Almost thirty years have passed since our last meeting

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Pasaret is a suburb of Budapest on the left – Buda – bank of the Danube River. In September 2026, my wife and I revisited this leafy area for two reasons, one of which I will recount below. I will write about the other in a future essay.

In September 1974, a conference, The Nafplion Colloquium on Research Programmes in Physics and Economics, was held in Napflion, Greece. My father, an economist, was one of the organisers and participants of this conference that celebrated the works of the Hungarian philosopher Imre Lakatos (1922 – February 1974; see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos ). My mother, my sibling, and I were invited to join the delegates and their partners at the event. Imre’s recently widowed partner, Gillian, was present, as were his friend the historian of mathematics and philosopher Arpad Szabo (1913-2001) and his wife Klari, who lived in Budapest. Although much older than me, I enjoyed their company during the two weeks we spent together in Napflion.

In the early 1980s, I was about to make my second visit to Budapest. Before I went, I contacted Gillian, who had visited Hungary several times and gave me some contacts in the city, including those of Arpad and Klari. After arriving in Budapest, I got in touch with the Szabos, and they invited me for dinner at their flat in the Pasaret district of the city. We got on very well, and each time I visited Budapest, I used to visit them and enjoy their generous hospitality. They spoke superb English, and Klari was an excellent cook.

In 1985, when I was living in Gillingham, Kent, Klari sent me a letter. In it she wrote that she was teaching two young men, teenagers, English. Back then, Hungarians were able to travel outside to Soviet bloc but were only allowed to carry with them an extremely small amount of ‘hard currency’ – about 200 US dollars every five years, if I recall correctly. In view of this and the high cost of living in the UK, she wondered whether I would be able to accommodate the two lads at my home for a month. Although I did not know them from Adam – so to speak – I agreed because I trusted Klari’s judgement. It was quite a risk agreeing to host two people, whom I knew nothing about, but I am glad I did. A and K turned out to be delightful, appreciative guests.

After their stay, I used to visit them in Budapest, usually staying with A’s family and later in his own apartment. A has remained in Hungary, and K is now successfully established in the USA.

Between 1997 and 2026, we did not visit Budapest. I kept in touch with A and K, but lost contact with the Szabos in Pasaret.

In September 2026, we decided to visit the Pasaret district to view something of architectural interest, which I will write about in the near future. As our local bus sped along Pasareti Utca – the main thoroughfare that runs through Pasaret, we passed a house that looked familiar. It reminded me of the house where the Szabos lived, but I was not suren if it was that one. After seeing the architecture we had come to view, I rang our friend A to see if he remembered the Szabo’s address, which was where, many years earlier, he used to attend the private English tuition given by Klari. He supplied the address, and we walked there.

The house, which now bears a plaque commemorating Arpad Szabo, is a small apartment block surrounded by a garden. Two women were standing in it. We mentioned Klari, and one of them, who spoke English, pointed at the correct entrance, telling us that Klari, who was now 104 years old, lived there. I was delighted to discover that she was still alive.

We rang the doorbell several times, but there was no reply. An elderly lady, who lives in the flat below that of Klari, invited us into her flat. She only spoke Hungarian, but was keen to meet us. A retired violinist, we could not get her to understand that we would like to have Klari’s telephone number. We left, happy to know that Klari is still living, but sad not to have met her.

The following day, A came into Budapest to collect us in his car to have lunch with his family in the hills outside Buda. When we told him about our abortive attempt to meet his old teacher Klari, he suggested we drove there, and tried the bell again. This time, we were successful. One of Klari’s daughters let us in, and there in her immaculate flat whose walls are lined with shelves filled with books, stood Klari, looking much as she had sone when we last met her almost 30 years ago. She invited the three of us into a small room, which A remembered as being the one in which his English tuition used to take place.

Klari, who is about to celebrate her 104th birthday, is a little frail, but her memory and mind are in an excellent state. She recalled all kinds of small details about me, my parents, other people who had been at Napflion, and my wife, who visited her in 1997. It was a wonderful meeting – One which I had thought would have had the tiniest chance of occurring.

While we were chatting, one of her daughters mentioned that only the evening before, they had been talking about us. Our unannounced, spontaneous visit must have seemed unbelievable. One thing they recalled about our last visit made when our child still wore nappies – diapers – was that my wife changed her in front of the Szabos on their living room floor. Clearly, this had made a great impression on them at the time.

We spent 6 days in Budapest this September, and each one of them was highly enjoyable. Our best experience, which was one we were least expecting, was finding Klari again and spending time with her and her daughters.

Did you know about chimney cakes?

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Until my most recent visit to Budspest, I was unaware of the existence of Kürtőskalács – chimney cake. Somehow, it escaped my notice on numerous earlier visits to Hungary. Yet, chimney cakes have been made since at least as early as the fifteenth century.

Chimney cakes being cooked

Strips of dough are wrapped around a metal cylinder to form a helix. The dough on the cylinder is baked on a rotating spit above a source of heat – traditionally glowing charcoal. It is basted as it iscooked, and then often dipped in sugar or other tasty particles that adhere to its surface.

When baked, the hollow cylindrical cake is removed from the cylinder, and is ready for eating.

Americans and Soviet Russians standing side by side in Budapest

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Szabadság tér – Liberty Square – is close to Budapest’s Parliament building. At one end of this piazza, there is a tall monument surmounted by the 5-pointed star of Communism. The monument also bears a hammer and sickle, as well as bas-reliefs depicting Red Army troops liberating Budapest from the Germans at the end of WW2.

On both sides of the Soviet war memorial, which stands close to the US embassy, there are statues.

One statue depicts President Ronald Reagan, and the other President George W Bush. Both presidents were in power during the period when the Soviet Bloc and the Soviet Union were disintegrating.

Although the Russians were not loved by the Hungarians whom they ruled, it is good to see that the memorial to their soldiers, who sacrificed their lives to free Hungary from Nazi domination, has been maintainedand kept in good condition.

Shoes of shame along the Danube in Budapest

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Crowds of tourists gather along a short stretch of the Pest bank of the Danube near to the Parliament building and the famous Chain Bridge – Lanchìd in Hungarian. They are attracted to this spot by the presence of a line of different kinds of lifesize footwear made of iron. These items are very close to the edge of the bank, inches away from the steep drop down to the water.

The models of footwear commemorate a dreadful tragedy. In the last year of WW2, Hungary was taken over by the Nazi Germans, and the Hungarian fascist militia, the Arrow Cross, wreaked a reign of terror on the population. 23500 people, of whom 20,000 were Jewish, were taken to the Danube, and shot at the water’s edge, their bodies tumbled into the river.

Before they were shot, the victims had to remove their footwear because shoes etc had become scarce in Hungary. The footwear of those who were massacred was stolen and then sold by the militia. The iron footwear along the Danube is a powerfully moving monument to those who were massacred at this spot. It was created in 2005 by sculptor Gyula Pauer.

The monument has become a major tourist attraction. It attracts ‘selfie’ takers and is not treated with the respect that such a memorial deserves. Although I spotted some of the shoes and boots had flowers and candles placed beside them, many of the others were filled with rubble, and even worse, with empty soft drink cans. When I saw the footwear and thought of the horrific events that took place along the riverbank, I shuddered. And I wondered how many of the camera and ‘phone toting visitors understood that the models of footwear were not merely yet another tourist attraction, but markers recording the potential of man’s ability to treat their fellow beings in such an inhuman way.

A leafy suburb in Budapest

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The Garden City and Garden Suburb movements flourished in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first couple of decades of the twentieth. I was brought up in London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb, whose construction began in 1907. My family home was built in 1908. I have written about the Suburb in my book “GOLDERS GREEN & HAMPSTEAD GARDEN SUBURB: VISIONS OF ARCADIA”. Because of my interest in garden suburbs, I decided to visit the Wekerle Estate in Budapest.

The leafy Wekerle Estate – Wekelertelep in Hungarian – was named after a former Prime Minister Sándor Wekerle, who who favoured the idea of building comfortable, human-scale housing estates for government employees. The estate was inspired by the ideas of Ebenezer Howard, the ‘father’ of the idea of Garden Cities.

Construction of the Wekelertelep began in 1908 and continued until 1925. The estate is built around a large central square, which contains a park, and roads radiate out from it in 8 directions. The buildings in the estate range from one to four or five storeys. Many trees and garden plots give the estate a leafy, open feeling. The architecture of the buildings is picturesque. It includes many features of Transylvanian vernacular styles. The buildings surrounding the central square are the ‘stars’ of the show. They include two gateways that differ in design. These and the edifices around the square, which vary in appearance, were designed by Károly Kós (1883-1977), who was born in what is now Romanian territory. He was not only an architect, but also a writer, a politician both in Hungary and Romania, and an ethnologist.

The Wekelertelep has 4 schools. By chance, we chatted briefly with the great-grandaughter of the first principal of one of them. She told us that 4 generations of his family have lived on the estate.

Another person whom we met was a sweet old lady – the caretaker of the Wekerle Worker’s St. Joseph Church. Very kindly, she unlocked the large neo-Romanesque Roman Catholic church for us. Designed by Bela Heintz, it was constructed between 1926 and 1930. Its spacious interior is decorated with many frescoes depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The caretaker – a tiny lady – guided us around inside the church, carefully explaining the numerous religious paintings, sculptures, and stainedglass windows to us in Hungarian, a language I barely understand. She was thorough. She did not want us to miss a thing. At the end of the tour, she sweetly hugged and kissed each of us.

This church, like the two main churches in Hampstead Garden Suburb, is next to the central square. However, unlike Hampstead Garden Suburb in which its founder Henrietta Barnett forbade the presence of shops, restaurants, pubs, and so on, the square in Wekelertelep has shops, cafés, and restaurants. The absence of such communal facilities renders Hampstead Garden Suburb’s central square a rather desolate, soulless place. In contrast, the square in Wekelertelep with its pleasant park and commercial establishments adds to the liveliness and vibrancy of this pleasant suburb.

I am very glad we trekked out of the centre of Budapest to view Wekelertelep not only because I wanted to see how it compares with Hampstead Garden Suburb but also it turned out to be one of Budapest’s delightful surprises.

It is amazing whom you meet by chance on a train in Hungary

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Today, 24 September 2026, we visited the picturesque town of Szentendre, which is about 10 miles north of Budapest. While returning from there by train we met a couple, and began chatting with them …

Before telling you about our brief encounter, here is some essential background information. The family of my wife’s mother hail from Mandvi in Kachchh (Kutch), which is now a part of the Indian state of Gujarat. We often visit Kachchh, especially Mandvi and the larger town Bhuj, which is the capital of Kachchh. I have written much about these places in my latest book “Road To Heaven – A passage through India”.

The couple we began chatting with on the train looked Indian and smiled at us, which was why we began speaking with them. They have lived in Sweden for many decades, and were visiting Budapest with a Swedish tour group. We soon discovered that they spoke Gujarati, one of the languages that my wife speaks fluently. In her family home, conversations between family members were mainly in Gujarati. We were surprised to be conversing in Gujarati with strangers on a suburban train in Hungary. We were not expecting such a situation.

Our surprise increased by leaps and bounds when we learned that the couple’s families had originated in Kachchh. Both families had come from Bhuj – a place we have visited many times.

Both the man and his wife had been born in Uganda, and their families had been thrown out of the country when Idi Amin had forced Indians to leave in 1971. Some of my wife’s cousins, also of Kachchh origin, were amongst those who had to leave their homes and businesses in Uganda. Many of the Indians expelled from Uganda have become successful entrepreneurs in the UK.

One of our new acquaintances had fled from Uganda to Sweden, which welcomed the refugees from East Africa, and the other had moved to India. Both his and her families had been friends in the Ugandan city of Kampala prior to Idi Amin’s expulsion of the Asians. Friendship between the two families resulted in the couple’s arranged marriage. Since then, the couple have been living and working in Sweden.

This chance meeting on the train was remarkable. I wondered what is the probability that two sets of strangers, both Gujarati speaking and both with origins in Kachchh, would meet on a short train journey in the environs of the capital of Hungary. It was a pretty unlikely , but it happened.

A synagogue in Budapest then and now

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The Dohány Street Synagogue in central Budapest is now a major tourist attraction, visited by swarms of visitors. It is the largest surviving synagogue in Europe. Highly restored and well-maintained, it is a glorious site, but also a memorial to the awful fate of Hungarian Jewish people in the last year’s of WW2.

The first time I visited this place of worship was in the early 1980s, when Hungary was still part of the Soviet bloc, under control of the Russians. Unlike today, 2026, then there was no queue of tourists waiting to see the building.

To enter it back on the early 1980s, one simply went to the watchman and asked permission see the interior.

On the afternoon when I went there, I was not the only person in the watchman’s small office. There was a German and an two Americans – a couple.

The watchman asked us where we were from. The German answered first, and the caretaker said:

“Come back this evening when the service is being held”.

The German left, and the man turned to us. When he heard that we were not German but British and American, he admitted us to the interior of the great synagogue.

The place was not in a good condition. It looked as if it was falling to pieces and needed a great deal if care and attention.

The three of us looked around the ill-lit synagogue without saying anything. Then, as we walked towards its exit, the American said in all seriousness:

“Back home, the Fire Department would not approve of this place. It contravenes all fire regulations.”

And that is all he could say about a building whose existence is a reminder of a community that was all but wiped out a few years before we visited the synagogue.

It always amazes me how differently people see the same thing. For me, the synagogue was a moving experience; for the American it was poor example of health and safety; and for todayourists, it is yet another ‘must see’ item to tick off one’s Budapest ‘bucket list’.

Trieste and the fragrant odour of sauerkraut

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The first time I visited Trieste was by car in the 1980s. As I wanted to avoid having to drive within the city and because I was worried about parking there, I stopped on a village near Trieste. My idea was to leave the car there, and enter the city by local bus.

I parked close to a restaurant. As soon as I opened the car door, the odour of sauerkraut, a foodstuff that I adore, assailed my nose. Immediately, I entered the trattoria, and ordered a dish with sauerkraut – a food preparation I had not expected to find in Italy.

Well, I should not have been surprised. The part of Italy containing Trieste is not only close to sauerkraut eating areas such as Austria and the former Yugoslavia, but was also once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Today, 21 September 2026, I was back in Trieste. At lunch, I ordered a “Triestino”. It was a plate with cooked ham, potatoes fried with onions, raw horseradish, mustard, and … SAUERKRAUT! Needless to say, it was delicious.

A small town in Italy near Slovenia

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For less than the price of a single journey ticket on one of the water buses in Venice, you can buy a return ticket for the 30 minute ferry ride between Trieste and its southern neighbour Muggia – a little port on the northern fringe of the Istrian peninsula. This narrow strip of Italian territory is very near the Slovenian border.

Approaching Muggia by sea, the place’s  modern surroundings, which is all that the arriving traveller can see from the boat, look barely inviting. However, a short walk brings one into the maze of attractive streets and piazzas of the old town.

The cathedral – ‘duomo’ – is in the heart of the old town. It was constructed while Muggia was part of the Patriarchy of Aquilea. Consecrated in 1263, it is a spacious church decorated with freckles, some of which look as if they have been mutilated by a sharp object. We visited this church and two other charming smaller ones – Chiesa del Crocifisso and the Chiesa di S Francisco, which was restored in 1411.

Near the edge of the old town, there is a short cul-de-sac called Calle del Ghetto. It is believed by some that some that Jewish people once lived there, but the evidence is slender. The town’s records do not record any inhabitants processing this religion.

Muggia has a long history, stretching back to prehistoric times. After the decline of the Western Roman Empire, Muggia was under Ostrogoth, Lombard, Byzantine, Avar and Frank dominations, until 931, when king Hugh of Italy donated it to the Patriarch of Aquileia. In 1420, Muggia became part of the Venetian empire,  and remained so until 1797, when Venice fell. The town then became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After WW1,  Muggia became part of Italy, and has remained so ever since. Although between 1945 and 1954 it was part of the short-lived, nominally independent  Free Territory of Trieste – in the sector controlled by the Americans and British. The other sector was under Yugoslav control.

Today, Muggia is a thriving tourist destination. Despite this, it is not overwhelmed: it  is a lovely place to wander about, and there are plenty of places to eat and drink. Much to my surprise,  Muggia seems not to be dominated by tourism. There are plenty of ‘locals’ around. We had coffee in a small bar which had far more locals than visitors. Although the lady who made it was friendly,  the cappuccino she served me was one of the worst I have drunk anywhere.  Maybe, I  was simply unlucky, or, perhaps Muggia  being on the very edge of Italy, the magic of cappuccino has become diluted by being so close to Slovenia.

Exodus from Yugoslavia … for the lucky ones.

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The Lutheran church in central Trieste was built in an austere late gothic style between 1871 and 1874. Outside its west end, in Largo Odorico Panfili, there is a tall cylinder surrounded by transparent glass or plastic. Within the cylinder there are models of people. This artwork is a monument to a tragic era.

The monument called “Momentum”, designed by Jasmine Iannì and Giuseppe Sabatino, is dedicated to the memory of those Italians who fled from areas that had been Italian but had been incorporated into Tito’s Yugoslavia at the e d of WW2. These territories included Istria, Fiume, Dalmatia, and Zadar .

Well, I knew about these refugees, but not about something else commemorated by the monument. What I had not known about were the ‘foibe’ killings – massacres of Italians living in the formerly Italian territories that became part of Yugoslavia. These were, it is said, carrued out by Tito’s communist partisans. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foibe_massacres):

“The estimated number of foibe victims is disputed, varying from hundreds to thousands,according to some sources 11,000or 20,000…”

I was horrified to learn about this. I had read that many anti-communist Yugoslavs and other opponents of Tito had been killed or imprisoned at the end of WW2. In the 1980s, I knew the wife of a man who had been imprisoned by Tito in 1945 because he was “the wrong kind of communist”, and was still behind bars in the mid-1980s.

However, until I saw the monument in Trieste today in September 2026, I did not know about the Italians who had been massacred simply because overnight in 1945, they were suddenly living in the wrong place.