Budapest - A critical guide 2014. - With a brand new chapter on ruin pubs

This book tries to combine three types of guides with the advantages of all three: the Baedeker type, the critical guidebook and the alternative guidebook. It tries to serve you as an “invisible host”. There is a Hungarian saying for things that seem impossible: ‘an iron ring made out of wood’. Even if this book cannot overcome the language difficulties, it is designed to put the visitor at ease when making his own plans to discover the city. After all, it is easier to get help with the language from friends, business partners, interpreters or hotel receptionists, than to get ideas for spending one’s time.



“It’s essentially a loving and learned essay on the city slyly disguised as a guidebook. What he really does is to capture the soul of the city and its denizens, past and present. His evocative observations and opinions, laced with wit and candor could only have come from one clever guy who’s truly lived the life in Budapest. You’ll read every page of this book as though it were a novel.” From a reader on amazon.com



“Not just about Budapest but about any city. Török introduces the reader both to the soul of one of the world_s most soulful cities and to its haunts, dives, corners, and backwaters. Read it a week before you go, brush up on the way there, immerse yourself in Török’s Budapest, and you will experience the city in a way that none of the other available guides can begin to convey.” John Farago, NYC on amazon.com



“What better to accompany a visit to Budapest than someone like Andra´s Török, a person who knows Budapest inside out, from top to bottom, and then some. Great job Mr Andra´s Török! Take my hat off to you Sir!” Martyn Richard Jones on amazon.com



András Török, aka Simplicissimus (b. 1954) is an author, lecturer, and long-time chronicler of the Budapest urban scene. This is the seventh edition of his third book. He studied English, History and Modern Greek in his native Budapest during the 1970s, then he sharpened his wit in the dissident intellectual salons. Later he worked as translator, teacher, graphic designer and, after the Fall of the Wall, deputy minister for culture and President of the National Cultural Fund. Meanwhile, instead of writing new books, he re-wrote this same book, over and over again. He is a founder and regular columnist of the monthly Budapest, re-launched for the third time. A critic has called this book “The Bildungsroman of the author, who is a cross between a local historian, a journalist and a fiction writer.”