Present of Canada

In Hungary we celebrate Name-days. To every day of the year belongs a firstname. Today is the day of JEROMOS. This name has a greek origine. Means: having a holy name. So greetings to every JEROMOS:)

Weeks ago I posted the tulips...the present of Holland people to Hungary. And now here is the present of Canada. The waterfall is in the Westend City Center mall. It seems nations like to give presents for us:) Thank you CANADA:)

Some more photos you can see here....and a video here.

32-esek square

There are 50 years between this two photos. The first one was taken in 1956 during the revolution and the second was was taken yesterday afternoon by me. In front of the statue is a bus and trolleybus station nowdays and almost every day I wait here for my bus.

The trees has grown. The ruins got rebuilt.

People gone.

But we still remember.

Corvinus University

This is the building of the Corvinus University of Budapest. The word Corvinus refers to the name of King Matthias Corvinus (1443-1490). He have got this name because his familie's coat of arm depicts a raven which is corvus in latin.

The Hunyadi is one of the most famous family in the Hungarian history and surely he was the most popular king. There are a lot of tales about him when he changed his clothes and went to the country-side, dressing like a poor wanderer student and when he faced some injustice he discovered his real identity saving the victims from the abusing wicked local noblement.

After he died the phrase became a commonplace: Matthias died, and so did the justice.

Blockhouse

Budapest is not only about nice historical buildings. A lot of people live in soviet-type blockhouses. They started to build these type of houses in the '60s to create several living opportunities for people moving from the villages to the industrial centers...to the cities.

I have a dream

He/she has a dream. We dont know what is it...he/she didnt share it with us. The Hungarian text is like "one more thing, and pls dont steal my.......(and the last word is nosense to me)." Deep secrets..

Anyway...I have a dream, too. One day having nice clean trains only in Budapest.

Erotic exhibition

Source

I have found an older photo which is less direct then the previous one but still expresses what I wanted to express.

Every year is an Erotic Exhibition in Budapest. Actually it would be better to call it Porn Exhibition as in fact the main "exhibitors" are from the porn industry. The structure is like in any other fields, just like a travel exhibition but here instead of travel agency leaflets you can find porn magazines and dildos, and instead of intellectual presentations you can watch shows like this.

Yesterday I read about the sexual culture in Japan from Macky on the Tokyo daily photo site (search for his Sept 8. post)...and it made me think about the cultural differences regarding this issue. I dont know too much about Japan. I know about the Geisha culture but I dont know how it is nowdays. Macky's description gave me a short insight.

I know pretty well our culture here...and if you look at this photo carefully you can get some impressions.

p.s.: I hope I didnt offend anyone with this photo. I want to show this "world" as it is.

Graffiti

At some places graffities are legal in the city. They encourage artists to create graffities on walls of old abandoned factories. Some says this is not a graffiti anymore because a real graffiti has to be illegal. I dont know too much about this, but I like this kind of "professional" works better then pure tags everywhere.

Hard to catch these long wall with a single camera so I created a video time ago about it. You can see it here. And other graffiti here.

Broadcasting

These broadcasting stations are standing in front of the parliament building. Looking at them I feel like being in Steven Spielberg's E.T.:)

Clubhouse

Not a toe, but something calm, nice and peaceful which is more about building something and about destroying. Yesterday we had the opening ceremony of a new day center for people with mental health problems. Our foundation (Soteria Foundation) opened the first service like this in Budapest and now we had the opportunity to open a new one.

The vandalism is hopefully over. Last night was all calm...but since next sunday will be the local elections there is still a tension.

Crossing the Rubicon

Photo: www.index.hu

I have very mixed feelings. At times I feel ashamed. Thats what we are?

Then I remember that couple of months ago I have seen very similar photos from Paris and I didnt think French are animals. Couple of years ago I've seen Los Angeles in fire but I dont think Americans are bad. Two decades ago I've seen Belfast totally destroyed but I dont think British or Irish devils. Anyway...I still have this bad feeling.

I am sorry that the photos are not taken by me. You know I just dont want to go there. Not because I am afraid but because I dont want to take part in it in any way.

Protest? Vandalism?

Photo: Hajdú D. András

No, its not Paris couple of months ago. Its my lovely city, Budapest.:( You can see more photos here, and you can read my opinion on the events here. I just hate this.

Fountain

At times things are the same. Its how we look at them, thats the difference.

Tribute to Bohumil Hrabal

He is one of my favorite Czech writer. His stories from the old beer factory amazed me very much. In Kőbánya (the district I was born in Budapest) there is an old beer factory, too. As you can see all ruins. But among the ruined walls somehow still I can feel the athmosphere of the world that Hrabal described with such a good talent in his books.

I created a short "movie" about this beer factory. You can see it here.

Find your place!

Yesterday I went to the mall to my mobile phone company to "kill bill".:) And in the underpass I found this fun. They put the large satellite photo of Budapest(probably from Google Earth) to the floor and you can find your place on it. After some walk I found my area, too.

Hero square

A part of the hero square. Place for the Hungarian heros and during the day for guys with skateboard. I guess the kings like to watch them.:)

toward being multicultural

I admire cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam which are very colorful. A lot of very different people with very different origins. I took this photo yesterday in a mall. The little Asian (with my European eyes I can't recognize if she is Chinese, Japanese or Korean or....) girl was so obsessed with the helicopter that she even didn't see me taking photo of her. I asked the permission from her mommy who was smiling proudly. We have some Chinese people in Budapest but I wouldn't say Hungary is multicultural already. Its still a big deal to see Asian or African people and any time I can hear them speaking our very difficult language fluently I feel like woww!...Its a sort of honour...

Trabant

This former Eastern German car is called Trabant. Weeks ago I seen a Trabant on Philipp's Berlin Daily Photo site and I decided to post a similar one. My first car was a Trabant, too. I got it as a present from my grandpa after I graduated successfully in the highschool. But my grandpa was a very funny guy and he asked the mechanics to add some red color to the originally white car. Guess what was the result? ..............................yes, my first car was a pink Trabant:)

Where is the sun comming from?

If you didnt know it before, now you can see that someone is blowing out the sun as a bubble from my University's window.:) Afterwards in the morning it appears in Japan right over the House of the rising sun, and in California it falls into the ocean while Nicolas Cage is watching it with his black dressed mates.:)

Chain bridge

My favorite bridge in Budapest. I post here a picture which has pretty warm mood. The lighted Chain Bridge and the Gellért Hill in the background.

Cow Parade

I have seen that in some of your cities had cow parade, too. This cow was in front of the St. Stephen Basilica first but it became a scandal and one night they removed it to the building of the liberal party. Finally it found its place on the Vörösmarty tér.

Godzilla

Nothing serious. Probably Mr. Godzilla visited our city last night and when he (is Godzilla a male?) felt tired he rested against this building for a while.:)

Passion

This is the statue of Franz Liszt (Liszt Ferenc, 1811-1886) the famous Hungarian composer and pianist. He used to play with a lot of passion and I like this sculpture because I think it expresses this virtuousity very well. I uploaded a piece from his Hungarian Rhapsodies you can listen to it here.

The square is named after him and nowdays its a popular place for Cafés for sitting outside during the hot summer evenings.

Mounted Police

These policemen are mostly for attracting tourists. But at times they use them against football hooligans around stadions. If you look at the picture carefully you can see they even have a sword. But I never seen them using it. Maybe when they will have to arrest the Highlander one day:)

ELTE University

The summer is definitelly over. Today the University started to me, too. The summer is obviously over:( This is a quite new building of the largest University in Hungary called ELTE. My workplace. But thanks God my office's windows is on the other side having a view to the.....ok..ok....only to the terrace:)

Getting dark

The last three pics from my Parliament collection belong to each other too much to be separated by titles and dates or even by single lines. If I post them one by one it will be like posting the same photos for three days. But keeping them together you can see the transition. This is the way getting dark in Budapest:)

Parliament Building at gloaming

They say they used 40kg gold during the construction of the building. And a few years ago they brought the Crown of St. Stephen to the Parliament Building from the National Museum, too. ...But hey..what the hell is the helicopter doing there?:)

Hungarian Parliament Building

In the next 5 days I will post a series of photos about the Parliament Building. They started to build it in 1885 and was completed in 1904.

Western Railway Station

This is the Western Railway Station. Dont ask why they call it "western". It is located to the middle of the city and trains mostly goes to the Eastern part of the country from here.:)
It was opened in 1877 constructed by the same Eiffel company which built the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Turul

The Turul is a bird from the Hungarian legends. Most likely it is a huge falcon which showed the way to find the land of Hungary in the dream of Álmos. He was one of the seven leaders of Hungarians:
Álmos, Előd, Ond, Kond, Tas, Huba, Töhötöm. (wow I still remember!)
This Turul statue is located in Buda right beside the palace.

But this statue is a small one to compare to the Turul in Tatabánya 54 km away from Budapest. It is the town where I have spent the majority of my childhood but since its a Budapest daily photo site I didnt post a picture about that real huge Turul statue. But I have a short video about it....if you wanna see click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY9an8bcLGE

Going home late

This street is in the Palace of Buda. Basically its a touristic area I rarely go there up to the hill but years ago I used to work in this area for the Hungarian Scientifical Academy for a couple of months. My days started there very late and at times I left in the late evening. Walking on the empty streets I could hear my own steps and those street lights were on at times already.

I dont know why....but seeing lonely streets with public lights and with lights from the windows always remind me to the time when I was in the army.

In 1991 several times when I was in duty I had to spend long hours in a peel watching around along the fence of the military base. The first Iraq war just started and although we were very far away from Iraq being aware of terror attacks I had to stand there being armed to the teeth.

From the peel I could see the empty street with public lights outside and at times when some windows turned into yellow I desired so much being at home in a warm room just going out to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a pint of milk.

Nowdays I am at home at nights in a warm room. And going out during the night to drink something I can hear the trains a few blocks away and i wish being outside doing something adventurous.:)