30/10/2022
Except for buildings the Hungarian Kingdom's hertige is almost vanished. But if you have luck, some tracks from the royal past might be discovered.
This photo is not about a manhole, but a cover lid with the insignia of the Royal Hungarian Telephony Network on it. Its curiosity given by the fact that after 1945 each mark reminding on royal past was removed. On the place of the old ones new street names were born, new statues erected - the ancient regime must have been perished in every aspect. Unfortunately not only the communist transformation of urban environment, but the following consolidated and not historically oriented modernisation is also threatening this kind of pieces from the world before WWII. Even by not maintaining it. Anyway, this cover lid somehow survived the past decades.
A few might be found in the downtown (Rottenbiller street), this one has been taken in Zugló district on the Pest side. This part of the capital is very diverse. Where this photo was taken - in the Amerikai street - mostly secessional villas are standing next to each other. At turn of the century living here was not as cool as on the other side of the Danube in the Buda hills, but still, not everybody were able to buy or rent a flat in Zugló.
20 meters from here stands the house, where Hungary's maybe most known philosopher, Béla Hamvas was lived from 1945 until his death in 1968. He moved here after a bomb fell onto his former flat and all his notes, books were completely destroyed.
On the other side of the Amerikai street there is a flat, which was owned by a very controversial and almost unkknown figure of the Hungarian public life. Kálmán Zsabka was an amateur actor and a not too successfull director during the interwar period. Under the siege of Budapest in 1944 Zsabka was the leader of the second largest national partisan battalion. Even the fact that he was involved in numerous antisemite actions in the previous decades, thanks to his activity hundreds of jews and other persecuted people were protected from the n**i razzias. During those bloody days Zugló was almost the safest part of Budapest.
