When in Budapest, look up.
Budapest's buildings are beautiful and ugly, a fascinating mixture of all kinds.of architectural styles: gothic, classic, art nouveau, brutalist.
The beautiful buildings radiate, adorned with symbols and alive with detail.
The uglier buildings are monumentally so, and tell of a dark history.
I went on a communist tour to discover some of the sights. The guide Andrew mentioned that during the communist times, the city was grey. Buidlings were neglected, allowed to accumulate layers of pollution and urban grime.
When the 1990s came and the ending of the communist era, the sense of optimism for the future must have been matched by a sense of joy at seeing buildings like these shine again.
4 comments:
Among your "uglier buildings" you show a Bauhaus building that might be ugly for you but it's certainly not from the "Communist times". You did have a funny guide, for sure. You know it's easy to generalize but the city wasn't grey as such, buildings were not as neglected as many of them are today and there was less pollution than in the 90' because - surprise - there were less cars.
Thanks for your comment, shame you can't leave your name.
Which is the Bauhaus building? (The guide didn't point these buildings out; and he did try to explain that things weren't so simple to generalise.)
Tell me you went to the House of Terror. Amazing!
Sadly we got misdirected so didn't make it to the Communist Statue Park - did you?
I was a lot in E. Europe before 1989; it was grey after the West but UK had it's share of drab concrete- eg. Glasgow skyline until recently. Hungary was more liberal than some, private shops, cafes- variety -in prices too. They preserved the centres-not as smart as Vienna etc. but not demolished like UK. I've met people who feel USA/UK is replacing Moscow- English signs everywhere etc. yet most tourists -and many locals- speak German. But Bu. is more colourful than it was, more nice cafes than in 1980 (as UK!)
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