Introduction / 29
intact building of the Vigadó
9
. e only fly in the ointment
was that no tourist could be found anywhere, high or low,
throughout the land. Our roads were all torn up, our bridges
sunken into the Danube. Of all our hotels—if I remember
correctly—only the one on Margaret Island was open for
business. Budapest’s need for an Office of Tourism roughly
equaled that of having a Colonial Ministry.
As we approached spring, my colleagues and I spent our
days cutting out pictures from magazines, old and new, and
displaying them on the walls of our offices according to this
theme: “Past—Present—Future.” e past was represented
by old street scenes of Pest-Buda before the unification
10
, the
future by the plans of reconstruction just being drawn up at
the time, and the present by images of shot-up, collapsed
buildings.
One day, as I was trying to wend my way through the
crowd bustling among the ruined, scaffolded houses along
Petőfi Sándor Street,
11
a man made a beeline for me. He
asked me, with the French accent of a native speaker, where
he could find a post office.
I gave him directions and, of course, immediately fol-
lowed them up with a question about how he had come to
be in Budapest. It turned out that curiosity had brought
him our way. He was the proverbial first swallow who was
meant to bring summer tourists to Hungary.
Without thinking I immediately took him by the arm
and dragged him off towards my office.
9. A landmark Budapest exhibition hall and theater, built in the 1860s,
comparable to the Met in New York; the name means “Merry-making
Hall” or “Entertainment Hall.”
10. Budapest was unified and named Budapest in 1873; before then,
three “cities” were recognized instead: Pest, on the Eastern bank of the
Danube, Buda, on the Western bank, and Óbuda (Old Buda), North of
Buda. Together, they were sometimes referred to as Pest-Buda.
11. In the heart of downtown Budapest. is street was named after one
of Hungary’s greatest 19th century poets.