Tags
Art, Backpacking, beauty, Budapest, cities, cities by night, Europe, Exploring, fountains, gap year, Hungary, public spaces, sculptures, travel
There’s something about public art installations that I just love. It’s partly the open air aspect, and being able to inhabit the same space as art, but mostly it’s the effect of turning a corner and happening upon a gorgeous fountain or having to look twice at a child sitting on a fence as the first time you thought that they were real.
It’s no surprise then that I quickly fell in love with Budapest. Sculptures and fountains abound throughout the city on both sides of the regal Danube river and the buildings frequently require you to stop and step back to take in their ornate features.
By night the city is just as beautiful, perhaps even more so. Lighting is everything. The buildings are bathed in a warm glow from floodlights strategically placed to accentuate their character when the sun drops begins the hills of Buda. Bridges are beacons across the river creating perfect soft reflections in the water below so that when you walk across one everything sparkles with life. It makes the city seem alive, and not just because there are always people filling the streets be it 4pm or 4am but because the city itself is always vying for your attention, demanding it with beauty and character. It’s mesmerizing. And not just visually.
There is a constant hum in the city of trams and buses, ferries and trains, reminding you that as beautiful and aesthetic as the city is its also a thriving metropolis. Softer more calming sounds emanate from the frequent fountains that are always running, surrounded by people by day and illuminated with coloured lights in the evening.
It’s the kind of city that makes you feel inspired to be creative, to find in yourself an appreciation for beauty and art even if you didn’t previously think it was there. The kind of place that can and does, make heavily pierced and tattooed men break out into operatic song on the banks of the Danube while waiting for an evening tram. Witnessing these kind of things, knowing I’m not the only one under the spell of Budapest makes me love it even more, shared connection I have with all of the people I have met here, as well as all of those I pass but never touch and those I neve see but know are there. It’s the kind of place you plan to come to for a weekend and end up staying for a fortnight.
The city is an enchanting captor who you don’t want to be released from, one that truly makes you appreciate the small things like a sunrise or a fountain in a park on a sunny day. The kind of place the world needs more of.
B xx
From Where You’d Rather Be
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