I must remind you of one thing here: Budapest in the second half of the 19th century had a completely different rank than Warsaw. This has some significance for further considerations. Warsaw, especially after the absurd and suicidal January Uprising (in my private classification of historical Polish absurdities, right after the Warsaw Uprising), was ultimately reduced to the rank of a provincial city of the Russian Empire. Not that it had played any key role before, but it was at least formally the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, enjoying relative autonomy, which Margrave Aleksander Wielopolski tried to expand.
Budapest was quite different. True, in 1848, on the wave of enthusiasm sparked by the Spring of Nations, the Hungarians organised their own national liberation uprising, in which Poles played a prominent role – among others, Generals Henryk Dembiński and Józef Bem. The latter is particularly adored in Hungary, and in Budapest he has his own monument in the square bearing his name; on the pedestal is engraved the famous quote: “A hidat visszafoglalom vagy elesem. Előre magyar! Ha nincs híd nincs haza”, or “I will take back the bridge or die. Forward, Hungarians! No bridge, no homeland” – these words were supposedly uttered by General Bem before the battle for the crossing at Piski.
The uprising was suppressed by Vienna with the cooperation of Russian troops in 1849. This is supposedly the origin of the custom in Hungary not to clink glasses, mugs or bottles, because this was how the Austrians celebrated their victory over the Hungarians.
In 1867, less than 20 years after the tragic events for the Hungarians, a breakthrough occurred: the Hungarian part of the empire was recognized as equal, and Budapest became the second capital of the empire. Here we leave the realm of facts and enter the realm of intuition or feelings – but this, as we know, is what the world is made of. I would therefore put forward a thesis, and I would not be particularly original in this, that this position of Budapest, even despite the painful undermining by the Treaty of Trianon signed after World War I, was written in the city’s genes and forever deprived it of complexes. Budapest does not have to prove anything to anyone. It does not have to prove in advance that it is a “European” city, because its history is thoroughly European.
I am leaving aside the current political conditions: the anti-Orban sentiments of the capital’s residents or – I am not an expert here, so I cannot verify this – the supposedly worse treatment of the capital in the distribution of all kinds of funds by the central government, which is supposed to make the capital permanently underinvested in infrastructure. I suppose that the disputes in Hungarian public life about this are no less intense than in Poland.
I’m going back to impressions and intuition. Yesterday I was sitting on a bench on one of the quiet streets on Gellert Hill (an incredibly charming district, perhaps a bit like Warsaw’s Żoliborz, only with much nicer views) and I was wondering where the feeling that Warsaw differs from Budapest in some internally significant way – to its disadvantage – comes from. Finally, I got it: Warsaw is neophyte “modern” and “European”, as if it were taking part in some kind of competition for “modernity” and “Europeanness”, while Budapest is normal. Similarly, many other European cities I know are normal, which do not compete with anyone to demonstrate their Europeanness, because they feel confident about it.
Budapest has few newfangled innovations. Over the past decade – and I was there for the first time 12 years ago – there have been some bike paths, but no streets have been narrowed for this purpose. They have simply painted bike lanes on sidewalks or open spaces. And, truth be told, no one seems to care much about it. I have not spotted any fashionable battery-powered buses. The cityscape is not dominated by pretentious towers of concrete, steel and glass, but by the Parliament Building (completed in the early 20th century), the buildings of Buda Castle Hill and the dome of St. Stephen’s Basilica in Pest. The Danube flows lazily under the Chain Bridge, and from the rocky slope of the hill named after him, St. Gellért, the Venetian missionary who raised St. Emeric, the son of St. Stephen, King of Hungary, and was martyred by pagan rebels, looks on. Budapest does not have to do anything.
Warsaw, unfortunately, lacks this lightness and certainty, although perhaps Warsaw from before the Warsaw Uprising would have had it, had it survived the war. For at least two decades, the capital of Poland has been sinking into dramatic pretentiousness, as if it wanted to be more European than Paris, Brussels and The Hague combined. All innovations are to be implemented immediately, all progressive tendencies are to be pushed to the point of caricature, the city centre is to be filled with the highest skyscrapers, and each must be so similar to the other that it is impossible to tell them apart. If there are bicycle paths, then it must be at the expense of cars. Bus lanes – as invasive as possible. Buses – absolutely zero-emission. The clean transport zone – as large and inconvenient as possible. It is to be as progressive as possible.
At the same time, everything is polished, regulated, set to the rule. There is no freedom, no ease, which is a feature of self-confident places. Trzaskowski’s Footbridge emphasizes this characteristic in a caricaturally expressive way.
But oh well – every city has its own genius lociand this in turn is partly the result of the history recorded within its walls, and partly – the aspirations, views, needs of its inhabitants. Apparently Warsaw is supposed to heal the complexes of its own inhabitants, and these are apparently overpowering.
Lukasz Warzecha
Each FPG24.PL columnist presents his/her own views and opinions.