Letters From Budapest

in Hungarian, Papirusz Book, Budapest, 1999 Budapest literary historian Martos Gabor (b. 1953), an expert in the Magyar literature written in Romania between 1970-1990, well-known in the Transylvanian cultural milieu, held a regular column in the Bucharest Hungarian cultural weekly A Het (The Week), entitled "Budapesti levelek". "I tell you from the very beginning: I liked Bucharest. I actually liked those houses dating from the '20s and the '30s, smacking of art deco (AthénéePalace or that house of the media, behind the Intercontinental Hotel, on which a neon sign of Alitalia is hung). Think again: so many people go to America on purpose to see such buildings (…) Besides, please step into that big bookstore on the main thoroughfare, not far from the Intercontinental, going not to the University Plaza but in the opposite direction (I beg your pardon but ten days were far-from-enough time for me to get my bearings right), and there leaf through a splendid album featuring fantastic pictures of Bucharest in the 1920s or the 1930s. Then you will have a better picture of how those things looked once and you will immediately see the city in a different light. Then you could, perhaps, detect that something that I liked in the city, although, indeed I do not live there on a permanent basis."from Bukaresti level (Bucharest Letter) July 19, 1995


by Gabor Martos