A much more promising effort

OPENING guide books on Hungary or Budapest are usually a source of happiness and uncomfortable feelings for a Hungarian.


OPENING guide books on Hungary or Budapest are usually a source of happiness and uncomfortable feelings for a Hungarian. Recently on a trip in Amsterdam, the first guide book I spotted to my horror had a "typical Hungarian csikós" - the local cowboy - and a puli, the dog with dreadlocks on its cover. What was inside? I couldn't bare to look.


The compact Bradt City Guide on Budapest, Edition 1, is much more promising in its looks, showing the Fishermen's Bastion - better a feast of architecture from the beginning of the last century than worn-out puszta romantics. What I read by authors Adrian Phillips and Jo Scotchmer was ever so entertaining. Seeing a Hungarian through the eyes of a visitor is always an eye-opening, if sometimes intimidating, experience for me. I was curious to know what two visitors, staying in the city for six months, find special enough to spot.


Bradt is very good at putting the finger on the specifics of Hungarian life that can surprise visitors. Like, for example, people utterly disregarding the escalator etiquette, refusing to chink beer glasses, or insisting on informing a visitor of the number of Hungarian Nobel Price winners right after introducing themselves.


Besides providing the inevitable information on history, transport, accommodation, food and drink, entertainment, shopping, museums and language, this guide book that actually does fits into your pocket is very strong on providing the little, interesting pieces of information you can usually only get through local friends.


Titbits include the way to get used to Unicum (repeated attempts), not to wear either top hat and tails or jeans to the opera, and to memorize your locker number once in the Széchenyi baths.


It also draws attention to sights such as the Cave Church on Gellért tér, the Crime and Police History Museum in District VIII, and the Farkasréti cemetery - that the guide curiously translated into English only as Wolf's Meadow Cemetery, though it is most unlikely that signs will show a non-Hungarian word or that a cab driver could figure out the destination from this translation.


Attention is also paid to spelling: I found great pleasure in reading Hungarian words written down as they should be. But visitors be warned: Don't expect similar treatment of the English lingo in Magyar restaurants.


With a significant contribution of former Style Editor of The Budapest Sun, Lucy Mallows, who spent more than a decade in Hungary, the Bradt guide is an indispensable companion for a visit to this fabulous city.





INFORMATION


Budapest: The Bradt City Guide


By Adrian Phillips and Jo Scotchmer


Bradt Travel Guides Ltd.


Available in Bestsellers, District V, Október 6 utca 11.


Price: Ft3,395




23.12.2004