Budapest

May 23–24, 2009

There’s a sign that looks like a house with lightning bolts on the side of the road, signifying power lines ahead.

The road markings prescribe keeping a minimum distance of two carets. One is not enough. (I’ve seen something similar in China.)

What struck me most outside the city was the bridges for cows, which are lined with wooden fences and shrubs. The cows will live and die without ever knowing they walked from one field to another over a highway.

Budapest is magnificent.

Parts of it look very much like Saint Petersburg.

And parts are a hundred times prettier.

The post boxes maintain their dignity in all circumstances.

The same goes for the payphone booths.

But the noblest artifact of all is the metal plaque indicating distances to nearby utility hatches.

The numbers on it are also made of metal. Pure joy.

Compare this to the plastic plaques, whose numbers fall off right away and have to be re-done in marker. Some technologies just shouldn’t be messed with.

Budapest’s metro entrances are on par with Paris’s and Madrid’s.

Inside, the staff checks each passenger’s ticket by hand, like in Moscow 50 years ago.

There are shallow metro lines with cars that resemble trams. And deep lines, where the cars are the familiar older-generation Moscow ones, only with different upholstery.

The trams here are articulated, with five accordion joints.

Hungary is the homeland of the Ikarus bus. So it’s no surprise that they have Ikarus trolleybuses here.

Trolleybus stops are marked with signs that look like they need to pee.

The bus stops have more classic-looking signs.

Outdoor advertising is pasted onto signboards set up around poles. It’s somewhat similar to Bratislava.

Speaking of poles, the old utility poles are rapidly being replaced with new ones.

The Budapest trash can.

A promotional cigarette bin.

A junk mail box on a front door. Mailmen diligently put all the promotional catalogs and flyers in this box, letting residents fish out whatever they might be interested in.

House windows are equipped with roller shutters, as is the custom in these parts.

Quite unexpectedly, Budapest turned out to have a shared trait with Uruguay. Many of the buildings here also have gas heater flues that come out under the windows, and the grates covering them also have unusually elegant designs.

But another, even more unexpected thing Budapest has in common with South America is the existence of a “commercial vehicle unloading” sign. We’ve previously only come across such signs in Uruguay and Argentina.