Budapest’s District 8 has an unofficial saint worthy of Józsefváros’ wonderfully eclectic character – Saint Rita, the patron saint of impossible cases.
Her chapel rests in the heart of the district, on a piece of land converted to its saintly use after a tire factory was destroyed. I’d like to pretend that this beautiful tale that encapsulates the district’s essence so well came from my own fair hands, brought lovingly to FUNZINE readers after hours of intensive research, but in fact it came from the mouth of Gyuri, one half of Budapest’s most original, enthusiastic and charismatic tour guide company, Beyond Budapest.I was told this fascinating fact on a bitterly cold winter’s morning on the steps of the National Museum as we waited for the Spanish tourists (“they’re always late” smiled Mano, the other half of Beyond Budapest) who, like me, had signed up for a walking tour of Budapest’s VIII District – a district with a reputation akin to a bowl of goulasch from a dirty back street eatery: it’s spicy, tasty, most probably dangerous and you’re not quite sure what you’ll find inside if you look too closely.Mano and Gyuri take on the challenge of submerging tourists with an eye for something more exciting than can be seen from hopping on and off a bus into the belly of Józsefváros, and manage in around three hours. We were treated to the History of Hungary in less than five minutes, force fed sweets laced with coal (you’ll have to go on the tour to find out this secret) and given a short introduction to a story behind the National Museum with a bouncing enthusiasm that attempted – by stimulating our brains into action – to save us from hypothermia.
The story our guides weaved involved floods, bullet holes, revolutions, wars, safety matches, parliaments (note the plural), workshops, frescos, music, helicopters and the best whipped cream coffee in the city. We pounded the streets with tales flowing from Mano and Gyuri’s mouths like waters bursting free from a swollen Danube. We didn’t just stop, stare and go ‘oooo’ as the whirlpool of the eighth dragged us down into her depths, but we also got to smell, taste, hear and talk to the most exciting characters – popping in on the last remaining blacksmiths in Józsefváros and visiting the home of a Roma musician.
Some sight seeing tours can leave you feeling like a voyeur – you came, you clicked your camera and captured a nice piece of the city to look at in five years and have no real idea why, how and what you did. But not this tour. My anti-tour guide brain was as sceptical as my feet were cold, but my scepticism was washed away as I realized how good a tour could actually be, if the tour guides are genuinely excited by, interested in and knowledgeable about a topic. Józsefváros – the district of impossible cases – got the saint it deserves; in Beyond Budapest it has the tour guides too.
Ian Cook
I attended the Socio-cultural Walking Tour in the Slummy District 8, which costs 4,000 HUF per person (3,500 HUF for students) and took longer than the 2.5 hours advertised. They also offer two different tours Night Ride – Palaces in the Twilight and Contemporary Art Instant in the Legendary District. Quite how the district changes from a slum into a legend via the medium of art is something I regretfully forgot to ask. The tours take place in both English and Hungarian.