Arrived in Budapest

Arrived in Budapest, my birth city.  We were last here five years ago and what struck us is how many more people speak English these days.  People trying to sell you things on the street, shop assistants, on the bus, everywhere.

We are renting an apartment in Vaci utca right in the heart of the city close to the Danube, right opposite the Nagycsarnok - see photo below - the food market in Vamhaz korut.  Buda is just one tram stop away across the river.  We can walk practically everywhere.

The Nagycsarnok is described in the guide books as "a palace outside and a market inside".

Inside the great market.  And all this is just opposite where we live.

Here are some photos of the apartment.

The door of our apartment on the third floor is on the left.

This is the view as we walk out of the door.

The entrance foyer inside the apartment.  It is a space large enough for a decent sized bedroom.  Note the parquet floor which is throughout the apartment.

The lounge with high ceilings.  A feeling of spaciousness and grandeur throughout.  However, the grandeur of the apartment is in contrast with the lack of mod cons in the kitchen, bathroom and toilet of which there is only one.  The kitchen is quite small and not very well fitted out.  The bathroom has no shower facilities except for a hand held shower attachment in the bath.  But as there is no upright shower fitting or a shower curtain, one can only wash crouching down or else the water splashes everywhere.  We went shopping this afternoon and bought a shower curtain which Andrew managed to rig up.  It is not as elegant as the rest of the apartment :-) but it will make washing much more attractive.

When these places were built modern amenities were not available and people put up with things we tolerate less well.  I have found out that the building is just now celebrating its 100th birthday.  Originally, none of the apartments had piped hot water, only cold water.  Each apartment had to install their own individual gas heating appliances as a means of getting hot water to wash in and wash with.  Our kitchen has a very basic small heating appliance which heats the water as we are ready to wash up.  And a separate gas heating appliance in the bathroom.  But heating was always centrally supplied to all the apartments.  As well as the age of buildings, as a friend points out, much of Europe is full of such idiosyncrasies when after the grandeur came the era of fixing things on the cheap at the expense of style.  More recently built apartments may have had a central hot water system installed.  Our apartment is a grand old lady in the old world style with great panache but as I say lack of modern facilities.

I am not saying these things to grizzle.  It is simply an observation and a note of the contrasts that exist.  The building itself is fairly run down too whilst there are lovely buildings around the city which have been refurbished in style.  But we are very happy with our central location and the apartment is comfortable enough - plus it looks great.

This is a very nicely restored building that is not ours.

And another beautiful building.  I go around being constantly impressed with the beauty of the architecture everywhere in Europe.

Budapest, unlike Prague, was heavily bombed in the second world war and a lot of the buildings were damaged if not totally destroyed.  I guess these grand old buildings must have been restored slowly over the succeeding years.  There are signs of great building activity around central Budapest as they are either extending the metro system, improving the roads or doing other good things.  The transport system is very efficient and effective throughout the city.  The trams and the metro are heavily used and extend throughout the city.  They run frequently and efficiently.  You can purchase a daily, weekly of a 3 monthly pass and then use trams, buses or the metro as often as you like.

The Royal Palace on the Buda side.

We have spent our almost first week getting established and it has been great to hop on the various means of transport with impunity.  Apart from two separate sessions of bridge at our "new" bridge club we have done nothing else but get settled in.  We will start being tourists tomorrow with our first set of visitors Diana and Warwick.