Great Budapest photo

Hungary always has trouble portraying itself to foreigners. Tourist brochures and posters offer kitsch photos of Hungarian cowboys, algaic hot baths or Disneyesque turrets. The images rarely capture the Hungary’s incomparable blend of old and new, bravery and cowardice, east and west, hot and cold, idealism and cynicism, wine and coffee, innocence and sin, river and dirt. The place literally straddles a fault line. The top photo on this page is one of the first images I’ve seen in a long time that makes me long for Budapest. (Via Emmanuelle.)