Urban Nature

Have you ever thought about the connection between Nature and the city?

It is traditional, almost obligatory to regard the urban environment as opposed to nature, like the countryside or a forest. And it seems a logical one. After all, cityscape is man-made, while outside it we find wild, untamed growth of life, don't we?

In my opinion, the picture is much more complicated. Untouched natural landscape is something that probably exists somewhere in South-American rainforests or in the Himalayan mountains. Maybe in some highly protected areas in Europe. In Hungary, there is no such thing. We, humans are present here for thousands of years, and we have not left anything untouched. All our landscapes now are the results of excessive human activity, even if at some places this activity means we are trying to restore the way things were one or two hundred years ago.

On the other hand, Nature is present almost everywhere in the city. Okay, let's forget about shopping malls and underground parking lots. Apart from those, every square centimetre of earth, every crack in the pavement is a possibility for plants and animals to set their foot here. It is a source of relief for me that we cannot finally destroy life on this planet. As soon as we stop destroying animal and plant life, they are back again to sprout and grow. And if let be, the process is up to this:

(picture found here)

All right, I accept that these pictures give a rather bleak suggestion about our future. But does it have to be so? I could imagine a city that is in symbiosis with Nature. I would be happy to live there. So I just collect those examples where, instead of plucking and clearing, we should try to find a way of coexistence.

A lamppost in Nature's hug:

Welcome on board

Welcome to everyone on my new blog, Budapest From Inside and Outside. This blog is about Budapest, my Budapest, the city where I was born and where I have been living most of my life. We are in a special love-hate relationship, at least from my part. There are days when I feel gratitude that I can live in a city so full of amazing sights and great people. And there are other days when I feel like I want to scream, close my eyes, plug my nose and never set foot on its pavements again. Me and Budapest – a couple together for a long time, who are driven crazy by the other's whims and caprices but cannot imagine being perpetually separated. No matter how much I wanted to leave the city, and how many times I tried, I always ended up here, enamoured and full of frustration again.

As a teenager, I loved to stroll through the labyrinth of uniform streets on the Pest side, watching the buildings and finding funny institutes and companies hidden in them. Later, with a friend of mine, had excursions on the outskirts, sometimes on the very boundaries of the city, and met surprising symbiosis with nature: would you have imagined that rabbits and deer lived about 15 minutes walk from the Soroksár shopping malls? Nowadays I find public sculptures and memorial plaques more and more interesting. (Beside trees, of course, my all-time favourites.) After all, this is what makes a place a city: not the streets and the buildings but the layers upon layers of accumulated history.

And why in English? Well, I feel that 6 years of intensive study of English language, literature and culture radically changed my worldview. Or rather, I found a way of seeing the world and expressing what I see that matches my personality much more than my native culture. Of course, I am Hungarian, my mother tongue is Hungarian, and the characteristics of my home culture are graven in the founding structure of my inner personality indelibly. Not that I would like to get rid of it. At least, not anymore. I accepted this as I accepted my English-speaking personality, mistakes and all. And the fact that I'll be forever a half-foreigner in my hometown. Being at home and an alien in Budapest. I'm standing inside and outside at the same time, understanding and not understanding what I see and hear and experience here. Translating from one language to another, from one culture to another is impossible without understanding. So, this blog is partly an experiment to translate my experiences and make better sense of Budapest. For myself.

But beside being a personal experiment, this blog also aims to be useful for others. I try to introduce my city to foreigners living here. To show it from a perspective that is unique such as every perspective is unique. I hope many people will join me in my years-long tourist trip in my native city. Welcome and enjoy your stay here.