Alex Toyohara

Alex Toyohara Private tour guide offering walking tours of the city
Частный гид, провожу тематические и обзорные прогулки по городу

HelloAs some of you might already know, very soon I am moving to Wales. However, I am not planning to forget about Hunga...
18/05/2021

Hello
As some of you might already know, very soon I am moving to Wales. However, I am not planning to forget about Hungary by any means. I am going to continue blogging about Hungary, its history, culture, and other things Hungarian. Perhaps even more than before, because for the last year I have been stuck in a bureaucratic limbo, not sure which country I am going to end up in. I have several hundred GBbytes of pictures and a lot to write about, but I have a question for all who are still reading me. 

If there’s something in Budapest that you would like to read about, tell me and I will run there and take some pics.

#гидвбудапеште

10/04/2021

Oh and the video of the snowstorm

A few moments from the yesterday's snowstorm. The clouds arriving almost on an hourly schedule brought snow and freezing...
09/04/2021

A few moments from the yesterday's snowstorm. The clouds arriving almost on an hourly schedule brought snow and freezing winds to all of the city but it was the most spectacular at

#гидвбудапеште

Spring on Margitsziget part 2 #гидвбудапеште
03/04/2021

Spring on Margitsziget part 2
#гидвбудапеште

Blooming almond trees from Gellert hill. Till the filloxera epidemic of the 1880-s the hill was covered with vineyards. ...
29/03/2021

Blooming almond trees from Gellert hill.
Till the filloxera epidemic of the 1880-s the hill was covered with vineyards. After the grapes were decimated some enthusiasts tried growing apricots there, but since the soil on the rocky slopes was too poor to sustain the trees, they grafted apricots onto much more resilient almonds. Not much came out of this idea, and apricots have vanished since, but some almonds or their descendants are still in place.
The most photographed tree of Budapest, is the almond tree near the cross above the Sziklatemplom (Church in the Rock). The view of Szabadsag hid (Frredom bridge) is fabulous and on weekends you have to stand in line for a while to get an opportunity to make a picture. Worth it, though.
As for the cross, it was installed in 1936, to mark the entrance to the church below. In 1951 new regime had it demolished and it wasn’t until 2001 that it was restored.


So, after agreeing on the 12 points and the National Song the revolutionaries went to the universities, rallying the stu...
24/03/2021

So, after agreeing on the 12 points and the National Song the revolutionaries went to the universities, rallying the students. Then the steadily growing crowd proceeded to a publishing house to get the Points printed. Around 10am they reached the nearest (also the biggest and the most modern in the city) publishing house belonging to certain Landerer and Heckenast. Supposedly the place owners were aware that the revolution might happen, as the arriving crowd found only mr. Landerer in the office. His answer was no, since neither the Points nor the poem had been approved by the censorship. He offered a solution, though. If the revolutionaries tie him down and occupy the place in the name of the people everything would be fine, the leaflets would be printed and he would come out of it relatively clean. So Landerer was promptly tied down, the publishing house was proclaimed occupied and by noon all the leaflets were ready.
However this was not the end of this place’s revolutionary career. The first National government under Count Lajos Batthyany held its sessions on the first floor above the publishers. Another revolutionary leader, Lajos Kossuth rented a flat here as well as a number of literary figures including Janos Arany and Mor Jokai. 
The building you see in the pictures didn’t look like this back in the day, but it’s still the same building. In 1851, three years after the described events, the new owner of the building decided that it is in a rather bad shape (the damage caused by the flood of 1838 had not been seen to) and started a complete reconstruction which gave the house its current shape. 
The last picture is of one of the printing machines used for printing the Twelve Points and the National Song.
To be continued
#1848

This day, March the 15th is the day the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 started. It was part of the Spring of Nations, the ...
15/03/2021

This day, March the 15th is the day the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 started. It was part of the Spring of Nations, the huge tidal wave of uprisings which flooded Europe that year. Rather successful and bloodless at first, it had grown into a full-fledged independence war before it was crushed in August 1849.
It all started in a café named Pilvax, where the liberal-patriotic (today this description seems weird, but at that time it was all the rage among young intellectuals) youth gathered at 8am. The building which housed the café has been demolished long ago, so the second photo depicts the one that’s on its place now. There they agreed on the “12 Points”, the list of demands to the Austrian government and listened to the young poet Sandor Petofi (the bronze guy on the last pic) reading his National Song poem.
However, in public memory the National Song being read aloud is firmly connected to the stairs of the National Museum (first pic, yes I know, but this one was the prettiest), and that happened indeed but only at 3pm after it had been read a couple of times to the students, the 12 Points had been printed and the revolution had briefly stopped for a lunch break. 
To be continued.
#1848

It has been a year since I had my last tourists. We rented a car and travelled to Balaton. Actually, the plan was to vis...
13/03/2021

It has been a year since I had my last tourists. We rented a car and travelled to Balaton. Actually, the plan was to visit Tihany, but since the weather was not good enough for hiking, we went further, to Szigliget and Badacsony. It was a long day and on our way back we visited Veszprem to admire the sunset. 
Seems like a life ago. At that time I’ve had loads of plans for the summer and Covid seemed a minor nuisance, like influenza. I was sure it was going to be over in a month at most, possibly even earlier.
A year has passed and it’s still nowhere near over. 
However, I do hope that one day I will be able to return to guiding, even if the way will be longer and more complicated than the first time.

Just some pretty pic of the Parliament
25/02/2021

Just some pretty pic of the Parliament

One more bit of wintery magic
14/02/2021

One more bit of wintery magic

Actually I’ve planned this post to be about something else entirely, but then I thought, I’d share this while it’s fresh...
13/02/2021

Actually I’ve planned this post to be about something else entirely, but then I thought, I’d share this while it’s fresh. This is the aftermath of a freezing rain which hit Hungary on February the 10th. Freezing rain forms when the raindrops get cooled below zero on their way to earth and freeze instantly upon impact. Potentially deadly for trees and overhead cables but absolutely stunning. 
The forest I visited is on Harmashatarhegy (Mount of three borders) an imposing 495 meters high hill which got its name because once it stood in the border of three settlements the cities of Buda and Obuda and the town of Pesthidegkut. They had merged into Budapest long ago but the name remains. 
📷

Just a café scene in times of Corona. Seen in a fairytale village of Wekerle-telep (of which I will write more) ...
08/02/2021

Just a café scene in times of Corona. Seen in a fairytale village of Wekerle-telep (of which I will write more)

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