THE SIGN HUNTERS

HUNGARY: The neighbourhood where I grew up in Szombathely

Written by Laszlo, 21 June 2019

On the 30th March this year, I published an photo article called 'The place where I was born: Szombathely' (Click here to see the post) when I also promised that I would make this blog entry an on-going project. I did not lie, because now I am back in Hungary and I have started taking more and more photos to keep my word credible. But this time I have also gone a bit more specific and decided to set my focus on the area where I grew up. So, I also thought that I would make this a separate blog post.

We have not always lived in Sorokpolány. We bought the house here in 2010. The previous 23 years were defined by living in a ten-storey house.

We moved to the 'Derkovits' neighbourhood (named after Gyula Derkovits, a Szombathely-born Hungarian painter and graphic artist) when in 1986 my mother bought a flat on Váci Mihály utca (Mihály Váci Street) in a typical Hungarian multi-storey house, in a typical Hungarian residential area (lakótelep). In Hungarian, this type of building is called 'panel' because they were built like a Lego building, from pre-built/manufactured concrete blocks or panels. The flats in these blockhouses were usually 55 square metres and could normally come in two different layouts either flats with two or three rooms. We lived in a two-room apartment which had a separate kitchen, a bathroom and a toilet. Growing up in this house was not bad at all. I would never move back to a flat in a multi-storey building though, but still, I grew up there, lived there an overall 23 years, and I cannot say too much bad about it. I had a great childhood!

We lived in no. 65. Together with no. 63, the two formed one tower with two stairways. Under each number, there were ten plus one storeys and 44 flats. Our building was unique in the area as this block was the only one around where the balconies had blue glass panels installed. When asked, we always said: 'the house with the blue balconies'. This is where we lived. But, as you can imagine, it has also not always been as bright yellow as it is now. The insulation and recolouring was done only about ten years ago. Prior to that, the entire building was just 'concrete colour' - I included a few photos of it in the previous blog entry (check it out).

I am at home again, spending sufficient time in Szombathely, and I have returned to this place once again. I only had one hour, I just wanted to take some photos of the building and its surroundings including other iconic multi-storey buildings of the neighbourhood, the local shop, the forest and my primary school.

I have, however, suddenly started feeling that I should go back and document it more 'deeply', more precisely in more details, so this blog entry at this stage now is certainly not complete. I will come back to this topic with new photos and, maybe, some more added information. Wait and see... Have a look where I grew up!