Sankt Stephan (István) basilica in Budapest, before (1998) and after (2003) renovation

Hello Maria.

 

I am often envious of people who are able to return to beautiful places. Budapest is somewhere where I would like to return, but then there are so many other places where I want to go!

 

I like the documentray of this diptych. The restoration worked well, and the building looked like it really needed the face lift that it got. I was there in June 2004, and you will see from my poor rendition of this great basilica, that I couldn't get far enough away, and my lens just wasn't wide enough - alas! Clearly colour was the right choice for the splender here, as your images atests!

 

Did you climb the dome? It was the morning of our last day in the city, and we didn't have time, but I suspect that there were some good photographs to be had from there.

 

Fond regards, Nick.

Hi Nick,

 

thank you for the interest and the comment.

 

well, to Budapest I have been countless times. My grandmother was born in Kiskunf鬥gyhạ, Hungary, and during Ceusescu we were allowed to go once each two years, which we did. After 1990 a while we went twice a year, but since I am in Germany (almos 10 years) I was only 3 times. I think I was more than 15 times as a total. For this reason, I tend to have as many photos of Budapest as of Karlsruhe (=very few), because I am so used to the views. You can imagine, seeing every two years the same touristic highlights since I was 4 years old ...

 

From Romania I have more pictures due to the topic of my research (Romanian buildings), but when I started, in 2001 I had problem finding some for an article, as the only ones I had were the site studies from student time.

 

Somehow I tend not to have pictures from where I stay - from Pavia in Italy I also have very very few, and I stayed 6 months - from places where I was on a day trip I have whole films ...

 

And no, I did not climb ... I have some panoramic views of Budapest, but from the Gell鲴 hegy. Unfortunatelly not all pictures are scanned and since experimenting panoramas with the Salzburg photos it might be worth to do another one :) [apart from the fact that I have just managed to fill my photo quota so don't expect sudden and remarcable growth in the portofolio very soon]

 

fond regards

Maria

Hi,

 

I have uploaded the aerial view of Budapest - not from the dome, but from the Gell鲴 hegy; the dome can be seen on the panorama :)

 

Here

 

enjoy

Maria

Szent István, Budapest.

 

thanks for your time

Maria

Maria, I share your experience of not having too many pictures of the places where you've lived longer than for a few weeks or months. It might be that daily life, with its unavoidable banalities, overshadows those scenes more easily seen by an unencumbered passer-by's eyes. However, taking a good photo when you've just arrived somewhere appears to be practically impossible. One should have a feel of the place & be able to digest previous impressions before you can really take a meaningful photo which is better than a tourist snapshot. Cheers, Sam.

Hi Sam,

 

thanks for the comment.

 

Well, in some cases you take something better than a tourist snapshot when you just arrived - for example when you learned about that building in many university seminars ...

 

Sometimes I first write the seminar, and look in books from the library to see pictures how the building is, and only later travel to the location.

 

In any case, it is no rule - about Lisbon I did not know much, and still the photos are better than the other: they speak without text, while the others don't.

 

thanks again

Maria