Budapest Hungary Quotes

I admit I have a Hungarian temper. Why not? I am from Hungary. We are descendants of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. —ZSA ZSA GABOR

What’s the capital of Hungary?” she demanded. I knew the answer was Budapest before she even gave me the four choices. “A. Accra B. Berlin C. New Delhi D. Budapest.

O Danúbio, pensei, era o Danúbio mas não era azul, era amarelo, a cidade toda era amarela, os telhados, o asfalto, os parques, engraçado isso, uma cidade amarela, eu pensava que Budapeste fosse cinzenta, mas Budapeste era amarela.

She’d been in Budapest for over four weeks and her sister Vivian had been silent since her arrival. All Sarah had was the final note her dead sister made her write telling her that Armond Stuart had fled to Hungary.

The boy who convinced you to go to Hungary, he must be very handsome,” Svetlana’s aunt Bojana told me. “You can find an excellent coffee in Budapest. I see that you are looking at my tea tray. Do you like it? It’s quite a good tray. I will make it a gift to you. But not now—only when you get married.

He ate a ghastly blutwurst in the dining car, finished Bartha, managed to buy a copy of Est, the evening edition brought in from Budapest, at the station buffet in Brno. Clearly, political life was heating up. Two members of parliament had come to blows. At a workers’ march in the Tenth District, bricks thrown, people arrested. To the Editor. Sir: How can we let these liberal pansies run our lives? An editorial called for “strength, firmness, singleness of purpose. The world is changing, Hungary must change with it.” A coffeehouse by the university had burned down. TENS OF THOUSANDS CHEER HITLER SPEECH IN REGENSBURG. With photograph, on page one. Here they come, Morath thought.

In the great world outside Hungary events were taking place that would change all their lives: the uprising in Russia, the dispute over Crete, the Kaiser Wilhelm’s ill-timed visit to Tangier, the revelation of Germany’s plans to expand its navy – but such matters were of no importance to the members of the Hungarian Parliament. Even events closer to home, such as the rabble-rousing speech of an Austrian politician in Salzburg urging revolt among the German-speaking minorities in northern Hungary, or the anonymous pamphlet, which appeared in Vienna and revealed the total unpreparedness of the Austro-Hungarian forces compared with those of the other European powers, went unnoticed in Budapest. Naturally when Apponyi made a speech in favour of Deszo Baffy’s proposal to limit the demand for Hungarian commands in the army to using Hungarian only in regimental matters, everyone listened and discussed it as if their very lives depended on it.

In May 1981, Yuri Andropov, chairman of the KGB, gathered his senior officers in a secret conclave to issue a startling announcement: America was planning to launch a nuclear first strike, and obliterate the Soviet Union. For more than twenty years, a nuclear war between East and West had been held at bay by the threat of mutually assured destruction, the promise that both sides would be annihilated in any such conflict, regardless of who started it. But by the end of the 1970s the West had begun to pull ahead in the nuclear arms race, and tense détente was giving way to a different sort of psychological confrontation, in which the Kremlin feared it could be destroyed and defeated by a preemptive nuclear attack. Early in 1981, the KGB carried out an analysis of the geopolitical situation, using a newly developed computer program, and concluded that “the correlation of world forces” was moving in favor of the West. Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was proving costly, Cuba was draining Soviet funds, the CIA was launching aggressive covert action against the USSR, and the US was undergoing a major military buildup: the Soviet Union seemed to be losing the Cold War, and, like a boxer exhausted by long years of sparring, the Kremlin feared that a single, brutal sucker punch could end the contest. The KGB chief’s conviction that the USSR was vulnerable to a surprise nuclear attack probably had more to do with Andropov’s personal experience than rational geopolitical analysis. As Soviet ambassador to Hungary in 1956, he had witnessed how quickly an apparently powerful regime might be toppled. He had played a key role in suppressing the Hungarian Uprising. A dozen years later, Andropov again urged “extreme measures” to put down the Prague Spring. The “Butcher of Budapest” was a firm believer in armed force and KGB repression. The head of the Romanian secret police described him as “the man who substituted the KGB for the Communist Party in governing the USSR.” The confident and bullish stance of the newly installed Reagan administration seemed to underscore the impending threat. And so, like every genuine paranoiac, Andropov set out to find the evidence to confirm his fears. Operation RYAN (an acronym for raketno-yadernoye napadeniye, Russian for “nuclear missile attack”) was the biggest peacetime Soviet intelligence operation ever launched.

In early 2019, while I was still at the White House, BuzzFeed News published an article laying out the origins of the “Soros conspiracy.” It had originated in 2008, when two prominent political consultants in New York, Arthur Finkelstein and George Birnbaum, were recruited by Viktor Orbán to assist his political campaign. They had previously worked for Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu, who was friendly with Orbán. Netanyahu recommended them. Finkelstein and Birnbaum decided they should create an external political enemy to help Orbán mobilize support for his bid to become Hungarian prime minister. They selected Soros, a prominent Hungarian Jew whose family had fled Budapest during the Holocaust. Soros was both famous and controversial, and still connected to Hungary.

In the countryside the landowners and farmers were less affected than anyone, producing most of their own essentials and putting up commodity prices as regularly as the shopkeepers. Landless peasants were not doing so well, and the large number of casual labourers whose wanderings had been limited by the new confines of Hungary formed a particularly destitute class. Hohler’s account concluded with the comment that many were thriving in the economic crisis and were responsible for the superficial atmosphere of prosperity which Budapest presented - notably, he thought, the Jews who made up much of the capital’s population.

By D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review "Historical fiction readers are in for a treat with When I Was Better, a love story set in Hungary and Canada which follows the journey of István and Teréza, who flee the Nazi and Soviet invasions and the Hungarian Revolution to finally make their home in Winnipeg in the 1960s. Maps and a cast of characters portend an attention to details that history buffs will appreciate, but the lively chapter headings that begin with "This is What Dying Feels Like" are the real draw, promising inviting scenarios that compel readers to learn more about the characters' lives and influences. Few other books about immigrant experience hold the descriptive power of When I Was Better: "Her world had transformed into a place of gestures and facial expressions, making her feel more vigilant now than she had ever been under Communism. No one understood her but Zolti. Already she ached for her language and the family she left behind." Rita Bozi's ability to capture not just the history and milieu of the times, but the life and passions of those who live it is a sterling example of what sets an extraordinary read apart from a mundane narration of circumstance and history. Her ability to depict the everyday experiences and insights of her protagonist bonds reader to the subject in an intimate manner that brings not just the era, but the psychology of its participants to life through inner reflection, influence and experience, and even dialogue: “Four lengths of sausage, please?” Teréza watched as the man pulled two small lengths from the hook and wrapped them in course paper. “I beg your pardon, sir, but would you kindly add in two more lengths?” “We got an aristocrat here? If you take four lengths, what d’you imagine the workers are gonna eat at the end of the day?” The account of a seven-year separation, Budapest and Winnipeg cultures and contrasts, and refugee experiences brings history to life through the eyes of its beholders. That which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. This saying applies especially strongly to When I Was Better 's powerful story, highly recommended for historical fiction readers and library collections interested in powerfully compelling writing packed with insights: “Why is it so agonizing to be truthful?” István asked, not expecting an answer. “It depends on what truth you’re about to reveal. And how you expect it to be received. If you’re expecting an execution, you have two choices. Die for what you believe in or lie to save your life.” “So in the end, it all comes down to values.” István reached for the martini, took another sip. Bela smiled. “Without truth, there’s no real connection. The truth hurts, but love eventually heals what hurts.”" "With sharp insight and the gifts of a natural, Bozi's novel brilliantly chronicles the plight of an entire generation of Hungarians through the intimate portrait of two lovers tested by the political and personal betrayals that ripped through the heart of the twentieth century.

It was well after midnight when I put the thick document called ‘Invitation to Tender for a concession to provide GSM services in Hungary’ on my bedside cabinet. The document had been reissued on October 15, 1992. I had quickly scanned, and hopefully absorbed, the main points. The tender was organized as a beauty contest and the winning consortia would be allowed to participate in the auction to be held next year. There were two concessions up for grabs, one that would surely go to the existing NMT operator Westel (US West & Bell Atlantic) and one for a new party. It was shut eye time now, I was tired. The flight to Budapest would leave early in the morning, so I had only a few hours to rest.

Von Neumann too wondered about the mystery of his and his compatriots’ origins. His friend and biographer, the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, remembers their discussions of the primitive rural foothills on both sides of the Carpathians, encompassing parts of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, populated thickly with impoverished Orthodox villages. “Johnny used to say that all the famous Jewish scientists, artists and writers who emigrated from Hungary around the time of the first World War came, either directly or indirectly, from those little Carpathian communities, moving up to Budapest as their material conditions improved.

In the second court hearing, the Bavarian Administrative Court argued that Floris had not made a Bekenntnis to German Volkstum back in Hungary. Although his parents might have been part of the “German linguistic and cultural sphere” (deutscher Sprach- und Kulturkeis)—as he claimed—and his ancestors might have come from German-speaking lands, this did not mean that they were Germans. Liberal Jews in interwar Hungary had cherished German language and culture, but, the court argued, this attitude resulted from a “cosmopolitan stance” (weltbürgerliche Haltung) and was not indicative of a person’s “conscience and will to be German and to belong to no other people.”65 In this court’s view, the plaintiff had not publicly identified himself as German. Rather, he had tried twice—once without success, then successfully—to change his German-sounding surname, Steiner, into the neutral-sounding Floris. The reasons for these actions were arguably economic (only by assuming this name could he continue using the brand name after the war, when the real Floris moved to England), yet the name change made clear that he did not value his German appearance in name. In the Bavarian court’s view, Floris’s emigration from Hungary had also been for economic reasons. Moreover, his wife, Elisabeth, was not clearly German either, even though she credibly stated that her maternal language was German and that she had been a member of the Mozart cultural association in Budapest, where she used to sing German songs and where she met her husband, with whom she always spoke German. She supposedly also lacked the Bekenntnis.66

Einstein and Szilard were friends, and together invented a refrigerator without mechanical parts to help the poor. They first met in 1920 when Szilard moved to Germany after being thrown down a set of steps leading to the Budapest University by anti-Semites and realising that it was time to leave Hungary. An outstanding student, Szilard had trained as an engineer, but in Berlin, the epicentre of modern physics, he pursued the new science.

He was born on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary. His real name was Ehrich Weiss. But during his lifetime, Harry always said his birthday was April 6, because that is what his mother told him.

In this new entity, known as Austria-Hungary or the Dual Monarchy, Jews were fully emancipated. In 1873, Buda and Pest merged to form the metropolis of Budapest, home to almost two hundred thousand people, of whom 16 percent were Jews.

She read the train schedule in dismay. There was no service for two more days. She could use charm to beg a ride from someone, but that meant being in the small confines of a car for an extended period of time. It probably was the lesser of two evils. She heard male laughter, low, amused, mocking. You would try to run from me, little one. Raven sank down onto the bed, her heart beginning to pound. His voice was black velvet, a weapon in itself. Don’t flatter yourself, hotshot. I’m a tourist, I tour. She forced her mind to be calm even as she felt the brush of his fingers on her face. How did he do that? It was the lightest caress, but she felt it down to her toes. And where were you thinking of touring? He was stretching lazily, his body refreshed from his sleep, his mind once more alive with feeling. He was enjoying sparring with her. Away from you and your bizarre games. Maybe Hungary. I’ve always wanted to go to Budapest. Little liar. You think to run back to your United States. Do you play chess? She blinked at the strange question. Chess? she echoed. Male amusement could be very annoying. Chess. Yes. Do you? Of course. Play with me. Now? She began to braid her heavy mass of hair. There was something captivating in his voice, mesmerizing. It tugged at her heartstrings, put terror in her mind. I must feed first. And you are hungry. I can feel your headache. Go down to dinner and we will meet at eleven tonight. No way. I won’t meet with you. You are afraid. It was a clear taunt. She laughed at him, the sound wrapping his body in flames. I may do foolish things occasionally, but I am never a fool.

She heard male laughter, low, amused, mocking. You would try to run from me, little one. Raven sank down onto the bed, her heart beginning to pound. His voice was black velvet, a weapon in itself. Don’t flatter yourself, hotshot. I’m a tourist, I tour. She forced her mind to be calm even as she felt the brush of his fingers on her face. How did he do that? It was the lightest caress, but she felt it down to her toes. And where were you thinking of touring? He was stretching lazily, his body refreshed from his sleep, his mind once more alive with feeling. He was enjoying sparring with her. Away from you and your bizarre games. Maybe Hungary. I’ve always wanted to go to Budapest. Little liar. You think to run back to your United States.