exultingly and frankly excruciatingly long walks. No public transportation and, in a first phase, no restaurant pit stops involved. Up and down the hills of Buda, into the long straights of…
This is Not the Golden Age- Olof Palme House and Párizsi Udvar
I occasionally (as in, frequently) have questionable ideas, and one of these was jogging to the polling station a couple of weekends ago, keeping my fingers crossed that the chilly weather would allow me to be fairly presentable, both visually and odour-wise. I either succeeded, or the ladies in the electoral commission have by now…
The Roofs Have Eyes-Daytrip to Sibiu
To stop Romanians from ruling the world, God gave us a geographically perfect country. With no highways. And the chronic inability to build them. Yet when we set off on our short but sweet daytrip to Sibiu, we decided to ignore this dark curse and pretend that the 50 kilometres still lacking from the by now…
Why Go To The End Of The World, When You Can Go To Kőbánya
Kőbánya has always been mysterious to me, exotic and perhaps also slightly scary, exiled at the fringes of my Budapest existence, a land of imaginary brigands and flesh and bone people frozen into exasperated waiting on the platforms of minor stations my train hurtles through on its way home. Kőbánya-Alsó, Kőbánya-Felső, Kőbánya-Kispest. I know this…
Rocks, Saints, Rivers- A Visit to Ephesus
Present day Ephesus lies stranded inland, about 5 kilometres away from the coast. As with many ancient sites, one could hardly notice its presence if it wasn’t for the road signs. The closest settlement is Selçuk, a sleepy provincial town on the road from Izmir to the seaside resort of Kușadası. Most visitors also come…
Black Eagle, Blue Palace: A Day in Oradea
Growing up, one of the main tenets of our gang, often translated into footballing passions, was that out of the triad of neighbouring western Romanian cities ours (Arad) was the best. This was frankly contradicted by everything: Arad was the smallest, the economically least efficient and the one with the least spectacular architecture. Arguably, ours…
Geometries in the Rain- In Search of Bauhaus with Budapest 100
Once upon a time on an almost unbelievably rainy May weekend I set out in search of Bauhaus in Budapest- why it has taken me two months to write about it, I cannot really tell, let’s just say that procrastination is one of the few things in life I know inside-out, if not the only…
Budapest corner with Istanbul: Gül Baba’s Rosegarden
Humans are seldom happy with what they have. Say you’re offered a bank holiday right in the middle of the week, and in a more positively disposed moment you do admit that this arrangement could perhaps function in the long run, making people more focused on the tasks they have on the four working days…
Pocket Diary Budapest 