Summer gardens among the ruins
An unmarked door creaks open, you stumble through the entry passage of a derelict former residential building, and emerge into its central courtyard to find it teeming with life. Hundreds of people, from teens to middle age, are enjoying beer, wine and snacks from a hastily improvised bar. In every odd nook and cranny there are people, playing table football, viewing exhibitions by upcoming photographers or graffiti artists, or talking leisure or business among an imaginative array of vintage furniture and bric-a-brac. If there isn't a movie being projected onto one of the crumbling walls, chances are that a band is tuning up in some corner of the former living space.
Welcome to a Pest phenomenon: the 'gardens' (kert in Hungarian). These ephemeral bars open in summer within disused Pest blocks, particularly in the Jewish Quarter. They buzz from mid-afternoon to the early hours, in some respects playing the same role for today's creative spirits as the coffee houses did 100 years ago - though we have yet to hear of anyone testing how long it takes a joke to do the rounds of the kerts.
Many kerts do not stay in the same place from year to year. Some are more legal than others, most exist on a financial shoestring, and all are prey to the vagaries of local authorities. Nevertheless, the best-known one, Szimpla kert, seems pretty stabilised at Pest VII, Kazinczy utca 14. Other addresses - at least at the time of writing - include Pest VIII, Kisfaludy u. 36 (West Balkán), Pest VI, Király utca 46 (Kuplung), Pest V, József nádor tér 1 (Szóda Kert), and Pest VI, Hegedű u. 3 (Szimpla Kiskert). There is also a version of the phenomenon to be reliably found in the courtyard of Kultiplex, an alternative culture house, at Pest IX, Kinizsi utca 28.
