A coffee house was much more than just a café. It was a very democratic institution attracting all layers of society and had the function of a culture house with the then equivalent functions of Facebook and Internet platforms. It was here that journalists, lawyers, tradesmen, visitors from the countryside and starving poets met. Some coffee houses like New York Café, Centrál, and Hadik became famous thanks to the owners’ policy of attracting artists and men of letters.

We will start the time-travelling part of our tour at Centrál Café at Ferenciek tere, and we’ll brief you on the importance of Hungarian literature and writers in the history of the country.

Logistically, the Communist version of a coffee house is nearby, so we will have a brief stay at Ibolya Presszó, an antiquated version of how coffee houses were converted into cheap places with uncomfortable seating.

From here, we’ll continue our historical walk to the Hadik Café in Buda to have a feeling what partying in literary circles meant in the 1930s. You will be entertained by various anecdotes and jokes connected to the place.

Next, we will visit the New York Café, in itself an architectural wonder, and find out about its significance for locals. Unfortunately, the place fell victim to over-tourism, and we’d prefer to show you the place, and then you can visit it on your own later.

After seeing three iconic coffee houses and their Communist variant, we’d like to introduce you to the metamorphoses of these institutions we have witnessed in the past 30 years.

The “revolution” of innovative public spaces started with small enterprises, including intimate cafés like Massolit, but the real change was brought by the mushrooming of ruin pubs, spontaneous initiatives of young people to have a cultural place for socializing. We’ll visit three of these to illustrate how the best traditions of Hungarian traditional culture survive in a modern setting.

First, we’ll peep into the Massolit, a favourite working space for digital nomads that continues to have the most delicious flódni (a Hungarian-Jewish delicacy with poppyseed, walnut, and apple). Then we drop by at Rachel’s Patisserie, a typical private initiative.
We’ll end our tour at the Szimpla Kert ruin pub. You’ll be surprised that despite its name, it’s not a pub but rather a Bohemian and most creative community centre. Here we will wrap up all the experiences concerning the history of Hungarian urban lifestyle then and now.