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: urbanexploration
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…
Ode to a Muddy Stream- A Year of Walking by the Rákos-patak
It came in waves, like the sea, but the unpleasant sort, a cold sea with mud and plankton. Wave one, the paranoid days. Cases in Hungary were still low in spring, but as lockdown loomed, we stayed inside and, quite unnecessarily as per the latest studies, disinfected doorknobs and beer cans. Wave two, the second…
Suburban Waterworlds-A Walk by the Danube on Csepel Island
About a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon an article describing the wild charms of the Kolonics György walkway, nestled away in lush solitude on the eastern shore of Csepel Island. What a lovely proposition, I cried out. Alright, I didn’t, everything happened at a mental level only, but I felt like dramatizing this…
(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…
More Notes from a Budapest Lockdown
We may have reached some sort of turning point in the crisis. After about two months of fruitless quests, my favourite hand sanitizer is back on the shelves, albeit only the purple orchid scented version, not the flamingo one. It’s not flamingo scented, of course (I wonder what that would be like, salt marshes and…
Notes from a Budapest Lockdown
I crack open my front door and inspect the immediate proximity. My possibly Ukrainian neighbours, often prone to unsettling fits of what I hope is merely smoking induced coughing, are not around. This releases my tension somewhat, I do a last careful inspection of my pockets: sanitizers, handkerchiefs, my ID, just in case the authorities…
No Forest for Old Wolves- A Visit to Farkaserdő
Farkas-erdő (Wolf Forest) is not really a forest and obviously does not have wolves. Its most canine touch are the distant barks occasionally to be heard from the Rex Animal Shelter (actually called Rex Animal Island, though it’s not an island), situated at the Ócéanárok street end of Farkaserdő. Óceánárok means ocean ditch, but it’s…
A Story of Chalk and Crystal: Day Trip to Fox Mountain
Just when we thought we had finally run out of Budapest hills (or mountains, as per the local parlance) to summit, we were made aware of the existence of the poetically named Róka-hegy (Fox Mountain), situated very close to the city’s administrative border with Üröm. This seemingly extreme location is actually fairly easily reachable by…
The Commie IKEA of Rákóczi Boulevard
Rákóczi boulevard must definitely be the first glimpse I ever took of Budapest, as it opened up in front of Keleti railway station, rushed towards the mysterious Blaha Lujza square (I tend to get lost in its underpass to this very day), passed Astoria, the hub of my life while studying in the nearby ELTE…
Pocket Diary Budapest 