Halfway down the Danube

10 Things About Budapest

Here are some completely random observations about Budapest.

1) It's a really beautiful city, with delightful architecture and lots of lovely squares and parks. And the river, of course -- the Danube flows right through the middle of it.

2) It has the best second-hand English bookstore in the region. (The "Red Bus" bookstore, on utca Semmelweis.) Wow, that's a good bookstore. Only one problem -- it opens late and closes early. I only had about 20 minutes there, rush rush rush. Next time.

3) It has the biggest Advent Calendar I've ever seen. It covers the side of a large building in one of the squares, and it's probably 20 meters high and 40 long. Each window has a different Christmas-themed painting by a local artist.

4) Everyone under the age of 35 speaks at least a little English.

5) On the other hand, advertisements and posters are more than 90% in Hungarian. (This is in sharp contrast to both Belgrade and Bucharest.) I'm not sure what this means, but it's interesting.

6) The vendors in the parks and squares sell sausages, pastries and hot spiced wine.

7) Double feature in concert this weekend: Earth Wind & Fire, and Kool and the Gang.

8) Budapest is second only to Paris in its abundance of nude public statuary. It seems like every building has lots of attractive young naked marble people hanging around its windows. Get your mind out of the gutter, you -- it's Art.

9) Either Hungarians don't like dogs, or they clean up after them. I'm not sure which, but in the center of town, the "dog crap per 100 meters of sidewalk" index is much, much lower than in either Belgrade or Bucharest.

10) The departure lounge at Budapest airport has a "Kids Room". This is a room with toys, books, one of those crawl-climb-slide things, a changing table, and a Nintendo GameCube hooked up and ready to go. It also has a guestbook, which I flipped through: about 1/3 entries from happy children, 2/3 from very grateful parents.

Obviously, two days in a city are not long enough to form more than the most casual notion of what it's like. Still, Budapest makes a very good first impression.

And that room at the airport is pure genius. Why isn't everybody doing that?

Posted by douglas at December 12, 2003 08:23 PM