The Many Faces of Budapest (part I)

Back home in Finland my friends asked me about Budapest, "How is it there?", "Is it as beautiful as city they say?" and so forth. I tried to explain the situation to them, but as always a picture tell more than a thousand words. Those two combined should be rather enlightening. Of course I am not going to say thousand words here (at least I don't intend to) but a word or two to accompany this picture is in order.

The buildings here in Budapest along the main streets and close to hotels and tourist attractions are well kept care of or are under renovation. But the true face of the city reveals itself if you go off the main streets. This picture was taken a block or two away from one of the main streets here in Pest side, the Körút Erzsébet, along which is the famous New York Café (of which I unfortunately do not have a picture to post right now, those are on my home computer in Helsinki).

As you can see the foremost building is rather new and modern, stone slabs still shiny enough to see your own reflection out of it. And right next to it an old building whose facade is just about crumbling off. This kind of sight is quite common here in Budapest, old and rather dilapidated building right next to a new and moderns building. Of course, as mentioned earlier, the buildings on most visible locations are being renovated and kept a good care of but if you just see a little effort to peek through the well kept front you can see that there is still much to do. I suppose, as the tourism brings in more and more money, then the town can afford to repair its buildings more. At least it does seem so since there are many building under construction (many of which are hotels) or under renovation.