Budapest, You Wonderful!
What makes a great city? Clean streets, a beautiful architectural landscape, good infrastructure, a wide range of good restaurants, public spaces, pubs, and such cultural, artistic and design places that everyone talks about? Perhaps. Nevertheless, Csaba Magyarósi and Ádám Szűcs, the creators of the blog One Day in the City (Egy nap a városban), also give much appreciation to the individuals in their first book One Week in the City (Egy hét a városban) devoted entirely to the Hungarian capital, Budapest and its residents.
Csaba Magyarósi & Ádám Szűcs by BACH Máté
It’s no doubt that Csaba Magyarósi and Ádám Szűcs love Budapest, therefore, it’s not a real surprise that they would like to teach others how to love it, too. To do so, they launched their blog One Day in the City and started posting about their favourite places. They wanted and still want to share their knowledge and experience with others in order to show that Budapest deserves a story, or more.
On their blog they focus mainly on gastronomy, meaning introducing a great variety of catering establishments located in Budapest. They know how difficult it can be to find real treasures in the city, since there are tons of them; day by day a new unit opens somewhere in the frequented districts, one can hardly keep up with the fuzz. This can definitely be regarded as one of the results of the gastronomy revolution currently taking place in our beloved capital.
by FÁY Gergely
Budapest is a great city — according to a large number of international websites, most of the locals and those who have ever happened to pay a visit here. But it wasn’t like this before 2012, but that time something changed. The following quote sums it up the past: “[…] Budapest isn’t defined. When we think about Prague concrete feelings and impressions slip into our mind, while the Hungarian capital only exists. It hasn’t got any conception, it vegetates, and no values are associated with it.” (p. 54) But not anymore! The Budapest image is being formed constantly but will be never complete.
Nowadays tourists come all year round. It doesn’t matter whether it’s winter or summer, Budapest always offers something special to everyone. Even though Magyarósi and Szűcs’s book has been published only in Hungarian so far, it could be the perfect gift for them and those who are planning to spend some days, weeks or even years in Budapest. In addition to that, those, who have been already living in town for years, might also consider the book a page-turner.
by FÁY Gergely
While Hungarian speakers can enjoy all aspects of the book, non-Hungarian speakers — thanks to the QR codes placed next to the text — can find their way to the closest place the authors recommending. “The idea of the QR codes came across our mind early in the planning phase, but we did not consider adding comments too until the very end,” says Ádám Szűcs. “As time went by the structure and appearance of the book became less rigid so we became braver and braver to break down the traditional perception of what a book should be like.”
by the authors
When examining the book one can conclude that it’s in fact similar to Facebook to some extent; it provides an atypical social media experience for readers. It consists of 7 main chapters (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday), and in each of them the authors give some advice about the places one should visit while staying in Budapest. “We selected those places that we had a good memory of; we aimed at mentioning them at least. We hope we’ve managed to do that.” These are mostly certain kind of restaurants, cafés or bakeries, and therefore the gastronomical aspect of the book is much stronger and recognisable. However, this is understandable concerning their blog.
by the authors
Szűcs also added that the writing process went smoothly, he and Csaba agreed on almost everything, however, they might have rewritten the preface about five times: “At the end, we were like, OK, it’s not so important so we left it as it was.” He also elaborated on the negotiation with the publishing house the co-workers of which didn’t really like their naïve and primitive drawings, and at first they didn’t want them in the book. “In the end, they became softened and let us include them.”
Vasverő — KULCSÁR Bence by the authors
Beyond mapping out the city, the authors educate their readers with a brief historical summary on Budapest and its landmarks, plus six short stories based on real events presented at the end of the first six chapters. These stories are full of life. These are those parts of the book that amused me the most, I could have easily read more of them. Sometimes I felt the urge to leave everything behind and go for an adventure myself as well. Even if I’m familiar with the history of Budapest, I had the opportunity to hear about personal stories that evidently make me more curious about individuals who work and live a few kilometres away. I wondered what stories they could tell.
One Week in the City is such a book that you want to have on your bookshelf. The authors will probably update its content next year due to the facts that “many places close down, many opens, and the city is changing so fast that it’s worth examining it one year later, too”. Unfortunately, the book is currently available only in Hungarian, but Ádám and Csaba are in negotiation about the English version of it.
One Week in the City was released by the Alexandra Publishing House in December 2015.
Originally published at //hypeandhyper.com/en/budapest-te-csodas/.
