News from Nowhere

Brought to you by the department of closing some tabs (and about time too).

The Guardian 'Readers Recommend' in the Travel section, several weeks ago, asked readers to recommend blogs about cities. I haven't explored them all, and not all of them appeal, but Invisible Paris has some lovely posts: try this one, about the Catherinettes.

Also recommended, Pattern London: the emphasis is on the visual (pretty scarves!). Coincidentally, while I was failing to get round to this post, GirlBear sent me a cutting about the London Shop Fronts blog. This struck a chord with me because I've long nursed the idea of a similar project, as we drive around London I yearn to photograph the great variety of fascia boards, the different styles and type faces, some bright, some cracked and faded, some clever and some completely stupid. But I'm never going to do it (for one thing, you'd have to spend more time just wandering around London than I do, for another I lack the single-mindedness to run a themed blog, though I admire those who do); I wonder if anyone else will.

The Guardian also listed a blog from Budapest, a city I'd like to know better, but it turned out just not to be my style (entries were longer than I'd want to read regularly); and then I was drifting through lj_photophile and came across missravenz fabulous photographs of the Fisherman's Bastion - so it looks as if I've found a Budapest blogger I am going to enjoy reading. LJ wins again!

While I'm on the subject of the Travel section, this week's carried a fun article about traditional Mexican cuisine (and where to eat it). UNESCO has now added Mexican cuisine to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. I hadn't even known that UNESCO had a list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, but it has, and there's some wonderful stuff on it. Another link to follow when I have time...

...because truly, the internet is full of Stuff (but that's another post).

desperance has turned his ingenuity, and his network of expert contacts, to the task of identifying the mystery bird at Budapest zoo. We were initially tempted by the Crowned Crane, which is a splendid and elegant creature, and seems to display the right kind of behaviour, but after some squinting at a very bad photograph of the sign on its enclosure decided that it was a Crested Seriema. Here's another one: the text is in Magyar, which is more appropriate than helpful, but the picture does justice to its crest (not always the case).

Thank you, desperance. And thank you, too, David, should you happen to be passing.

Thanks also to people who've said kind things about the holiday posts: I wrote them to please myself, because it's my diary, after all, so it was a bonus to hear that others had enjoyed them.

Our walk around Castle Hill in Budapest brought us to the Mátyás Church - so called not because it is dedicated to Saint Matthew but because the fifteenth century king, Mátyás Corvinus (I am charmed by the existence of a king called Matthew the Crow, but that's a whole other story...) was married there - twice.

Our guidebook said:

...today the most attractive aspect of the facade is its reflection in the [Hilton] hotel. Even the interior fails to exude any sense of Gothic space. The wall paintings are somewhat far-fetched...

Such fervent dispraise was irresistible, and we went in to see for ourselves.

I'm glad we did, because I enjoy excess, and have a taste for Victorian Gothic: and this was certainly excessive. Imagine what Pugin could have done, if he'd really pulled out all the stops and let himself go. It's true that the interior is so crammed with decorative detail that it does not exude any sense of space, Gothic or otherwise: there is no unity, but a mass of details, each more irresistible than the last. I was particularly taken by a crow design for all the world like a 1950s wallpaper.

The following morning we visited the Great Synagogue which had intrigued us on our outward journey: this time a genuinely nineteenth century building, and one which had been designed all of a piece. The contrast was astonishing, and not just because this was nineteenth century orientalism, rather than gothic. I was forced to concede that, wonderful though the church had been, the synagogue was better. The decoration was equally rich, but co-ordinated, harmonious, and the result was not to reduce the exuberance but to focus it: yes, I know this is the theory, but I've rarely seen it so clearly demonstrated.

Next door is the Jewish museum.