We’ll start our tour at the AURÓRA Community House and get a briefing on the history of

all the experiments of progressive Hungarian youth initiated after the Communist period, trying to find their own VOICE.

After leaving Auróra’s premises, you get an insight into how this multicultural district is going through a gentrification process but, at the same time, keeping its character and becoming an attractive place for young people in search of affordable living and a culturally inspiring neighborhood.

We’ll check out the architecture of 19th century Józsefváros (the official name for District 8, meaning Joseph Town) while walking to our next destination, the Rauf Patisserie, to meet the owner. Barbara produces some of the best ice-creams and cakes in town in her minuscule place, and she even has a wonderful gallery for exhibits of local artists.

Our brief stay at Barbie’s will allow us to acquaint you with the story of the Magdolna Project, one of the most successful EU urban development projects where locals were fully involved in improving their living conditions. You can witness what it used to be, and what it is now.

Afterwards, we’ll visit the nearby Glove factory (Kesztyűgyár). Don’t expect to buy gloves. This is a community centre serving the local population. The name was inherited from its original function in Communist times. The initiative is just great, but how the centre functions is prone to the whims of the ruling political regime. Anyway, it will be educational to see the range of activities of officialdom versus local initiatives.

Next, we’ll walk down to Rákóczi tér and visit Budapest’s only feminist gallery called FERI. If she is in town, we will meet Kata, a most wonderful person, about whom an English journalist wrote:

“Kata calls District VIII the current home of Budapest’s “classic avant-garde,” and says it offers her “a small taste of the kind of multicultural capital that we don’t have broadly, and which the government is doing everything it can, not to have. Here there are Africans, Jews, Roma, Chinese, an intellectual student crowd, savvy, open-minded teenagers, different mentalities, skin, gender identities. One of my biggest fears is that the trend for people who think differently to move abroad in response to the political climate will continue. But I love District VIII, and I’m staying.”*
From here, we’ll walk over to the 7th District, popularly called the Jewish Quarter, which became the nest for alternative or counterculture about twenty years ago. Due to its fame and popularity, it fell victim to over-tourism, and now you can see only the traces of the original counterculture, but it is still is very Hungarian and original. We’ll end our tour at Szimpla Kert, the initiator of the counterculture movement, and scrutinize what they have achieved and how they would like to go on without falling into the trap of commercialism.

*For a more in-depth description, read a recently published article Counterculture spaces by Rupert Mellor, highlighting the complex background information concerning our theme.