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Pólus Center, the first or second modern mall in Budapest, built just next to a plattenbau (like 3-4 other Budapest malls), also one of the ugliest and (intentionally) most US-style with its giant parking lot and flat outlay (and worse than US with its hyper-kitch interior, including painted sky):

The nearby Ázsia Center, the (at least at the time of completition) largest mall in Central Europe, built by Chinese businessmen, housing hundreds of small shops selling the same importware, initially a failure (people could buy the same stuff cheaper at Chinese open markets) but now with some traffic:

The Westend City Center, a giant inner-city mall (with bureaus/hotels on top on the right side) in place of former railway marshalling yards, with the parking house placed above some tracks of West Railway Terminal (on the photo from before the end of construction, rebuilt tracks still missing between those white columns):

Inside Westend City Center, whose pluses of downtown/public transit access and some natural lights on top are balanced by being the loudest inside and being most frequented by the kind of teenagers Drew Jones would call out:

There is even a well-established Budapest slang word for the girls buying/wearing all the bright-coloured crappy design stuff with heavy makeup & walk around malls with dead eyes, plázacica (=mall pussycat), and it is said their density per metre is highest in the Westend.

As last example, the MOM park was built by a German chain with the philosophy that natural lights should be allowed in, but I don't have many impressions -- it is in the posh Buda part of Budapest and I have been there only to watch some films:

A section of the Great Boulevard, pre-malls a prime shopping area, here with uncharacteristically few cars:

The great Budapest Market Hall, (today) a renovated century-old building where Western tourists go:

I'm not sure I'd take any Western guests to a real, everyday marketplace in or around Budapest -- they might have doubts about hygiene and atmosphere.



*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Mon Mar 26th, 2007 at 11:27:02 AM EST

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