Budapest – AGAIN!

Hello subscribers!

This time I do not have any new Blog posts to report. Since the previous Newsletter I have instead kept myself busy with updating my main website’s chapters for Budapest and Hungary, giving both expanded text and extra photos.

Moreover I added four all-new chapters, namely for the Hospital in the Rock, the 1956 Memorial, the Semmelweis Museum and the New Municipal Cemetery. In addition I extracted the info and photos for Kerepesi Cemetery from the original Budapest entry and made that a stand-alone chapter too, with extra text and photos. The photo above, by the way, was taken at this very atmospheric cemetery back in 2008. It’s entitled “dark angel” …

This now brings the total number of subchapters for Budapest to eight (with the old chapters for the House of Terror, Holocaust Memorial Center and Memento Park), which is much more appropriate for this wonderful city.

In fact, my wife and I were so smitten with Budapest on our long weekend there earlier this month that we’ve decided to go back sooner rather than later. Indeed very soon, namely from 9 to 11 of July, when we have yet another long weekend at our disposal. We’ll get the same train connection and will even stay at the same hotel as last time. Now, this is something totally unheard of for us. We rarely go back to places in close succession, and never before within the space of just five weeks, and never before have we booked the same hotel accommodation twice in a row (in fact we’ve hardly ever stayed at the same place more than once … come to think of it, I can only name about half a dozen such cases). But this hotel was so perfectly located, friendly, has a good buffet breakfast and wasn’t overpriced, that for once we made the decision to stay there again.

And there is also more to do in terms of DT. I haven’t been to the Hungarian National Museum yet, which is said to have a section about WWII and the communist era, so that might be worth checking out. And when we visited the Semmelweis Museum we noticed that right next door was another museum, with an exhibition about WW1 and the immediate aftermath years. So that might be worth inspecting too. Moreover, a return trip to Kerepesi Cemetery would be good; and maybe we can this time manage to visit the Jewish Cemetery we failed to get into last time.

Apart from DT duties, we’ll just enjoy some nice Hungarian food again, and will continue to explore Budapest’s excellent craft beer scene, this time even visiting the brewery of the main player (called “Mad Scientist”) at a wonderfully derelict old red-brick industrial complex.

What is however no longer possible is doing one of the world’s holy grails of urbexing, the old Kelenföld power station. Until a few years ago it was possible to visit this outstanding art deco industrial complex, with its magnificent control room, even on official guided tours, i.e. legally. And it used to be possible to sneak in (as proper urbexers would prefer it anyway – if it’s not forbidden it’s not fun, seems to be a typical urbex credo). But neither is possible any longer. As I’ve learned from digging around in some relevant forums, the tours are no longer offered and the site is more guarded now, as some form of conversion of the complex seems to be in the pipeline. You may actually have seen parts of Kelenföld power station in movies, as it has repeatedly served as a film-set location (see e.g. this film location website about Kelenföld).

With Budapest done (for now), I will now concentrate on all those new chapters that still need writing for Tirana, Albania. That’s what I’m currently working on. Photo galleries are already up.

Have a good week.

All the best,

Peter