Statue-Spotting in Budapest

City breaks and mother-daughter time: a classic combination. Last year, my mum and I were well overdue a weekend away, so we picked Budapest, a city neither of us had ever been before. We spent a lovely few days hitting the highlights, marvelling at the beautiful architecture and sampling all the culinary delights of Hungary. Budapest is a gorgeous, fascinating city, with an interesting history, beautiful buildings and, one of my favourite things, unconventional statues.

One afternoon, we climbed up the Buda side of the city, and from the castle we had a beautiful view of Pest. My interest was piqued by a cute little sculpture of a rabbit with very long ears and a telescope. I snapped a photo and made a mental note to look it up later.

When we got back to our apartment, my mum packed her suitcase and I researched the tiny statue online. I discovered it was the work of a guerilla sculptor named Mihály Kolodko.

A Ukrainian artist with Hungarian roots, Kolodko has been placing his mini statues all over Budapest (not always with permission from the authorities) for many years. Some of them are based on Hungarian nostalgia – the bunny with the telescope is a famous cartoon from the 1970s – some are famous Hungarians, and others are political statements.

Fascinated, and overjoyed as I love a quirky statue, I found that these mini sculptures have been marked on Google Maps, and as I had another 24 hours here by myself, I decided to spend my last day on a treasure hunt all over the city.

I woke up bright and early and headed to the closest mini statue to my apartment: Harry Houdini, who was born in this very neighbourhood. It is located in the entrance hall of the K11 Arts and Culture Centre, so I shuffled in trying not to look suspicious and took a quick photo.

After that, I set off in search off Tivadar Herzl, a Hungarian journalist, lawyer, writer and political activist who is known as the founder of the Zionist movement and was born right around the corner. When I say these are mini-statues, they really are absolutely tiny. I had the general location from Google Maps, but I truly had to search carefully to find them, and the sense of accomplishment after spotting one was exhilarating. Found him!

Next on the treasure hunt was the diver and the key in front of the beautiful New York Café. The story goes that local playwright Ferenc Molnár loved the café so much that he threw the key into the Danube River so that it could never close.

I went on my merry way, searching until I found Rezső Seress, a Hungarian songwriter who wrote the world-famous Gloomy Sunday in 1933. Instead of going to the US to collect his newfound riches in song royalties after it was recorded and released by Billie Holiday, he decided to stay in Budapest, playing his piano every night in the Kispipa Bar. This statuette is on the wall of what used to be Kispipa.

Continuing my hunt, I found the 14-Carat Roadster, based on the popular book by Hungarian author Jenő Rejtő who was born around here.

Next up, the incredible Hanna Szenes, a Hungarian Jewish hero who left her safe home in Palestine, was trained by the British Army, and parachuted into Yugoslavia during WWII to assist anti-Nazi forces and prevent the deportation of Hungarian Jews to concentration camps. Sadly, she was captured, tortured and executed, but she never gave up the details of her mission. The statue was erected on International Women’s Day 2020 in the park that bears her name.

Moving on, I found the Garfield mini-statue attached to the wrought-iron railing around the University of Veterinary Medicine.

Also close by the University of Veterinary Medicine (of course) was a statuette of Noah’s Ark, complete with glass windows that form a little rainbow when the sun hits just right.

I continued my walk, and this one was easier to find: Trabi, the classic Eastern European car, in front of the Keleti train station. Apparently it has disappeared since I saw it…

A few blocks from the train station, I came across Skálá Kópé. Kópé was the cartoon mascot of the famous Skálá stores in the 1980s, and now he sits close by the Skálá Metró building, invoking nostalgia in the hearts of passersby.

After a quick lunch, I visited the Miksa Róth museum, a Hungarian artist who specialised in mosaics and stained glass. I marvelled at the gorgeous artwork on display and found a little figurine of the man himself.

No rest for the wicked, I continued on to look for the mini statue of Winnie the Pooh outside the birthplace of the linguist who translated all the Pooh books into Hungarian. He wasn’t easy to spot but there he was!

By now getting rather tired, but wanting to see as many as possible as it was my last day in Budapest, I pressed on to find the statuette known as Among Us. It is placed next to the new Ethnography Museum, on the spot where there used to be a statue of Stalin.

The statue was torn down during the revolution, and the only part left standing was Stalin’s boots. Kolodko installed this mini statue on 23rd October, the day of a national holiday in Hungary commemorating the 1956 revolution against the Soviets. It is meant to symbolise that Russian interference and oppression is still among us today. And the skateboard is because the new museum looks like a skate ramp!

In the late afternoon, I wandered over to Vajdahunyad Castle, a fascinating place in the capital. It was built in 1896 to celebrate 1000 years of the Hungarian State, and its aim was to showcase the outstanding architecture and long history of the Magyars by blending some of its most beautiful buildings into one castle. In front of the section based on Hunyadi Castle, believed to have been where Vlad the Impala, the inspiration for Dracula, was imprisoned for many years, I found my next treasure.

The sun was setting when I found Moon Buggy on Hold Utca (Moon Street). The inspiration for this one was Ferenc Pavlics, a Hungarian inventor who fled to the USA after the 1956 revolution, worked for NASA, and invented the lightweight but resilient wheels used on the lunar rover.

Just round the corner is Liberty Square, a large park full of statues and a monument to the Soviet liberation of Hungary from Nazi Germany. In 2019, Kolodko installed a mini statue of a Russian Ushanka hat in sight of the monument as a criticism of what he saw as continued Russian influence on Hungarian politics. The politican Erik Fülöp, offended by the insinuation, took an axe to the statuette and threw the ushanka into the Danube. Kolodko cheekily replaced it with a miniature axe.

Also in the park is a tiny Kermit the frog, a reference to the popularity of eating frog legs in late 19th century Hungary.

Plodding on, I found the statuette named Brexit, a mini Mr Bean’s Teddy on the wall of the former British embassy, placed there to cheer us up in these contentious times.

Finally, after about 35,000 steps and when I could walk no longer, I ended my treasure hunt with the balloon dog, an homage to the artist Jeff Koons and his Hungarian wife.

Supposedly, there are 30 Kolodko mini-statues in Budapest. I’d managed to find 20 of them on my mega-walk around the city, and I'd learned so much about Hungarian culture and history while doing so. I left the city exhausted but happy, and already itching to return. The hunt will go on!