They don't take, they bring!

There are those funny coincidences. One morning at the subway we met with the girl next door, who, on seeing that I came with bike, asked me whether I was not afraid to leave it there closed down all the day. (I touch wood, but for ten years nothing has happened to it, although I use it a lot.) On the same day, by late at night, when I picked it up in front of the plaza, someone left a nice little lined cap on the package carrier.

Then I also love when people are kind only for the sake of the good feeling, like this morning the public worker who wished me a good way and told me to watch out because the roads are very slippery.

the Peace Fountain at Tahi Street, on 7 December 2012 in the morning

Something is missing from here

To be sure, it’s primarily the economic crisis, and only secondarily the environmental thinking which causes such profound shifts in cultural consumption. But this change also has a positive side, such as the appearance of the “book stations” spreading from Western Europe. The simple idea is that everyone can bring the book he/she does not need any more to the bookshelves set in a public space, without getting any money for it, and he/she can also take from the books left there (take a book / leave a book). I guess it will sooner or later run out, as more people want to take out from the public goods than as many want to contribute, but this belongs to the structure of the thing. The measure of the success is whether their consumption runs down in hours, days or weeks.

So, on Friday we were glad to see that they have established a Book Station in the Danube Mall.
We also made a couple of rush photos – later all of them resulted unfocused –, as a preparation to write about it here on the blog. The first mall of the capital has never belonged to the really busy shopping centers, but nowadays the buyers just linger in it, sometimes I have the impression that the people working there are more than those going there to buy.
A sign of the restructuring of consumption is the spread of second-hand clothing stores in the malls. Here, a Háda shop runs a spectacular traffic. And now it seemed to me that with the bookcase a real community social function has also appeared, which does not produce profit, but can increase a little bit the popularity of the place and through it, the traffic as well (smaller exhibitions are also usually here, all kind, from lego to old timers).

In the weekend I have also collected some books, which I felt I do not need, but I was surprised to see this morning that the bookshelf has disappered, and the place was now occupied by a Santa Claus with dishevelled teeth, a representative of the popular Prof or Hobo series. He was kindly regretting when he saw that I carried a basket of books in vain.


On the way to work there was another book station at the Kassák Lajos Museum in Óbuda (the book stations in Óbuda also have a facebook page), but when entering the yard, I felt that nobody would ever come here, so I have finally put them down in the depressing Flórián Square, I think they will quickly take them away from here.
How good it would be to have such a permanent place, don’t you think? Where could we find a place for it, where many people go up and down, and they would also spread its fame?

in the meantime, elsewhere

There are some points in the Earth, where the best way to exist is to try to observe and learn how others do it successfully. Say, the bugs. To slip under the shadow of the fine veins of a leaf from the scorching sun, where the air is perhaps less hot, and the shadow hopefully retains some moisture… It is expected that such a strategy will be necessary for more and more people. However, what the bug can find with a little luck, is much more difficult and expensive to create in great.

The stunning designs of Jean Nouvel’s office for the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum.

found

A new stylish fashion store of a popular menswear brand in the fashionable shopping and entertainment Shibuya district in Tokyo. The building is really nice and exciting, but I don’t think it affects us directly (more pictures).


But have a closer look at the blocks scattered in front of the entrance. And yes! the pillow-like space elements are actually cast concrete plant holders! ,)


I must say, we could imagine even better ones in this genre.

The melon demonstrator

Look at it well! then give me, say, this! a lot!

If you have not yet done so, then now the time has really come to bring out the bird feeders of the last year, or buy a new one if you do not have any. The simpler versions can also be made at home. The several aspects to be taken into account are described in the in-depth article of the Hungarian Ornithological Society. The bird feeder types suitable to different situations and bird species are described here in detail. At the beginning of the feeding season they always give feeding-related advices as well.

Previously, we wrote several times on the subject, so now I point out only the most important topics again.
- regularity is a life-saving basic rule! once give and then no, is worse than if we did not feed them at all, because disappointment can be fatal for the small birds of a rapid metabolism (so the best solution is to store at home a large package of bird food, which is enough for all the winter, well out of reach of pests)
- no bread or crumbs!
- no salted bacon!

- water always, regularly, in a shallow water-feeder! in great cold warm water is also a good solution, as it would freeze much later.
- from sunflower seed the small, black one is both cheaper and more suitable to the purpose than the tabby one with thick skin.
- cooked vegetables, apple, egg are real delicacies.
- curly or smooth red millet are a real titbit for chaffinches and other birds with a similar beak.

pictures of this morning

The original, largely submerged natural stone border is now being digged around. This is a big job, because the residents of the house only rarely come to help us, so we did not dare to begin it ourselves. Finally, we are now working together with this company. I will also show their price bid later. It would be nice to use their workforce and experience here and there also later, which would complement our potential.


A stripe of concrete is going to get in the ditch, and the raised edge will get back on it.



The concrete is arriving.


At this point I had to catch the bus. Tomorrow morning, if I will have time, I will also photograph the works at Tahi Street.

new developments, quick news!

Today I wanted to make a new entry on the developments in the garden, but it is not going to go, I fall asleep instead.

However, the most important news:
the gardener-entrepreneur, with whom three weeks ago checked the ground, finally sent a price bid. We have divided, multiplied, scaled, and he will arrive TOMORROW MORNING, so at last we begin to realize the long-planned renewal around the transformator house.
So far we can only do the first steps, but if we manage to win a new application in the spring, then we will have laid down the foundations to continue!
I will try to serve with more details soon.
Restful good night!

Gyöngyösi Street

I was busy in quite different jobs, when I suddenly found myself in the courtyard of Gyöngyösi Street 45, vis-à-vis the statue of the talented rock guitarist who had started with promising hopes. Here lived throughout all his short life, in the one-room flat of his parents, Béla Radics, whose fate was short-circuited by the cultural politics of the Kádár era and the alcohol together. Either by irony or by defiance, the statue captures the memorable concert moment, also recorded in a photo, when the young guitarist laughing points victory. The sculptor probably meant it as a sign of defiance, but the laugh in any case fell behind. Not a very good statue.

The residents, coming and going, or lurking from the windows, suspiciously watch me taking pictures. I understand the situation, I nod from the distance, but nobody addresses me whom I could assure that I did not come from the local government to register some unknown failure, and that I am definitely not a scout for burglars. If anyone addressed me, with a few words I could trust the reassurance on the wings of gossip. Please, I’m watching the letters, bird feeders, plastic windmills, withered flowers. Why, and you?

Despite the sad story – and presumably much more sad stories –, the courtyard is peaceful and nice, and the very sparingly designed and constructed buildings embrace a gentle, melancholically aging park. Just like the strange sculpture of the guitarist, everything is a little bit small, except for the poplar.

In the Hungarian capital this neighborhood, where the pictures were taken, has been traditionally considered as a workers’ district, although in the past twenty years, since the change of regime the factories which had employed the residents have almost all disappeared. The small size of the flats and the normal life cycle of its population has also promoted aging and slumming. On the other hand, the gradual replacement of the residents, typically with young people moving into their first flats, has also offered the possibility of rebirth. The building, especially together with its outward inscriptions, is reminiscent of German and Austrian social housing in the same period, isn’t it? Can you show us similar examples?

Domus

I have to confess that I don’t love it.
I did not want to believe that while the neoclassical and eclectic monuments of the downtown are being pulled down without hesitation, this outdated and dispassionate monster designed by Péter Reimholz must remain there. It seems that the Domus Supermarket has been declared protected! This is also peculiar because this building which has lost its function I cannot imagine as successful in any other role: and then why?

Opened in 1974, the Domus of Budapest was for a while the largest home furnishing supermarket of all Eastern Europe, and together with the Domus network, the king of the socialist furniture sales. The competition situation after the change of regime (and of course the appearance of IKEA) did not help to Domus, which was unable to change its face, until in 2011, after a long agony, it permanently closed off. (In this photo it shows a relatively good face, compared to itself.)

photo from here

In the weekend we will anyway take some photos of it, perhaps I will be able to discover some beauty in it through the unbiased glimpse of the photo objective. And what do you think about it? Mum – as at that time there was hardly any other furniture store – did we buy anything there? Perhaps that little red children’s furniture which, when rotated, was alternatively a chair and a table?
And you?

wonderful November

after many nights awake today I wake up to see that although the last orphane leaves are slowly playing in front of the window, on the top of the old poplar tree, but the shining sun has filled the room with small rainbows, and titmice gone mad are running riot around the feeder, because it has run out of seed

autumn in the garden city

In the post of yesterday I have mentioned good and bad experiences. Let me put down right now a recent good one, about how inspiring it is if others work as well, and that if there is enough attention, the table-tennis of learning from each other immediately starts.

Since early summer I have been watching how beautifully the little garden around the gate at the corner of Tahi and Göncöl streets has been developing. No matter from which direction you came, you immediately discover it. In the neglecd, dusty little nothing they first built a small stone frame. It also involved breaking up a part of the concrete foundation of the sidewalk. This hard physical work, requiring machinery and experienc, must have been done by a professional. Then in the raised garden they also changed the soil. In the fresh soil, next to the unworthily hyped irises, they put quickly and densely growing simple one-summer flowers, these were already planted by the residents. They did not have to invest too much, since these grew really quickly, they only needed to be watered by some enterprising local aunts. The house has a common water hose, to be connected on the tap of the dustbin room.

All these details were counted by an aunt whom I found while weeding. I praised the spectacular change and the flowers, and she immediately said that it was learned from the neighboring garden that theirs should not remain so insignificant either. And she points towards the house of Gábor, where we planted the lavenders, pomegranate and fig tree. We did not want to miss – we turn a bit in the direction of the work competitions.

I have promised her to print a photo, I hope she will like it in this mosaic format.

ps.: if anyone knows a good printing office in the neighborhood, please send it in comment, because just recently I discovered that even the Copy General has moved from Váci Street!

found picture

fortepan

Shorts and long socks… I can completely understand those twentieth-century memoir writers who live as an initiation-like experience the first serious long pants. ,)
This photo may have been taken around 1957, the eight-to-nine-year-old boy – probably a fresh dweller of a nearby flat – is as old as my father. Who could photograph him and with what kind of camera? In the fifties an own camera was a much greater thing, the number of the pictures of a film limited, the fixation and lab costs money, the portable bathroom enlargers for home use spread much later. The half-smile and slumped head also seems rather a shy gesture, a hesitant self-representation. He was made to stood here, it is not him who wanted to be on the photo. Yes, it was rather the father with the camera who commanded him there, this is not the kind of picture which friends take of each other.
To the right, the first steps of landscaping, in the background the corner of one of the two family housing estates formerly named after Governor Miklós Horthy and his wife Magdolna. The worker’s housing estate was built in several phases, the houses in Tomori Alley were completed only around this time, after the revolution. A part of the dwellers moved in during the autumn of 1956 as squatters, under the pressure of the house dearth, taking advantage of the disheveled wartime situation. According to the memoirs, the squatters could rightfully establish their position after the battles, the district council did not take back the occupied flats.
The majority of the flats in this estate are around 35m², so-called “adjusted to the reduced demand levels”. This meant to bring down the building costs by reducing the bathroom to a shower niche opening from the kitchen. I think that in the given situation this was better than trying to reduce the size of the room or the kitchen, as they did in several other state house developments in the period. This situation, nowadays perceived as too narrow for a family, was a big step up in the post-war decades.

Does he still live here?

a picture from the neighboring district

via

On Friday morning we went out to our favorite nearby nursery garden to supplement the small bushes of the hedge which died out in the summer (one was stolen, two broken out, for three the drought was too much). At Tahi Street there were also some which did not stand the training.
Unfortunately we have seen that the bushes were mainly sold out, and no spindle-berry – which we wanted to buy – was on sale. Bernadett says that they would not even order any more until spring, since they only could do it in large quantities, but soon the season of pines is here. So we will return in the spring, or maybe we will ask Laci to bring some.
However, there is plenty of bird food, and tulip bulbs, which we will urgently buy for the city tulip expansion!

But so that we came not in vain, we walked out in front of the neighboring lot, Régi Fóti Street 77, to see the former synagogue which looked like this from the adjacent nursery:


And from the other side somehow like this:

via

It was built in 1926-27 by the Orthodox Jewish community of Rákospalota. In 1926 they published a small prayer book in Hebrew, by the purchase of which one could contribute to the construction costs. It also contains the façade drawing of the building which at that time existed only on the drawing board.

via

via


via

The community was able to use the building for less than seventeen years. After the holocaust it was deserted. In the 1980s it was purchased by the National Széchényi Library. In addition to the store of extra copies, a book restoring workshop also works here.


Its most beautiful photo is on Fortepan:


The photo was taken in the late 30s, more or less from the location of the current Penny Market. The masses of land and stones probably indicate the cemetery which was wiped off just at that time.

mine, yours, ours

The Hungarian commentators living in Hungary decried a lot on the Facebook the Allmende-Kontor community garden in Berlin. közösségi kertet. They were mainly upset by its scrappy, makeshift character. In fact, it looks as if a petty bourgeois paradise had been shaken together with a hippie commune. The result is a surprisingly peaceful mixture, not devoid of kitchy and parodic elements. Everyone can have his or her little corner, for which he or she has responsibility, and a combination of these shows a simultaneously jovial, eroded and proliferating impression.
In any case, Berliners really like it, and the waiting lists of the community garden which started with 300 plots in a part of the former Tempelhof Airport, along the Oderstraße, are always full. Townspeople grow food, change plants, do gardening and relax in the former airport, by now completely encircled by residential areas.

Information here, further pictures here and here: What do you think?
Should people buy expensive designer furniture, or make out of pallets whatever he can? Maybe should they jointly knock it together? Or should they buy plastic chairs in the Tesco? Or wait for the municipality to assist them with cast iron street furniture?
Or perhaps they should not bring furniture at all in such small plots, as one of the commentators has suggested?
Should they set up their small gardens in a similar way, and agree among each other that they would only plant things there that are in harmony with each other? How would you do differently? Or is it all right as it is now?

Kuhi, the mountain kite

The Hungarian Ornithological Society has reported on the observation of a new bird.

Perhaps climate change is also a reason why a beautiful, small bird of prey, originally native to the tropics, has been observed today in Hungary.


The bird – in Hungarian kuhi, in English black-winged kite (Elanus caeruleus) belongs to the family of the diurnal birds of pray, and due to its characteristic appearance it is hardly to be confused with other species. It is bluish gray on the back, bright on the belly, and has black wings. The eyes of the adults are bright red, the wing feathers dark black, and their yellow feet are visible from afar.

We have checked where the strange-sounding Hungarian name of the bird comes from. Most languages name the animals unfamiliar in their territory by comparing them to a familiar species: thus, in most European languages the kuhi is called “kite”, namely black-winged kite, white kite (nibbio bianco), gray kite (luněc šedý), and even black-winged smoky kite (чернокрылый дымчатый коршун). In contrast, in Hungarian they have adopted the Persian name of the bird (کوهی, kuhi) meaning “mountain”, as it is called in its original habitats, where the language of culture is Persian or Arabic, which also took over the Persian name. It would be interesting to know who first heard and introduced the Persian name in Hungarian!

Originally in Africa, Rear India and the Indonesian Archipelago widespread species regularly nesting population is now Spain and Portugal, and more recently in Poland, Greece, Germany and Austria have also been reported in news. In Hungary, the Zámolyi Basin, Vértes Nature Park watching the photographic reporting Gabor Szalai.

The species, originally widespread in Africa, Northern India and in the Indonesian archipelago has a regularly nesting population in Spain and Portugal, and more recently they reported its appearance in Poland, Greece, Germany and Austria. In Hungary, it has been observed for the first time in the Zámolyi Basin, the Vértes Nature Park by Gábor Szalai, who published the first photo report on it.



via MME

octopus

at the encounter of Váci Street and Rozsnyai Street
it’s been months since I’m going to take a picture of it, but either I am on a rush, or it is dark, or it is raining (=> I am on a rush).
here you are. Is it evil, how d’you think?

Chinese brick

This addiction might be familiar to you. Photographing the ruins stirs up the treasure-hunter in me. I must go back, I must go back! I feel of having left there something. Yeah, like those beautiful little metal doves, which decorated the window boxes! How nice it would be to save them. If I leave them there, they will go to the rubbish anyway, nobody will pick them out. They have almost no weight, it is not worth to dig for them, and it is so uncomfortable to take them off the external facade. True, it would not be easy to me either.

I can easily turn into the plot, no gates, no dogs, only the mud crumpled by the machinery.
I take some pictures, a gutted out dollhouse, green flowered plastic floor, a small table desperately holding the bricks which tumbled upon it, light falls on the abandoned mirror of the bathroom in the second floor, an upset morocco game, dust, dust. The outside corridor is still held by a couple of beautiful cast iron columns on the opposite side, too bad for them, they will also get spoiled, how good it would be to build a house.


A sharp whistle, well, that’s for me. And it is good that not for the dogs.
That I should get out of here, quickly, as this is a private property, say the three men coming.
The one even having a waist-belt is the security guard, the one even having no shirt is Lacika. Then we end up talking, even the pigeons come into play, actually they cannot help me, but I should come back in work time and speak with the representative of the builder, if it is important. So many people try to rake things out of here, perhaps I will also succeed. Meanwhile, I do not feel it so important any more, these few pictures will do, where could I take the metal doves. There’s not much wasted here, whatever can have a new host will have it, the best I can have from here are the pictures, I will not go into picking irons.

In the meantime the small, thin man says that he is the guard of the demolition at the other side of the street, if I want to take photos, he willingly lets me in. He is bringing the water in two plastic jugs, because in his place there is no running water any more. And one must wash himself with something.

He pulls aside the plank fence, we get in. The bike almost cannot stand in the two inch deep loose dust, well, most of the former building has been already cleaned off, some of it is still standing at the borders of the plot, it is the most difficult to demolish there. Laci says that they were left so for the time being out of fear that it would fall into the next courtyard, which belongs to another office building. And on the other side, along Váci út, because the traffic goes there.


And how many good used bricks are there. For example these with the inscription RKF. A huge amount of them. Sometimes people come and buy of them, to build them into the garage or the fence, for decoration. But there are a few ones that are really rare, for example this square one, with a Chinese symbol.

The “Chinese symbol” – really beautiful. Do you know what it means?

But they have left so many things here, he says, even good furniture, tables, double beds. It will be not a few bucks to buy them again. You could also pull the wires from the walls. They could be recycled. True, one can no longer go up to the still standing part.
This is where he usually sleeps. What? In the front seat? Yes, across them. It is good soft. Here he has put that beautiful brick which he cannot find now, perhaps someone has thrown it out, it seems. Well, one can find all sorts of good things anyway.

Changes

Change for a full-screen map

the demolition of the Váci-Madarász-Fiastyúk-Föveny Streets block has been going on for months, in the spring we have already taken a series of pictures on it, which I have not yet published – now, retrospectively, I will pick myself up –, but this morning I have made new photos on the demolition which has recently got a new impetus. An office building called Váci Greens will be built in the place of the block. The hg.hu reported in June that building A has already reached its highest point, and that the office building is expected to be delivered in the spring of 2013. You can read more details on the project here and here, according to the preliminary designs it will look something like this:

I have some doubts about who would willingly rent any office – however well provided with eco-certifications – just on this bitterly developing, dusty, noisy, suburban trace of Váci Street, but for the residential area behind it it will be certainly good if there will be a tall silencer band of buildings along the Váci street ;> They promise that the office building will include the establishment of a spectacular community space, which will be open to the residents of the area. Let us see it!

ddd

(a puzzle: where was the dove?) ;>