Tourists, Signs and the City: The Semiotics Of Culture In An Urban Landscape (New Directions in Tourism Analysis)

Tourists, Signs and the City

New Directions in Tourism Analysis Series Editor: Dimitri Ioannides, E-TOUR, Mid Sweden University, Sweden Although tourism is becoming increasingly popular as both a taught subject and an area for empirical investigation, the theoretical underpinnings of many approaches have tended to be eclectic and somewhat underdeveloped. However, recent developments indicate that the field of tourism studies is beginning to develop in a more theoretically informed manner, but this has not yet been matched by current publications. The aim of this series is to fill this gap with high quality monographs or edited collections that seek to develop tourism analysis at both theoretical and substantive levels using approaches which are broadly derived from allied social science disciplines such as Sociology, Social Anthropology, Human and Social Geography, and Cultural Studies. As tourism studies covers a wide range of activities and sub fields, certain areas such as Hospitality Management and Business, which are already well provided for, would be excluded. The series will therefore fill a gap in the current overall pattern of publication. Suggested themes to be covered by the series, either singly or in combination, include – consumption; cultural change; development; gender; globalisation; political economy; social theory; sustainability. Also in the series Stories of Practice: Tourism Policy and Planning Edited by Dianne Dredge and John Jenkins ISBN 978-0-7546-7982-0 Sports Event Management The Caribbean Experience Edited by Leslie-Ann Jordan, Ben Tyson, Carolyn Hayle and David Truly ISBN 978-1-4094-1855-9 Sex, Tourism and the Postcolonial Encounter Landscapes of Longing in Egypt Jessica Jacobs ISBN 978-0-7546-4788-1 Development Tourism Lessons from Cuba Rochelle Spencer ISBN 978-0-7546-7542-6

Tourists, Signs and the City

The Semiotics of Culture in an Urban Landscape

Michelle M. Metro-Roland Western Michigan University, USA

© Michelle M. Metro-Roland 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Michelle M. Metro-Roland has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Metro-Roland, Michelle Marie. Tourists, signs and the city : the semiotics of culture in an urban landscape. -- (New directions in tourism analysis) 1. Culture and tourism. 2. Culture--Semiotic models. 3. Symbolic interactionism. 4. Tourism--Psychological aspects. 5. Tourists--Hungary--Budapest--Attitudes. 6. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 1839-1914-Knowledge--Semiotics. I. Title II. Series 338.4'791-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Metro-Roland, Michelle M. Tourists, signs and the city : the semiotics of culture in an urban landscape / by Michelle M. Metro-Roland. p. cm. -- (New directions in tourism analysis) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7809-0 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-7546-9603-2 (ebook) 1. Tourism. 2. Cities and towns. 3. Tourism--Social aspects. 4. Signs and symbols--Social aspects. 5. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 1839-1914. 6. Semiotics. 7. Culture--Semiotic models. I. Title. G155.A1M446 2011 306.4'819--dc23 ISBN 9780754678090 (hbk) ISBN 9780754696032 (ebk)

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK.

2011015893

Contents List of Maps and Figures    Preface   

vii ix

1

Introduction  

2

Peirce, Signs and Interpretation  

11

3

Landscape and Tourism  

25

4

The City—A Brief Introduction  

41

5

Tourists in the City—Means and Methods  

63

6

Signs in the City  

75

7

Markets and Culture  

111

8

Conclusions and Implications  

139

Appendices    References    Index   

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149 151 167

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List of Maps and Figures Maps 4.1

Budapest Inner City   

42

Figures 6.1

Palatinus Strand Sign (Photo 5.20T)  

79

6.2

Drechsler Palace (Photo 19.21T)  

84

6.3 Trabant  

88

6.4

Museum and School of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Múzeum) (Photo 20.21T)  

94

6.5

Typical Central European Courtyard (Photo 4.2T)  

95

6.6

University of Fine Arts Building, 67 Andrássy Avenue (Photo 6.11T)  

96

6.7

Pest Embankment (Photo 20.19T)  

98

6.8

Traffic Signs (Photo 18.6T)  

100

6.9

Uneven Restoration (Photo 16.25T)  

104

7.1

Central Market Hall  

112

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Preface This work is the result of a chance trip to Budapest in the summer of 1994. Having since spent over a decade returning there to live and visit, it is hard to remember exactly what those first experiences as a tourist were like. I recall the beauty of the view from Margit Bridge while riding the street car at night, the Danube winding between the two sides of the city, with Buda and the imposing Castle District on the hill on one side and Pest with its equally imposing Parliament building on the other. I recall the angular and starkly modern architecture of Déli Train Station and the heavy nineteenth-century atmosphere of Nyugati Train Station. I also remember walking through Moszkva Square late at night and seeing old ladies selling half wilted flowers, trying to make a few extra forints to survive in the new economy. Each return evinces subtle and not-so subtle changes to this landscape and these early encounters have been augmented, and further contextualized by new understandings about the historical trajectory and cultural milieu of the country and the region. This is at its essence what happens in semiosis, the interpretation of signs which leads to knowledge, beliefs and habits, and it is this process which is the focus of this work. The research and writing of this project has been an enterprise dependent upon many who assisted in a myriad of ways. I would like to take a moment to express my gratitude to some of those who have helped bring this project to fruition. First I would like to acknowledge the institutions which through their financial support have helped make this research possible. A Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant from the United States Department of Education allowed me and my family to spend the year in Budapest where I was able to undertake my field work. The J. Stewart and Dagmar K. Reiley Graduate Fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University generously provided support for a year of intensive writing, while a grant from the Graduate and Professional Student Organization helped defray research costs. Thanks also to the Hall and Market Management of the Municipality of Budapest (CSAPI) for allowing me to research in the Market Halls, to the Szabó Ervin Municipal Library; and to Orsolya Vida and the Hungarian Fulbright Association for their assistance with the execution of the photographic project. I would also like to thank colleagues, in the United States and across the ocean in Budapest, who have played a role in shaping this project. For reading drafts of chapters, for hashing out ideas over coffee, for sharing their experiences in the field, for hunting for books in the antikvárium, for revealing the hidden corners of the city, for elucidating the complexities of Hungarian grammar, for double and triple checking my translations, for providing emotional and technical support,

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thanks go to Nora Czar, Ivett Czászár, Owen Dwyer, Eszter Eszes, Charles Greer, Daniel Knudsen, Zoltan Köver, Katalin Metro, László Muntean, Gabriella Nagy, Péter Nemes, Jillian Rickly-Boyd, Kenli Schaaf, Thomas Cooper, Tamara Rátz, and Mihály Szegedy-Maszák. Thank you especially to Yamir Gonzalez-Velez for editing, styling and cheering on this project. I also want to express my appreciation to those people on tour in Budapest, and those residents who were generous enough to take the time to speak with me about their experiences or who agreed to explore the city on film. I would also like to thank Ashgate, the reviewers, and especially Val Rose and Katy Crossan for their encouragement, patience and helpful suggestions. A debt of gratitude is owed to Jane Crawford, Professor of Classics, who was a compelling example of the virtue in pursuing a scholarly life. Lastly, I want to thank my family for their support. In particular my children Elek and Éva have been patient beyond their years, and made the year in Hungary much more richly rewarding, while Liliána, has grown up to toddlerhood with the writing of this book. My partner Dini deserves my utmost appreciation since we journeyed through this work together as he wrote on his projects upstairs while I was writing downstairs, the result being dinner time conversations about linguisticality, signs, cross-cultural interpretation and sometimes just our tired selves. Michelle M. Metro-Roland

Chapter 1

Introduction Signs, Place and Meaning In the Spring of 2006, the Budapest landscape underwent a tectonic shift as the city was invaded by cows. They came slowly at first, one here, one there, until by midsummer, wherever you turned you could not but bump into one of the recalcitrant ruminants. As part of Cowparade, the fiberglass sculptures have made their appearance throughout the world from Chicago to Bucharest. Local artists are charged with inscribing the blank canvas afforded by the cows’ bodies, painting, decorating, modifying and naming them. The cows which filled the Budapest streets present a puzzle for those encountering them because like the other elements which constitute the city, their relationship to Hungarian culture is a complex one to unravel. Two examples should suffice. Across from the Vásárcsarnok, the Central Market Hall in Budapest, sat the “Package Cow,” painted to resemble the famous Hungarian Pick Salami. The wording, however, is in English and plays on the tension between the global and the local highlighted by the proximity of the Burger King, which the cow sits in front, and the city’s largest market hall which looms across the street. Then there is the “Magyar Narancs” [Hungarian Orange] cow, colored and textured to have the appearance of an orange. On first glance this might simply seem another food themed depiction analogous to the melting ice cream and the chocolate milk cow, but its significance goes much deeper. One needs to know that one of the popular political and cultural weeklies is entitled Magyar Narancs. One also needs to know that the name refers to a scene from the movie A Tanú [The Witness], which offered a subtle but trenchant critique of socialism when it was finally released in Hungary in 1969. The film follows the missteps of József Pelikán, a dike keeper who bungles one after another of the tasks with which he is charged by the Party. One of those tasks is the cultivation of citrus fruits, which given the inappropriate climatic conditions is bound to elude even the most determined planning capabilities of the socialist government. The one orange that is produced is eaten just prior to the celebration and a lemon replaces the orange on the dais. When the general tastes it, unable to suppress a pained pucker of his lips, the reply of the hapless Comrade Pelikán “az uj Magyar narancs, kicsi sárgabb, kicsi savanyú, de a miénk,” “the new Hungarian orange, a little yellower, a little bitter, but ours,” entered the cultural lexicon, as a pithy critique about the lies and failures of real existing socialism. It is this scene from the film that inspired the liberal journal (one of the first to appear at the change of regime), and which was referenced in 1989 by the reform party Fidesz [the Young

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Democrats] when they handed out oranges to supporters and adopted a bright orange shade as their color. Their recent shift to the right of the political spectrum spurred the journal to change its colors from orange, to yellow, with the tag line “The Hungarian Orange is Not an Orange, and neither is the Color.” It is all of this which is embodied and referenced in the cow. That an orange, a so called “southern fruit,” foreign to the country and the culture, can attain such a level of signification is at heart a semiotic event. As can be seen in this one example, the position of an object, in this case an orange fiberglass cow, in a larger meaning flow, is a complex one, based upon layers of meaning and signification which stand outside of the actual object. Thus a person unfamiliar with the history of the “Hungarian orange” sees simply a cow, a piece of public art, a pun on food types. And these are all correct. But because objects are not simply free floating entities unmoored from place and time, or if you like, geography and history, meaning accretes like dust, and bringing to bear the film, the phrase, the journal and the political party, the subsequent repudiation by the former of the latter turns this orange cow into a particularly Hungarian cultural object. The meaning(s) of any object in the world is multivalent, richly contextual and our understanding and unraveling of these meanings is best explained by sign theory which treats explicitly the epistemological problem raised in cognition. This act of meaning making, the linkage between mind and world, and belief and action is the subject of this research which treats this process in the context of the tourist experience of culture within the urban landscape of Budapest. This work makes several contributions towards the understanding of tourism. First it offers a theoretical framework for understanding the way in which meaning is educed from the built environment. This is not to say that landscapes are passive containers filled with significance or that they are simply “texts” to be read. Cognition is always an active endeavor which entails a give and take between object and interpreter as we will see. Secondly, it brings to bear core geographic understanding of landscape and place meaning to the interdisciplinary field of tourism studies in an investigation of tourism practices in urban areas. By privileging geographic thought this work adds to the growing sub-discipline of tourism landscape. Third, it offers insight into the ways in which the banal and the monumental, the quotidian and the touristic play out in the context of urban tourism by proposing the concept of the tourist prosaic, a hybrid understanding of the spaces in the city which matter to tourists. Lastly, it brings empirical research to the theorizing of landscape interpretation, uniting the analytical insights of the researcher with the lived experiences of non-specialists. Applied Semiotics Let us start with the last contribution first. This work is based on three applied studies undertaken with foreign visitors to the Hungarian capital of Budapest in

Introduction

3

2005 and 2006 based upon extensive ethnographic field work. The focus of these studies was tourists’ interpretation of the urban landscape with particular attention paid to the encounters with national culture, specifically the rather vague notion of Hungarianess. This concept is an admittedly allusive one—Hungarian scholars have been debating the question What is Hungarian? [Mi A Magyar] (Szekfű 1939; Romsics and Szegedy-Maszák 2005) for the last century—but in the context of this research it has a dual role. On the one hand, tourism while we can debate the various aspects of what as a practice it actually entails, is at some level about encountering that which is other. Thus visitors to Hungary would be thinking about what made this particular place Hungarian at some point in their stay. On the other hand it was also a proxy for placeness; how was this city different and unique from other cities. Puczkó, Rátz and Smith (2007) note that Americans especially find it difficult to distinguish between Prague, Vienna and Budapest. While Thomas Friedman (2005) declared the world flat as a result of globalization, Richard Florida (2005) argued that rather what we are seeing is a “spiky world” in which a few places stand out. Cities around the globe have sought to elevate themselves above the fray, turning to branding (Caldwell and Freire 2004; Kavaratzis and Ashworth 2005) in order to capture the lucrative capital streams which global tourism attracts (Blaine et al. 2005). At the heart of this is the question of the genius loci, or spirit of place, what makes a destination unique and marks a site as desirable and worthy of the tourists’ attention. Participant observation was combined with interviews in order to investigate tourists’ experience with place and the attempts at creating meaning out of the built environment. Three different investigations were undertaken. In the first instance over 52 groups of tourists (103 people in all) were interviewed on the streets at key tourist sites throughout the Inner City, including the Parliament and the Castle District. In the second instance visitor employed photography was undertaken. Single use cameras were distributed to a different group of tourists, 30 in total, who were asked to capture their encounters with Hungarianess in the cityscape. 22 cameras were returned with a total of 357 exposures. Lastly, the study of tourists’ interpretations of culture was moved to a specific locale in the city the Central Market Hall. A busy meat and produce market and tourist attraction, it is a paradigmatic case of the tourist prosaic. Interviews were conducted with 53 groups (109 people in all) just outside the main doors of the market. The interviews and the photos paint a picture of tourists’ encounters with culture in the cityscape– touristscape nexus. As will be seen below this research was framed within the context of semiotics and landscape theory which both give explanatory power to the results of the applied research. Towards a Theoretical Framework for Interpretation Semiotics, or sign interpretation, dates back at least to the Ancient Greeks. The present work offers an introduction to the sign theory of the American Pragmatist

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Tourists, Signs and the City

philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce who along with his contemporary the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, is considered one of the founding fathers of modern sign theory. Outside of the fields of philosophy and semiotics his work is not well known. Unlike the linguistic model based on the lectures of Saussure, Peirce’s theory goes beyond simply explaining the way in which concepts are linked to language but rather treats the real world implications of interpretation that result in habit and action. Peirce’s writing on semiotics is grounded in a larger philosophical project which addresses epistemology, logic and metaphysics. Saussure (1959) proposed a sign bifurcated between a signifier and signified, that is a sound (image accoustique) and a concept, privileging the arbitrary linkage between the two and the way in which meaning emerges from the structures of language. Peirce on the other hand proposed a tripartite sign consisting of object, representamen and interpretant. It is this last concept, that of interpretation, where Peirce’s theory advances our comprehension of the relationship between objects in the world and our understanding because interpretation is not just thought, but also resides in habit and action. This stems directly from Peirce’s foundational beliefs about pragmatism: “consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (EP 1.132). In other words, we act in the world based upon our beliefs, which are in turn shaped by our interactions with the world; hence most of us choose to walk through doorways rather than walls. His theory is also better suited to dealing with “real” objects, rather than simply concepts, things which comprise landscapes from street cars to walkways. Nöth (1990) in his far reaching encyclopedic study of semiotics concludes, “Saussure’s contribution to a general theory of signs has been only minor. He had little to say about nonlinguistic signs and was not concerned with questions such as the general typology of signs” (63). Those following on Saussure have adopted a structuralist approach applying a model based in linguistics to nonlinguistic contexts. Studies such as Preziosi’s (1979) of architecture using terms borrowed from linguistics, such as phonemes and morphemes, fail to grasp the social meaning of architectural form. As Goss (1988) notes, in his call for an Architectural Geography, “to understand the meaning of the built environment is not to retreat into obscure analyses of the deep structural grammar of architecture. We must realize the complexity of a multi-coded space and study it in its everyday usage (through interviews, literary and historic texts, or events) by everyday people” (398). The difficulty of imposing a structuralist model based in the system of language upon nonlinguistic cases has meant that many studies which claim to employ semiotics, including much of the work in tourism (Culler 1981; Davis 2005; Frow 1991; Gaffey 2004; Jaworski and Pritchard 2005; Nelson 2005; Smith 2005) offer a diluted theoretical application which assumes that semiotic is simply interchangeable with symbolic, producing studies which tell us a great deal about how signs are symbols of other things. They do not go beyond signs that are not mere symbols, they do not show us the

Introduction

5

means by which we know the world through signs, and they do not explain how we interpret the meaning which signs have. These weaknesses are the exact strengths that one finds in Peirce’s theory, a theory which not only treats explicitly the way in which meaning is educed from objects—things which are constituent of landscapes such as lampposts and street signs—but also moves us beyond simply talking about symbolic meaning and thinking to understand the way in which interpretation compels us to action. Landscapes, Cityscapes and Touristscapes In the multifaceted environment of cities what constitutes sense of place and how place is experienced is a vitally important question not just for tourism boards, but also for urban planners, preservationists, local governments, community activists and residents. Geographers with their disciplinary interest in landscape bring an ideal set of tools with which to approach the role that place plays in urban tourism, a topic which has received less attention than one might think. In his recent comprehensive look at urban tourism Martin Selby (2004: 125) notes “there are relatively few contemporary studies of urban tourism which use an experiential approach concerned with the knowledge, meanings, emotions and memories of urban tourists or residents.” Cities offer a beguiling array of possibilities for the tourist from theaters to museums, from parks to palaces. They are the ideal locus for the provision of entertainment and dinning, and the presentation of culture. Capital cities in particular are replete with cultural meaning, since it is here that the nation is reified in material form, through government buildings, monuments and museums (van der Wusten 2000). Cities are not simply open air museums, repositories of art and heritage, but are the sites of home and work for the large populations that reside there or in the surrounding suburbs. Cities accommodate industry, offices, stores, residences, hospitals, places of worship, and all the infrastructural trappings from waste disposal to satellite towers that make life possible in the contemporary city. They can be cacophonous, claustrophobic, liberating and overwhelming. The functional aspect of cities makes touring a complex endeavor that entails the tourist to be able to make sense of the landscape. Kevin Lynch’s (1960) classic work on city image offers some insight into the way in which this is accomplished. He writes: In the process of way-finding, the strategic link is the environmental image, the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual. This image is the product both of immediate sensation and of the memory of past experience, and it is used to interpret information and to guide action. The need to recognize and pattern our surroundings is so crucial, and

6

Tourists, Signs and the City has such long roots in the past, that this image has wide practical and emotional importance to the individual. Obviously a clear image enables one to move about more easily and quickly: to find a friend’s house or a policeman or a button store. But an ordered environment can do more than this; it may serve as a broad frame of reference an organizer of activity or belief or knowledge. On the basis of a structural understanding of Manhattan, for example, one can order a substantial quantity of facts and fancies about the nature of the world we live in. Like any good framework, such a structure gives the individual a possibility of choice and a starting-point for the acquisition of further information. A clear image of the surroundings is thus a useful basis for individual growth (4).

Lynch’s account of the role of the image is remarkably similar to Peirce’s conceptions about semiosis. For one thing the image of the city forming from both “immediate sensation” and the memory of past experience resembles Peirce’s claims about the role of collateral knowledge, the satchel of previously gained information we bring to every semiotic encounter. Secondly, the image which is the result of both the present and the past is a kind of representamen, which is then interpreted as informative at the same time it guides behavior. This sounds remarkably similar to an interpretant. The passage, while not directly referring to tourism, nevertheless has much to say about the path that tourists take in urban settings. Even for those who are not themselves urban dwellers, literature, film and other mass media entities ensure that cities, as an idea, are well understood. As Donald and Gammack (2007: 4) quip “everyone who sees films knows, or thinks they do, what a US, city looks like … [and] Europe also has its cinematic cities.” But even with regional and cultural differences, urban areas around the world share morphological similarities in the constituent elements that give them shape. Lynch’s argument about the image of the city bears thinking about because it highlights a very important but often neglected idea about urban tourism, and that is that the city, as opposed to the “tourist site” matters. Cartier and Lew’s (2005) speak of “touristed landscapes” as places which get large numbers of tourists but which, are in the end, lived spaces which carry on other functions, tourism being only one (see also Ringer 2002). The present work assumes a symbiotic relationship between the cityscape and the touristscape. The former term encompasses the landscape that is a part of the functional and cultural city of residents and workers, whereas the latter term represents the landscape that is considered part of the tourist city, including cultural sites, restaurants and hotels, souvenir shops and specific tourist districts (the places in which no local wants to be caught, except when forced to entertain out of town guests). The idea that the tourist bubble or the tourist layer exists is not new (Wolfel 2008; Hayllar, Griffin and Edwards 2008). The premise behind most of the alternative guidebooks is that they will lead you off the beaten path into the “real” city (Stewart 2005), and

Introduction

7

tourism studies has been debating the relationship of the tourist to the “real” for decades (MacCannel 1976, 1999; Boorstin 1964). The present work contends that at the intersection of the two concepts of cityscape and touristscape lies the tourist prosaic. Based on the empirical studies undertaken with tourists in the Hungarian capital, the experiences of the city that they were talking about were not synonymous with the experiences of either the touristscape or the cityscape but instead were a blending and a sampling. There are of course areas of overlap between the two realms, restaurants, museums and even entertainment districts immediately come to mind, things that would have obvious appeal to both locals and visitors alike. The tourists were also seeing things that were part of the quotidian landscape of the city, like manhole covers and buses, people walking their dogs and graffiti, things which many locals have ceased to notice long ago, and which the tourists themselves back in their home communities probably took little heed of. The role of architecture is characteristic of the quality of the tourist prosaic. The buildings and their varied architectural styles offered not just a backdrop for the experience of culture, but were a critical component of that experience. But in interviews time and again the discussion of buildings foundered upon any detailed discussion of particular styles or buildings. Instead what mattered was the atmosphere a kind of architexturality that developed from the mix of façades. The critical ingredient was the general “oldness” of the building. This sense of engagement with the cityscape it is argued is a function of the tourist prosaic where the banal aspects of the everyday become noteworthy. But the tourist prosaic also carries another sense, the one that aligns more closely with the touristscape of the city. If we take the prosaic to represent the everyday and the ordinary within the course of being on tour, what constitutes the everyday shifts to include hotels, tour buses and guides, souvenir stands and cafés aimed solely at the tourist with mediocre, overpriced food, and menus in English. Also included here would be the heritage sites that also have resonance for the local population but which on a daily basis are mainly given over to the tourist. The advantage of such an elastic concept as the tourist prosaic resolves one of the biggest dilemmas in addressing what it is that tourists do when on tour, and whether they seek “authenticity” or not. The argument put forth here is that tourists do both, they move through the “tourist bubble” where they can perform as tourists, pulling out their cameras and guidebooks, in the sanitized, purified and petrified historic town square, yet they also seek the lived city in the street full of trendy shops or bars, or the dingy questionable hole-in-the-wall lunch shop where they can experience of bit of contemporary urban life. They want to see that there are pharmacies and butcher shops and get a glimpse into the quotidian practices of the place in which they are sojourning but they also want to shop for appropriately folksy souvenirs. The tourist prosaic even as it draws from the cityscape is not synonymous with the city, because even where the banal is of interest, it is usually framed, or rather juxtaposed against the touristscape. This is also true in the reverse. The monotony of tourist sites is relieved by juxtaposition with the cityscape. Unlike the controlled space of the enclave or heritage park the

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city creeps in. Thus the tourist prosaic can account for the disorderliness of urban life and the smoothness of tourist space. The Path Forward In the subsequent chapters the contours of the tourist prosaic will be laid out, with a focus on the ways in which culture is interpreted in the landscape of the city. Chapter 2 introduces in more detail Peirce’s theory of semiotics. It first contextualizes his work historically and then goes on to introduce the general theory of signs including the constituent elements of object, representamen and interpretant. The role of collateral knowledge, the background information which we bring to bear upon interpretation will be discussed. Our interpretations are based on, and shaped by, our beliefs about the world and these create habits which are active interpretations. It is this notion which is useful in understanding the ways in which we make sense of what we see, feel, hear, and experience and which moves semiotics beyond a simple linguistic exercise. The three categories of the way in which signs relate to their objects iconically, indexically, and symbolically will be introduced. Chapter 3 treats the intersection between landscape and tourism. It offers a brief introduction to the foundational aspects of landscape within geography, with specific attention to the importance of the vernacular and the genius loci in the geography literature and the ways in which this intersects with non-representational work on landscape. It will also consider how tourism studies has treated semiotics and the question of tourism and artifacts in the debate over authenticity, as well as the relationship between conceptions of place as meaningful space and the creation of destination. The concept of the tourist prosaic will be more fully fleshed out. Chapter 4 will provide a brief historical overview of Budapest within the history of the territory of present day Hungary. It then offers a historical sketch of architecture from the nineteenth century through to the present day. Special attention will be paid to the debates within Hungarian society about what it means to be in the midst of Europe but apart. We will then turn specifically to the documents that chronicle this history for the tourists, that is, guidebooks. Chapter 5 explains in detail the portions of the research project which dealt with the city as a whole. This includes discussions about the semiotic exercise of identification of tourists and the methodological issues regarding the interviews. The use of visitor employed photography will also be addressed in general and the methodological details of the Budapest study will be discussed. Chapter 6 will analyze the results of the interviews and the photographs in the context of looking at the city. The discussion will be organized around the themes which emerged in the interviews and the sorting of the photographs. These include the role of language in material form in the landscape, the idea of faded grandeur and disorder and the image of the socialist and post-socialist city. The importance of architecture, especially the notion of architexturality for the tourist experience

Introduction

9

will be addressed, as well as the role of quotidian objects in the urban landscape. The chapter will consider the role that location and geography play as a sign of cultural attribution by exploring the indexical role of locality. Chapter 7 applies Peirce’s theory of sign interpretation to a particular site within the city, the Central Market Hall, and presents a semiotic ethnography of place. Based on interviews and participant observation, what emerges is an interpretive narrative, which highlights the meaning of place, as constituted by the ensemble of individual objects, the cacophony of sights, sounds and smells, the organizing framework of architecture and the experiences with cultural practices engendered by this site. Rather than applying Peirce’s concepts to individual instances of interpretation, what is presented is a phenomenological experience of the site, a walk through the Market Hall, weaving together the role of the market in the urban and cultural landscape of the city, the objects which comprise the site, and the interpretations of foreign visitors to the site. Chapter 8 offers a concise summation of the insights of Peirce’s theory for landscape interpretation. It also recapitulates the main argument about the tourist prosaic as a specific conception of the cityscape–touristscape nexus and the implications for the practice and study of tourism which are attendant. The urban tourism site is one which presents a number of unique challenges for those working to attract tourists and for those on tour, namely the fact that cities are lived places, full of the busyness of daily life and all that this entails. Tourism is just one of a myriad of activities but this is the strength. Tourists can find the symbolic and the banal interwoven and juxtaposed, the monuments, souvenir stands, farmers’ markets, parks, architecture, graffiti, and museums and cafés. All of these together, even the messy bits, constitute an experience of placeness which is an important consideration and one of the reasons for travel.

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Chapter 2

Peirce, Signs and Interpretation Charles Sanders Peirce—American Pragmatist In spite of the fact that Peirce is, in the words of Cornell West, “the most profound philosophical thinker produced in America,” outside the fields of philosophy and semiotics his work remains largely unknown (1989: 43). For various reasons he failed to find a home in academia, but nevertheless published extensively and wrote even more, much of which has only been published posthumously, in eight volumes by Harvard University Press and in a proposed 30 volumes (five of which have been completed) by the Peirce Edition Project at Indiana University Press (1982–). His theories were developed through lectures and articles published in places such as The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Popular Science, and The Monist, and his detailed correspondence with Victoria Lady Welby is a rich reservoir of intellectual insight especially on his sign theory.1 In spite of, or because of, his vast material output, Peirce’s philosophy is notoriously dense. His ideas evolved and sometimes contradicted each other over time and he employed obscure terminology, full of neologisms and common words to which he gave new precise meanings. To Lady Welby he wrote of himself “for a person, like me, who thinks in quite a different system of symbols to words, it is so awkward and often puzzling to translate one’s thoughts into words” (EP 2.480).2 James Jakób Liszka (1996: ix) in the Preface to his introduction of Peirce’s semiotic writes “Let’s be frank. Peirce’s writing is terse and convoluted, without much wit or grace … at times his analyses are so complex and detailed that they seem to make the phenomenon disappear. His examples are obscure and exotic, and so they confuse rather than help. He has a tendency toward digression.” Even his contemporary William James who had the benefit of reading and discussing Peirce’s writing face to face found him opaque, but intriguing. In a letter dated 1869 he wrote “I have just been quit by Chas. S. Peirce, with whom I have been talking about a couple of articles in the St. Louis ‘Journal of Speculative Philosophy’ by him wh. I have just read. They are exceedingly bold subtle & incomprehensible and I can’t say that his vocal elucidations helped me a great deal to their understanding, but they nevertheless interest me strangely” (James 1989: 361). And Freadman 1  These have been published in Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce & Lady Victoria Welby [SS]. 2  References to Peirce’s writings are based on the customary citation practice EP, Essential Peirce and CP, Collected Paper followed by volume and page numbers, and SS, Semiotic and Significs followed by page numbers.

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(2004: 275 n.1) points out, in a 1916 posthumous assessment of his work in a dedicated volume of the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, “all the writers in this volume refer to the difficulty even inaccessibility, of Peirce’s work, [Josiah] Royce taking it as a deliberate strategy and [Christine] Ladd-Franklin predicting that in the interpretive exercise offered by it to future students it may ‘remain forever indecipherable.’” This helps to explain the absence of Peircean semiotic theory from most tourism work which undertakes sign theory (see Chapter 3). Peirce’s work is incredibly dense and intricate but it offers a compelling allurement to those who glimpse the bright flashes against the darkness, to those who attempt a “guess at the riddle.” What Peirce has to say about interpretation is important and can offer a robust theory for explaining landscape interpretation, for explaining the way in which we encounter and accommodate that which is “other” than ourselves (Smith 2002). This chapter will introduce the relevant concepts from Peirce’s theory of semiotic which relate specifically to the problem of landscape interpretation. These include: 1) his theory of sign as constituted by object, representamen/sign, and interpretant; 2) the different relationships which signs have with their objects, as icons, indices, and symbols; and 3) his theory of collateral observation, doubt, belief, and habit. The Sign—Object, Representamen and Interpretant By way of introduction Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s narrator in The Little Prince offers a glimpse into what is at stake in the interpretation of signs. In those days I thought a lot about jungle adventures, and eventually managed to make my first drawing, using a colored pencil … I showed the grown-ups my masterpiece, and I asked them if my drawing scared them. They answered, “Why be scared of a hat?” My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. Then I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so the grown ups could understand. They always need explanations. The grown ups advised me to put away my drawings of boa constrictors, outside or inside, and apply myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why I abandoned, at the age of six, a magnificent career as an artist. I had been discouraged by the failure of my drawing Number One and of my drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again (1971: 3–4).

Peirce’s own writing on semiotic is scattered throughout his voluminous corpus, and as his thoughts on the topic bubbled and boiled over time, his terminology morphed throughout his career. Although Peirce contended that it was logic which

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was at the heart of what he did, Fisch (1986: 320), citing a letter written by Peirce to Lady Victoria Welby near the end of his life, convincingly argues that the underlying theory is truly semiotic. While there are a number of ways to put his work into order, one of the most accepted is to divide Peirce’s work into the early and the late work (Hookway 1992; Short 2004). Peirce’s interest in signs is closely related to what I see as his epistemology and his pragmatism, which we will look at in more detail in the next section. According to Short (2004), if one traces the evolution of Peirce’s thought, his mature semiotic rests on his conception of pragmatism and prevents the former from being trapped in the infinite regress of Saussurian semiotics, bound in an endless parade of thought defining thought in an arbitrary chain of reference. Peirce’s notion of sign is based upon a triadic relationship between a sign, its object, and its interpretants. Confusingly the term sign is used by Peirce to refer to both the whole triadic unit of object–sign–interpretant and just the middle term which he also at times calls the representamen (EP. 2.272–3). This work will follow the general practice of referring to the representamen as “sign” and will endeavor to make clear when the discussion is related to this element or the larger triple entity of sign. Peirce envisioned a tripartite system whereby a sign is composed of three integral parts—an object; a sign/representamen (see Benedict 1985 for a chronological discussion of Peirce’s use of the term representamen); and the interpretant which is the final aspect of making sense of the sign, the resulting action or thought which comes from interpreting the object as represented by the sign (EP 2.272–3). The sign, as middle term, is the least developed of the elements in his writing as it seems to have been the least problematic in that it simply and straightforwardly “represents,” mediating between the object and the interpretation. As he wrote to Lady Victoria Welby, “I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by … its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect is called its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former” (EP 2.478). In a sense, the sign occurs when one’s attention is drawn to an object amidst the background of the world, noticing a paw print in the woods for example. Although Peirce’s inclusion of “upon a person” he contended was a “sop to Cerberus” in that he remained obsessed with the communal nature of knowledge which he referred to as the commens, nevertheless time after time his examples turn upon the work of cognizing taking place in the individual mind. Throughout his writing one sees the concern with this problem of how an object can not just be represented, but ascribed meaning. The sign is determined by the object, in the way that the paw print in the woods is “determined” by the animal which left it. But the sign can only hint at the object which according to Peirce remains external to the representation of it at the same time that it gives shape, so to speak, to its representation. There are, in a sense, two aspects to the objects, what Peirce terms the immediate and the dynamical. As an analogy we can think about a photograph, say of the Empire State Building. The picture is a representation. As such it gives us a less than

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perfect idea about the actual building—we can not see it in three dimensions, we can not feel its surfaces, nor experience the vertiginous feeling of looking down upon a miniaturized populace on the street below. But the photo does depict the building and were we to compare it to the actual building the representation would bear a resemblance. The image resembles the actual building because when the aperture on the camera was opened the building and the play of light and shadow struck the film affecting the image recorded upon it. The object, the Empire State Building, which is represented in the photo is termed by Peirce the immediate object, it is the object which is embodied in the representation while the actual building exists as the dynamical object. This split solves several problems of interpretation in that the object can both be in the sign and out. As Liska (1996: 22) explains, “[t]he division of objects allows us to view the sign from two aspects: the object from the perspective of its representation in the sign, and the object as the determinant of the sign, the so-called process of determination (understood as a process of constraint rather than causation).” And here we can see the imperfection of our analogy. But to stay with this example were we to travel to New York City and go to the Empire State Building, our empirical explorations of the building itself, touching the walls, gazing downward, would not necessarily mean that we had gained access to the “dynamical object” itself, since our cognition of the world external to ourselves is always mediated through the sign. Always. Our trip offers but one brief encounter in the life of the Empire State Building and the “dynamical object” is made up of synchronic and diachronic representations, the view at street level and the view from far off, and all of these can not be captured by us. As Mats Bergman (2002: 3) writes, “Peirce declares that there is no such thing as an absolute empirical datum; an experience, no matter how simple, is always a sign rendered comprehensible by its position in a cognitive flow. There is no pure experience of something as black, because blackness is something that is associated with a thing in understanding; and such an attribution is a complex semiotic act, performed mostly without control, but always against the setting of a wider semiotic background.” Like a game of 20 questions, the immediate object can only hint at the actual dynamical object which is outside the act of sign interpretation. At the same time, we should resist thinking that there are two separate and distinct objects, in thought and in reality. Peirce was not a dualist, nor was he a nominalist despite his flirtation with it in his early career. As Fisch notes (1986: 184) “[h]e often said in later years that the proper order of philosophizing was to begin with nominalism and give it a fair trial before going on to realism (CP 8.251). As Peirce wrote, ‘Everybody ought to be a nominalist at first, and to continue in that opinion until he is driven out of it by the force majeure of irreconcilable facts’”(CP 4.1). It is this movement which can be seen as influencing Peirce’s conception of the way in which the sign and the object interact. The sign is determined by the object and in turn shapes the interpretant. But because interpretation is neither transparent nor straightforward, Peirce draws a distinction between interpretations, offering three facets. The immediate

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interpretant is “the interpretant represented or signified in the sign,” the final interpretant is the “effect that would be produced on the mind by the sign after sufficient development of thought,” and in between these two sits the dynamical interpretant “the effect actually produced on the mind” (EP 2.478). In another formulation Peirce writes that “The Immediate Interpretant is an abstraction, consisting in a possibility. The Dynamical Interpretant is a single actual event. The Final Interpretant is that toward which the actual tends” (SS 111). The immediate interpretant is embodied in the sign, it is the possibility for meaning to be made. One way to think about this is to consider an actual “sign” so to speak, a pictogram posted in a foreign city. Our recognition of it as a sign conveying information constitutes the immediate interpretant. Now pictograms are intended to be intelligible regardless of language; that is why they are the current lingua franca of the European Union. But of course they depend upon context and often cultural context, so our ability to “interpret” a pictogram, as with any sign, does not entail a one-to-one correspondence of object–representation– interpretation. The dynamical interpretant is an actual interpretation of a sign in a place and in a time. The interpretation can be a thought, an utterance, an action or all of these. And of course we might be wrong. But because what we are dealing with is the world and our cognition of it, rather than simply words and images as in Saussurian semiotics, Peirce’s theory offers a way to comprehend how Nathan Houser (1992: EP xxxix) writes “objects (or the external world) can determine mind.” He goes on “The interpretant is, or helps make up, a habit that ‘guides’ our future (and present) actions or thought with respect to the object in question, or objects like the one in question. If the interpretant is untrue to the object, our behavior will not be (or may not be) successful—reality will have its way with us. Not until our interpretations (our ideas or intellectual habits) are fully attuned to their objects will we avoid unexpected confrontation with a resistant reality. In this way, the real object determines or shapes our mind, our reservoir of intellectual habits” (Houser 1992: EP xxxix–xl). Thus interpretation is both wide open— subject to error—but also bounded by the dynamical object which underlies the sign. Our mistaken interpretations may hold out for a while, indefinitely even, but then they may not, and we will eventually bump up against something that makes us begin the interpretive process anew. In the case of the foreign pictogram, the image on the bus of the hat wearing stick figure with his head tipped back holding up a bottle which in profile looks awfully like a wine bottle, does not simply mean “no guzzling wine” but also includes fizzy drinks too as we are informed by the angry rant and agitated gesticulating of a rule-abiding passenger as we sip our Coca-cola. The interpretant is the biggest difference between the bifurcated, linguistic based theory of Saussure and the more robust theory put forth by Peirce, and it can

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be seen as emanating from Peirce’s pragmatism, or as he termed it Pragmaticism.3 As T.S. Short (2004: 228) notes in his exploration of the development of Peirce’s sign theory, “the fundamental revolution in doctrine that occurred in 1907 was to have recognized that it is the habit itself, and not a concept of it, that is the interpretant (more precisely, the ultimate logical interpretant) of a concept.” By way of illustration, the sound of a horn is an object, the hearing and recognition that it is a horn by a listener is the sign, whereas the quick jump out of the way of the oncoming car to which the horn is attached would be the result of the interpretant working in the mind resulting in the intended action of moving out of the way in order not to get run over. Peirce wrote to William James, “the Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any mind does act [i.e. the dynamical interpretant] but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of this type: ‘If so and so were to happen to any mind, this sign would determine that mind to such and such conduct’” (EP 2.499). In light of Peirce’s adherence to fallibilism, the future in which the final interpretant would reign is a future that is ever receding but which is ever possible. Semiosis in theory is never ending in that only when a sign represents itself can semiosis be brought to an end. “The trouble is,” writes Peirce, “nothing does speak for itself, strictly nothing, speaking strictly. One can not bid his neighbor good morning, really effectually, unless that neighbor supplies the needed commentary on the syntax. If he does not,” Peirce contends “I might as well shake a rattle” (MS 427.146, quoted in Freadman 2004: 176). It is the question of syntax that is relevant with respect to the tripartite interpretant. As semiosis proceeds more collateral knowledge can be brought to bear. Collateral knowledge exists outside a particular semiosis, and helps fill in the details (EP 2.493–6). “By collateral observation,” Peirce wrote, “I mean previous acquaintance with what the sign denotes. Thus if the Sign be the sentence ‘Hamlet was mad,’ to understand what this means one must know that men are sometimes in that strange state; one must have seen madmen or read about them; and it will be all the better if one specifically knows (and need not be driven to presume) what Shakespeare’s notion of insanity was. All that is collateral observation and is no part of the Interpretant” (EP 2.494). The more information one can bring to bear on the process of interpreting, the closer one can come to the dynamical object of the sign, though along the way there are multiple stopping points. So while semiosis in theory can not be complete, in any particular inquiry into a sign, in actu, a final resting point can be reached, until belief is disturbed and semiosis is undertaken again (Freadman 2004). The way in which collateral information works in tandem with the interpretant allows for an accretion of meaning, the denotation and connotation of a sign. As Eco (1976: 16) writes, “[i]f a sign ought to be directly compared to its object, 3  Pragmaticism is the term used by Peirce as distinguished from the pragmatism of William James (1943 [1907]).

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intended in an extensional way, no metaphor would be possible. To call Achilles a lion means nothing if you compare Achilles to a given token lion or even to the class of all lions. The metaphor works only because among the interpretants of the word lion there are concepts of ‘courage’ and ‘fierceness.’ In a world without interpretants a sickle and hammer would only mean a sickle crossed with a hammer. And Leonardo’s Last Supper would only be a very gloomy dinner or a meeting between thirteen unshaven men.” Peirce demonstrates this tension in interpretation by showing the difficulty of pulling apart the actual personality of Teddy Roosevelt from the image of him: “It is useless to attempt to discuss the genuineness and possession of a personality beneath the histrionic presentation of Theodore Roosevelt with a person who recently has come from Mars and never heard of Theodore before” (EP 2.498). In this case one would have to start with the bare minimum in terms of the fact that Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States (assuming that one had already explained to the Martian what a president is and the political entity which is the US). Peirce at one point analogizes knowledge and meaning to an onion; we attempt to pull back the layers to find the “it” which is the kernel of the thing in question only to discover that there is nothing inside, that each of the layers was meaningful (CP 4.87). Meaning accretes though not all that falls to the object should remain. The distinction between the immediate and dynamical object, as noted above, emerges out of Peirce’s adherence to fallibilism, which is directly related to his involvement with, and belief in, scientific inquiry. As Peirce put it, “fallibilism is the doctrine that our knowledge is never absolute, but always swims, as it were, in a continuum of uncertainty and indeterminacy” (CP 1.171). In other words, there is always the possibility to further refine meaning. Hookway comments, “the contrast is between the object as it seems to be at the time at which the sign is first used and interpreted, and the object as it is known to be in the final interpretant” (see below) (1992: 139). Collateral Observations, Habit and Belief What happens when there is no actual object, no “real” Theodore with which to compare? This is one reason why Peirce shied away from using the term “real object” in juxtaposition with immediate object, instead coming to use dynamical (and at other times dynamoid) since it might, in fact, be a fiction, Hamlet or a unicorn. Less opaque is Peirce’s discussion of the object in an unpublished “letter to the editor” regarding pragmatism and the way in which the dynamical (or here termed “real” object) can be appertained through the immediate object in the sign. It is worth quoting Peirce at length: Now that we have attained, you and I, Reader, as I hope, a pretty clear notion of what, in strictness of speech, must be meant by the Object of a sign, it becomes pertinent to inquire how far such strictness of speech is practicable and

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Tourists, Signs and the City convenient. Of the two loosely synonymous terms, “individual” and “singular,” the former translates Aristotle’s τὁ ἂτομον, the latter his τὁ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον. “Individual” is usually and well defined as that which is absolutely determinate; the “singular” is that which is absolutely determinate as long as time is so, or to generalize this definition, is variable only in two precisely opposite and converse ways of varying. Now, it is quite impossible that any collateral observations, however they might be eked out by imagination or thought, should ever approach a positive idea of a singular, let alone an individual; that is, that we should actually think it as determinate in each one of the more than millions of respects in which things may vary. Suppose, for example, that it is visible; and consider only the outline of a single aspect of it. Even though this outline were restricted to being one of a family of curves, say ellipses, the different possible shapes between any two limiting shapes are more than innumerable; for there is a continuum of them. It would be impossible to complete our collateral observation, aided though it were by imagination and thought, even in this one, almost insignificant, respect. It is plainly impracticable, therefore to restrict the meaning of the term “object of a sign” to the Object strictly so called. For, after all, collateral observation, aided by imagination and thought, will usually result in some idea, though this need not be particularly determinate; but may be indefinite in some regards and general in others. Such an apprehension, approaching, however distantly, that of the Object strictly so called, ought to be, and usually is, termed the ‘immediate object’ of the sign in the intention of its utterer. It may be that there is no such thing or fact in existence, or in any other mode of reality; but we surely shall not deny to the common picture of a phoenix or to a figure of naked truth in her well the name of a ‘sign,’ simply because the bird is a fiction and Truth an ens rationis. If there be anything real (that is, anything whose characters are true of it independently of whether you or I, or any man, or any number of men think them as being characters of it, or not) that sufficiently corresponds with the immediate object (which, since it is an apprehension, is not real), then whether this be identifiable with the Object strictly so called or not, it ought to be called, and usually is called, the ‘real object’ of the sign. By some kind of causation or influence it must have determined the significant character of the sign (EP 2.408–9).

Several important points are made clear in this passage. First, the distinction between the sign and the world is made manifest. We apprehend the world through signs, through interpretation. The object which we are grasping has both the character which we interpret it as having, and the character which is inherent in it as an object, in other words, the thing in itself and our interpretation. The above passage comes from a manuscript of 1907, and shows the mature theorizing of his semiotic and the influence of realism on Peirce’s thought, and, as the editors’ gloss on this piece asserts, it offers the most “clearly articulated proof” of his pragmatism as rooted in his semiotic (Houser et al. 1998: 398).

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So while the object exists outside of semiosis, interpretation is not transparent, nor is it straightforward. When Peirce talks about “you or I, or any man, or any number of men,” it is apparent that there can be multiple interpretations of an object and that some are better and some are worse. Those which are better more closely approximate the “real object” and the proof comes in the execution so to speak. This is in essence the Pragmatic Maxim to “[c]onsider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (EP 1.132). Peirce goes on to illustrate his claim with reference to hardness, free will, weight, and force about which he writes, “Whether we ought to say that a force is an acceleration or that it causes an acceleration, is a mere question of propriety of language, which has no more to do with our real meaning than the difference between the French idiom ‘Il fait froid’ and its English equivalent ‘It is cold’ … The idea which the word force excites in our minds has no other function than to affect our actions, and these actions can have no reference to force otherwise than through its effects” (EP 1.136). In this one can see clearly the unique contribution of Peirce’s semiotic; as with Saussure, the actual words are arbitrarily connected to things in the world, in this case, the feeling of cold and force, but unlike his Swiss contemporary, it is our actions which come from our cognizing of these things that embody the true interpretation of them. Also noteworthy in the above passage is Peirce’s use of the term collateral observation which here is in some ways at variance with his use of the term in the Teddy Roosevelt example. Here it is insufficient whereas in other cases it is the means by which we can begin the interpretive process. Collateral observation is that which we bring to the table when we enter into semiosis, it is the accumulated knowledge about the world which allows us to recognize that Teddy Roosevelt is a man and not a horse. Of course collateral observation is the result of previous semiotic encounters and a fleshing out of our conceptions about the world. In contradistinction to the Cartesian concepts of doubt, Peirce contends that we do not go out into the world doubting everything, but rather we work according to a set of beliefs and only when we encounter something which does not fit, which is counter to our preconceived notions, do we then set about examining the phenomenon. But that said, doubt enters at all levels of cognition from our cogitations about the nature of transubstantiation to those about which coins we should use to pay a taxi fare (EP 1.128–33). According to Peirce, inquiry is the result of irritation of belief, and its resolution results in habit. And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life. We have seen that it has just three properties: First, it is something that we are aware of; second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and, third, it involves the establishment in or nature of a rule of action, or say for short, a habit. As it appeases the irritation of doubt, which is the motive for thinking, thought relaxes, and comes to rest for a moment when

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The above passage is from Peirce’s article in the Popular Science Monthly from 1878 and immediately precedes his famous definition of the pragmatic maxim. The essay does not touch upon his semiotic but the implications of this idea for his concept of sign and interpretation can be seen. Peirce only briefly touches upon child development per se (EP 1.18–20), but one can say that the child interacts with the world, interpreting signs, and accumulating knowledge which forms the backbone of the “collateral observation” which is then brought to bear on further interpretation, all the way through childhood and adulthood. For example, a child in the park comes running to her mother saying she has seen the most amazing insect, it flies and threads behind it white ribbons. Look she says, there is another one, pointing to an airplane followed by two thin threads of condensation. The mother says oh dear, that’s not an insect, that’s an airplane to which the child, with a pitying giggle at the ludicrousness of her mother’s mistake, replies no, mama, airplanes are much bigger than that, and runs off. Eventually the child will encounter more and more resistance to the idea of the fantastic beribboned flying insect, through the doubtful reaction of others, her best friend whose judgment she trusts more than her parents on these matters, or through pictures showing clearly decipherable airplanes with con-trails, or even such a thing not far from an airport, low enough as to make out the metal wings and tail, or eventually she’ll learn about distance and perspective and the fantastic insects will go the way of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. One could term this the Velcro method of knowledge accumulation, in that more and more bits of information are accumulated and the sign is given more complex significance, moving closer towards the dynamical object. Peirce’s discussion of Ralph Pepperill demonstrates his idea of this quite clearly (EP 2. 404–5). One day he hears that Ralph Pepperill has a mare called Pee Dee Kew and since he is unacquainted with either the horse or the man, “it means to me only that some man has bought some famous trotter; and since I knew already that some men do make such purchases, it does not interest me.” He hears the next day that Mr Pepperill is, besides the new owner of Pee Dee Kew, also the owner of a famous edition of Plato. “Now although I never was knowingly acquainted with any purchaser of crack trotting-horses, yet I should not have supposed that such a person would be aware of possessing an old edition of Plato whose chief value is due to the circumstances that modern citations from the Dialogues usually refer to it.” Now, whenever he hears the name Ralph Pepperill he pays attention and builds up an idea about the man which is “pretty

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fairly” on par with that of Mr Pepperill’s acquaintances. “This imparts, not merely an interest, but also a meaning to every little scrap of new information about him;—to scraps that would have conveyed no information whatsoever, had they first introduced his name to my ears.” It is this notion of signification, of making an object meaningful that MacCannell (1976, 1999) draws from Peirce in his exploration of tourist activity; a rock seems to be just a rock until it is marked out as significant with its label that says “moon rock.” One other point ought to be made with respect to the object as noted in the above long excerpt from his unpublished letter to the editor. Peirce is clear that even with objects that are not “real,” in this case the Phoenix, in other places the Unicorn, there nevertheless exists a “real” concept of them. So even though these may be a fiction, with no white horse with a horn growing upon its head to compare to (unlike a real Teddy Roosevelt who can be held up next to his histrionic image) there are nevertheless a set of established facts which correspond. So one can not show a white horse without a horn, nor a Narwhale with a horn but without four legs and a mane and expect it to be accepted as a unicorn by any child who happens to be interested in such mythical creatures. That our beliefs, the satchel of ideas about the world we carry with us, shape our actions is one of the most important contributions of Peirce’ interpretive theory. “The essence of belief,” Peirce writes, “is the establishment of a habit” (CP 5: 398). Peirce’s theories about belief and his sign theory in general are formed by his categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness (EP 2. 160–78). Like all Peirce’s concepts it is complex and the full extent of it is spread thorough his writings but a simple shorthand is offered by Houser (1992: xxx–xxxi) as thus: firstness is single and is a feeling; secondness is dual, depending upon relations and an action or reaction; thirdness is a triple relation, mediating between the other two creating a rule or habit which emerges from “learning or mediation as in thought or semiosis.” The triadic nature of the categories is found throughout and is also at the heart of thinking about the elements which constitute the sign. Signs and Objects—Icons, Indices and Symbols Peirce created an elaborate classification system for his semiotic with regard to the sign, in relation to the object, the sign (representamen), and the interpretant. Contrary to the assertion of Hodge and Kress (1988: 27) who claim, incorrectly, that Peirce’s semiotic is “rudimentary” and impoverished because it only allows for three kinds of signs, the full schema results in ten categories or sixty-six classes for any particular sign (EP 2. 296; 2: 481).4 According to Peirce’s logic, a sign relates to itself as either a qualisign, sinsign or legisign; to its interpretant as either

4  For a more detailed explanation of Peirce’s classificatory scheme see SS Appendix B.

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a rheme, dicent or argument; and to its object as either an icon, index or symbol (EP 2.289–99).5 As an academic exercise, classifying any particular sign is not a matter of simple straightforward application but a logical game which can result in reasoned arguments for various arrangements and assignments. The intricacy of the system and its unwieldiness, it can be claimed, are not made up for by a huge payoff in added insight into any sign in actu. In other words the energy exerted in collating and labeling sign types, may not contribute greatly to our understanding of the way in which cognition in the guise of sign interpretation works in the real world. That said, the classificatory system is not purely academic since the relation of the sign to the object yields an elegant and remarkably usable account for comprehending the relationship which holds between signs and actual objects. A sign, Peirce contends, is “determined” by its dynamical object in three ways: through resemblance or shared quality resulting in an icon; through actual relation or connection resulting in an index; or through social convention resulting in a symbol. Peirce concedes though that few pure examples of icons, indices, and symbols may exist. Rather a sign can embody each of the qualities and what matters is the way in which signs function iconically, indexically, and/or symbolically rather than their ontological status as one of the types (EP 2.10). It is this elasticity which makes Peirce’s theory so eminently useful in the matter of understanding the way the mind comprehends the world, and in the case of this research, the way in which landscape and material culture play out in the tourist experience. In order to get a better view of the way in which signs and objects relate let us look more closely at Peirce’s statements about each of the categories. A symbol is related to its object through what Peirce refers to as “habit, disposition or rule” (CP 4.447). Irene Portis-Winner (2002: 51) writes, “Saussure’s arbitrary sign or symbol should not be confounded with Peirce’s Symbol. The latter is neither divided nor entirely arbitrary and linear; it is a general rule, rational, logical and abstract, but modified by hierarchical structure, that is its iconic and indexical levels.” Examples of symbols are the use of the word dog to represent a furry, four-legged drooling animal, counting, and any sort of abstraction (CP 2.92; EP 2.5–9). Symbols have no resemblance to their objects and are not connected to them in any real way other than through routine (CP 4.447). Peirce is in agreement with Saussure regarding language, in that all terms are related to their objects out of convention rather than some underlying onomatopoetic relationship (EP 2.163), what Saussure identified as an arbitrary linkage; there is little inherently treelike about the word tree, neither the words of other languages, arbre, baum, nor fa. But for Peirce it is because a community has agreed that the object tree will be represented by a particular agglomerate of sounds, hence there is an underlying regularity to it. The German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer contends that we are socialized into a linguistic community with its traditions and this in turn 5  The discussion about the intepretant as rheme, dicent or argument most clearly shows the influence of logic on Peirce’s semiotic theory.

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shapes our culturally infused horizon of meaning with which we understand the world around (1989 [1975]). Thus children, when they are learning to speak, take up language as a game of give and take, replicating to the best of their abilities the labels that the speakers apply to the world around them. And while they may fashion their own terms, momi for pacifier or addi for water, when they enter into the wider community and these no longer are effectual, meaning that the desired result of being handed a glass of water does not take place, they will learn the power of communally accepted language and adapt, or consign themselves to remain thirsty. Symbols hold an interesting place in Peirce’s epistemology. On the one hand he asserts that they are what allow for abstract thinking, which is a “great engine of discovery” and “in many respects … the very warp of reason;” at the same time he contends that because they are based on habit, “and since knowledge is habit, they do not enable us to add to our knowledge even so much as a necessary consequent, unless by means of a definite preformed habit” (CP 4.531). While this may seem tautological, the idea behind it is simply this: habits are a form of status quo, a kind of “common sense” which allows us to function in the world. Of common sense Peirce writes, “there are some propositions that a man, as a fact, does not doubt; and what he does not doubt, he can, at most, make but a futile pretense to criticize. The test of doubt and belief is conduct” (EP 2.432–3). It is only when the smooth flow provided by our habit of interpretation is interrupted that real inquiry begins (EP 1.114). Being thrust into a foreign country where one’s words are no longer efficacious has sent many a tourist on the quest for the knowledge hidden in the travel dictionary. An index represents its object by actual or physical connection to it, or by being in “a real relation to it.” At other times, Peirce contends, the index can not really tell us anything about the actual object; it rather forces our attention to it, in the manner of a pointing index finger. Examples of indices include the hands of a clock, a weathervane, a landmark, a hygrometer, a photograph, a bullet hole, a knock on the door (CP 2.304; CP 4.447; EP 2.163; EP 2.274). The case of the hygrometer clearly illustrates what Peirce has in mind by the index which can not tell us anything. Although in Peirce’s time it was still understood that the little man in an old fashioned hygrometer would come out in moist conditions, if two hundred years on and the purpose of the object has been forgotten, nevertheless the little man will still continue his appearance when the weather gets wet, he will still indicate, “despite the fact that it ceased actually to convey any information” to those observing it (EP 2.163). Icons are signs which are related to their objects by resemblance. The sign shares a likeness, or, notably, may share in the quality of the object. Peirce’s examples of icons include a map, a painting,6 a diagram, an error distribution curve, the feeling evoked by a piece of music, if it invokes what the composer 6  A photograph Peirce contends, differs from a painting in that the resulting image is made by actual connection to the object through the effect of the object through light

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intended (CP 8.335; EP 1.226; EP 2.5). By way of illustration, Peirce offers the example of a yard stick which should be representative of a yard. If any particular yard stick were to be brought into direct comparison with the standard measure housed in Westminster Abby then the yard stick as icon would be found to be similar, or would no longer be considered a yard stick (EP 2.461). There are in fact times however, when icons are representative of objects which in fact do not exist, such as a statue of a centaur, and yet, if it has the shape of what is understood as a centaur then it does not matter that the object, a real living breathing centaur, does not exist other than in myth (EP 2.163). Peirce also wrote “an icon is a sign fit to be used as such because it possesses the quality signified” (EP 2.307). This is an important qualification which highlights the connotative, as opposed to the denotative, function of signs. In this sense, it is not that the sign is a copy, a direct image of the object, but rather that it embodies the essence of the object, and hence may appear nothing like it. These two aspects of the icon are found within our lay usage of the term—the icon on the computer screen for example is meant to represent, by resemblance, the program to which it is attached, but it is also evoked when we say that so and so is an icon of some phenomenon, like the new economy. In the former case we may have a file representing a folder, and in the latter, the person does not have dollar signs all over them but through synecdoche is emblematic of the larger phenomenon in question. The more direct relationship between sign and object in which resemblance is the predominating factor is grounded in the Orthodox practice of crafting icons, or eikons, as images which not only represent holy figures but themselves are holy objects for veneration. Alfredo Tradigo (2006: 7) in his catalogue of Orthodox icons writes, “every attitude of the body, every movement of the hand, every color used for the clothing, every building or fold of drapery has a precise meaning in icons.” They employ a set of formulized practices to portray their objects which are not necessarily literal portrayals. And while his concern is with religious icons and the practice of iconography, these claims by extension can be applied to signs in general underscoring their hybrid nature as not entirely faithfully relating to their objects in one way alone, but embodying various aspects of indexicality, iconicity, and symbolicity. It is this aspect of Peirce’s semiotic which pushes beyond the linguistic bounds within which Saussure worked, and which demonstrates most clearly the way in which sign interpretation is applicable beyond language to understand the way cognition of the world takes place.

and chemicals which constitutes photography, hence it is categorized as an index (see EP 2.5–6).

Chapter 3

Landscape and Tourism Introduction J.B. Jackson in musing on his early adventures in Europe wrote, “it was, to be sure, a cautious, uneventful, and at times a fatiguing and solitary way of passing a summer vacation: tramping out to admire Baedeker’s list of three-star monuments, conscientiously sampling the local food, taking lessons in conversational French or German or Italian, and always trying not to resemble a tourist. But as I look back on many summers of such European travel I wonder if they were not in fact an excellent introduction to the different phase of tourism that I have learned to call landscape studies” (1980: 9). In thinking about tourism it is difficult to ignore landscape. These two phenomena have a natural affinity since without being too trite, touring takes place in a place, one which may be radically different from or comfortably familiar to the place in which we go about our daily lives. In geography the term place, as we will see below, has a particular meaning, indicating a site which is meaning-ful, either in itself or because of the memories, feelings and emotions we bring to it. “Sense of place” is used to describe the sentiment when a site resonates with significance. In touring, one of the distinguishing factors in separating out the vacation site from the home is the idea of destination. The way in which it is used in everyday parlance, a destination can be either a place to which we are traveling, or a must see, an event a spectacle. In either case, it is construed as special, unique, and worthy of our attention, it is a place, rather than simply an undifferentiated locale. Thus understanding the importance of place as opposed to space, the role that the geographic imagination plays, the way in which the spirit of a site, its genius loci, converts a place into a destination are all critical questions for tourism studies, and all questions which draw directly upon theories of landscape. Geographers and others working on cultural landscapes have been dealing with these issues since the emergence of landscape as an heuristic category. This chapter will give a brief introduction to the landscape and tourism studies works, with special emphasis upon those which underlie this research. Attention will be given to the ways in which destinations are made, and to the spatial partitioning and the multilayered urban landscape as it plays a role in the intersection of the cityscape and the touristscape, most notably the ways in which these two categories interact in various ways creating different experiences of place in the tourist prosaic.

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The Study of the Landscape The study of landscape within American geography can be traced back to the work of University of California at Berkeley geographer, Carl Sauer. Sauer was himself influenced by European thought on geography including the writings of Alfred Hettner, Alexander von Humboldt, Paul Vidal de la Blache, and Lucien Febvre. “The Morphology of Landscape” (1963 [1925]) provided the first explicit programmatic statement by an American geographer regarding the study of landscape, and he set out a distinct methodology for embarking upon an investigation of the land as landscape, that is, land shaped by both natural and human factors. For Sauer a landscape was a unity of physical and cultural influences acting and reacting upon one another; the privileged position did not lie with either; “[t]he content of landscape is found therefore in the physical qualities of area that are significant to man and in the forms of his use of the area, in facts of physical background and facts of human culture” (1963 [1925]: 325). Sauer’s work on morphology is a work of synthesis for the field of geography, in that in it he calls for a holistic approach to landscape. The physical features— climate, vegetation, soil type, landforms, and hydrology—and the cultural elements—population, housing type, forms of production, and communication— working together over time produce the cultural landscape. Sauer claimed to take a phenomenological approach to landscape (not, though, the Husserlian view taken in the 1970s by humanist geographers) in that the landscape is a phenomenon that is to be understood using the tools of the geographer, that is, observation. While many see “The Morphology of Landscape” as the key document in the development of landscape studies, it can be argued that Sauer’s (1941) 1940 Presidential Address to the Association of American Geographers provides a better roadmap for understanding the way in which landscape studies developed. In the address he lays out a modified framework for undertaking historical geography studies, arguing that cultural geography, that is, culture’s manifestations upon the land, is the true object of human geography, which aims at explaining areal differentiation. In a trenchant critique of superficial geographic practices he says: The historical geographer must therefore be a regional specialist, for he must not only know the region as it appears today; he must know its lineaments so well that he can find in it the traces of the past, and he must know its qualities so well that he can see it as it was under past situations … Such work obviously cannot be done by sample studies ranging widely, but may require a lifetime given to learning one major context of nature and culture … The human geographer cannot be a world tourist moving from people to people and land to land, and knowing only casually and doubtfully related things about any of them (1941: 10).

To that end, he advocated detailed archival work on primary sources in the language of the area under study, and painstakingly detailed field work. As often

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noted (e.g. Agnew, Livingstone and Rogers 1999) Sauer’s own work did not achieve the ideal set forth. But two important things came from his cogitations on landscape. First, the focus upon the interaction of humans and environment served as a counter to the environmentally deterministic views which obtained in American geography in the interwar period, represented, for example, in the work of Ellen Churchill Semple. In addition, the positioning of culture as it shaped and was shaped by the physical world as synonymous with human geography inspired an attention to landscape which was carried out by the so called Berkeley School geographers, people such as David Lowenthal, Wilbur Zelinsky, Fred Kniffen, and their students. What resulted was a fecund field of study, one which has impacted intellectual inquiry far beyond the boundaries of academic geography (see for example Schama 1995; Ladd 1997; Sandweiss 2001). It is the analytical notion of cultural landscape as uncovered through detailed field work as well as archival studies, drawing upon a myriad of sources to understand the look of the land, and the necessity of being versed in the nature and culture of a place which allows for an understanding to be formed by the researcher who is usually in the role of outsider. While Sauer’s work and that of the Berkeley School has been accused of being too nostalgic, focused on societies and landscapes in which the physical shape of the land and the built environment is directly impacted by the social and cultural norms of the community (Henderson 2003), the work of J.B. Jackson broadened the scope of what could be considered a “landscape” focusing much attention on the vernacular and the built environment. In 1951 Jackson began the magazine Landscape and for 17 years, it was published under his direction, during which time he financed, edited, offered translations of foreign-language works and contributed articles, essays, critiques, editorials and book reviews (both under his own name and numerous nom de guerre). In the mid-1950s Landscape, Sauer and the Berkeley School geographers were formally “introduced” to each other; the magazine benefited from their inclusion and they benefited from having a forum for their work. Contributors included Sauer as well as Homer Aschmann, Clarence Glacken, John Fraser Hart, David Lowenthal, Cotton Mather, and Wilbur Zelinsky. The magazine was read by, and received contributions from, great writers from many other disciplines as well—history, architecture and landscape architecture, sociology, anthropology, design—including Herbert Gans, Lewis Mumford, and Kevin Lynch. Jackson in 1967 was invited to teach landscape at Berkeley, and in the 1970s he also began lecturing at Harvard, inspiring a generation of academic landscape scholars. Unlike Sauer who set forth a clear guide for landscape study, Jackson demonstrated through practice rather than programmatic statements his approach to landscape. His fascination with roads and his less than critical pronouncements about the landscape which had built up around the American highway can be seen as emerging from his engagement with this landscape from the back of his motorcycle as he traveled across the country.

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I would contend that his landscape “method” demonstrates three things: 1) looking is important, and not just looking and seeing, but looking and interpreting the large scene and the small details up close, immersing oneself into the picture, providing a multi-sensual experience, a kinesthetic engagement with the landscape; 2) important information is to be gleaned about a culture from investigating the vernacular elements of the landscape, both the sublime and the unsightly—front lawns and strip malls in America for example—and in many cases it is the vernacular elements that will tell you more than the large-scale symbolic sites; 3) landscape is a much broader term than the way it is presented in the Sauerian sense, rather it can include an examination of the garage or the front lawn as well as an entire community and while the physical aspects are important it is the human elements which are rich in interpretive possibilities. Jackson’s writing with its clear, jargon free prose, and the lack of footnotes are both part of the appeal and the “limitation” of Jackson’s work. As Donald Meinig (1979: 228–9) writes, “all is assertion and argument, nothing is documented or formally demonstrated; much is observed, nothing is measured. Jackson is a stimulating thinker, he is not a professional scholar” (229). He also lobs an oblique criticism at Jackson for being enamored with the ugly, the common, the disposable, the vernacular side of the American landscape; “The American people were opening their eyes to their surroundings, as Jackson wanted them to do, but they were shocked and outraged at what they saw, and he was not” (231). For Jackson, the aesthetic qualities of the landscape were not qualified in terms such as attractive and ugly but rather beauty resided in what was appropriate. And so the “decorated shed” was fitting for the American way of life and hence was beautiful.1 It has also been pointed out that Jackson “wrote primarily about the landscape of men; rarely about those of women and children” (Groth and Wilson 2003: 12). One senses that this is less a critique than a lament since Jackson was such a keen observer that he would have added much to the discussion about these other places which make up the American landscape. Others have criticized Jackson for being theoretically impoverished and yet as Paul Groth, who inherited Jackson’s lecture notes revealed, the marginalia were filled with reference to social theory (Rowntree 1996: 148 n.3). He just chose not to wield his theoretical knowledge like a hammer. During the 1960s although Jackson and the Berkeley school continued to write on landscape, regional studies within geography were subject to critique for being too descriptive and lacking in explanatory rigor. Landscape studies also came under scrutiny and as a preferred topic of inquiry was overshadowed as quantitative methods and Marxist analysis came to the fore. Within geography 1  Jackson’s embrace of the strip mall and his loathing of the International Style though, are in my opinion ironic. It is clear that the strip is for him an example of the vernacular, whereas the other, as the name implies, is a placeless construction severed from the way of life of everyday people and imposed from on high. Yet the strip is as placeless and even often times atopic in style as any Mies van der Rohe building.

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though there were those who were unsatisfied with either of these approaches, writers such as Anne Buttimer, Edward Relph, and Yi-Fu Tuan who worried that the people had disappeared from the scenery. And while these writers were not a coterie, nevertheless they were working along similar lines of inquiry in seeking to understand humans’ relationship with the world, creating in the mean time the adumbration of humanistic geography. What these writers shared was a phenomenological approach to landscape based (some more and some less) upon the work of Edmund Husserl and which drew the distinction between space, as undifferentiated locality, and place as meaningful sensed locale. It is worth noting that the relationship between landscape and place within the history of geographic thought has been a complicated one. The two concepts have been kept distinctly separate at times, at others they have been seen as closely related, even being used interchangeably. According to Setten’s (2006), review of the literature one can find three disciplinary interpretations for place, as: 1) location (i.e. a particular address); 2) locale (i.e. the venue in which human activities take place, such as one’s town or neighborhood); 3) sense of place (i.e. space made meaningful). He argues that if one were to look at the definitions of landscape sometimes offered as form, meaning and representation, one would find parallels in the usages of place, hence contributing to the elision sometimes seen between the two concepts. Within the realm of humanistic geography, the preferred term was place which emanated from the genius loci, or spirit of place which was at the heart of their investigations of the world. Phenomenology and existentialism offered geographers a new way to think about peoples’ lived experiences with geography (Duncan and Ley 1982); what mattered were peoples’ perceptions and experiences, thus following a thread first elucidated by Wright (1947) and later Lowenthal which moved analysis down to the level of the individual (see the collection by Ley and Samuels 1978 for a wide view of humanistic geography). Anne Buttimer’s work took a phenomenological approach to exploring human interaction with the landscape. Phenomenology as exemplified in the work of Husserl sought to create a theory of knowledge which “must bring to pure expression, must describe in terms of their essential concepts and their governing formulae of essence, the essences which directly make themselves known in intuition, and the connections which have their roots purely in such essences” (quoted in Moran 2000: 1–2). The lifeworld is where this enquiry takes place (Buttimer 1976). While existential phenomenologists, Buttimer argues, tended to treat the “world” as passive space, geographers see interaction between the human and the environment as reciprocal hence adding a placial element to phenomenology. Buttimer’s writing calls for geographers to work in the “spirit” of phenomenology, most importantly in following its interest in the everyday world of experience. It is in the lifeworld that the quotidian activities of life take place; this is a space that is not simply the abstracted disembodied space of geometry but a real hot/ cold/smelly/fragrant/rainy/windy place. It is also in the lifeworld that attempts at knowledge of the self are undertaken, which in phenomenological inquiry strives

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to move beyond dualist categories of subjective and objective knowledge, instead partaking of both while being identical to neither. So with respect to the person in the world there is a back and forth symbiotic creation between the two. These ideas have affinities with Peirce’s notion of meaning making which results from the interaction between interpreter and object in the world. Phenomenologically we can explore the physical world in three separate ways: space as place, social space, and space as context. Space as place is the fruit of human interest and interaction with the world. Existential and phenomenological investigations into space as place reveal patterns of concentric layers of lived space at multiple scales within which can be found places specially endowed with memories and emotions. The concept of place, as meaningful space is juxtaposed with its opposite in the work of Edward Relph (1976). Phenomenology for Relph is the (unidentified) underlying principal behind fascination with the earth and the environment, so in a sense, adopting a phenomenological orientation in geographic analysis was a foregone conclusion, not a imported idea from an alien discipline. Relph contends that existential space is experienced on multiple scales from nation to home, and that from moment to moment one’s focus can shift between scales. Nevertheless each level from smallest to largest he argues can be characterized by three distinctions: region as the abstract, place as the most meaningful, and paths mediating between the two. The concept of place is teased out by both juxtaposing it with placelessness and by proposing three components of place identification— physical setting, activities conducted in situ, and meaning. Peirce would argue that these three are intimately related. The notion of sense of place is common to many of the humanistic geographers, and in the work of Yi-Fu Tuan the underlying meaning behind a sense of place and how we interact with the world is more broadly conceived. Tuan distinguishes between two types of places, those made by individuals, “fields of care” knowable only from the inside (either figuratively or literally) and places as “public symbols” which can only be understood from the outside (1974). There are two sides to meaning of place—the genius loci which is in the place itself and the sense of place which is in the viewer, cognized through subconscious reactions to knowing, through smell, touch, and so on. This is similar to Peirce’s contention that meaning emerges from the interplay of mind and world. Time impacts upon place meaning as well. Natural places retain their genius loci through generations, while publicly created monuments can lose their power of place within a generation, or can be “meaningless” for true cultural outsiders. And while Tuan argues that space becomes place through repeated experience, one can have an intense and brief emotional experience with a space, almost as if falling in love. It is in Space and Place (1977) that Tuan re-articulates the major tenets of humanistic geography’s privileging of place. Set along vaguely phenomenological lines, Tuan contends that it is through actively observing with the senses that one truly knows reality. The difference between reading a map

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(a bird’s eye view) and a being on the ground (a perspectival view) are illustrative of the difference between space and place. Humanistic geography had its heyday in the 1970s and the orthodox use of phenomenology never took root. Nevertheless, the notion of placelessness embodied in the humanistic focus upon place and its opposite, continues to have currency, and in the wake of the homogenizing impact of global capital upon the built environment, the discourse on place remains an important contribution to understanding the complex impact of human activity upon the physical world, especially the built environment. In addition, a new wave of work by geographers examining landscapes using so called “non-representational theory” have reopened the discussion of phenomenological explorations of place. It has also moved landscape studies back to considerations of actual place, versus representation, as became the norm after the publication of Denis E. Cosgrove’s Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape in 1984. For those working in what Lorimer (2005) has called a “more than representational” vein, the emphasis is on process, rather than interpretation, and on the everyday rather than the extraordinary. It pushes forward the work of the humanist geographers and refocuses attention towards an engagement with the world, rather than simply the image of the world, in that meaning is not there to be found and uncovered through interpretation but is actively created. As Wylie (2006: 532) notes, it is the “material and the sensible” aspect of landscape, sensed through embodied experiences that create meaning. One strain of this research has been through performance theory and investigations of the ways in which tourists act as such (Edensor 2000; Bærenholdt et al. 2004). Many geographers however have also applied a non-representational theory perspective to engage with representations, both images and textual. Crouch (2010: 14) for example writes that landscapes “can engage multiple interactions and a possible unsettling of cultural resonances through which new ones may emerge,” complicating the perceived static nature of art. Della Dora (2009), takes landscape images as material objects, and looks to what these objects do, other than to just sit and look pretty. She writes “I will call [these] ‘travelling landscape-objects’: portable graphic images embedded in different material supports that physically move through space and time, and thus operate as vehicles for the circulation of places; worlds in miniature visually and physically possessed by the beholder and yet able to exercise their own agency” (p. 335). These works focus on the way in which our interpretations and interactions with landscape imagery plays out beyond mental perceptions, a position which resonates with Peirce’s active interpretation. Moreover, as in Buttimer’s notion of the everyday in the “lifeworld” there is renewed attention to the mundane and the routine, as well as sensual encounters with the world because as Lorimer (2005: 84) points out “so much ordinary action gives no advance notice of what it will become. Yet, it still makes critical differences to our experiences of space and place.” Experience with place is thus more constructivist, where embodied actions help shape the meaning of the physical world (e.g. Hoelscher 2003; Scott 2006) In the work of Terkenli

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(2002: 203) for example, the embodied experiences of landscape are explored based upon theoretical notions of attraction and seduction experienced through “bodily/sensual, emotional and cognitive relationships” of tourists with the places in which they tour. Tourism Studies in Perspective In contemplating tourism the question arises as to what the tourist is doing when on tour. We know of course that for urban tourists they are eating and imbibing, sightseeing, and shopping, perhaps going to museums or concerts. But what is the whole of which these are the constituent elements is a question of concern for tourism theorists. Two (now classic) conceptions were suggested by John Urry (1990, 2002) and Dean MacCannell (1976, 1999). Urry, drawing upon Foucault’s theory of discourse as structuring knowledge, suggested that what tourists do is “gaze” and that this gaze was organized according to the structural expectations of the tourist industry, which was in turn itself organized to satisfy that very insatiable tourist. MacCannell (1976, 1999) offered the tourist as the condition of modern man, alienated and in search of something authentic, which is not to be found through touring though he or she keeps searching in vain. What the tourist does though is sightsee, looking at things which portray themselves as other things and things that represent things, for example plaques. While both of these theories are grounded in the visual (see also Crouch and Lübbren 2003), in looking, that these two are different is made manifest in MacCannell’s (2001) later exploration of agency in tourism. He argues that Urry’s conception is too structural, removing any agency from the tourist. MacCannell posits a second gaze, one that does not trap the tourist in the role as defined by the structures of tourism, but which allows the tourist to be an active participant. It is worth quoting from the work at length: The first tourist gaze has been described by John Urry. It is the gaze installed by the institutions and practices of commercialized tourism. It is fully ideological in its construction. The ideology of the first tourist gaze advances the notion of the transparency of visual meaning: what you see is what you get … The second gaze is always aware that something is being concealed from it; that there is something missing from every picture, from every look or glance … The second gaze turns back onto the gazing subject an ethical responsibility for the construction of its own existence. It refuses to leave this construction to the corporation, the state, and the apparatus of touristic representation … It looks for openings and gaps in the cultural unconscious. It looks for the unexpected, not the extraordinary, objects and events that may open a window in structure, a chance to glimpse the real (MacCannell 2001: 379–80).

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This later articulation mirrors MacCannell’s position in his ground breaking 1976 work, but there is less desperate need for the tourist to find the authentic; the tourist, the one whom he identifies with Stendhal,2 is less alienated and simply savvier. In many cases this harmonizes with Edward Bruner’s (1994) assertions about authenticity in that one senses that the Stendhal tourist understands the various ways in which something can be authentic. This is the view of the tourist adopted in this work, and is a fairly accurate characterization of those who were interviewed,3 the tourist who knows what the brochures and posters at the travel agency promised, but who is also aware of the many ways in which the tour is another way of being in the world, a way that might be similar and might be different than being in the world at home, as well as the world imagined in the lead-up to the trip. The question of what is a tourist and what is tourism underlies both of these classic conceptions. The typologizing of tourists is prevalent elsewhere in the older literature (Cohen 1972; Smith 1989) and in its most frequent form, at some level what one finds is a distinction drawn between the tourist as a reviled crass consumer of (inauthentic) sites, and the traveler, as smart, solicitous, savvy, cultured surveyor of (authentic) sites. On the ground the split between tourist– bad and traveler–good though is not simply a creation of the researcher but often cleaves not on the object under view but along the lines that they are tourists and we are travelers. And of course the popularity of guidebooks such as the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide series are due to the belief on the part of the user that they are somehow going to get a more “authentic” experience, off the beaten path, than that found in the more “mainstream” guidebooks (Ashenburg 2001). The rise of mass tourism during the twentieth century has had two attendant effects—1) places like museums and other sites of high culture which once were the domain of the intelligentsia and the elite, have now become sites visited by the “uninitiated” mass tourist, and 2) the scope of what can be an object of interest for the tourist has grown tremendously to include heritage, kitsch, tragedy and the general oddity (Prentice 1994; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998; Pohlen 2002; Foote 2  MacCannell is working off of Stendhal’s Memoires de un touriste, in particular the wondering eyes of Mr L._____ who sees in every corner the minutiae which give character to the scene and thus, in MacCannell’s view sees beyond the official narrative and the headline billing. 3  One woman immediately comes to mind. She was on an “organized tour,” a river cruise along the Danube. They were let off to explore the city and she made her way down Váci street, the main pedestrian road. Along the way she stopped and had ravioli (something no one would imagine to be Hungarian) and raved about it (she being Italian-American and knowing good ravioli when she encounters it), and then walked through the Central Market Hall in order to find ice cream, which she ended up buying from the grocery store in the basement. This woman will go back and tell her friends not about the blueness of the Danube but the lucky chance encounter with Italian food. This is the Stendhal tourist in action, attracted to that which is out of the frame.

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2003). E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View turns upon the negative judgments of the other guests of the perceived crassness in the unorthodox behavior of the Emersons (see also van Aalst and Boogaarts 2002). This tension over proper behavior of the initiated and the uninitiated is echoed in the concerns over heritage and kitsch which is bound up with this very dichotomy between traveler and tourist. Within the academic realm of cultural and historical tourism this problem has turned on the issue of authenticity in narrative and presentation (see Wang 1999 for a thorough review of the literature).While there have been some calls to abandon the concept of authenticity, (Reisinger and Steiner 2004) it is still useful as a heuristic category, but only if it is elastic enough to embrace the varied ways in which authenticity is reasoned (Metro-Roland 2009b). The ways in which sites are marked as “authentic” is complex. Bruner (1994) argues that the binary pairing of authentic/inauthentic in which the former is privileged would make a mockery of the term “authentic reproduction” as many historical theme parks, not to mention tourist objects and souvenirs claim to be. Instead he suggests a more nuanced read of the term offering four distinct definitions—verisimilitude, genuineness, originality, and authority. Using the heritage site at New Salem, Illinois he explains that something has verisimilitude if it corresponds to the way in which the place is thought to look by those visiting, that is if it conforms to ideas about the way in which an adequately informed modern visitor thinks an 1830 village should look. It is authentic if it is “credible and convincing” (399). It is genuine if the simulation is “complete and immaculate” so that “an 1830s person would say ‘This looks like 1830s New Salem’” (399), and it is original if it is an authentic artifact from the period, originating in the past. Citing Lionel Trilling in an echo of Peirce’s contentions about doubt and belief, Bruner states that “authenticity becomes an issue only after a doubt arises” (403). MacCannell (1976, 1999), who is well versed in semiotics, draws upon a basic definition from Peirce in making his argument for what invests an object with authenticity. Culture, authenticity, interest and importance are ascribed to an object through site-sacrilization and it is the marker, or the sign, which makes the site. MacCannell (1999: 109) writes that “a sign represents something to someone,” quoting, almost verbatim, Peirce’s own formulation (see Peirce CP 2.228, “[a] sign, or representamen is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity”). In the museum it is the plaque which gives a painting its status. For the overwhelming majority of visitors the exquisite brushwork and lighting in a Caravaggio, for example, will elude their detection, but because it has been sanctioned by outside entities, the art world, collectors, curators, and so on, it is worthy of attention. The same goes for the hill upon which the Bonnie and Clyde shoot-out took place; it is distinguished from any other hill only by the posted marker. In the case of urban tourism the authentic becomes a more questionable quantity than a painting on a wall, or a discreet hill top with a placard. The German poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s (1996 [1958]) “Theory of Tourism” already at mid-century made the case for tourism as an escape for alienated modern man,

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an escape in a search for the pristine and the authentic with the ironic effect that through discovery, the pristine and the authentic are destroyed. Around this same time his contemporary, the American historian Daniel Boorstin (1964), argued the opposite, claiming that mass tourists are interested in moving in safe bubbles, quite content with experiencing what he termed pseudo events. MacCannell (1976) returned the conversation to the previous position arguing on the contrary that the tourist was desperate to have an authentic experience, to escape the faux wood paneling and the alienation engendered by work and that the tourist believed that authenticity could be found (and perhaps a little piece could be brought back home) in other times and in other cultures, hence the fascination with historical and cultural tourism; it is a search that is in vain, because the “authentic” is always deferred. Umberto Eco (1986) presents an extreme example of the fact that history has a tendency to remain unseen by the average viewer unless marked; a set of ruins where the narrative is aided by the use of multi-media and holograms so that if one turns one’s head quickly enough the reconstructed image can still be retained when the gaze is shifted to its (authentic) remains. We will come back to the issue of authenticity within the urban landscape below. Let us turn now to the treatment of semiotics within the tourism literature. Signs and Semiotics in Tourism Studies Semiotics is not new to tourism studies. Looking at works which employ semiotic theory the weakness one finds is that either they adopt a vague interpretation of sign theory often based loosely on Saussure’s work, or they depend exclusively upon secondary sources for their semiotic theory. Culler’s (1981) work takes a Saussurian approach where all is symbolism and deferment and arbitrariness. Frow’s (1991) look at the semiotics of nostalgia is a wide ranging investigation into tourism and image, objects, paintings, and representation, though it uses semiotics loosely, referencing MacCannell, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida and Culler. Urry (1990, 1992) proposes that sights as signs function as metaphor and metonymy, and MacCannell (1999) in his discussion of site sacrilization has in mind Peirce’s theory but does not introduce it in detail. Others have taken a socio-semiotic approach such as the study of place marketing in Ireland by Gaffey (2004) and the essays in an edited volume by Jaworski and Pritchard (2005). Davis (2005) uses a vague symbolic conversation about the ways in which Bikini atoll has been imagined. Andrew Smith’s (2005) study of city image in Barcelona equates sign with meaning and draws upon Goss (1999) and Gottdiener (1986), while Nelson’s (2005) study of images of Grenada also equates semiotics with meaning drawing exclusively upon secondary sources including MacCannell (1999), Rose (2001), and Hopkins (1998) whose semiotic work turns on myths of the countryside. The two fundamental problems with most of these semiotic studies in tourism lies in the dependence upon Saussurian notions of sign and the dependence upon secondary treatments of semiotics both of which result, as noted above, in the use of semiotics as a synonym for saying something has symbolic meaning. One of

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the problems with the use of Saussure’s work is inherent in applying a linguistic theory to the world. Saussure (1959) sought to explain the relation between a sound (image accoustique) and a concept, privileging the arbitrary linkage between the two and the way in which meaning emerges from the structures of language. “Language” he wrote “is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others” (Saussure 1959: 114). The relationship between a signifier and a signified being arbitrary, and hence symbolic, results in the various signifiers across languages, dog, hund, perro, canis to indicate a drooling, four legged, furry animal. It is the difference between terms within a language that will give meaning, differentiating a drooling, four-legged furry animal, dog, from a purring, four-legged furry animal, cat (Saussure 1959). For Saussure however, the signified was never a thing, but only a concept, and hence no referential object or objective world existed within the boundaries of his theory which concerned itself only with the structure of languages. Those following on Saussure have adopted a structuralist approach applying a model based in linguistics to nonlinguistic contexts, or have glommed on to the arbitrary nature of these sound-concept pairs to treat exclusively the symbolic nature of signs. And while Saussure’s theory is suitable for literature, the borrowing of semiotic theory from literary studies is one of the reasons Peirce’s work has remained unknown. Peirce’s theory accounts for both the mental and the physical, the material and the spiritual, which constitute the tourist experience giving order and meaning to the world around. As Franklin (2004: 285) has argued in claiming a new ontology for tourism, getting beyond the binaries associated with the classical conceptions of tourism, the everyday/extraordinary, the sacred/profane, the concept of ordering within the tourist act is one aspect of modern attempts at making sense of the world, one which “freed from the need to operate inside the restraints of abstractions such as society, social order, social structure and so on … suggests we concentrate on what people and things, people and things together, actually do.” Destination—The Genius Loci of Tourist Places In this study the notion of place as a site of objects and meaning, of place as meaningful space is taken up, in the guise of the destination. Tourists travel to places, that is, locales which have been imbued with meaning from multiple directions, the qualities of the place itself, the marketing and advertising that goes into creating a place, the associations a person makes with a place. Thus destination runs the gamut from the individual who has a fondness for a certain fishing hole in Montana she went to with her dad, through to the Hawai’i Tourism Authority’s tropical paradise product on which it spends millions in carefully crafted marketing messages. Destination is multifarious, inherent to place, created or manipulated as a commodity to create desire, as well as a perceptual

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assessment by persons. In the case of the fishing hole it may hold little appeal to others but it can be considered what Tuan (1974) labeled a “field of care,” known intimately to someone and almost inaccessible from the perspective of the outsider. In the second case, the Tourism Authority is working with a fairly attractive set of propositions, white sandy beaches, trade winds, and tropical island life and their job is to play up the already present amenities which have made Hawai’i a destination well before it was the focus of major marketing. In fact, as scholars have pointed out, one of the challenges of managing a desirable “destination” is carefully managing demand, preventing it from becoming too popular, overcrowded and ultimately less desirable (Butler 1980; Ap and Crompton 1998). With other less obvious “destinations,”marketing must convince people of the desirability of the place, creating demand where there was none. So in order to persuade people of the benefits of “Exploring Macedonia” or the wonders they will find when they “Discover Ohio,” a great public relations campaign must be employed. City branding (Evans 2003; Hauben, Vermeulen and Patteeuw 2004; Kavaratzis 2004; Kavaratzis and Ashworth 2007) has become an important buzzword in the race for advantage in the ever growing competition for tourist dollars, Euros and yen. As Ashworth and Tunbridge (2000) note (see also Graham 2002), much of the commodification of place trades on the notion of heritage, but in some cases, they claim that this results in the homogenization of places as they seek to follow models which have been successful elsewhere; the creation of festival marketplaces, or the imposition of generic heritage items, such as cobblestones, gas lights, and wrought iron benches. The irony is the eliding of real genius loci behind a marketable easy to digest, familiar, because widespread, nostalgic site which ignores the more complex historical evolution of locales. But this notion of “authentic” takes a decidedly historicist approach disallowing for progression and change within urban areas. And if, in the inner city of Prague for example, when asphalt comes up, cobblestones go back down in what sense is this a violation of the authentic? The critique rests in accusations of creating a false tidy historical scene that may not reflect the reality of what was there and what has been there, but rather muddles the question of authenticity. The problem with this line of reasoning is that cities are not museum displays, in spite of the elegant arguments by Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998) to the contrary, but dynamic places which develop and change over time. If that development entails a craze for historicism, then so be it. The city with its newly installed cobblestones and gas lights is an authentic artifact of its contemporary self. It would be judicious to keep in mind that many of the statues which sit in the ancient art collections of the great museums are “inauthentic,” mere Roman copies of Greek originals. So too today’s kitsch might become tomorrow’s heritage. This is not to condone the loss of historically important artifacts through tourist gentrification, nor is this to say that questions of authenticity ought to be abandoned (DeLyser 1999; Wang 1999; Metro-Roland 2009b; cf. Reisinger and Steiner 2006) but the tensions which are well known from the fights over

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historical preservation and the need for adaptation in contemporary life ought not to be dismissed. Although laments about the protean nature of present day tourist sites can be frequently heard, and the debate rages about the desirability (or not) of the authentic for the tourist experience, the intermediary between these two poles may be the most tenable space, understanding that the most successful cities have found a balance between cultural sites and preservation and presenting a bustling, contemporary urban life. The tourist has routinely been portrayed as an uncritical consumer of culture, which Di Giovine (2009: 8) describes as duped by the “smokescreen-like representation of places” manufactured by the tourism industry. The urban tourist is confronted with an array of images, sites and experiences, and if we follow that these are subject to interpretive processes of semiosis then we have to conclude that the tourist brings an active meaning making to the encounter. For some the authentic, in its various forms, will be a critical filter, for others not. But to totemize authenticity as has been common in the literature, has the concomitant effect that it posits there is one moment in time for which a city may be seen as “authentically itself” thus disallowing for the full complexity of the urban. Cityscape, Touristscape and the Tourist Prosaic The present work takes as a given that landscapes are meaningful, predicating that assumption on the work of the humanistic geographers. Equally important however is the notion of culture’s impact upon landscape and the interaction of human intervention in shaping places. However, landscape is not considered a naively given concept, nor is culture. Meaning is not there to be withdrawn in an unproblematic straight translation from object to interpretant, but as we have seen when looking at the theories of Peirce which give coherence to this research, meaning making is an active muscular activity that has both mental and physical considerations. In other words, landscapes are not simply background, providing scenery for the tourist, but in the course of touring, landscape plays a crucial, active role in shaping the experience, but this is also dependent upon the collateral knowledge that visitors bring and their willingness to risk themselves in experiencing the full complexities of the places in which they tour. The claims by Jackson that the vernacular is important, also resonate in this work, though rather than the pure vernacular, the focus here is heavily upon the banal, the everyday conjunction with the monumental. In the context of this work, that is the space between the everyday of the cityscape and the festive nature of the touristscape which is the tourist prosaic. And while non-representational theory as an extension of earlier phenomenological work, figures, its relationship to Peircean semiotics still needs to be teased out by other scholars, namely in the question of the final interpretant. However, the affinity between the two lines of reasoning is striking in that the great contribution of Peirce’s work is upon interpretation as habit, or action rather than simply mental gymnastics, while the non-representational theorists

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wish to move the conversation beyond images and interpretations as words, to understand the ways in which the physical embodied experience of place matter. The city is a complex place in which layers of history are elided by what comes next. Like Eco’s hologram and the ruins, the guidebook is an attempt to recreate the image. But it is weak compared to the competing vividness of the actual city, and becomes entangled with what the relationship is between the cityscape and the touristscape. The nature of cities is such that these two realms intersect, intertwine and intervene upon each other. There is a suspicion that the fact that a something has become an object of the gaze, or a locus for tourist performativity implies that the something has become tainted, has become a mere commodity in the (figurative and sometimes literal) economy of tourism, thoroughly embedded in the touristscape. This is a sentiment found in the scholarly literature and among tourists themselves buying up the guidebooks which promise to show you the way out beyond the tourist bubble. The distillation of culture and heritage which ensues when on tour, even in the wide open boulevards of urban space (as opposed to more circumscribed spaces of heritage parks for example) is not free of questions of authenticity because the cityscape and touristscape are not independent of one another. A more useful approach is to consider that in urban places the sites which constitute the city, from the most banal everyday objects of urban infrastructure to the most manufactured touristy kitsch sites, are all part of the urban tourist experience, a part of the tourist prosaic. As defined in the introduction, the tourist prosaic helps to account for the sites that are important to the visitor, that are common and everyday in the context of exploring a city as a tourist (the castle in Prague, the tower of London), as well as those quotidian aspects of the city that are also important in the daily lives and activities of the residents, buses, street furniture, cafés and the general atmosphere of urban life. Urban destinations often have clear divisions of space, in that not all spaces are equally open to, or of interest to the visitor. Differentiation within urban areas has a long history both as a lived reality and as a conceptual tool for analyzing cities. We hear about downtown and uptown, the garment district, the wharf, the other side of the tracks, the financial district, the central business district, adaptive reuse zones, gentrifying neighborhoods and tourist precincts. Landscape as an analytical tool is a useful way to contemplate these spatial aspects of destination. While specific places might be set off as worthy of tourist attention the experiences on the ground are always more complex as perception of place is based upon the interaction between the individual and the objects which are constituent of the site. Stoked by guidebooks, media accounts, reports of friends and family, and previous travels, destination takes shape in the trip planning, even before the bags are packed, but the experience changes drastically when all the senses are involved when the traveler hits the ground and the attention drifts from the highlights to the places in which these are embedded (cf. Hayllar, Griffin and Edwards 2008). The concept of the tourist prosaic offers a way to capture the messiness of urban tourism in that walking down the street the tourist and the resident often bump

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shoulders, museums appeal to both, national monuments are tourist highlights and important players in the continued stoking of national sentiment, and moving from landmark to landmark requires moving through the more ordinary spaces of the city. In the spaces between the “important” must sees, the banal objects of the everyday play a larger role in the creation of a sense of place than has been surmised in the tourism literature. Even in cities which have clearly delineated tourist zones, Krakow, for example, one will find that not every church within the zone is equally highlighted on tourist itineraries, and even in those that are, the tourist must contend with the many faithful Catholics who “occupy” them on Sundays and holidays. It is this workaday activity which is part of the appeal for the visitor who can immerse him or herself, at least for a few moments, in the everyday life of the city. The cityscape and touristscape are not so much juxtaposed as that the mix of the two along with the presence of the tourist contribute to something new being conceived, a tourist prosaic. While universalizing theories about what tourism is and what tourists do always tend to founder upon the reality of the heterogeneous nature of tourism and tourists, it can be argued that there are two things which tourists seek, difference and sameness and when the two are together it is even a greater find. For example, in urban tourism it is often a seemingly insignificant experience which offers itself as a key moment in the trip, rather than the city highlights and touristy kitsch, gift shops and tour buses. There are a whole other group of experiences that often occur in the interstices of the trip, when attempting to undertake some quotidian task, buying a newspaper, getting from one part of town to the other in bus or taxi, or trying to eat dinner or get a coffee, experiences that force us to pause to actively contemplate, taking up the phenomenological investigation. This is similar to Peirce’s contention that we do not challenge our beliefs until we encounter something which irritates our sense of certainty. The familiarity of the task is beguiling because the differences, whatever there may be, are that much more noteworthy. The coffee can not be bought in a to-go cup, you can not buy a ticket on the bus, the change at the newsstand is not given in the hand but placed upon a tray in front of you. It is at these moments when the reality of the place, the world that exists outside the tourist bubble, is made apparent, in the moment that a familiar task is made difficult, when our flow is interrupted and we must interpret these subtle but potent signs of being immersed in another culture. And in reality, the place the setting and the experiences with the cityscape and the touristscape are critical in this tourist experience. This work looks at the ways in which these two spaces, the touristscape and cityscape, exist in the guise of the tourist prosaic within the context of a particular city, proposing that the way in which tourists make sense of the complex interaction between cityscape and touristscape is through sign theory.

Chapter 4

The City—A Brief Introduction Pest Buda and Buda Pest―The City in History Budapest is the conglomeration of two ancient cities, Buda, Pest, and their third less well known cousin Óbuda (literally, Old Buda).1 The three were administratively joined in 1873 to form the present city. It was during the next three decades that the city grew and took on the form and visage which still shapes it today. The site itself however has a much longer history. Under the Julio-Claudian emperors military camps were established along the Danube and the civilian town of Aquincum developed. The site gained in importance during the second century A.D. as an outpost of the Eastern border of the empire. German invasions in the fifth century led the Romans to give the larger area of Pannonia over to Attila, the leader of the Huns, a man who had lived in Rome as a hostage; his death in 453 brought an end to the nearly 20-year Hun rule over Pannonia. The area next came under the control of the Avars for over two centuries during which time numerous Slavs settled in the area of Transdanubia and the Balkans. Charlemagne conquered the Avars in the 790s and control of the area was divided—the eastern portion going to the Bulgarians, the northwestern corner to the Moravians and the west to the Carolingians. The plains became a wasteland ready for the invading Magyar tribes in 896. The material remains of this period are slight including some ruins in Pécs and in and around Budapest. Among these are the remains of the town of Aquincum and a small legionary amphitheatre in the area of present day Óbuda, and in the Inner City the remains of the Contra-Aquincum fortress which guarded the eastern border of the Empire in the third century on the Pest side of the river. According to Engel (2001: 5) the legacy of Roman rule did not last their defeat: “when the Avars arrived in Pannonia the only remnants of Roman rule were uninhabited ruins. The destruction caused by the invasions—mainly those of the Huns—seems to have been more brutal here than in the West. Not only was life in the towns interrupted for centuries, or indeed permanently, but judging from the evidence of toponymy the indigenous population also disappeared, and with it all traces of romanisation.” The remaining structures however where utilized especially by the Magyars when they settled in the area at the end of the ninth century.

1  For detailed histories of Budapest and Hungary see: Corefeld 1999; Enyedi and Szirmai 1992; Gerő and Poór 1997; Gyáni 1999; Kósa 2000; Lukacs 1994; Sugar, Hanák and Frank 1990; Romsics 1999.

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Map 4.1

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Budapest Inner City

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As the Magyar tribes turned their attention towards settlement, they took a “western orientation” adopting Carolingian economic practices, which according to László Makkai (1990a: 16) had the effect of weakening tribal loyalties and advancing centralized authority and identification with a “single Hungarian ethnic unit.” The adoption of Western Christianity by István (St Stephen) for himself and his subjects further solidified the Western orientation of the Magyars/Hungarians with the nascent development of a feudal type state which was threatened by sporadic opposition and disturbance from Byzantine competition and devastation wrought by the Tatar invasions of the thirteenth century. Buda which had seen built a royal palace was devastated, as was Pest which was “a plundered heap of ruins reduced to ashes” (Ágoston 1997: 19). The destruction which resulted from impotent defensive measures throughout the territory, engendered a series of reforms and though “introduced for the sake of defense served … as a force which modernized the entire state structure” (Makkai 1990b: 29). The Medieval Hungarian rulers continued to shape a further stratified and formal class structure, and a revived urban network, so that the state more and more began to resemble that of its Western European neighbors, though its peripheral geographic position vis-à-vis Christendom meant that, according to Pál Engel (1990: 42) the “institutional organization remained archaic compared to those of the West, or at best, that it continued to retain some outdated features” including an extremely large noble class, based on free holding of land which was not based upon a feudal structure and, in spite of reforms, a still minor level of urbanization. In the early fifteenth century, there were only 20 walled and 12 unwalled urban sites which shared the privileges of Buda as royal free cities, and a much larger number of market towns, approximately 800, some of which were little more than large villages (Bak 1990). While there was greater dispersion of these market towns thought the territory of the Hungarian crown, the location of the royal cities left much of the central plain empty of urban activity. The area of Pest-Buda stood out, with a population of 10,000 and 12–15,000 respectively in the fifteenth century. Buda, with its royal court, was a center of Renaissance revival. The Bibliotheca Corviniana, established under King Matthias, contained over 3,000 volumes and the city was filled with people from all over Europe— Germans, Jews, Poles, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Turks, Italians, and Czechs (Enyedi and Szirmai 1992; Ágoston 1997). This period of prosperity was not to last. The truce that the Hungarian kingdom had renewed yearly with the Ottoman Empire in 1520 was not and in August of 1526 an Ottoman army decimated the Hungarian forces at Mohács. The name of the battle still resonates today. The defeat ushered in a period of civil war and competing royal claims when the Ottomans retreated. In 1541 the Turks under Süleiman came to Budapest to intervene in the question of succession in favor of the infant son of the recently deceased ruler, János. One of the casualties in the Battle for Budapest was Gül Baba (Father Rose). His tomb, which sits near the exclusive neighborhood of

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Rózsadom is the most northern holy site of Islam.2 The Turks took advantage of the many hot springs in the city and built numerous bath complexes, which unlike those on the Golden Horn, featured full emersion. The remnants today include, the Király, Rudas and Rác. The turning back of the Turks from the gates of Vienna was a turning point for Europe and led in 1686 to their eventual ousting from Hungary by the Habsburgs, leading from one form of foreign domination to another. The Habsburgs were not popular, and the turn of the century brought them into conflict with the War of the Spanish succession as well as a war for independence in the Hungarian lands under Ferenc II Rákóczi. The effort ended in 1711 with a retrenching of noble rights. Habsburg rule would continue to be challenged intermittently throughout the next 150 years or so until the Compromise of 1867 established the Dual Monarchy. When the Turks had been expelled, the castle area was in ruins. Rebuilding took place, guided by Italian architects and the introduction of the Baroque (Enyedi and Szirmai 1992). While a small palace had been built, the Empress Maria Teresa, in exchange for Hungarian support in her battle for succession, promised to build a new castle. This went up in Buda in the mid eighteenth century. Her successor Joseph II attempted to modernize and streamline the administration of his hulking empire. One of the most important of these was the abolition of Latin, which until the 1780s was the language used by the aristocracy. German was made the official language and this “foreign” imposition sowed the seeds of discontent, stoking national sentiment, including a renewed attention to a reform of the Magyar language and the deliberate adoption of Hungarian clothing by the nobility. This growing Magyar national identity would culminate in the 1848 War of Independence, one of several uprisings that swept across the continent in that year. Luckily the flames of war spared the newly built Chain Bridge across the Danube, and it still stood when Hungary’s last bid for independence was quashed in 1849. The execution of Lajos Batthyány, the first Hungarian prime minister, and 13 generals was just one of the punishments inflicted on the rebellious subjects. These other punishments included the construction of the Citadel on Gellért Hill and a period of “centralized absolutism” (Somogyi 1990). The eventual easing and the compromise reached between the Hungarians and the Habsburgs ushered in a period of sustained growth in the city, the highpoint being the Millennium celebration of 1896. Since that time the city has seen its fortunes threatened by the destruction of two world wars, imposition of socialist rule, the 1956 revolution, and the vicissitudes of market forces since 1989.

2  The site of the tomb is considered extraterritorial and is cared for by the Turkish government.

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Form and Function―The Architecture of the City The city today in its bearing owes much to the Habsburg period, especially the second half of the nineteenth century. With respect to the Hungarianess of the city during this period there is a tension that emerges between indigenous and borrowed and adapted styles. But the debates about what an appropriate national style might look like in the mid to late 1800s were contentious, but mainly centered upon historicizing styles. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Hungarian sentiment both sought to extend Hungarian rule to the eastern half of the empire, as well as to assert Hungarian claims to membership into a wider Western European heritage. This is reflected in the architecture, especially in the tendency towards historicizing styles from the west which are so in evidence in the Budapest landscape of the late 1800s. But the particular choices were always fraught with the baggage they brought.3 The building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences demonstrates the complex nature of Magyar national identity during this period. A competition for the design was first held in 1860. Among the invited architects a cabal developed, each member promising to submit neo-gothic designs. But Miklós Ybl, the foremost architect in Hungary at the time, submitted a neo-Renaissance design and “in the wake of the competition a passionate debate erupted mainly because of the general outcry against the Gothic style” but really this was about what an appropriate Hungarian style might be (Sisa 1998: 176). Arguments were made by various camps in favor of different historical styles including an eclecticism representing the best elements of all historical periods, the Rundbogenstil as representative of the eastern origins of the Magyars, and assertions that the neo-gothic recalled or rather symbolized the power of the Medieval Hungarian kingdom. In each of these claims the one common denominator is that none of these styles were actually based upon unique, indigenous, historically grounded Hungarian architectural examples. The building which stands today at Roosevelt Square (named for Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States) was the result of a second competition initiated in the wake of this debate between two foreigners, one from Munich with a neo-classical design, and one from August Stüler from Berlin with the winning Venetian Renaissance design. The success of the Academy of Sciences building ensured the continued favor of the neo-renaissance style and when in 1873, in the wake of the compromise a national opera house was to be built the competition required invited architects to submit designs in this style. It was won by Miklós Ybl, who had in the first competition for the Academy submitted the rogue Italian renaissance design, only to withdraw it.

3  For detailed discussion of Hungarian architecture see: Déry and Ferenc 2000; Rados 1971, Szegő and Haba 2003; Wiebenson and Sisa 1998. The following field guides for twentieth-century architecture are also useful: Jékely and Sódor 1980; Heathcote 1997.

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Neo-classicism, one of the predominant architectural styles during the nineteenth century, served an important role in the social changes occurring in the empire. The historian Péter Hanák (1998: 6) notes of neo-classicism that “in Central Europe in particular, the style eminently suited the tastes of a nobility that was taking on bourgeois characteristics” while functionally it was “better suited to the multiplied demands of urbanization and the erection of civil offices and apartment houses than the Baroque mansions” which had preceded them. Likewise for other historicizing styles. Jószef Sisa (2002: 170) notes that while neo-gothic in 1861 was deemed inappropriate for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as it was a too “ecclesiastic and Germanic style; Hungary, still smarting from its defeat at the hands of (German-speaking) Austrians in the war of independence of 1848– 1849,” by 1882 the neo-gothic was deemed entirely appropriate for what was then to be the world’s largest parliamentary building. Ákos Moravánszky (2002: 70) in comparing the choices made by the Hungarians with the neo-classical style of the Viennese parliament, argues that the later avoided “any suggestions of a Germanic ‘national style’ thus serving the Habsburg program of a multiethnic empire” while the Gothic was a “clear rejection of the Ringstrassenstil [Ring Road Style, i.e. Viennese Habsburg] and a reaffirmation of the reformist goals of Gothic revival, with all its associations of joyful labor, craftsmanship, and national virtues.” And as Sisa (2002) points out, it was also the support of the powerful Count Gyula Andrássy who associated the neo-gothic with the British House of Parliament which made it possible to build in that style. By the end of the nineteenth century, one finds a parallel current within the architecture of the city. Moravánszky writes “the Cosmopolitan direction of premodern rationalism took root in Budapest as well. The young, multinational metropolis, however was becoming enthusiastically Hungarian, and renewed efforts to create a national architectural style there survived much longer than in many other European cities” (2002: 181). What one finds in the buildings in the last decade of the 1800s and the first two decades of the early 1900s is a continued dependence upon historicizing styles, but a newer more daring shift as architects sought to move towards a more authentic Hungarian architecture. The search took two distinctly different routes, one eastern and one folk. The millennial celebration of 1896 was a period of celebration, and a stimulus for the modernization of the city of Budapest, but it also aimed to remind the other Europeans of the Magyar nation’s long existence within Western Europe. One of the most evident demonstrations was in the main building of the Millennial Exhibition, the so-called Vajdahunyad Vár which, in the words of architectural historian János Gerle was “a montage of historical monuments created under western European architectural influence in Christian Hungary … Although [Ignác] Alpár … specified in his competition submission that the building should include Islamic and Byzantine motifs demonstrating Eastern influence on Hungary, the jury, interested only in Western achievements, deemed his idea ‘unfortunate’ and deleted it from the plans” (Gerle 1998: 225).

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The centerpiece and entrance to the Exhibition was György Zala’s monument in Hősök tere (Heroes’ Square) which featured both the tribal chiefs who first led the Magyars into the Carpathian basin a thousand years earlier, and the Christianized Hungarian kings, another not so subtle claim of membership. The square in which the monument sits is the terminus of Andrássy Avenue and the entrance to the City Park and site of the Exhibition. On either side of the square were built two massive museums in neo-classical style, combining both Greek and Roman models for the exterior. This site, what Sisa (1998: 209) calls “one of the most impressive architectural ensembles of historicism in Europe” needs to be juxtaposed against another building sited elsewhere in the city but built at the same time and for the same celebration, the Iparművészeti Múzeum, Museum of Applied Arts, designed by Ödön Lechner. This building was a conscious statement about the belief of Lechner and others in the Eastern origins of the Magyar nation. The resulting building eschews Western European historicism and instead combines various eastern styles, Indian, as well as Moorish, with Hungarian folk motifs. The distinctive colored tiles on the roof come from the Zsolnay Porcelain factory in Pécs and are themselves unique markers of Hungarian origin. They are also found on the rooftops of the Central Market Hall, as well as St Stephen’s Church. Comparing the three museums one could not imagine starker differences and the Museum of Applied Arts marks a foray into the search for a more “authentic” Hungarian architectural style. The Postal Savings Bank which was finished in 1899 is considered one of the gems of Budapest architecture in spite of the fact that it in effect ended Lechner’s career with respect to official government sponsored projects (Gerle 1998). It too draws on the output of the Zsolnay factory but this time to create extraordinary three dimensional faience designs of flowers, birds, insects and snakes. The use of Moorish or Indian designs interestingly had precedent in synagogues within Central Europe where the “orientalizing” style was used with great affect in, for example, the building of the Great Synagogue on Donhány Street in the 1850s. Ironically, in the new century, while many Jewish architects were pushing forward a new style, other architects such as Marcell Komor and Desző Jakab, the most prolific builders of public tenders in the areas outside of Budapest, designing culture houses as well as city halls, were following Lechner and “devoted their efforts to developing a national form of expression” drawing heavily upon Hungarian folk motifs even in the building and design of synagogues (Gerle 1989: 230). These efforts towards a particular national idiom were also taken up by the so-called Fiatolok (the Young Ones) and the national romantic style sought out Hungarian antecedents in rural villages throughout Hungary including the Great Plains and especially Transylvania. József Huszka collected both folk motifs from household objects as well as structural designs and asserted that the folk designs and architecture of the Székely in Transylvania represented the most unadulterated glimpse back into ancient Magyar culture. Archaeology figured as well in the search to include ancient, hence “authentic” Magyar motifs in architectural design, signs

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which led scholars to find connections to ancient eastern peoples. Morávanszky (2002: 222) writes that “Huszka regarded the cifraszűr, the shepherd’s cloak, as the most unadulterated expression of Hungarian soul, embodying the ‘ten commandments’ of Hungarian taste. He compared its motifs with those of the metal clasps of Hungarian tribes of the ninth century (artifacts newly discovered at that time), of buckles from Avar cemeteries, or Sasanian god-trees, and even of Chinese designs.” Lechner was influenced by the work of Huszka and hence so were his followers. But, as architectural historians are quick to point out, there was a thin border between the resulting buildings in the national romantic and modern architectural style since in many cases, ancient and folk motifs were combined with the most contemporary construction styles such as the use of concrete, iron framing, and pyrite tiles, resulting in buildings which stood out dramatically from the historicism of the recent and more distant past. Many of the architectural stars of early modernism, such as Béla Latja, spent time under Lechner. In the interwar period, with a revived conservatism, there was a general turning away from this style, with a few notable exceptions, namely those working in the Turanian style who continued to produce designs based upon ancient Hungarian origin myths. The Great War, and the resulting loss of two-thirds of Hungarian territory after the Treaty of Trianon left the country in shock. This development ushered in a turn back towards historicism, in this case, neo-baroque since “conservatives adopted the ‘national’ label for their own artistic endeavors. According to them, neither ornamentation nor the incorporation of ethnic forms of construction would make architecture patently Hungarian, but only the discovery of a deep spiritual link between the culture of medieval Hungary and that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (Ferkai 1998: 250). Some architects in the interwar period moved in the other direction, eschewing national forms, either historical or folk for Bauhaus and other International Style forms. In fact several Hungarian architects spent time in the Bauhaus and one of the key foci of this new architectural idiom was the building of flats to address the severe housing shortages which resulted from the war and the peace, the challenge being the creation of livable places in minimal spaces. In Budapest several key buildings from this period include the Atrium apartment block and theatre on the Buda side of Margit Boulevard, the Simplon Apartments and theater on Bartók Béla Road the Napraforgó Street housing estates and many of the apartment buildings on Pozsonyi Street on the Pest side around St István park. Bonta (1996: 169) argues that, in spite of, or rather because of, the turn towards historicism, the economic crises of the 1930s and the result of WWI and its aftermath “Modern architecture in Hungary reached a very high level between 1919 and 1944 … Repression made this architecture tough and disciplined; the poverty of available means and materials made it even simpler and more straightforward. This need to succeed against all odds, the desire to make the most of nothing, the urge to ‘show them,’ could be considered a unique motivating force of all modernism in East–Central Europe.”

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The war brought utter devastation to the city. Not only were all the bridges destroyed but the housing stock was severely damaged and just as after the previous war, housing shortages were endemic. Architecture was not exempt from the effects of the political situation in the county and where sleek International Style buildings and particularly Central European modernism had begun to make some headway in the city, as Ferkai (1998) notes, there was a brief window for the continued influence of modernism in the immediate aftermath of the war. Following the consolidation of power in 1948 private architectural firms became obsolete, the professional membership was reorganized and a new journal, Magyar Építőmúvészet, appeared to propagate the new acceptable style. Socialist Realism became the sanctioned idiom in which to build. While it was almost impossible to get modernist buildings approved, the lag time between design and construction meant that even in 1950 some of the most striking examples of modernist architecture were constructed, the MEMOSZ Trade Building across from the City Park, for example, and the bus terminal at Erzsébet Square. Study tours, as well as Soviet advisors, and lectures on the decadence of the modernist style were all tools implemented by the Russians according to (Ferkai 1989). Many of the more ambitious projects were undertaken outside the capital, such as the Socialist Realist city of Sztálinváros (today Dunaújváros) but within the city the Academy of Applied Arts building, the government office of the II District at Mechwart liget, the Népstadion [People’s Stadium] and the Technical University R-Building are exemplars from this period, the last one built in 1955, two years after Stalin’s death and the reprieve from the Socialist Realist style which followed (see Szegő and Haba 2003). With so much destruction, reconstruction of damaged buildings was also a high priority. The very real need for housing solutions coupled with the death of Stalin resulted in a shift towards the ubiquitous panel flats, which have become such a compelling sign of the Eastern Bloc. The general acceptance of unornamented façades and flat roofs signaled an end to the era of experimentation in modernist architecture Ferkai (1989: 285) contends: “modern designs, now widely used, became banal and the great prewar generation of architects disappeared from the professional scene.” The 1970s and 1980s were marked by some dramatic shifts architecturally, but only on the margins one could argue. The Organic style, practiced by Imre Makovecz and his followers, with its ecstatic use of wood and other natural elements influenced by folk art, had its strongest impact in the provinces, the Farkasréti chapel in the Buda hills, far outside the touristscape, is one exception. The other shift was the arrival of foreign capital and the building of late modernist and postmodern hotels, including the Marriott on the Danube embankment in 1969, the Hilton built into ruins on the Castle District in 1976, and later the Grand Hotel Kempinski, started in 1988, just prior to the change of regime. Since the change of regime in 1989, the city has seen major construction of glass and steel buildings and some creative postmodern construction, such as the ING building across from the City Park with its odd angles and wrapping

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strings, that according to Török (2005: 165) “is a love or hate affair [and] to many people the symbol of new Budapest.” One of the most outstanding features of the city is not necessarily construction but reconstruction, or really more accurately restoration. Just as in the period after the Second World War, demolition of socialist era buildings and starting from scratch was not economically or physically feasible, and while some many even pre-WWI places have been torn down to make way for entirely new construction, much of the work has gone into restoration of facades. In some cases, these have been poorly executed, resulting in little being done to interiors, or in the opposite case sometimes the gutting entirely of the interiors and poorly done new construction. It is a good rule of thumb that if one is living in a pre-war or even inter-war period flat one will rarely hear the neighbors, whereas any post-1989 construction affords full access to the lives of those in adjacent flats. New construction has taken place on a grand scale however in the form of the shopping mall. In the final years of the socialist regime, the first hints at what would come appeared, the Sugár shopping mall at Örs Vezér Square and the Flórian in Obuda. But it has been since the 1990s that the city has been overrun by huge western style shopping malls, so many that just as in the west they have turned to niche marketing, appealing to smaller and smaller segments of the population. These spaces serve as a fascinating study in the evolution of the post-socialist city, not so much because of the architectural styles, but more because they mark a transition from a socialist and industrial to capitalist and consumptive foci. Within the downtown, large scale retail and housing parks have gone up on brown field sites as part of the deindustrialization which has accompanied privatization (Nagy 2001; Kiss 2002, 2007; Uzzoli 2004). Duna Plaza, one of the first western style malls constructed after the change of regime, was built on a brownfield site turning a “derelict industrial and warehouse district into the prime office axis of Budapest in a matter of 5 or 6 years” (Kok 2007: 121). MOM was built on a former industrial sites, the Magyar Optikai Művek (Hungarian Optical Works), its legacy still memorialized in the name of the plaza, and Mammut is situated on Széna Square, part of the former Ganz factory, the rest of the site having been repurposed into a tidy multi-purpose space, policed by private security guards who ensure that the new bourgeoisie are not bothered in their leisure by the losers of the new system, the out of work, homeless folks who populate nearby Moscow Square. On the Pest side of the city, along the Grand Boulevard and across from the former state-run Skala department store, sits the giant Westend City Center, dubbed az új belvaros, “the new downtown.” Its location along the Grand Boulevard, next to the Western Rail station, was afforded by the fact that it sits on the property formerly owned by MÁV, the Hungarian state railway. With its shiny new interior it the lower level entrance offers a stark contrast of the city now and in the recent past as the mall debouches the more daring of its flashy clientele into the underground passages which lead towards the railway and the subway station. Here one finds men playing chess, pay-to-use toilets, cheap wine bars,

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and small stands filled with cheap substandard goods, a throwback to the “goulash communism” kiosk economy of the 1980s. The Implications of Geography―Between East and West The brief historical and architectural sketch highlights a critical issue; the place of Hungary in Europe is fraught with numerous questions about orientation and belonging. Hungarian culture is situated within this historical trajectory of long standing negotiations about Hungary’s place in Europe (Szekfű 1939; Sugar, Hanák and Frank 1990; Kósa 2000; Romsics and Szegedy-Maszák 2005), located as it is on the cusp between East and West (Szűcs 1983) and occupied by a people speaking a non-Indo-European tongue. The division of Europe into West and East which prevailed during the second half of the twentieth century engendered a set of essentializing categories which still impact perceptions about the wider European political and cultural landscape today. Although regions are understood as socially constructed categories, among scholars and denizens of Europe, the concepts of West, East and Central are still used to think with, though without any clear consensus about where the lines should be drawn (Pagden 2002). While the Iron Curtain was the most recent manifestation of this division, scholars such as György Schöpflin (1991) look back in time locating those divisions even further in the past arguing for major differences in terms of the relationship between state and society, attitudes towards modernity, economic structures, and organization of society. With the demise of the Soviet Bloc many scholars predicted (and some feared) a revival of Central Europe or Mitteleuropa (Judt 1991; Rupnik 1991). In fact, in Hungary, the resurgence of café culture reminiscent of the fin de siècle, has been seen by some as one sign of an again flourishing distinctive Central European culture [Personal Communication, András Török 2006]. Since 1990, the country has faced a massive influx from the west of foreign capital and cultural imports which have exerted a major impact upon the built environment of the capital as the country emerged from its some-40-year exile in the Eastern Bloc (Locsmándi 2000). Hungarian culture since the conversion to Christianity by St Stephen has always been a dialectic between perceived “authentically” Hungarian and borrowed, or sometimes imposed, non-Hungarian elements (Domokos 1985; Romsics and Szegedy-Maszák 2005). The future trajectory of Hungarian culture within the context of accession to the EU, the legacy of socialism, the impact of American and other non-European cultural and capital imports is a fertile ground for exploration. While the term post-socialist city is one that is applied to places as divergent as Prague and Warsaw, it is a term that has resonance in thinking about the cities of the region particularly in coming to terms with the material legacy of “real existing socialism.” While some of the relics of the socialist era have been packed away, the statues, monuments, plaques, and street names, the more mundane and functional remnants of that past endure, in the housing estates and infrastructure. And while the debates go on within the

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county of where Hungary’s place is within contemporary Europe, for visitors to the city, the negotiation of east and west is also an ongoing endeavor. Unlike the 1990s when much of the appeal for tourists was that Hungary had been locked away in the East, behind the Iron Curtain, today its place is more fluid depending upon where the tourist trains their eyes in the tourist prosaic. Guidebooks―Setting the Scene Assisting in the interpretations of the city is the ubiquitous trapping of modern tourism, the guidebook. Budapest’s cityscape is richly endowed with the cultural legacies of its varied history and while for locals this historical narrative is inculcated through national holidays and school curricula, for the visitor, within the tourism nexus the image which is rendered of the place, before and even during their stay, is shaped to a large degree by external factors geared towards the outsider, one of the most dominant being the guidebook. The lament that E.M. Forster penned for Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View is revealing: Tears of indignation came to Lucy’s eyes partly because Miss Lavish had jilted her, partly because she had taken her Baedeker. How could she find her way home? How could she find her way about in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never be in Florence again. A few minutes ago she had been all high spirits, talking as a woman of culture, and half persuading herself that she was full of originality. Now she entered the church depressed and humiliated, not even able to remember whether it was built by the Franciscans or the Dominicans. Of course, it must be a wonderful building. But how like a barn! And how very cold! Of course, it contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values she was capable of feeling what was proper. But who was to tell her which they were? She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date. There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin (1995 [1908]: 29).

Faced with the actual object of her interest sans her Baedeker she was immobilized, unwilling to squander her attention on mediocre objects. The guidebook provides for the tourist this discerning power, the ability to render the seemingly ordinary, sublime, because of its provenance, history and/or significance. The guidebook functions also to separate the wheat from the chafe, or as the nineteenth century Murray guide stated to distinguish “what ought to be seen” from “all that may be seen” (Koshar 1998: 323). Franklin (2004) refers to this as “ordering.” The role of the guidebook in liberating visitors or simply conscribing their options is debatable depending upon when in its history one looks. Some

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scholars have claimed an emancipator role (Cronin 2000; Jack and Phipps 2003); its emergence freeing the traveler from the vagaries of local guides and servants particularly in its early inception such as in the Baedeker. The guidebook though can become hegemonic, conscribing the visitor to certain places, and particular views, shared with hundreds of other visitors, even in the case of those which promise sites “off the beaten path” such as Lonely Planet (Bhattacharyya 1997). The other important task that the guidebook has is to provide a preview and establish a set of expectations for the visitor. As Travlou (2002: 108) argues for Greece, “the guidebook has the functional role of the informant.” This is where the work of reimaging a city into a destination takes place. This task differs from that of highlighting and explicating specific sites in an important way; even while the narrative may focus on particular sites in setting the scene, the guidebook builds expectations of a place by situating it within a larger conceptual category that is in reality unspecific of place. In other words, the guidebook categorizes the experience of place for the reader, fitting specific locales into generic types of places. Examples of such types include the Historic European City; “Denmark’s third-largest city still has a medieval core, and you can walk its cobblestone streets and admire its half-timbered houses …” (Porter and Prince 1997: 2); the Bustling Middle Eastern City with Teeming Narrow Streets; “with its narrow alleyways and its unique ambience, Urfa’s bazaar has a Middle Eastern flavor” (Bainbridge et al. 2009: 145); or even African Continent Filled with Wildlife; “the remains of times long past are evident all over the country … The Age of the Mammals is in evidence all over Kenya …” (Pike 2001: 169). Each of these types carries with it a set of expectations, commonalities that will be expected by the visitor, who can picture him or herself bargaining for a rug and drinking tea, and then, once on the ground, can actually go and do it. In reality, without fulfilling the expectations set for these types of places to do these things, the tourist has missed the point of being in the particular type of locale. In this aspect, the guidebook does not just show “what ought to be seen,” but “what ought to be experienced.” This scene setting crucially draws upon the larger landscape, the cityscape in the case of urban areas, more so than the touristscape, in that it is not about the highlights of a place or the important sites on their own, but the sense of place itself. It is this, the composite of both tourist highlights and everyday urban sites which create the tourist prosaic. The question arises as to the relationship between the image and the reality on the ground. How much does the guidebook and other media condition the tourist to only see what they are told they will see (Dann 1996; Selwyn 1996)? Are travelers so “‘tutored’” by texts to gaze and experience their destination in a particular way” that there is no room for other experiences (Young 1999; McGregor 2000: 46)? These assessments may be overly deterministic. Interviews with visitors to Budapest reveal a two-way relationship between representation and reality, as we will see in the next section. Peirce contends that collateral knowledge and our preconceived ideas shape the way in which we go about comprehending the world, but when we bump up against the brute force of reality our resolve is shaken, then we are compelled to

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reconsider. It is also the case that experiences with time and space are contingent, and what stands at one moment for one person may not be the case for the next person, and that the truth, that ever elusive concept that we strive to reach, in vain, is somewhere in between. However, it is possible that, like walking past a swinging pendulum, we manage to miss being hit, and continue on with our misconstrued conceptions of the world. With respect to tourism, faced with the challenge of interpreting a foreign environment, the expectations that tourists bring with them are powerfully embedded in their minds and play a critical role in giving meaning to the chaos of the scene, so that in some cases the images they see and the experiences they have conform to their expectations, the guidebook functioning as an ordering tool. But as we will see with the tourists interviewed, we should not assume they are simply sheep led to the tourist slaughter. They are unruly, constantly glimpsing and peeking, and seeing beyond the confines of the touristscape. This is exactly when semiosis comes into play, in that the guidebook shapes perceptions, but the force of the physical, the experiential and empirical state of being on the ground competes with the authoritative voice of the guidebook in shaping perceptions and meaning. The guidebook does play a role in making sense of the experience since it serves as the sign that shapes the collateral knowledge against which the actual sign of the city is measured against. Guidebooks have their own personalities as New York Times travel reporter Karen Ashenburg (2001) writes; “one guidebook will remind me of a hypercautious uncle; another an infectiously enthusiastic, but not always terribly discriminating, college roommate.” While the early guidebooks, such as the Baedeker and the Blue Guide, followed along a path aimed at fairly highbrow audiences, in recent decades the field has greatly expanded so that one is faced with a plethora of options. Alex Stewart (2005) offers to the savvy traveler a guide to guidebooks, highlighting 10 different styles, from the so called “independent” and traditional, to the more specialized literary, trekking and suggestion books. The different personalities impact the expectations and the experiences of the traveler, as Rowland (1987) has argued in comparing French and American guidebooks. Furthermore, these various types are related to the needs of differentiation and marketing such that the guidebook “segmented into different customer profiles and then differentiated symbolically and thus positioned in relation to the needs, values and socioeconomic position of the target audience” is not just “reflective of” but “actively” reproduces these same values in the acquisition and ownership of the different style of books (Jack and Phipps 2003: 291). This can be seen in comparing any of the guidebooks to Budapest. While Nicholas Parsons (2005) offers a cogent critique of the many guidebooks to the city which have appeared in the last hundred years or so, the following analysis is more modest and will focus upon the two most frequently cited guidebooks used by those interviewed, the DK (Dorling Kindersley) Eyewitness Travel Guide (2004) (this one appearing in several languages) and Lonely Planet’s Budapest (2003). Comparisons will also be made to a pair of indigenous guidebooks,

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András Török’s Budapest: A Critical Guide4 (2005) and the Hungarian language series Vendég Váró Budapest és környéke [Budapest and its Environs] (2005). From a semiotic perspective the guidebook is both an object itself and also a representamen of what exists on the ground, the city as object. The book, its form and content, the images and texts exists as a material artifact, open to the interpretive process as part of the trappings of the tourist enterprise. The various styles of guidebooks utilize different forms and images, creating subtle differences in the way a particular place is portrayed. In the case of those books that are part of a series, there is distinct tone that is carried throughout the entire series. The DK series bills itself as “The guides that show you what others only tell you” and each of their books are densely illustrated with photos, detailed architectural sketches of buildings, and maps. As Parsons (2005: 99) claims, “the Eyewitness series (British with translations into major European languages) most obviously moved the genre forward in terms of production values, with its excessively semiotic [sic] approach to communicating information and its sophisticated axonometric plans of major buildings. Virtually no latitude is allowed to its writers, whose contributions often read like sound bites to accompany the illustrations.” The Budapest guide begins with an overview of the place, providing history and cultural context, and then divides the city geographically, offering street level explanations of highlights. The final sections offer more practical information for the traveler, from places to stay and eat, to how to use the telephone, though this is not what the series is known for. The photos and sketched plans of buildings are provided with captions making it a useful “field guide” for exploring the city, but lacking the in depth historical, cultural, and architectural commentary of others, such as the Blue Guides. The Lonely Planet series strives to “make it possible for adventurous travelers to get out there—to explore and better understand the world” (Fallon 2003: 8). The city guide to Budapest begins with an extensive (by guidebook standards) history. It then offers a brief overview of the culture of Budapest including sections such as “Treatment of Animals” and “Architecture.” It follows with practical traveler tips including transportation information, and then gives several walking tours, information about museums, baths, hotels, restaurants, entertainment, shopping, excursions outside the city, and ends with a language guide and maps. There are only a handful of photos sprinkled throughout. Certain key facts are highlighted in so called “boxed text” while important sites are located in two ways, within the context of the twelve walking tours which are strictly narrative, and not highlighted on the maps in the back other than to show the sites listed numerically, and or they can be found in the alphabetical list of “Things to See and Do.” The cultural information on society and conduct is based upon stereotype and is wrong on several points, for example women sunbathing topless, which by the time of 4  Budapest: A Critical Guide is mentioned in the Lonely Planet. The author of the Lonely Planet guide seems to have drawn inspiration from Török’s insider stories and anecdotes.

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the writing in 2003 was no longer the norm. On the other hand, the astute warnings about the extortion racket of the so called “drink girls” [konzumlányok] is right on; “guys please: if it seems too good to be true, it is. Trust us and the mirror; such vanity has cost hapless victims hundreds and even thousands of dollars” (54). The Vendég Váró book covers the capital as well as several other surrounding cities among them Esztergom and Gödöllő. As a Hungarian language guidebook produced by and for other Hungarian speakers, it can assume a great deal more than the other books. For example, in speaking about the Széchenyi Lánchíd [Chain Bridge], it mentions fireworks on August 20th, a national holiday; there is no need to explain what is being celebrated. The guidebook itself is arranged more holistically, offering descriptions of the city with some photos of key sites, especially those critical to Hungarian history and culture, and there is no practical traveler information in the city sections, but there is a list of relevant offices and numbers in the “Tourist Information” section towards the back. Although the book does not offer nearly as extensive an architectural commentary as the Blue Guide, (the Hungarian one was written by a British ex-pat), it nevertheless includes in the descriptions of buildings and statues the name of the artist or architect in parentheses. Many of the major architects worked in the provincial areas as well as the capital so visitors may already be familiar with other examples of their work. There is also, not surprisingly, a more narrative flow to the descriptions of sites in the city, without much practical guidance about how to follow the implied route through the actual city. Moreover there is attention to attractions which would be of little interest to the foreign visitor. For example when talking about the National Museum on the Little Avenue, it mentions the nearby Eötvös Loránd University as well as the Központi Antikvárium (the Central Antiquarian Bookstore) which it tells visitors to take a look in but “carefully” since they might easily get stuck there looking at books. Subtle distinctions are made between the presumably Hungarian traveler reading the book, and the foreign tourists they might encounter. In speaking about the polished testicles of the bronze horse upon which the figure of András Hadik sits, the result of a long standing good luck ritual by the students from the Technical University before they take their exams, it says “about the successfulness of this there is no data, but for some time the tourists [turisták] also have rubbed them, the reason why, that perhaps they did not know either” (45). Török’s (2005: 6) Budapest: A Critical Guide “tries to combine three types of guides with the advantages of all three: the Baedeker type, the critical guidebook, and the alternative guidebook.” This guide is drawn in some measure from his Nagy Budapest Könyv which was written for Hungarians as a cultural guide to the city. The English book has no photographs, but provides elevation sketches of building facades, architectural plans, and detailed hand-drawn maps for the walking tours. Written by a Hungarian essayist it offers an insider’s guide to the city. For example in the opening section entitled “Crash Course” it lists among other things, “The Single Most Important Bookshop” (13), “The Single Most Important Esoteric Classical Record Shop” located on a street “no tourist ever sets

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foot …” on (16) and “Staring at Others and Getting Away With It” which includes the metro escalators and a certain bus at sunset when “people switch on their lights, but do not draw their curtains right away” though with the caveat that “to take advantage is not nice, not even in Hungary. You could be scholarly and call it ‘applied people-watching’” (18). The book provides guided walks with attention to architecture, cultural and historical facts unavailable just from the physical sites themselves, as well as practical information about places to stay, getting around, and details about local customs and practices missing in other guides. The list of restaurants for example is arranged in categories such as “Twelve Restaurants Everyone Can Afford, Where We Can Spot Ordinary Hungarians.” It, compared to all the other guidebooks, including the Vendég Váró, offers the greatest access “backstage” of any of the guidebooks. It is an independent guide, meaning that it is not part of a series and in the current climate most travelers choose so called brand name guidebooks. It was entirely absent from the group of interviewees. In the US at least, it is difficult to get a hold of, offered at exorbitant rates from used bookstores online. In Budapest it is available in some of the bookstores and tourist shops but the English language version is often sold out. Interestingly the one pair of tourists who actually had the book refused to be interviewed. While these guidebooks are exemplary of the varied personalities one finds in travel guides, it is interesting to note the similarities of the front covers. The choice of picture plays an important role in setting the expectations of what the place described inside will be like, presenting a snippet of information about the larger whole. For a while in the 1990s Eastern European guidebooks could be found with graffiti covered walls or other dilapidated imagery, indicating the gritty nature of travel in the newly opened region. Those images have been replaced for the most part as Eastern Europe has been brought back into the fold of a larger European context. The DK, Critical Guide, and Vendég Váró each feature a variation on the same scene, the Chain Bridge over the Danube. The shot on DK and Vendég Váró is from the same spot looking from Buda to Pest, the DK shot at night with the lights of the bridge while the other one depicts the raw colors of the city in the unflattering full light of day. The choice of the bridge is not a surprising site since this is a virtual emblem of Budapest in the tourist trade, serving as the most recognizable and representative image of the city, much as the Eifel Tower marks out Paris. The Chain Bridge was the first permanent crossing over the Danube and was designed by and Englishman William Tierney Clark, who was brought to the attention of Count Széchenyi because of his design of the remarkably similar, but smaller Marlow suspension bridge over the River Thames in 1832. It was built by a Scottish engineer, Adam Clark, and finished in 1849, just after the end of fighting, which began the previous year. That original structure and all the other bridges across the Danube were blown up in 1945 by retreating German soldiers but it was rebuilt swiftly after the war and reopened on the 100th anniversary of the original structure.

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Inside the DK the Chain Bridge appears on six pages, with four pictures. It is positioned as part of the neo-classical city, and the important role that its physical presence played in uniting Buda and Pest is briefly highlighted. The Lonely Planet lists only one reference for what it calls the Széchenyi Chain Bridge which is a “boxed text” highlighting several of the Danube bridges. Like other guidebooks it tells who built the bridge but adds that “the nobility – previously exempt from all taxation – had to pay a toll like everybody else to use it” (Fallon 2003: 78). And while the cover does not feature the bridge, one among the handful of pictures in the book features a well worn nighttime shot of the illuminated bridge with the Castle in the background. The Vendég Váró describes the bridge’s history in a box text which translates as: “An English and a Scottish Clark,” covering the recent celebrations around the bridge as well as the history of the lions (including the name of the sculptor) and the buildings and names of the architects at the Pest side of the terminus. While the bridge is a common icon of the city, as we will see when we discuss tourists photos and interpretations of the city, it was mainly absent from these visitors’ descriptions. Although there are variations in the level of photos in each of the books, the Critical Guide having none, one of the most striking things in looking at the initial image of the city planted for the reader by the guidebook is the presence or absence of people. The Lonely Planet includes 35 photos and people appear in 17 of them. In several of these photos, particularly those of the baths, shopping, and café scenes, they are important background elements showing the ways in which the places are used and allowing the viewer to picture themselves sitting amongst the tables immersed in the tourist prosaic. In other scenes the reader is simply a voyeur, watching, the widely reproduced scene of men playing chess while soaking in the waters of the Széchenyi baths, or the picture of speed skaters in the City Park, or a singer in a café. However, in several of the photos, particularly the street scenes, the people are blurred so that they virtually disappear into the scene. Unlike the Lonely Planet, the DK as its tag line implies, is densely illustrated with up to a dozen images on each page, numbering over 1,200 photos in all. What is most surprising however is the paucity of images of people; in just over 60 photos can one find people, but in two thirds of these pictures the focus is elsewhere, and the people are employed to set the scene, as in those pictures of the many thermal baths found in the capital, the street scenes or the images of public transportation. A handful of the photos (six) are of historical figures or events embedded in the book’s timelines. In the majority of the images of architecture and monuments people are included in the frame simply because they happened to be there. In some cases the people are so miniscule as to be easily overlooked or even dwarfed by the edifices past which they are walking. In the remaining third of the photos, people play a much larger role, including pictures of performers (seven) and shoppers (three). There are also several pictures of Hungarians who serve some function including a motorcycle police officer, a doorman, a train conductor, and a flight attendant. These are “cut” outs in the style of the

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DK books for children in that they only include the persons themselves against a white background. Other people are photographed while shopping. While the utilization of people in the Lonely Planet in scenes from cafés and baths serve to invite the viewers in and to imagine themselves joining the scene, in the DK the majority of cafés are empty and the two images that have people sitting show places that are half empty, and are taken from such a distance that it would be difficult to imagine oneself joining in. On the pages dedicated to restaurants and cafés, only two of 11 pictures contain people and one of these is a side shot of a woman standing inside the darkened entrance of the Ruszwurm café. The one odd feature which may be an attempt to invite the tourist reader to join the scene are the several pictures of “tourists” included in the book. These are strategically placed in the practical information pages. At the start of a section entitled “How to Use This Guide” are a cut out image of a man and a woman dressed ostentatiously as tourists, with a vest, a camera around the neck, and a travel bag looking at a map or book, it is unclear which. This is replicated in the “Practical Information” section which has a large picture of, again, an ostentatiously dressed set of tourists with sandals, socks, and backpacks, looking at a map of the city outside the Hungarian state “Tourinform” office. These may be less successful at having the visitor picture themselves on the ground as in these and the other two images the people clearly stand out from the environment and are seeking information rather than enjoying or participating in the scene. What is most striking about the DK, is that considering the large number of images in the book and the small number which actually include people, the editors have managed to produce a set of peopleless images of the city’s highlights. The result is that the reader is left to believe that the city is simply a depopulated collection of historic buildings and artifacts, a touristscape museum severed from the living breathing everyday city. The reality on the ground for the visitor is vastly different. Parsons (2005: 85) argues that most guidebooks tend to sever sites from the actual city. With the “total guidebook” he argues, the tourists “inevitably tend to experience the city as a succession of items (a Baroque church here, an Art Nouveau bank there) that have been wrenched from their period-determined and cultural context in order to become ‘sights.’” Looking at the guidebooks treatment of the socialist past also gives some insight into the way in which they market the city. In the DK for example, communism appears less as a specter than a footnote to a footnote. In spite of the fact that the DK does not shy away from this past, it is completely absent from the “Top Ten” sites—the Gellért Monument, the Gellért Baths, Parliament, the National Museum and National Gallery, the State Opera House, Mátyás Church, Margaret Island, and Váci Street, the Danube and the Chain Bridge—which all can be considered part of the Habsburg City (Olszańska and Olszański 2004: 37). Margaret Island was opened as a public park in 1869, Mátyás Church with its neogothic façade was reconstructed during the last decades of the nineteenth century, and Váci Street despite its modern international brands, dates architecturally from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

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Lonely Planet’s introduction to the city also privileges the Habsburg period. “Architecturally Budapest is a gem … Overall it has a fin-de-siècle feel to it, for it was then—during the industrial boom and the capital’s ‘golden age’ during the last third of the 19th century, that most of what you see today was built” (Fallon 2003: 9) and the only section on architecture is of the Secessionist Period. So too all of the half-dozen boxed highlights in the “Things to See & Do” section—the view from the Fisherman’s Bastion, an opera at the State Opera House; a visit to the Gellért, Rudas or Széchenyi baths; the Crown of St Stephen in the Parliament and the king’s right hand in St Stephen’s Basilica; the Applied Arts Museum; and the Market Halls—privilege the Habsburg City (Fallon 2003: 73). One needs to read very intently the text of the walks and the annotated list of “Museums & Other Attractions” to find references to the socialist era and World War II. These include listing the obvious attractions, The House of Terror (Terror Háza) and the Statue Park (Szoborpark), as well as the Jewish Museum, but there are also unexpected sides notes. The Hungarian Electrotechnical Museum contains the electricity-consumption meter “that was installed in the apartment of ‘Rákosi Mátyás elvtárs’ (Comrade Mátyás Rákosi), the Communist Party Secretary, on his 60th birthday in 1952” (Fallon 2003: 103). The “Walks” throughout the inner city find the tourists’ attention every so often directed toward the socialist period being told that, for example, the former name of the street behind the American Embassy was Rosenberg házaspár (87), that the Hungarian Radio building saw the opening volleys in the 1956 uprising (94), and that the White House at Jászai Mári Square which now houses the parliamentary offices was formerly the headquarters of the Central committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (85). But these particular places, these sites are also buried among descriptions of much more attention grabbing sites so that they are but side notes. This conversational approach is characteristic of the Critical Guide and Török offers many of these anecdotal factoids such as that the Vidám Park was run down and depressed “in the last years of Totalitarian Hungary” (158). His account is thoroughly infused with the socialist past, mainly because he was an active member of the szamiszdat movement in the 1980s which was critical of the government. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Vendég Váró guide eschews much mention of this past offering a very brief remark about the House of Terror and a slightly more expansive description of the Statue Park. The remnants of the socialist past did however figure for tourists in the city, as we will see in the interviews. The role of the guidebook in touring is complex. For one thing, the guide is a mediated experience with the city. The tourists reads the text and sees the images which create a set of expectations, and yet the embodied on the ground experience is that much more vivid, and the reality which has been crafted in the mind fractures at the onslaught of real-time experiences. This is one of the reasons why guidebook directions and maps are so often hopelessly useless when one begins actually walking from one point to another. In spite of the fact that one American group said that they knew they were in a Hungarian city because, “it looks like the pictures from the guidebooks” (Interview 26) in reality the printed

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form is weak compared to all the other ways one experiences the city, with its multi-dimensional, and multi-sensual experiences. This is especially the case with the quotidian spaces of the city, where the messiness of the mundane, of everyday life, contrasts sharply with the images from the guidebooks. In the plethora of pictures in the DK, for example, there is nary a photo of graffiti and yet as we will see this too was one of the most commented upon features of the city.

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Chapter 5

Tourists in the City—Means and Methods Landscape scholars have long been interested in the association between culture and the built environment, but this is not necessarily the case for the average person. And while Peirce would argue that all knowledge even self knowledge is semiotic in nature, this would be news to many people. The present study sought to uncover the ways in which people make sense of the landscapes they find themselves in, through observation, through conversation and through photography. As we will see in Chapters 6 and 7 the interviews and images give voice to the complex interaction between expectation and experience and the interpretive process which is undertaken when the tourist is faced with the materiality of the city. This chapter will introduce the methodological issues of locating tourists and interviewing them in media res, while still in the midst of their explorations of the city.1 It will also look at the ground upon which the photographic study was laid by looking at the literature on Visitor Employed Photography and discuss the method used for sorting and organizing the images. Field Guides—Locating the Tourist Gianni Vattimo writes that “the cultural tourist, although (as is more and more often the case) unchecked by the sign reading ‘No entry for tourists during services’, moves with a certain embarrassment and is conscious of being a disturbance, and out of place. Those in prayer regard tourists with mixed feelings, for on the one hand, they should welcome them with a charitable attitude, respectful of their interests and the intentions that have brought them to their church. Yet on the other hand they sense in tourists a foreignness in conflict with what, at least at that moment, seem to them to be the proper meaning of the place” (1997: 58). This raises the question of how are tourists encountered and observed within the spaces of the cityscape? The easy answer is that they are found in the touristscape. Although the reality on the ground is that rather than clearly delineated borders, the cityscape and touristscape are stacked and interwoven much the way that map layers are, coexisting one upon the other. Budapest like many other cities around the world presents the visitor with a touristscape that is a set of nodes thoroughly embedded within the everydayness of 1  The methodological issues concerned with the ethnography of place at the Central Market Hall will be addressed separately in Chapter 7. Comments from interviews at the Central Market Hall are designated with a V after the number.

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the cityscape. The highlights of urban tourism tend towards the social and cultural and are features which often are just as much a part of the local’s experience of the city as the visitor’s, though with tourism being such a big business there are areas which overtime become almost exclusively devoted to serving the needs of the foreign visitor. But even tourist on a three day jag hitting only the “Top Ten” highlights, cannot help but encounter the banal, as they move between the Parliament and the Castle for example. Guide books often fail to take into account the vast spaces of the cityscape, in their focus upon particular elements with the touristscape, the mise-en-scène of the city and the charms of the everyday are lost. Roland Barthes’s (1972: 76) assessment of the Blue Guide applies just as well to most other guidebooks: “to select only monuments suppresses at one stroke the reality of the land and that of its people, it accounts for nothing of the present, that is, nothing historical, and as a consequence, the monuments themselves become undecipherable, therefore senseless. What is to be seen is thus constantly in the process of vanishing, and the Guide becomes, through an operation common to all mystifications, the very opposite of what it advertises, an agent of blindness.” And when they do attend to the cityscape, it is with overly broad strokes. While it is easy to condemn the tourist stuck in the “tourist traps” as a dupe uninterested in real cultural encounters, the reality is that for many people on holiday, the touristscape provides a festival-like atmosphere where they can “perform” as tourists. For many, wandering hokey cobblestoned streets, browsing “faux” folk art, and sitting down to an overpriced meal at a place where one pays for the privilege of having the menu in multiple languages other than the native one, is what being a tourist is; were they to completely eschew these places and things for hardware stores, factories and suburbs, their sense of fulfilling the duties required of being a tourist would be in some doubt. Modern tourism carries with it a set of expectations, a set of images, which condition the traveler to the “habits” attendant with being on holiday, which is itself a powerful semiotic experience. This research turns upon the notion of constructing a landscape study of the tourist prosaic, and while the built environment features heavily, the interaction of visitors with the city was of great interest. Interviews and the use of visitor employed photography was one method, but it was also necessary to observe tourists “in their natural environment” so to speak in order to triangulate between the results of interviews, the literature on tourist activity and actual observable behavior.2 Thus identifying tourists and the ways in which they act was critical, and the identification of tourists as such became a matter of applied semiotics. Some areas of the city, the Castle District and the area immediately proximate to the Parliament are tourist friendly sites where visitors are free to act as tourists and are 2  For example, tourists were asked about what things they photographed when in the Central Market Hall, and very few mentioned the gaudily decorated tourist stand on the main floor. Participant observation revealed this to be an extremely well photographed spot in the market.

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easy to identify waving their guidebooks and drawing their cameras. The between places of the cityscape causes tourists to behave much more circumspectly, thus raising the question of how to distinguish between foreign tourists and foreign and Hungarian locals. Max Weber’s (1969 [1949]) notion of the “ideal type” offers a way to create a rubric for identifications where the so called ideal type is formed from observations of token examples in order to find commonalities, what Peirce refers to as induction (e.g. EP 2: 442). In this case, the creation of a rubric for the “ideal type” emerged from knowledge of Hungarian culture and tourism and gained through being in the field. Signs used to identify tourists included clothing styles, accessories, language and volume of conversation, and movement through space. In spite of the global diffusion of fashion is which has in many places minimized national and ethnic differences in contemporary clothing, especially among the industrialized countries of “the West,” the similarities and differences are subtle but palpable with close and careful analysis On the surface, Hungarian’s dress differs little from that of their European neighbors, even those not having been subject to Soviet occupation. There are, however, a few uniquely Hungarian brands which mark a person as a local. These include anything from Philosophy of Sherpa, an ostentatiously Canadian brand of adventure clothing which in reality is a Hungarian company, or shirts or bags from ManuArts, a natural cotton, clothing store, or any bag from the Hungarian company Budmil. The difference in degree of formality offers another potentially distinguishing factor, that is, the difference between those dressed for work versus those on holiday. Some travelers wear specialized travel wear, pants that double as shorts for example and this offers yet another distinguishing mark. There are of course differences in American and European footwear—the stereotypical German man in sandals with black socks and his American counterpart in white socks and white running shoes. Baseball caps are yet another indicator though their proliferation, even the Hungarian police wore them for a while, makes them a less reliable, and like most apparel is not by itself a sure marker. Accessories are a further distinguishing feature. Cameras, guidebooks, and maps are obvious markers but more subtly and more importantly are bags—both presence and absence. Hungarians who are out on the streets carry bags, usually several bags. The intelligentsia, professionals and university students carry the ubiquitous leather satchel and these have a strong similarity in underlying style. High school and elementary students carry backpacks, often the bright, ostentatious, locally produced Budmil bags. And most people have shopping bags with them, either plastic or reusable. Tourists can be identified by the presence of backpacks (since most Hungarians after high school move on to more appropriately adult styles) and those who still use hip bags. More importantly however, the tourist is marked by the absence of bags. In other words, those people walking around the city with no bag, neither tote nor plastic shopping bag, are more likely than not to be tourists since they are simply out in the city. Hungarians who are out on the street and using public transportation take advantage of the fact that the city is

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set up for pedestrians and so will have stopped at the bakery on the way to work, or the stationary store on their lunch, or the greengrocer on the way home in the evenings and will be weighed down with these essential items. Reading materials offer another telling indicator of outsider status in that most Hungarians riding public transport will have either a book, newspaper or magazine with them, often in Hungarian, though many locals and foreign residents will have reading materials in their native tongues, distinguishing them from foreign visitors who do not read on the buses, trams or subways. Tourists are often too busy calculating when their stop will be, or scanning their immediate environment for threats since one of the scams that tourists are told to watch out for is being crowded by a group of pickpockets, especially on the subways. Lastly, movement through space is another marker. Locals, with a familiarity of the city and its character tend to move much more fluidly through those spaces. Tourists, because of their outsider status and their lack of knowledge about place, will move much more hesitantly, checking for affirmation in the environment and in street signs, and on public transportation will exhibit a hyper vigilance about the safety of their belongings. This was less evident on the streets, but was evinced over and over in the Central Market Hall, when tourists would enter the building and turn their backpacks from their back onto their fronts, and on public transportation. A slightly different situation is seen when tourists move more slowly through the environment, paying more attention to landmarks, placards, manhole covers, features of the built environment which are simply background to the local who passes them each and every day. None of the characteristics by themselves would mark someone as a tourist, but a person would be identified as such having matched several of the traits of the “ideal type.” This was especially important in trying to identify tourists outside of the main tourist areas of the Parliament, the Castle District, Váci Street and the Market Hall, which all provide relatively secure environments for the tourist to “perform” as tourist. In spite of the fact that the Castle District is home and place of work for many Hungarians, it has been denatured and distilled as the epitome of a tourist locale, one of the few seemingly pure touristscapes in the city. It is part of the tourist prosaic, in both senses of the term in that it is a fully functioning part of the city, filled with residents, school kids and state employees at the National Archives, and Széchenyi Library, but also a mainstay of tourism in the city. Visitors primarily see other tourists (the locals blending in or perhaps just not as striking as baroque buildings) and hence they can “be” themselves, play the role of tourist, taking pictures, reading their guidebook, consulting their maps, acting out appropriately in the touristed space of the tourist prosaic. This is in contradistinction to the “non-tourist” areas of the cityscape where visitors may dare to tread, but where they “perform” as locals, their guidebooks tucked away in their bags, maps folded out of view, and cameras kept out of site when not in use. They are chameleons, blending in with their surroundings and hence, as a group are hard to find. This is the case for some of those moving up Andrássy Avenue, along the so-called Cultural Avenue, but even more so for those moving

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along parallel or perpendicular routes to this one. This is not to say that tourists cannot be spotted when one looks carefully enough, but they do what they can to blend in, and it is a rewarding find, like discovering a bear that has wandered into the city.3 Colloquies—Conversing with the Tourist Working with tourists “in the field” presents two fundamental challenges. One is that they are on vacation and they often do not really want to be bothered with participating in research, answering questions, and being hindered from their brief enjoyment of the place they are in. The second challenge, closely related, is that tourists are cautious and suspicious, worrying that any approach by a stranger has some ulterior motive. This made it difficult to stop people in the cityscape, beyond the boundaries of the touristscape within which they were less startled at being singled out and uncovered as outsiders. In the Castle District tourists were reluctant to stop and speak when they were approached on side streets rather than along the main thoroughfare. For those who were willing to speak, the interviews were semi-structured and open ended conversations, allowing for respondents to be as detailed as they wanted choosing to answer each question or to talk about things outside of the scope of the questions. Of course this meant that sometimes the encounter served as a sounding board for their complaints about the city or their experiences. For example the waitstaff were rude, no one smiled, the names of the stops on the trams did not convey enough information for the visitor, and so on. The questions included basic demographic information and the details of the present trip, general inquiries about the type of tourist they considered themselves to be, that is, the things they liked to do when on tour, questions about their previous knowledge about Hungary, and the specifics about touring in Budapest (see Appendices). The more general questions were asked first in order to get people comfortable with talking about touring and the demographic questions were asked last in order to allow for a general rapport to have developed before “personal” information was requested. Although no personal identifying information was ever solicited or recorded, in initial work with tourists, starting the interviews with information 3  It is certain that tourists who were able to successfully “perform” as locals evaded notice, but in terms of correctly identifying tourists on the street, among those who were approached, only once was the initial assumption incorrect. While I was certain that I would be speaking with a pair of tourists, the man responded to an English hello with the Hungarian equivalent, szia, and the conversation continued in Hungarian as he assured me he was not turista [a tourist]. Interestingly among the many black and white, rightwing political t-shirts which have become popular lately, is one with the nationalist slogan “Magyar vagyok, nem turista” [I am Hungarian, not a tourist]. For the most part though, even without the assurance of a declared identity from a shirt, tourists and locals were clearly identifiable.

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that for the lay person feels “personally identifying” seemed to put people on guard. The basic questions about sightseeing provided an easier way in for people to think about their own experiences without having to reveal anything which felt personal. It also had the advantage of being process oriented and most participants interpreted it that way when they answered. In other words, the majority of people talked about the mechanics of touring, that is gathering information from guidebooks, the internet and/or friends and colleagues, and the initial moving about a place, walking to sites or taking a bus tour. Subsequent question started to move them more explicitly towards the issue of interpretation without specifically getting at their interpretations of Hungarian culture. People were generally quite quick to answer that they used guidebooks and/or placards or their own interpretations to make sense of what they might see when on tour, and some people even said they might consult locals. More specific questions about Budapest in general, and specifically about interpretations of the urban landscape were asked. The role that Hungarian national identity played within foreigners’ interpretation of the built environment was of particular interest. From a Peircean perspective, the world entails mediating meaning from what is around us and in this sense, tourists are unable to not interpret; even if, as was the case with many of the interviewees, they had little previous knowledge about Hungarian culture. In order to get at this interpreting explicitly, tourists were asked to focus on a specific task of interpretation, that of “reading” the Budapest landscape for signs of Hungarianness. In another sense there was also an interest in the things that were significant to them and to that end they were asked what were the most striking things both positive and negative in the city. As we have seen, collateral knowledge shapes our interpretations and forms our beliefs, habits and actions, so questions of previous acquaintance with Hungarian culture and how the city itself met visitors’ preconceptions were asked in order to get a sense of what collateral knowledge they might have brought to bear on their interaction with the city. In total 103 people in 52 groups were interviewed. Women and men were almost equally split, 49 women and 54 men. The majority of interviews took place with more than one person. Nine people were interviewed alone, seven men and two women; there were two groups of three, one mixed, one all women, three groups of four, and a group of six made up of an equal number of men and women, and the remaining groups, 35, were pairs, only one of which were two men, the rest being male/female pairs. Those interviewed represented 13 different nationalities and 10 different countries.4 11 people were in their 20s, nine people in their 30s, 17 4  The 13 nationalities and the number of interviewees in each category were: American–45; British–32; Australian–7; Canadian–4; German–4; French–3; Israeli–3; New Zealander–2; Chinese–1; Italian–1; Japanese–1; Norwegian–1; Philipino–1. The interviewees resided in 10 different countries: United States–44; Great Britain–34; Germany–7; Australia–6; Canada–4; Israel–3; France–2; New Zealand–2; Norway–2; Japan–1.

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people in their 40s, 37 people in their 50s, 28 people in their 60s, and one person in his 70s. Photographs—Picturing the City Photography as Method Photography is a constituent element of touring, providing both proof that one has been there, as well as a souvenir of the experience. Jenkins (2003) has referred to this as the circle of representation when tourists reenact the images they have seen. Professional photography also plays a key role in shaping destination image through guidebooks and advertising campaigns undertaken by tourism bureaus and the growing preference for illustrated guides highlights the importance of the visual (Butler 1990; Hall 1997; Edensor 2006). Photography also plays an important role in understanding the tourist experience. Researchers have turned to photographic methods in order to gain greater insight into the way in which others see the world around them (Banks 1998; Harper 2002; Schirato and Webb 2004; Schwartz 1989). Visitor employed photography (VEP) has its origins in the landscape and planning field where it was first introduced in the early 1970s (Cherem 1972; Cherem and Traweek 1977) as a way to assess public perception of nature, and is still being used in that manner with visitors as well as residents (Stedman et al. 2004). VEP differs from a closely related research method, that of photo elicitation, where photos are used with participants as an “aid to interviewing” (Collier 1957: 843; see also Collier and Collier 1986; Harper 1986, 2002). While often the photos originate from outside the participants realm, in some cases their own previously produced photos can be used in the interviewing process. One of the claims is that “the interview can move from the concrete (a cataloguing of the objects in the photography) to the socially abstract (what the objects in the photograph mean to the individual being interviewed)” (Harper 1986: 25). One of the advantages which has been claimed for VEP is that it empowers the picture takers, and allows them to show things that may be far too complicated to explain with words or to offer views not seen by mainstream or dominant society. Cameras in this vein have been used with children (Hubbard 1994; Leavitt, Lingafelter and Morello 1998; Samuels 2005) and homeless people (Erhardt and Hislop 1998). Within tourism and urban planning, VEP has been employed in a similar manner, allowing participants to demonstrate their view of place perception and has been used with both residents and/or tourists in places such as the United States (Ziller 1990), Toronto, Canada (Haywood 1990), Simla, India (Jutla 2000), Wales (Garrod 2007), as well as at more conscribed places such as heritage sites (MacKay and Couldwell 2004). VEP was used in Budapest in order to bypass some of the linguistic binds which ensue during interviews when speaking about material artifacts and

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landscape, a problem which was especially obvious, as we will see below, in the case of architecture. Having participants produce their own photography Ellis (2003: 14) argues, can be a powerful research tool to understand participants’ actual experiences “because they are only revealed in photographic rather than discursive narrative … For there are often differences between what people mention and say ‘matters’ and what matters in practice.” There is however a double and triple hermeneutic circle which ensues when analyzing the resultant pictures. On the one hand the researcher must work with a certain set of assumptions about photography, one of those being that both she and the participants have a shared understanding of the aspects which constitute the genre of tourist photographs. Unlike art photos the tourist photo tends toward a more straightforward portrayal of what is being seen from behind the lens (see for example Crang 1997). These single-use cameras did not lend themselves to more complicated pictures since they utilized simple 35 millimeter film with a flash without zoom or any of the other features that can be found on even the most basic digital cameras. For the most part the photographs have a documentary quality to them, capturing the scene rather than artfully manipulating it. In some cases, feet or fingers appear in the frame, or the photos awkwardly focus in on the object so that two foot long trashcans fill the entire frame, or a street scene without any obvious focus fills the picture. But as Ellis (2004: 4) notes: the “imperfections” of much of the self-directed photography as lamented by the anxious research participants themselves—such as not knowing what to take … taking pictures which may be out of focus or “impinged” by embodiments like fingers—are important in themselves … the “imperfections” of selfdirected photography are crucial when considering the knowledges subjects have and the discourses they are citing. The “picturing practices” (Crang 1997) of research participants are a crucial site for the performance of identities and subjectivities …

Even in the most naïve photographing, there are decisions made about framing, things which are left out of the scene purposefully, angles chosen which flatten the complexity of the actual scene. Peirce includes photographs in his category of signs which function indexically rather than iconically, that is simply sharing a likeness. The photo, while it does “involve an icon of a peculiar kind,” is indexical because it is “affected by the Object” (EP 2. 291), because of the chemical reaction which ensues to produce the negative and then the photograph itself which makes it a sign of the scene captured. But with all signs, interpretation takes into consideration what is there, and what is not, in a photograph. Picturing Budapest Visitor employed photography was used in the present study as a compliment to the interviews. The group of people who participated in taking pictures were an

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entirely different set of people from those interviewed on the streets. Participants were given a 27 exposure Fuji single-use camera in a self-addressed, stamped, small padded envelope. Working with a transient population such as tourists, the instructions for taking pictures, for completing the task, and for returning the cameras had to be easily disseminated both verbally and in writing as there was no chance for follow up. The directions attempted to be both thorough and openended enough to allow participants to follow their own ideas about what to take pictures of. The biggest challenge which emerged in the design stage of the project was one of definition. The concept of culture could not be over-determined, but because this particular study was concerned with the built environment, the focus in the examples was on elements such as doorknobs and panoramas, and what Hungarian culture is, or is not, was left unarticulated, hence the use of the admittedly awkward term “Hungarianness.” It was underscored in the directions that there were no “right or wrong answers.” This was important in order to allow people the freedom to record their direct encounters with the city. Equally vexing, in terms of explanation was the question of how to avoid getting 30 pictures of the main cultural-historic tourist highlights of the city. It was determined that the best way to do this was directly, by asking people not to take pictures of “large scale monumental sites.” And they were given examples of what sites would fall under this category including the Castle District, the Parliament, the Citadel, the Basilica, and Heroes’ Square. Instructions to tourists were given verbally at two times, a three line description of the project when tourists were approached about participating, and after they agreed to participate, instructions were also given while going over each of the materials in the self-addressed, stamped envelope. The written directions for completing the project were summarized though the oral instructions did not follow verbatim what was on the sheet, but rather certain things were highlighted. For one, participants were made to understand that however many or few pictures they were inspired to take was all right, and that the most important thing was that they returned the camera even if they just took a few pictures. They were told that they could take anything, any size, but that the emphasis should be on material objects in the city, rather than people. In emphasizing the focus upon the banal spaces of the city, the terms “everyday” and “non-monumental” were used and since most of the recruitment was done in the Castle District, near Matthias Church, the immediate environment was pointed to as what not to take photos of. This area it was said, was basically assumed to be “Hungarian” and that the study was concerned with what seemed Hungarian in the rest of the city. This concept of monumental was summed up by one early participant as, “basically anything which appears on a postcard.” When people were first approached they were told that once they were finished, they should simply give the envelope to the front desk when they checked out if they were staying in a hotel, pension or hostel and this was reiterated when we explaining the materials. This solved a number of problems in terms of getting cameras back. The postboxes which can be found on the street have slots too

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narrow to accommodate a filled envelope, and the Hungarian post office is a byzantine bureaucracy that is best avoided by the non-Magyar speaking visitor. Of the 30 cameras handed out, 22 were returned with the number of exposures ranging from four to 27, resulting in 357 pictures. As a visual record of Hungarianess, the photos are far reaching and provocative and along with the interviews, raise a number of questions about the ways in which the cityscape and touristscape intersect. They also hint at the porosity of national culture specifically the elasticity of the boundaries that constitute that culture in the realm of material artifacts. The photos, taken with the results of interviews also point to the ways in which the tourist prosaic is experienced. And of course signs have both denotative and connotative functions and in the case of the photos participants were asked to consciously attend to the connotative aspects of the artifacts they are capturing in their attempt to photograph “Hungarianess.” While the idea and the deliberate nature of what participants were being asked to do forces the attention in a way that does not occur during the everyday, the act of being a tourist already entails the seeking out of, in Culler’s words, “signs of Frenchness, typical Italian behaviour, exemplary Oriental scenes …” (1981: 4). The concept of “Hungarianess” met with little resistance to those on the road for it was one of the reasons for their travels. The interpretation of their interpretations shows the winding around of the hermeneutic circle in that the researcher must then put into context the images, and her interpretations of participants’ interpretations of signs of Hungarianess. Because the photographic project was meant to avoid the binds of linguisticality, participants were not asked to explain what they took pictures of, though they were asked to record the locations at which the photos were snapped and some took this as an opportunity to gloss what they were shooting. Organizing the Images The process of analysis of the photos proceeded in several steps. As Groves and Timothy (2001) recommend, it is important to establish a multi-stage set of criteria for analyzing the images which can be applied consistently to each photo in order to isolate that which the photographer was intending to capture. In the present study, the photos which the tourists took were organized according to place and theme. Qualitative research strives for coherent methodological and interpretive analyses which offers “thick description” (Geertz 1973), doing justice to the richness of the material while providing a narrative that serves to add to our knowledge about the topic at hand (Hay 2005). In the case of this research, while it is surely significant that a large proportion of photos of a certain theme occur, for example architecture, aggregating each token into the larger category risks homogenizing the data, resulting not in an increase in our understanding of tourists’ interaction with the built environment but in a smoothing which avoids the outliers and the differences amongst the given tokens. Converting the resultant photos into mere numerical counts obfuscates

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the significance of so called outliers, and leaves little room for a discussion of the absences which are present in the data. So while thematic categories were employed, these are simply organizing tools to aid in the interpretations of the material. To begin the process of ordering the images, simple descriptions were made of the content of each photo and from these descriptions, and using the photos themselves, each was sorted into categories. The choice of categories was based on three sources of information—the subject matter of the photos themselves, guided by the themes which arose in interviews with people, and the place ethnography of the cityscape itself grounded in the literature of Hungarian culture and history. This resulted in 31 distinct categories from architecture and buses, to souvenirs, graffiti and baths.5 The photographs were then analyzed in order to record the general or specific location within the city. In some cases, previous knowledge of the city allowed the assigning of an exact location for the photo in question, in other cases only an approximate location could be given and in other cases the image left a large question mark. The final step was to turn to the location cards filled out by participants in order to fill in missing locations, correct those which were off, and adjust the categorization of the photos if the comments required such. The rational for sorting the photos in this order is directly related to the challenges of interpretation mentioned above. It is impossible to interpret the photos by bracketing previous knowledge about Budapest and Hungary, because as the German hermeneutic philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer (1989 [1975]) argues, we can never truly be free of our prejudices, we can not face a scene with our mind as a true tabula rasa. In a Peircean sense, one can not stop collateral knowledge from impinging upon interpretation. Objects which are produced— photographs, paintings, literature and the like—can not be assured a straightforward authoritative meaning by their authors. Instead the meanings emerge out of the collaborative nature of the commens, Peirce’s term for the collective nature of knowledge (SS 196–7). In some cases interpretations are consistently close to one another, Peirce includes for example a musical composition amongst his example of icons if and only if, the conditional being the key factor, the playing of the music evokes the same feeling which the composer intended (EP 2.5). In the case of these photos, the interpretive process is a collaborative one, the commens consisting of participants and the researcher, and indeed the reader striving together for an ever closer approximation between the interpretant and the object. Because this 5  The categories and numbers of photos in each were: Architecture and Architectural Details–101; Food–30; Signs–23; Statues, Monuments and Memorials–23; People–15; Street Scenes–15; Stores–12; Random–11; Souvenirs–11; Transportation–11; Nature–10; Graffiti–8; Construction–7; Panoramas–7; Postbox–7; Infrastructure–7; Danube Shore–6; Flags–6; Baths–5; Cars–5; Socialist Realist Art–4; Lamps–5; Manhole covers–5; Horsedrawn carriage (Fiáker)–4; Phone Boxes–4; Trash cans–4; Water Fountains–3; Interiors–3; Trash–2; Clock–2; Bridges–1.

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is a process, it is thus necessary to subject the photos to multiple interpretations/ readings, adjusting the categorization of the photos as necessary. To quote Ellis (2003: 14) “while the researcher potentially imposes their own meanings, frameworks and academic discourses on the photos based on their own positionality and framings of their research project, particularly where photos aren’t explicitly explained, it could also be argued that the researcher may uncover interpretations which are not articulated by the research participant.” Thus while a simple description of the images and categorization can be made, there is a larger story about the Hungarian quality of the cityscape as experienced by these visitors, one which rests upon the materiality of language in the landscape, the disorderly nature of the past in the present, especially as it manifests itself as “post socialist,” the role of architecture in creating a textured landscape, and the mundane features of the contemporary city. We will discuss each of these more fully in the next chapter.

Chapter 6

Signs in the City The interviews and the photographs, separately and taken together, offer tantalizing glimpses into the ways tourists were interpreting culture in the city. We have spoken about the history of the city, especially its architectural legacy, and the general conception of the way in which guidebooks shape collateral knowledge. However, once the tourist arrives on the ground, that information, along with their other conceptual baggage, is brought face-to-face with the vividness of being in the city. What follows is a discussion organized around the themes which emerged in the photos as well as the interviews. These include 1) the role of linguistic markers; 2) the question of disorder in interpreting the past, 3) the tensions between the socialist and post-socialist history, 4) the textual quality of architectural style for urban landscapes 5) the everyday city and its objects. The images and interview comments it is argued in the conclusion reveal the indexical role of location. The Writing on the Wall—Signs, Language and Graffiti The so called “linguistic landscape” is the material manifestations of language in place, the collection of street names, shop signs, notices, adverts, graffiti and other textual items (Shohamy and Gorter 2009). This landscape is crucial for the smooth functioning of a literate society, and because of its ubiquity is a key element of the tourist prosaic and the experience of cultural tourism especially when the language is other than the tourists’ own. As long as it does not impinge upon the visitor’s enjoyment or cause disruptions in the experience of the city, language difference remains an important marker of place differentiation. As we will see it was among the most commented upon aspects of a sign of “Hungarianess.” Images of the linguistic landscape were captured in the form of commercial signage, location markers including street signs, and graffiti. Shop Signs Commercial life is a key function in cities, from the fora found in Ancient Rome to Fifth Avenue in New York. While some participants photographed the folksy souvenirs available in shops in the Castle District, others took many pictures of the

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many local, small scale shops found throughout the city.1 One photographer was particularly interested in a shop called Telefonía selling used cell phones which the photographer had “never seen.”2 Like many shops this one listed on its sign its wares in Hungarian first and then in English, which is why the participant could comment upon it. The use of English in commercial places is both functional, a message to non-Magyar speakers, but it also signifies to the Magyar speaker that it is hip, “international” and contemporary. Two separate photographers shot the Ruszwurm sign, the tiny coffee house in the Castle District which dates from the early 1800s. The actual name on the sign, is a sign, in a semiotic sense, indicating all that is embodied in the concept of this café which the Vendég Váró calls “an atmospheric, confectionary furnished in the Empire style” (45). The Kiscelli Museum which sits on the outskirts of the city has an important collection of old commercial signs, which as opposed to those one finds today, utilized symbology, created in the round often out of metal. For the most part those signs have disappeared except for nostalgic reconstructions, such as one Owl sign taken outside what appears to be a folk craft store in the Castle District.3 Entirely absent from the commercial signage photos surprisingly were the elaborate neon signs that date from the 1950s and 1960s, many now defunct but still in situ on buildings throughout the city. Others have made their way into the Elektrotechnikai Múzeum [Electrotechnical Museum]. In interviews the shops and commercial enterprises were not mentioned with a great deal of frequency, with a few notable exceptions. One pair were struck when they went into a “locals shopping store, and it looked really poor on the outside but inside it was fabulous” (Interview 14), and they also spoke about trying to find a pharmacy. Enzensberger’s (1989 [1985]: 102) mid-1980s essay on Hungary gives a sense of why this would be a challenge: I’ve spent whole days reading the wounds and splendors of the city of Budapest from its doors, walls, and nameplates. I think of it as an ambiguous, puzzling, dirty panorama. Every sign in this country seems to promise a secret to the flaneur from abroad and impresses upon him that he is condemned to remain an 1  Photos 9.22T; 11.21T; 11.24T; 11.25T; 16.17T. The numbers in parentheses refer to the photographers and the image number which are archived with the author. A selection of the 357 photos will appear in the chapter. The numbers are included in the text in order to give the reader a general idea of the number of photos on a particular theme that appear in the collection. Each camera held 25 to 26 exposures, and the numbers assigned to each photo reveal where in the order of images the pictures was taken, in reverse order. In other words, a picture with an image number of 25 indicates that it was the first picture taken, in reverse successive order all the way to 0 or 00. The T indicates that this was a tourist. While cameras were also given to Hungarians, those pictures are not treated in this work. See Metro-Roland (2009a) for a discussion of the Hungarian photos. 2  Photo 12.20T. 3  Photo 21.7T.

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idiot, an illiterate. Gyógyszertár, for example. Who could decode such a word? And yet, behind the frosted glass and the wood paneling is concealed nothing more than a quite ordinary pharmacy.

The pair mentioned above recognized the Green Cross image and so were able to locate one. The experience of a young American couple (Interview 1) however was more frustrating, and bore a close resemblance to the complaint of Enzensberger. They unsuccessfully sought out linguistic clues in the cityscape to guide them to a pharmacy but gyógyszertar the word bears little resemblance to pharmacia, patika or apotheka, words they might have recognized more easily. They were bitterly disappointed when upon locating a shop called Drogerie Mart they discovered that, in fact, no actual drugs were to be found, only shampoos, soaps, and tissues. In the course of one of the interviews in the Castle District the interviewee asked for help in locating a pharmacy. These experiences shed light on the frustrations that the Hungarian linguistic landscape could bring when trying to undertaken everyday tasks. For many people language was the defining factor given for the city being Hungarian and the logical follow up question was whether this impacted negatively the tourists’ experiences, that is whether the language posed a barrier. This also allowed for a glimpse into their level of interaction beyond mere “sightseeing” of Hungarian culture; in other words, how far were they moving out of the touristscape which exists in an almost exclusive English language space within the larger Hungarian speaking local space of the cityscape as a whole? It should be noted that in the capital English is the primary language of tourism followed by German. What ought also to be kept in mind is that, as the list of nationalities of interviewees reveals, for many of them English was a second language (if not a third or fourth). The expectation of English was high among interviewees and photographers as well no matter what their mother tongue might have been. For example one participant from Sweden photographed a plaque in the Castle District which was glossed as “Opposite of Hilton Hotel letters not understandable–no translation.”4 The comment reveals the belief that English will be used as the lingua franca of tourism and the expectation that within the touristscape not only should those working in this realm be able to converse but so should the linguistic landscape. Interviewees had numerous observations about language in the city. “I see signs and newspapers in a foreign language” (Interview 2). “Everything is written in a foreign language” (Interview 10). “The signs, language” (Interview 16). “I don’t know, all the signs are in Hungarian but it’s hard to figure out if a word is Polish, Czech or Hungarian” (Interview 1). “Some Turkish influence, can tell from the street signs, the language is weird can see Turkish influence but can not make it at all a word” (Interview 21).”The language is incomprehensible” (Interview 22). “The Hungarian language is so strange, store names look like a graffito” 4  Photo 1.21T.

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(Interview 23). “The language, it’s kind of different from other languages” (Interview 33). “The strange spelling of words, it’s a pretty unique language” (Interview 42). One interviewee took a far more romantic view referring to “the colors and the melody of the language, unspeakable words” (Interview 9). Street signs are one of the spaces where Hungarian predominates. Photographers captured several pictures of these including signs for Zrínyi Street 5–1, Vám Street 11–9 and Király lépcső [King Stairway].5 The Vám street sign, from the Víziváros [Watertown] district of the city, employs a pointing hand to indicate the range of building numbers found on that block and this was glossed on the location card as “hand in street sign—not seen anywhere else.” The linguistic landscape of street signs is rich with historical reference, but it seems that much of this was lost on visitors. While there were general references to Hungarian on streets signs as seen in the previous comments, the toponymic legacy was not mentioned. The example of the photo from the Yellow Underground offers a glimpse into the importance of history for toponymy. In the 1890s as part of the expansion of the city out along the radial boulevard, Hungary became the first country on the continent to have a subway, the Millenniumi Földallati vasút [Millennial Underground Railroad]. It retains the dimensions and façade of its fin-de-siècle origins. The stations are tiny, and literally just a short flight of steps underground with decorative iron supporting structures. The trains are small and yellow, each with only three cars. Photographers snapped station signs in the metro and above ground. The latter photo demonstrates a rather typical fact of Hungarian toponomy, that is the fact that the names of streets and squares are a primer in Hungarian history. While this is well known to Hungarians, the connections between place name and historical figures often remains mute. Most tourists are challenged enough trying to locate places without having to tack on a history lesson as well. The text reads “Vörösmarty utca, Földallatí, Vörösmarty tér felé” which translates as “Vörösmarty street, Underground, in the direction of Vörösmarty Square.” The latter is the end stop of the Yellow line, a large square on which sits Gerbeaud Café, and from where Váci Street the pedestrian shopping zone frequented by tourists begins. The former is a rather quiet cross street along Andrássy Avenue about midway along the line. Tourists would be forgiven for mixing the two up. Mihály Vörösmarty died in the 1850s and along with Sándor Petőfi, is considered a national poet. His significance is attested to by the sheer size and scope of the monument to him which fills the eponymous square at one end of the Yellow Line and the fact the Budapest street map lists 13 different streets or squares named for Vörösmarty in the city.

5  Photos 6.4T; 12.16T; 19.11T.

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Figure 6.1

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Palatinus Strand Sign (Photo 5.20T)

Multi-lingualism is admittedly high in the country, and is a basic prerequisite for employment in the tourism industry. Where Russian was once mandatory, and students’ poor grades in the subject were worn as a badge of honor, today English has joined German as a preferred language of study. Many former Russian language teachers simply changed their orientation after getting crash courses in English in the 1990s in order to remain au courant. The number of people who said the language posed a barrier for them were by far in the minority. English it was noted was spoke by “the important people” (Interview 34), and in the hotels (Interview 1). Out in the city there were mixed results. “In the stores, you ask if they speak English and they answer no in English” (Interview 33) while another pair commented that “People speak German or English, they seem to be good linguists” (Interview 50). As we have seen above the signs all seemed to be in a “foreign language” but others noticed the multilingual aspect of signs, in German, English and sometimes French, which offer practical information to help people get around (Interview 29). These include brown direction arrows that point people to key sites throughout the city, but once there plaques on monuments failed to offer any translation unlike other cities (Interview 49). This shifts the interpretive burden almost exclusively onto the tourist. There are other surprising places where Hungarian dominates. One of the most intriguing pictures was the map of the Palatinus Strand (see Figure 6.1). It features a visual guide to the bath complex on Margaret Island, a site which is ostensibly in the middle of the tourist area and yet the map itself, painted on a large meter and a

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half long board, is only in Hungarian, locating the playgrounds, waterslides, bűfe [snack bar], changing room and various pools within the swimming complex. This is not unique to the Palatinus, as other bathing complexes that get a large amount of tourist traffic such as the Széchenyi baths also lack a sufficient amount of foreign language signage, and Gellért’s layout was said to be “confusing” (Interview 22). There are enough of these Magyar only spaces in the midst of the Inner City tourist areas to call into question the ways in which language in material form shapes the contours of the foreigner’s experience of the cityscape as touristscape in a positive way, contributing to placeness versus putting up barriers to enjoyment. From this research it appears that the former is the case. Unofficial and unsanctioned contributions to the linguistic landscape were also noteworthy, in comments and photos of the ubiquitous graffiti which covers the city.6 The overwhelming amount of graffiti is shocking to the unprepared. In interviews it was mentioned upon over and over. “Yesterday we were disappointed looking around, we saw lots of graffiti, things were run down but this morning we found a more touristy area. We were a little disappointed but we’re loving it this morning. Picture of something in our heads, a picture postcard” (Interview 14). “Lots of graffiti, you don’t read about it in the guidebooks” (Interview 16). “The Castle District in Buda yesterday and St Mathias church was magnificent, wonderful décor; the only negative is going back to the residential areas, they’re graffiti strewn. Hopefully it will improve, there was so much repression for so long now let that expression out; that’s the down side of freedom.” One pair had an extended debate between themselves over this very topic; the man arguing that the graffiti was a sign of new found freedom, while the woman insisted it was just ugly vandalism (Interview 23). There are few things in the city which avoid being marked by graffiti; neither churches nor other culturally significant sites are spared. In fact of the two pictures taken of the Anonymous statue in the City Park one was marked with a graffito, the other was not.7 Some of the graffiti are tags, though others are far more elaborate. The graffiti in the contemporary city is for the most part apolitical. The one exception to this are the insults and anti-Semitic barbs launched at politicians and celebrities, though this category was absent from the images taken. The graffiti offers a good example of the complex nature of the tourist prosaic in urban areas, where the everyday collides with the desire to be away from the stresses of daily life.

6  Photos 5.18T; 8.11T; 9.25T; 12.18T; 15.18T; 18.13T; 18.14T; 19.13T; 20.17T; 20.20T. 7  Photos 12.18T; 17.15T.

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The Image of the City—Disorder and the Past The question of graffiti also touches on the image of the city. Dirt and cleanliness were common tropes in the interviews, representative of more general concerns of order and decay. Mary Douglas (2002 [1966]: 4) writes that “some pollutions are used as analogies for expressing a general view of social order.” Many of the comments about the city reveal binary expectations of what would be found in travelling eastward to Budapest. The Hungarian composer György Ligeti quipped that if you travel to Budapest from Paris you think you have arrived in Moscow, but if you travel from Moscow to Budapest you think you have arrived in Paris. The middle space that Hungary occupies geographically and spiritually in Europe, as we have seen above, is not lost on even the most historically uninformed tourist unfamiliar with the anxieties of the Hungarian intelligentsia over the centuries. Thus comments reveal much about what people saw, but also what they were expecting to see.8 For many of those interviewed the city was a remarkable site worthy of a grand European capital. “Architecture, and the restoration of the other side of the Parliament is great; magnificent buildings” (Interview 21) “I had [no expectations] I’m impressed by all the magnificent buildings. Architecture is on a grand scale, grandiose, very impressive” (Interview 23). “Everybody said the architecture is beautiful; there is a lot to see, it’s overwhelming, I can not even get started; very interesting sites, very historical, date back so far” (Interview 50). One man who had just arrived from three days in Paris with his wife said they were interested specifically in the Habsburg empress Erzsébet and remarked on how “very historical … very beautiful” the city was (Interview 45). Another pair commented that they found exactly what they were expecting “a historic city” (Interview 46). For others the city impressed them because it proved to be more wonderful than they had anticipated. “I didn’t expect it to be as nice, I expected it to be poorer” (Interview 26); “I didn’t expect magnificent buildings, a ruin here, a ruin there but nothing like this.” (Interview 31). “It is much more majestic” (Interview 9) “It is better than I expected … very nice buildings, the past of which are interesting” (Interview 11). The city both suffers and benefits from a general lack of knowledge among tourists. Puczkó, Rátz and Smith (2007: 25) note the city has struggled to get out from the association with Vienna and Prague, what they refer to as “the three cities shared history, relatively similar architectural heritage and comparable geographical features.” The rise in “imageless” travel within Europe, made possible by the budget airlines in which destination matters less than price, means that many people are arriving with a weak, or unarticulated, set of expectations. Their research also found that people were generally pleased with the experience of the city, though the comments above reveal that pleasure emerging from having 8  See also the discussion about cleanliness and visitors’ expectation at the Central Market Hall in Chapter 7.

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had a set of diminished expectations countered by the unexpected. One can see this with comments about cleanliness from the interviews. The city was “very immaculate, you don’t see garbage, really well kept” (Interview 24). In several cases it was more a matter that the city was “cleaner” than they had anticipated (Interviews 8, 26 and 48). Within the photo category of infrastructure, there were a relatively large number of pictures taken which dealt with trash and sanitation. In the modern city the appurtenances and practices for disposing of rubbish and waste are extensive. The hygiene and public health movements of the late nineteenth century not only formalized the collection of refuse but also ensured the delivery of clean water and the subsequent removal of waste water. There were several pictures of aestheticized sewer covers. Trash receptacles throughout the contemporary city also play a role in the effort to keep streets tidy. Among the photos which highlight refuse was a picture of a large dumpster on a side street of the Castle District filled with building materials a reminder of the fact that this is not simply a tourist precinct but a lived landscape, a part of the cityscape for those who work and reside here.9 There were also two pictures of the aestheticized wire trashcans found in the Inner City. One of these the photographer had glossed on the location card as being of interest for the “separate compartment for cigarette butts.”10 This was the focus of the picture taken by another photograph of one of the more ubiquitous plastic trash bins found throughout the everyday spaces of the city.11 The reason for the separate cigarette compartment becomes obvious when one notices the numerous remnant piles of melted plastic, indexical signs of the fire that destroyed the plastic trashcan that had been there before. Budapest compared with Vienna or Prague has never been accused of being too clean, but the areas around the main tourist sites are usually kept fairly tidy, often by workers towing large green trashcans with the most improbable looking fairytale brooms made of bound sticks. And while it might seem as if these folksy brooms are there for the tourists’ benefit, they are practical tools found throughout the rest of the city as well. In 2006 miniature motorized street cleaners were introduced with great fanfare to assist in the cleanup of city sidewalks. Nevertheless, however clean it may be at the Parliament or the Castle District, moving through the touristscape there are many ruptures where the cityscape, in all its dinginess appears. One tourist recorded an encounter with the giant trash piles that appear each year through the city on each district’s large item pick up day. The event offers neighbors the opportunity to see into each other’s private lives as long held periodicals and newspapers, furniture and clothing, and everything in between are laid out on the curb. It also provides the possibility for 9  Photo 8.17T. 10  Photos 8.24T; 12.17T. 11  Photo 13.21T.

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the creative reuse of materials by those who scavenge the discarded items. The one photographed was labeled “pile of furniture” on the location card.12 The other major hygiene challenge within the contemporary city is the management of its canine population and the attendant dog droppings. The city has taken a three-pronged approach to bringing order to this chaos. A number of creative advertising campaigns meant at instilling a societal expectation about cleaning up after walking one’s dog have been waged. The creation of dog runs, either free standing or adjacent to existing parks has been another aspect. The other, as captured in one tourist’s photo, has been the setting up of special boxes, in this case one labeled “dog bog” (in English).13 At the time this research was undertaken, these changes were just getting started and the results were still not showing. Although one interviewee was very impressed by the dogs being walked on their leads and the lack of dog litter (Interview 44) this is more a commentary on her home community than it is the city of Budapest. While these four-legged friends have always been a part of the city population, since the change of regime the rise of the pampered pet has been swift, an indexical sign of the rise in conspicuous consumption, and discretionary spending. One aspect of this, as sociologist Judít Bodnár (2001) points out, has been the rearranging of shelves in small local shops to accommodate a newly introduced western capitalist concept, the can or bag of specially prepared dog food to a society that was used to feeding its animals table scraps. The disappearance of the mutt, replaced by beautifully groomed, purebred dogs has also been a marked change. While many interviewees were impressed by what they saw, others were disappointed. The grandeur of the Habsburg past helps to create a placeworthy experience for the visitor, one of the unfortunate facts is that this cultural heritage was victim to general neglect and the necessities of chronic housing shortages coupled with ideological mandates about the means and manner of building during the socialist period have marked the city in a way that Vienna and Prague were not. As one participant noted, the architectural legacy of being a part of the AustroHungarian empire is one marker of Hungarianness but so too is the drabness of the 50s and 60s and the rebuilding in the socialist style that “does not match” and “doesn’t sit well” (Interview 40). The grand façades of nineteenth-century buildings, while part of the Habsburg inheritance, with their crumbling plaster were for many a potent index, in Peirce’s sense of the word, of the socialist era when maintenance of the building stock was notoriously minimalist and the once grand building are one of the distinguishing facts between Vienna and Budapest. The faded glory of crumbling façades were captured in many photographs including separate photos of peeling plaster on the same neo-baroque building at the corner of Fő Street and Batthyányi Square.14 12  Photo 16.15T. 13  Photo 19.23T. 14  Photos 4.23T; 6.24T; 11.13T; 11.14T; 16.25T; 19.21T; 20.16T.

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Figure 6.2

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Drechsler Palace (Photo 19.21T)

As interviewees put it: “It feels like an Eastern European city, the buildings are old not like Western Europe which is modern” (Interview 11); “the buildings are deteriorating, it’s a shame that’s happening” (Interview 30); “it’s appalling outside the main area” (Interview 29). “The buildings, the architecture [are the most striking thing both positive and negative] since they’re run down. The street lighting which is absolutely amazing. The state of buildings in Central Pest, they’re crumbling and derelict … really sad the historically significant buildings are in such terrible shape for example the building across from the Opera House, the guidebooks says it’s a five star hotel and its absolutely derelict” (Interview 19) (see Figure 6.2). The café which filled the arcade of the building, the Drechsler Palace, is featured on the cover of John Lukacs’ (1988) famous work recounting the energy and beauty of the fin-de-siècle city. Sitting as it does across from the grandeur of the Opera House, and along Andrássy Avenue, with its UNESCO World Heritage designation, the decrepit state of the building was that much more noteworthy. This is also the route of what the tourism office has designated as “The Cultural Avenue,” a path that stretches along from the Castle District on the Buda side, across the Chain Bridge and along Andrássy Avenue, up to Heroes’ Square and the museums and offerings of the Városliget [City Park]. The Cultural Avenue concept is an attempt to organize the space of the city, drawing a linear route that offers a comprehensive sampling of the variations in Hungarian culture, history, and tradition as represented by the sites located along it (Puczkó and Rátz 2006).

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The route concept, as opposed to using tourist precincts affords glimpses into the interstices of the everyday city, but the question that is not addressed is how to deal with all aspects of the city’s past. The (Post) Socialist City From the perspective of cities in the Eastern Bloc, what is highlighted in the touristscape is guided by an often hostile if not ambivalent relationship with the period of socialist rule. The “Eastern European”—i.e. “communist”—character of cities in much of the post-socialist world is still evident, with numerous reminders throughout, a legacy both in material form and certain habits and dispositions, and this legacy shapes tourists’ experience in the city. The official website of the Budapest Tourism Office does include brief references to the socialist past, and features both the House of Terror Museum and the Statue Park but these are not highlighted in any meaningful way. The overall theme is one of culture, history and sophistication as opposed to socialist kitsch. “Budapest,” Levente Polyák (2006) writes “searching for its new identity in the nineties, found itself in a peculiar position: official narratives found the city’s past references in the turn-of-the-century liberal metropolis, while at the same time, they tried to phrase Budapest as a dynamic, future-oriented city. This narrative is of course a bold simplification of the transformation, post-socialist Budapest underwent.” The tension between the socialist and pre-socialist past is manifest throughout much of the former Eastern Bloc. One of the best known examples of this is the controversy over the East German built Palace of the Republic, where the debate was about whether the functionalist modern building, cancerous with asbestos should be torn down and a reconstructed Prussian era castle built in its place (Ladd 1997). One sees this struggle playing out in Budapest, for example, in the discussions over the future of the Corvin áruház [Corvin Department Store] at Blaha Lujza square. Built in the 1920s, it was once the largest department store in the city. The neo-classical façade which was damaged in WWII, was given a “modern” facelift in 1966 with a functionalist curtain. In the early 1990s the store still retained the quaint practices of old, wrapping one’s purchases in grey paper and tying the bundle with twine, though in more recent years the store has been superseded by the modern shopping malls that have sprung up throughout the city. The public spaces of the square on which the Corvin sits has been given over to large swathes of the disposed, the losers in the shift to a market economy. In stark contrast, the dangerously dilapidated neo-renaissance building which housed the New York Kávéház, once the most fabulous of all Budapest cafés, has recently been renovated into an exclusive high end hotel complex by an Italian luxury hotel operator, Boscolo, which has also reopened the café. Instead of writers it is now frequented by foreign tourist. The juxtaposition of these two sites, the New York Palace and Corvin Department store within blocks of one another recall the intense class

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divisions of turn of the century Budapest and offers a reminder of the complexities of the contemporary post-socialist city. Sitting atop the Corvin building at a rooftop café seeing the towers of the New York Palace and an industrial smoke stack lit up, Polyak (2007) wrote: The glittering of fin de siècle nostalgia, the ruin aesthetic of the transforming urban landscape and the ready-made decorative elements of the terrace blend the divergent segments of Central European urban memory in a unique fashion. To this day, an imagined notion of adventure and spontaneity covers these recently still infamous parts of central Pest. This notion provides a perfect breedingground for initiatives that connect dilapidation and an acceptable level of urban impoverishment with an enthusiastic irony regarding the remains of socialism, and make use of all these in the symbolic consumer area of entertainment.

There has been talk about stripping away the socialist era curtain and returning the Corvin to its original interwar splendor, presumably filling in the bullet holes at the same time. This would of course have the effect of eradicating the intervening history of the building but is typical of the fetish for “the turn-of-the-century liberal.” One local historian has suggested “pull away the outer façade at certain points as a real curtain but preserve it as part of the building’s history. And by preserving it as a curtain and making visible what is behind, it would be possible to create something original and representative of the palimpsestual stratification of Budapest’s façades” (László Muntean, Personal Communication 2008). It is unlikely that this will happen since the fall of socialism has represented a chance to clean house and exorcise the effects of the planned economy. And while wholesale street renaming and the removal of offending statues and symbols was undertaken across the region (Ladd 1997; Foote, Tóth and Árvay 2000), the economic and social challenges brought about by the demise of single party rule and wide-scale privatization were more complex. These changes resulted in an influx of western capital and cultural influences, diminished social safety nets, increased unemployment, and the emergence of homelessness, a result of the heedless un-regulated embrace of neoliberalism (Andorka et al. 1999; Grime 1999; Bodnár 2000; also see the edited collection of news stories by Berko 2005). All of these have themselves wrought changes to the urban landscape, such as the restoration of façades only and the delineation of public space by class. These signs of the Socialist City in the interviews are only given reference to in a vague idea of “communism” in the landscape. “The infrastructure is communist, it’s not as ornate as Vienna” (Interview 18); “The Architecture is Eastern Bloc type some of it” (Interview 29); “Eastern European feel, tall buildings wide boulevards” (Interview 22); “The architecture—the shapes, colors are left over from communist era and all the baroque stuff and bullets in walls” (Interview 10); “The communist city does intrude, dreadful boring blocs, but it’s not worse than other places” (Interview 33); “A purposely slow, former communist country” (Interview 34); “It was described as Prague 10 years ago, looks tired as a city. It

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went backwards in the 50s and 60s but has started to pick itself up. A lot of flats and apartments were communist built, not very good” (Interview 40); “What’s left from 50s … rebuilt style does not match. Here’s one [on Szt. István Square] it doesn’t sit well.” (Interview 40). In the photographic record, the Socialist City surprisingly features only minimally. A photographer who ventured out to the Buda hills captured one of the stellar remnants of the Socialist City, the Pioneer mosaic at Széchenyi hegy station.15 During the socialist era, the youth were organized into The Pioneers (Úttörők) and one of its activities was the Pioneer Railway which, along with the nearby Pioneers’ Camp was an entry into the customs and habits of socialist society. As the architect Gábor Preisich said at the time, “Characteristic of a nation’s culture is the fondness with which the authorities and society at large care for the country’s children. Through creating a Pioneers’ Republic, the people’s democracy of Hungary has demonstrated yet another sign of this fondness” (quoted in Prakfalvi 1999: 13). Built between 1947 and 1949 the narrow gage line which ran approximately 12 kilometers through the Buda Hills was operated entirely by children who did the ticket selling, collecting, and signaling, though adults drove the trains. The mosaic at the southern terminus of the line has three main scenes; on the left a train is seen with Pioneers standing in their train uniforms in front. A girl kneels with a dog, holding up a flower which she seems to be trying to identify, based on the open book which sits in front of her. Towards them, in the middle section, a group of Pioneers is marching, with a drum and fife, carrying a red flag and the Hungarian flag with the socialist seal in the middle aloft, and in the far right are a group of Pioneers on an expedition, with their tents set up. In front sit three girls reading, while another girl feeds a fawn, and a boy stands holding a standard with white background and the Hungarian colors on it. It clearly depicts the role that outdoor activity played in the fostering of a healthy socialist youth as well as the emphasis upon industry. It is a stunning example of the ways in which socialist ideology was disseminated in banal ways. Today the line is run by youth interested in trains under the direction of MÁV, Hungarian State Railways, and the Gyermek vasút, or Children’s Railway, as it is now called, has successfully been rehabilitated from its socialist origins so much so that it is a favorite among parents of all political stripes. As the Hungarian language guidebook Vendég Váró (2005: 12–13) puts it, “nor do we have to lose our nostalgia for our childhood. The steam engine again runs, since 2000 it carries travelers to hike the northern Börzsöny side. Newer and newer generations learn about the former Pioneer Railway which today is called the Széchenyi-hegyi Childrens’ Railway …” In the winter they run a steam engine and wagons are warmed by wood burning stoves, while in the summer open-topped cars travel the line and the train can be rented for special occasions such as birthdays and weddings. The stations allow passengers to get off and hike through the numerous 15  Photos 5.5T; 5.6T.

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Figure 6.3

Trabant

marked trails through the forest, including a stop at János hill, the highest point in the area. While the railway is written up in English language guidebooks the full history of it is usually elided. Because it sits outside the touristscape, it tends to draw more adventurous visitors, like the ones who took the pictures. Another object in the photo record which dates from the socialist era and which for many depicted “Hungarianness” was the Trabant (see Figure 6.3).16 The interpretations attached to this auto are emblematic of the way in which banal objects are not simply signs because of their arbitrary symbolic connotations, but because of their real attachment to the social practices of daily life indexically linked to “real existing socialism.” Although car ownership was restricted for most of the socialist period to the nomenklatura, restrictions began to ease in the 1960s and numerous models of so called micro-cars began to fill the streets (see Majtényi 2009 for a history of luxury among Party members). Different brands were manufactured in East Germany, Romania, Poland and Yugoslavia and sold throughout the Eastern Bloc. The Trabant is perhaps the most well known of these but the idea of the micro-car as such has been fully bound up with popular images of the Eastern Bloc. In the 1990s Levi Strauss ran a television ad filmed in Prague in black and white in which we follow a young man driving the streets of the city with a hip soundtrack playing in the background. In the end, the driver 16  Photos 8.10T; 15.23T; 16.21T.

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gets out of the car pantless, and Westerners were told “In Prague you can trade them for a car.” At the Statue Park, a collection of socialist era statuary and plaques removed from city streets after the change of regime, a light blue Trabant sits just inside the entrance, and miniature die-cast models can be bought at the gift shop along with CDs featuring “The Best of Communism.” The Hammer and Sickle Tour which promised to show you communism “the way it was, comrade” used to offer guests the chance to drive a Trabant (Absolute Walking Tours, n.d.). The car has become a piece of socialist era nostalgia. One of the clothing stores in town which offers graphic t-shirts, mainly to a local clientele, has images of Trabants and Ladas on shirts for infants up through adults. More to the point, however, the Trabant is an example of the way in which the banal becomes a cultural marker for tourists, a potent marker of “Socialist Bloc” and by virtue of its emplacement along the Budapest streets, also a mark of Hungarianness regardless of the car’s East German origin. Only two other photos, both from the Inner City, capture images from the Socialist City, the Soviet War Memorial and a Socialist Realist relief on an unidentified building.17 The Soviet War Memorial is one of the most prominent of the monumental relics of the Socialist City. According to László Prohászka’s (2004) comprehensive survey of statues, the memorial was consecrated on May Day, 1945. In design it is similar to the Soviet War Memorial set up at the same time in nearby Vigadó square in that it features a stone obelisk with gold lettered inscription, above which sits, in gold, the grain sheath, hammer and sickle and a five pointed star of the Soviet Communists. The stone for this monument was allegedly requisitioned from an already planned statue of Martin Luther which was to be set up in Deák Ferenc Square. After the change of regime, many of the offending statues put up by the socialists—the Soviets as well as the Hungarian workers’ party, workers’ councils and other official organs—were removed from city streets, to the Statue Park. This particular monument was not only not removed but “when an underground garage was constructed in the square, the monument was temporarily dismantled and after when the square was put in order, in 2003 it was rebuilt in the original place. The Russian government insisted on the original wording …” with the words in Russian and Hungarian, “Glory to the Liberating Soviet Heroes” [Dicsőség a felszabaditó szovjet hősöknek], (Prohászka 2004: 84). Presently, the monument is surrounded by grass and two rows of metal security fences, creating a sort of no man’s land in the midst of this busy downtown area. Even with the fencing, it is not unusual to see memorial wreaths and flowers laid at the base and at times for those presumably lacking access to the monument, flowers are simply tossed in between the two fences. Adding to the surreal nature of this monument is the fact that it sits in the midst of Szabadság tér, Freedom Square, so named because it was the site of the Neugebäude barracks built by the Habsburgs in the eighteenth century. The 17  Photos 17.9T; 20.15T.

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Eternal Flame which is located just off the square commemorates the execution here of the first Prime Minister of Hungary, Lajos Batthyány, by Habsburg forces after the failed 1848 uprising. The barracks began to be demolished after the Compromise of 1867 and the square was named in honor of this newly gained freedom. Szabadság Square is also the site of the American Embassy which occupies an outstanding Secessionist building.18 The building displays a bronze plaque commemorating the 15-year internal exile of Cardinal József Míndszenty, who after being released from prison during the 1956 uprising soon sought refuge in the embassy when Soviet tanks re-entered the city. He stayed until he was given leave to travel to the Vatican in 1971. The square is just a stones’ throw from the Parliament and the alignment of the war memorial offers ideal photo opportunities for those interested in capturing the full sweep of recent Hungarian history while from the other direction the American flag and the war memorial offer yet another interesting photo opportunity.19 The paucity of images from the Socialist City among participants’ photographs is quite surprising because the remnants are not difficult to find from bullet holes in older buildings to the housing estates which ring the city. One might argue that these are minuscule and easy to miss on the one hand, and far outside the tourist areas of the Inner City, on the other, but for those moving through these spaces, the socialist past is quite visible in buildings and infrastructure, and street signs along the Grand Boulevard, where the propagandistic names of streets under the former regime have been marked out, with red Xs, but retained on a handful of buildings as a living memorial to the past. Near Parliament, the closest metro stop is in a socialist era building, and one side of St Istvan Square, outside the Basilica is a bland functionalist socialist era building, as was pointed out by one interviewee (40). More subtle signs of the Socialist City are available for those with keen eyes, and sometimes an ability to read Hungarian. Near Parliament on the Danube promenade stands a stone monument to the now-gone Kossuth Bridge which was heroically rebuilt after the fascist onslaught. Across from the City Park a few blocks away from Heroes’ Square is the MEMOSZ Trade Union building discussed in Chapter 4 above. Although it is one of the last important buildings to utilize a modernist idiom, the Socialist 18  The frieze on it was somehow captured by one photographer (Photo 6.20T) which is surprising since the guards which stand outside the embassy are adamant about photographers pointing their cameras in the other direction. 19  The square more recently in the Autumn of 2006 was the site of massive antigovernment demonstrations after a leaked tape from a MSZP [Hungarian Socialist Party] convention revealed then Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány admitting that he “lied” about the state of the economy and that he and his party “screwed up” during their recent term. During the protests, which made international headlines, the Soviet War Memorial was attacked and damaged and the Hungarian State Television Building was stormed (Gorondi 2006).

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Realist relief on the façade is noteworthy. The Trade Union district of the city was an important statement about the new society being built. The architect of the building Gábor Preisich said “Each period of historical development had the characteristic buildings representing the age. These proclaimed the power of the ruling exploitive class from ancient times to the decline of capitalism. The society progressing towards socialism has created such buildings meant to serve the working man as flats and community centres … as well as those symbols of the fellowship of the working class, those remainders of its decade-long struggle, the trade union headquarters” (quoted in Prakfalvi 1999: 15). And many of the neon signs from the 50s and 60s and even the block letter signs with their generic description of what’s on offer can still be found along the boulevards of the city, the Nagy Korut included, dohány [cigarettes], könyvesbolt [bookstore], and horgászcikkek [fishing supplies]. These prosaic relics sit amongst a city shaped by the Habsburg period and facing an onslaught of new construction and new western capital a fact which makes each of these other eras more conspicuous and the contrast that much more prominent. Mariusz Czepczyński (2008: 125) in his work on the cultural landscapes of Eastern Europe writes: “Empty pedestals and former sites of the monuments … holes left after memorable plates, vast squares and broad avenues designed for grand marches and meetings, silently speak of ‘the recent past.’ The message of these landscapes of silence is only understood by those who still remember … Fewer and fewer people can remember the old, socialist street names, exact locations of the monuments of the sites of former communist party buildings, not even mentioning meanings and texts officially attached to those icons.” While this may be the case, and some would say that even during the socialist era the “socialist street names” were silent as people continued to use the older names colloquially, it is not necessarily the alteration of monuments, government buildings, official sites and former street names which matter as much as it is the material legacy of the everyday spaces of the post-socialist city which still sit heavy on the landscape. But even while the monumental remnants of that past were cleared from the streets, the numerous memorials which have appeared across the city since the change of regime are potent indices of that era, making manifest past events. Memorials are bifocal, pointing not only to the events which they are meant to recall, but as important, if not more so in some cases, pointing to the era in which they were erected. Thus an entire set of monuments and plaques have filled the city streets since 1989 which not surprisingly offer a far more critical reference to socialism than did the hagiographic pieces which were there, often in the same places. Photographs capture some of these including two memorials on the perimeter of the Parliament; the new eternal flame to the victims of 1956, an abstract block of stone, and a more vernacular example, the socialist era flag with a hole cut out with hand lettered signs, flowers and candles that gives it a makeshift feel.20 20  Photo 8.9T.

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Just across from the Parliament is a new statue of Imre Nagy, the martyred Prime Minister who in 1956 withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, sparking the revolution. He was killed by the Soviets and buried in an unmarked grave.21 His reburial in 1989 foreshadowed the end of single party rule. Another photographer captured the memorial plaque for Cardinal Míndszenty which sits on the corner of 60 Andrássy Avenue, the former headquarters of the ÁVH State Security Police, now turned into a memorial museum, The House of Terror.22 More surprising is an out of the way example which depicts a wall plaque from Óbuda which translates as “Memorial to the Óbudai Civilian Victims deported to the Soviet Union in January 1945.”23 But of course at the time this research was undertaken, Hungary had been free of the yoke of “real existing socialism” for 17 years, nearly two decades during which the economic and political changes of the shift from a planned economy and single party rule have made their mark upon the post-socialist urban landscape. Many of these post-socialist states have, in the mean time, also become members of the European Union. While the EU prides itself on protecting difference, the bureaucratic juggernaut of EU mandates means that much local, everyday culture, is actually jeopardized by requirements to conform. States which were romanced by western money and rushed headlong into the arms of the EU have also witnessed a resurgence in hardline populist sentiment and a perceived need for defending and fostering national cultures which are viewed within the context of internationalism and supranationalism as minority cultures under threat by outside influences. The accession to the European Union both by those in the country and those coming from abroad has been seen as a marker, a sign, of Hungary’s return to the west. Although not yet part of the Eurozone it has recently joined the Schengen agreement, it is on its way towards full membership in the club of Europe. As one interviewee put it Budapest was “an oppressed city beginning to come up with the European Union, signs of Westernization” (Interview 40) while for another, the most striking thing was “The flying of the EU flag alongside the national flag, in other locations not just government buildings, it struck me that membership in the EU is a significant matter, and one Hungarian I asked certainly lent credibility to this” (Interview 24). The data from European Union public opinion polling complicate this picture somewhat. In 1990, 79 percent of Hungarians were in favor of an Association Treaty, the first step towards accession (Eurobarometer 34: Table 64). By 2004 as a new member state, only 45 percent saw membership as being a good thing for Hungary (Eurobarometer 61: Fig. 6.1a). The most recent Eurobarometer from Autumn 2008 showed Hungary’s citizens even more pessimistic with only 31 percent responding that membership in the EU is a good thing (Eurobarometer 21  Photo 8.8T. 22  Photo 12.14T. 23  Photo 18.18T.

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70: 15). In a 1999 poll, Hungary’s entrance into NATO was seen by 48 percent of respondents as a sign of Hungary’s place within the West (Wodak and Kovács 2004). And while only 10 percent of respondents said Hungary’s roots lie in the East, almost a third, 31 percent, took a middle position that Hungary was neither east nor west (Wodak and Kovács 2004). In 1990, emerging from the shadow of the Soviet Union, a majority of Hungarian citizens, 66 percent, said they thought of themselves as European at least sometimes (Eurobarometer 34: 50), but by 2004, with membership in the EU secured, the numbers were reversed and a majority, 61 percent, thought of themselves as only Hungarian (Eurobarometer 61: C48). Hungarians continue to be circumspect about what it means to be a part of the perceived west in a unified Europe. In Spring 2008 the majority of respondents, 52 percent, said that the country had not benefited from membership, this compared with 77 percent of Poles and 76 percent of Slovaks and Estonians who agreed that their membership had benefited their countries (Eurobarometer 69: 17–18). For visitors to the city, Hungary offers this mixed bag, a country in the midst of Europe yet unique and apart. A paradox and aporia this in-between-ness is perhaps embodied in the site of Nyugati pályaudvar.24 Built in the 1870s by the Eiffel company, and today housing the “world’s most beautiful McDonalds,” the Western Train station is the place from where the trains head out east to Transylvania. Of course these facts are not there apparent on the façade of the structure waiting to be read, the site must be interpreted with the collateral knowledge that is gained from other places. This is what makes interpretation of the built environment so challenging for the tourist and why the general feel of place in urban tourism, produced by the tourist highlights embedded in the spaces of the everyday city is what seems to matter. Set in Stone—Architecture and History in the Cityscape Tourists travel for a number of reasons though history and culture are dominate tropes and play a key role in urban tourism. The vast majority of interviewees who when asked what things they liked to see mentioned historical and cultural features more than any other. “Site seeing, churches, castles, landmarks, cafés, historical museums …” (Interview 1). “The main sites, historic sites, sometimes museums …” (Interview 21). Specific cultural sites mentioned included museums and churches but architecture was a dominant theme.

24  Photo 20.4T.

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Figure 6.4

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Museum and School of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Múzeum) (Photo 20.21T)

To paraphrase David Lowenthal (1985), a foreign country is the past and this is what we see in the photographic record of buildings taken by participants. When asked how the city matched their expectations one American pair answered that they found “exactly what they expected, a historical city” (Interview 46). Along with monuments and particular historical sites, architecture is an important marker of creating the sense of a “historic” city. In interviews architecture was the most commonly mentioned sign of Hungarianess. Those taking photographs captured infrastructure and other elements of the contemporary city, but when they turned their lens to architecture the images they took were almost exclusively from the turn of the nineteenth century Habsburg City. The present appears not in images of post-1989 buildings, but in images of renovation of the old. The city needless to say is full of buildings, and a key element of the tourist prosaic is the general composite of the façades. Architecture as the largest category of images includes entire buildings as well as smaller details such as friezes and windows. Pictures of buildings from the Habsburg period, especially those which have suffered little or have been extensively restored predominate. The colored tiles, the product of the Zsolnay factory which we have discussed in Chapter 4, were photographed on the roofs of the Technical University [Budapesti Műszaki Egyetem] along the Danube, and

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Figure 6.5

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Typical Central European Courtyard (Photo 4.2T)

the Museum of Applied Arts [Ipariművészeti Múzeum] (see Figure 6.4).25 There were pictures of eyelid dormers in the Castle District, and pictures of the interior structural elements of the Central Market Hall.26 Exterior shots of its façade and that of the Market Hall at Batthyányi square were also taken.27 There were also numerous pictures of balconies, including shadowy interior courtyards with balcony galleries, “ornate plasterwork balconies,” one with “very great restoration needed” and one “little balcony with flowers.”28 The balcony, especially of the type depicted in the pictures of interior courtyards, are images typical of this region. Moravánszky (2002: 410) writes, “the characteristic Central European apartment … blocks usually have one or more gateways leading from the street into a courtyard with open galleries. Staircases at the gateways give access to these galleries. The small vestibules, kitchens and baths (if any) or toilets of the flats were oriented toward the gallery, the living rooms and bedrooms toward the street.” He goes on to note the social implications of such construction writing that “some German theoreticians who described the open staircase principle stressed the drawback that each tenant had to live under the constant visual control of the others; however other analysts regarded this 25  26  27  28 

Photos 4.12T; 22.21T. Photos 1.20T; 8.23T; 6.9T; 8.3T; 20.25T. Photos 20.22T; 15.19T. Photos 6.5T; 11.5T; 11.16T; 4.2T; 4.3T; 6.16T; 4.6T; 4.7T; 1.18T; 19.15T.

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Figure 6.6

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University of Fine Arts Building, 67 Andrássy Avenue (Photo 6.11T)

situation as generating social cohesion” but of course these are two sides of the same coin. While in other parts of Central Europe the courtyard block type was considered rental housing, and hence home to the less affluent, in Budapest this was the prevailing type even among the bourgeoisie, so that on the gallery side of the flat, along with the utilitarian rooms, would be situated a very small servant’s room. As we have seen Andrássy Avenue played a key role in the shape the city took in the late nineteenth century and there are several pictures of buildings along this route. They include the Opera House, and its poor cousin across the way, the derelict building of the former Drechsler Palace. Further down the road the badly exfoliating edifice at the corner of Liszt Ferenc Square with its permanent wood scaffolding was also photographed.29 While there are several buildings along the route which have sgraffitoed 30 façades the former Drawing School is perhaps in the best shape and was photographed. Also along Andrássy, the towers of one of the four curved buildings at Kodaly Körönd [Circle] and an iron fence and façade near the terminus at the City Park were taken. 29  Photos 11.13T; 11.14T; 16.25T; 19.21T; 20.16T. 30  Sgraffito is a technique in which the top layer of paint, glaze or plaster is scratched away to reveal a contrasting layer underneath.

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Buildings along the Little Boulevard out from Deák Square were also photographed. A 1901 building by an unknown architect for an Italian salami merchant which features paintings of the allegory of the seasons and the ponderous Anker Insurance Building on the square both appear.31 Interestingly there were no pictures taken of the Great Synagogue which also is along this route. The topic of Jewish Budapest was generally ignored in interviews and by photographers, which is emblematic of the general dissolve between Jewish history in Budapest and Hungarian history among those visiting the city. In the collection of images there are virtually no examples of Secessionist, the Finish embassy being the only exception, or Hungarian modernist buildings from the interwar period.32 We have already discussed the few images from the socialist period, but it is worth noting again that there are no examples of Socialist Realist architecture not to mention the ubiquitous panel flats. And as only one contemporary building was taken, the image painted of the city is skewed towards the turn of the nineteenth century. While the vast majority of buildings photographed come from the period prior to WWI, it would be difficult to write the architectural history of the Habsburg era from this sample, not to say anything of bringing that history up to the current day. The fact that there are missing many of the buildings which are considered to be important examples of the period is not at all surprising. While the camera was an attempt to free the participant from having to explain and allow them to show instead what they were seeing and interpreting, it appears that even this avenue did not afford more than a vague referencing of building styles. Just as interviewees frequently mentioned the architecture but failed to mention any specifics about this category of analysis, the photographs also record only a general picture of the state of architecture and the various styles present in the city. The humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1977), in Space and Place, has argued that architecture was much more important and transparent in terms of meaning in preliterate societies in the pre-modern world, revealing information about social structure and power dynamics. Architecture was more obviously didactic, the Medieval Cathedral being one example. With the emergence of a literate society, and the preeminence of the written word in the modern world, however, architecture no longer carries such unambiguous lessons. Architecture he contends has been lessoned of the burden of needing to convey messages, and hence the meaning of architecture has becomes less clear and less important. The argument may be too strained since as we have seen, particularly for nationally important buildings, the various styles available in the nineteenth century, still mattered and conveyed different sets of meanings and the debates about what form contemporary buildings in the capital should take are not rare. Buildings remain potent signs and it is clear that architecture does matter in the contemporary world. If that were not the case there would be no need for architects, and both 31  Photos 21.1T; 20.6T. 32  Photo 6.3T.

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Figure 6.7

Pest Embankment (Photo 20.19T)

those interviewed and those taking pictures would not have focused so much on buildings. It is worth mentioning too that in observations of tourists, it was rare that anyone actually stopped and looked at any particular buildings, nor did they tend to look above the ground level. The minute differences in meaning and style, especially among the various historicizing movements as written about by architectural historians is really the currency of a specialized discipline, as foreign to the everyday person as the complex calculus of astrophysicists. But the fact that the neo-renaissance, neobaroque, and neo-classical styles differ from what is generally in evidence in contemporary buildings (hence the singular image of contemporary construction, the exuberantly post-modern ING building across from the City Park can be accounted for by the general perception that glass and steel construction is more international than located in any particular national cultural home), is meaningful, at the very least as a general sign of “pastness.”33 There was little discussion about particular buildings other than the Parliament, the derelict Drechsler Palace across from the Opera house (which was also photographed), and the Basilica with its uncomely socialist era neighbor which sits on the square with it. The photo in Figure 6.7 taken by one participant is illustrative of the way in which architecture functions. Taken across from the opposite shore, it is a photo of the Pest embankment between Erzsébet and Szabadság Bridges. The Danube fills 33  Photo 21.20T.

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most of the foreground on the bottom half of the picture and the blue sky fills the rest. But between them is a ribbon of façades, each different than the next. None of them particularly stand out, but together they providing a sense of groundedness and a place to focus the eye if only briefly. The question of what specific ideas about architecture were relevant for the tourist experience of Hungarianess is difficult to answer other than to say that that the various architectural styles simply contributed to a “architexturality” proving a rough surface on which to stick a sense of place and history. Quotidian Objects of the Contemporary City The signage of the city is one subset of the larger category of urban infrastructure. These banal aspects of the city appear in the interviews as well as the photos; items such as street lights, post boxes and buses appear as relevant category of artifacts. Urban tourism engenders a number of contradictions that are not present at purpose-built tourist sites, namely the fact that cities are not simply objects of the tourist gaze, but are home to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. Thus all the activities that take place on a daily basis, from work to play, from shopping to eating, require the infrastructure needed to handle those activities: roads, cars, taxis, public transportation and street signs, sewers, toilets, and rubbish bins, bakeries, bars, cafés, restaurants and grocers, offices, shops, malls, parks, benches, and street lamps. In spite of fears of homogenization from the ongoing phenomenon of globalization, the infrastructure that makes urban living possible, while evincing enough similarity to make movement through a strange city possible, also embodies distinct morphological differences between places, and these variations are meaningful because of the geographic and locational differences across space and amongst nations. For tourists, these objects were perceived as a part of the tourist prosaic appearing just dissimilar enough that when asked specifically to record Hungarianess, these elements stood out. Streets and street furniture were the highlights of many pictures, including clocks, an iron fence and cobblestones.34 Pictures of the historicized green telephone boxes were taken, the same one in the Castle District by two different photographers, as well as the highly stylized box from the Párizsi Arcade whose bright pink graffiti matches perfectly the new pink T-mobile receiver.35 The mail boxes of Magyar Posta were well represented in the photographs.36 Budapest is a city of water and especially in the Inner City area there are numerous fountains, many providing drinking water. Photographers captured the elaborate fountain 34  Photos 4.4T; 5.16T; 6.13T; 18.25T. 35  Photos 13.19T; 18.23T; 21.9T; 12.19T. 36  Photos 8.13T; 10.17T; 12.8T; 13.25T; 16.14T; 18.21T; 18.22T.

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Traffic Signs (Photo 18.6T)

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outside of the Hotel Gellért, the simple stone fountain just off Váci Street and the girl with amphora in the Castle District.37 We have seen that street signs were photographed but there were also pictures of iconographic traffic tablets. The meaning of the tablet depicted in Figure 6.8 was explained thus “the arrow means that this is a one-way street. The other four signs belong together and mean that you may stop but you cannot wait/park your car from where the sign is up to 15 meters because it is an area where things/goods are taken in and out of cars/lorries between 7am and 6pm during the day. So this is to ensure that the place is left free for loading. You can park your car there only if you stay there and can move on as soon as the space is needed” [Ivett Császár 2010, Personal Communication]. Also among the elements that make the city work is the public transportation system. Photos of the yellow line, which was built in the 1890s and still retains the dimensions and style of its fin-de-siècle origins were taken as well as pictures from the other two lines which were built after the war, some of the stations rivaling the depth of the Moscow subway. Photographers took pictures of one of the escalators on the red or blue lines which Török (2005) claims offers some of the best people viewing, as well as a piece of public art from the station wall and a metro car.38 The system was the setting of one of the more popular recent Hungarian movies, Kontroll [Control] (which was filmed entirely in the underground) based upon the adventures of a group of controllers, ticket inspectors who ensure that passengers are travelling with proper tickets or passes, as there are no gates such as in Chicago or New York. Tourists are a prime target for the controllers who engage in applied semiotics, interpreting who is an outsider and hence unfamiliar with the somewhat Byzantine fare structure for tickets, while those who appear to be locals, especially the elderly and parents with children are not even checked. This is not just harassment of the tourist however but is grounded in the belief that they, either out of ignorance or intent, often take advantage of a ticket system which is based upon social norms and expectations inherent to Hungarian society. The urban transportation network is also filled with streetcars, buses and trolley buses. The bright yellow streetcars are a distinctive feature of the city, and both the cars themselves and the signs were taken.39 One tourist snapped a picture of one of the red trolley buses which run on wires strung across the streets.40 Antal Szerb in his 1930s Guide to Budapest for Martians [Budapesti Kalauz Marslakók számára] wrote that the objects of the city are imbued with complex meanings so even “the autobus numbers have literary associations, or some such thing.” He was not far from wrong. The trolley bus was first introduced in 1948, the year of Stalin’s 70th birthday and hence each route was numbered sequentially through the 70s. 37  38  39  40 

Photos 12.24T; 4.0T; 14.8T. Photos 22.25T; 20.8T; 20.9T. Photos 4.21T; 18.15T; 19.25T; 20.21T; 5.15T. Photo 19.22.

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The cafés, a dominant feature in the Budapest landscape figured in tourists’ encounters with the city. “I travel to sit in a restaurant, buy a coffee, eat a cake and talk to people” said one man (Interview 3). For others, it was specifically the notion of the café found throughout the former Habsburg lands, but most notably linked with “Vienna and Budapest coffee houses” (Interview 28) which mattered. The role that café culture played in Budapest in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was enormous. Translating the social historian Gábor Gyáni (1999: 85–6): Accordingly, the coffeehouse became—in particular in the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th—a truly civic institution first and foremost because the term coffeehouse itself acquired connotations expressive of (almost a seal of) the lifestyle, consumer culture and sociability of the bourgeoisie, even while the patrons themselves increasingly hailed from the strata beneath the bourgeoisie or the circles of the intelligentsia, forced into the narrow confines of petty bourgeois relations.

While many cafés have opened, or remade themselves since the change of regime, especially in the tourist areas of Váci Street and the trendy Liszt Ferenc Square, and the more local and trendier Ráday Street, the more traditional café and cukrászdá [confectionary] are major tourist attractions. The Vendég Váró instructs Hungarian speaking visitors to the city that “for after lunch coffee, it is worth moving to the newly old conjured Central Coffeehouse, where [Frigyes] Karinthy, [Mihály] Babits and many other spirits hang around the marble tables and Thonet chairs” (40). The cafés, numbering 600 in 1900 according to John Lukacs (1988: 148), the chronicler of fin-de-siècle Budapest, were the epicenters of cultural life. He writes: They were inexpensive. One could sit for hours over a cup of coffee, with a glass of cold water frequently replenished by a boy-waiter, and avail oneself of a variety of local and foreign newspapers and journals hanging on bamboo racks. One could send or receive messages and letters from the coffeehouse. Free paper, pen and ink were available there … Many writers and journalists found the atmosphere of their Budapest coffeehouse so congenial that they repaired there for work, rather than for relaxation (or at least for a combination of both.) Entire newspaper articles, at times entire short stories, chapters of a novel and a large part of the theater criticism were composed at the tables of the noisy, crowded coffeehouses of Budapest (151).

In many of the cafés during the summer months tables could be moved outside. Café culture in the Habsburg style lasted until World War II, and in the aftermath during the socialist period the presszó [coffee bar] was the place to be, especially

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after the 1956 revolution, with the neon signs and eclectic interiors (see Bodor 1992 for a nostalgic tour of these places). There were of course a few holdouts that survived from the pre-war period, or have come back to life, and are prime spots for visitors to recapture the Habsburg experience, including the Central Kávéház, Lukács, Művész and Gerbeaud. A number of photos taken by participants depict themselves or their travel mates experiencing café culture. These include a shot of an espresso and glass of water on a marble top table, and a slice of chocolate cake from the famous but given over to the tourist, Gerbeaud with an uncharacteristic glass of orange juice and iced tea on a marble top table.41 These shots capture the Central European café culture and are not just symbols of this past, but iconic in a Peircean sense. The two images are also telling of the way in which tourists experience culture. Minca and Oaks (2006) refer to the paradox of the tourist endeavor, which can also be explained with Peirce’s theory of the quest for the dynamical object, the one that exists in reality outside the realm of the touristscape. On the one hand there is the fact of the espresso, which is a quintessential part of the Central European café experience. So too are the marble table tops and the cake it can be argued is also reminiscent of the café as an ideal. The historicist nature of the present day Gerbeaud fits nicely into the idea as well. And yet there is also the present day reality, that now one can easily find iced tea and orange juice among the more exotic offerings at cafés, and that many of them have a modern slick euro style (see for example the description of the Café Europa in Drakulić 1996). Of course the question of the “authentic,” could be raised but Peirce would argue that all of these moments in the history of the café make up the dynamical object and thus authenticity is a moot point allowing for the flexible accounting of what a Hungarian café experience is today at this point in time; the images of these tourists should sit side-by-side with the images of café culture from the turn of the nineteenth century. The historical and the contemporary, and the dialectic between them, is one of the attractions of touring the European city. It is also a hallmark of the tourist prosaic. The cityscape as we have noted is the pulse of the city where the work and life of locals plays out. One of the hallmarks of the contemporary city is that it is in flux, attested to by the numerous pictures of construction and the juxtaposition of old buildings against the new (see Figure 6.9).42 While there has been some reconstruction undertaken by government funds, often at the district level, the majority of renovation has come from private investment resulting in an inconsistency that can produce stark contrasts between the old and shiny and old and decrepit as captured in these photographs. And of course there were numerous composite pictures of basic everyday street scenes,

41  Photos 8.7T; 4.16T. 42  Photos 1.16T; 4.11T; 4.14T; 5.24T; 8.6T; 10.22T; 15.15T; 17.18T.

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Figure 6.9

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Uneven Restoration (Photo 16.25T)

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with people, buildings, infrastructure, signs and history either obvious or hidden as in the case of the numbering of the trolley buses.43 The intersection between the touristscape and the cityscape in the tourist prosaic is most obvious in the mix between the everyday and the exceptional. This was reflected in interviews where tourists frequently commented upon the coming together of these two realms in shaping their experiences. When asked about preconceptions, one woman answered that she was expecting “Something like this, grand palaces, churches, little cobbled streets, and more modern parts, a contrast” (Interview 51). But perhaps the most cogent articulation of the tourist prosaic was captured in this assessment of the differences between Prague and Budapest: “In Prague you know how Prague is really cleaned up, its spottier here, the tourist area is not as distinct, you’re in with real people more than in Prague” (Interview 43). It is this interaction between the banal and the monumental that is what gives urban tourism its caché. Placing Culture—The Indexical Role of Locality Peirce’s ideas of the indexical role which proximity and space play are key to understanding the ways in which the accretion of meaning builds on top of the functional nature of objects in the landscape. A close reading of Peirce’s examples of indices, signs that simply “point” to their objects, highlights a neglected spatial element in his thoughts on signification—the fact that the locational and proximal conditions give meaning to the index, allowing it to function as such. So, for example, in Bergman’s (2002: 9) discussion of the role common sense plays in Peirce’s theory, he writes, “some wild interpretations, which the signs alone would render possible, are excluded by common sense. Much is based on an unspecified understanding of things shared by communicants” (emphasis added). He then cites the following passage from Peirce: If the utterer says ‘Fine day!’ he does not dream of any possibility of the interpreter’s thinking of any mere desire for a fine day that a Finn of the North Cape might have entertained on April 19, 1776. He means, of course, to refer to the actual weather, then and there, where he and the interpreter are alike influenced by the fine weather, and have it near the surface of their common consciousness (EP 2:407; emphasis added).

This “unspecified understanding” is entirely dependent upon the “then and there” the fact that both utterer and interpreter are located proximate to each other in the same locale. Peirce’s other illustrative examples for the indexical nature of demonstratives also underscore the significance of location and proximity. 43  Photos 1.17T; 2.10T; 2.21T; 4.8T; 5.12T; 5.14T; 13.16T; 16.22T; 18.3T; 19.18T; 20.23T.

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Suppose two men meet upon a country road and one of them says to the other, “The chimney of that house is on fire.” The other looks around him and describes a house with green blinds and a verandah having a smoking chimney. He walks on a few miles and meets a second traveler. Like a Simple Simon he says, “The chimney of that house is on fire.” “What house?” asks the other. “Oh, a house with green blinds and a verandah” replies the simpleton. “Where is the house?” asks the stranger. He desires some index which connects his apprehension with the house meant. Words alone cannot do this. The demonstrative pronouns “this” and “that” are indices. For they call upon the hearer to use his powers of observation and so establish a real connection with his mind and the object … (EP 2.14; see also EP 2.7). Demonstratives are dependent upon spatiality, hence the difference between here and there, this and that. We can extend this to say that emplacement/location works indexically to give signification to national culture and objects in the built environment. Because we live in a world of national states—which have become as natural and unreflected upon as the air we breathe—where the uniqueness of nationalities is taken for granted, even the most universally homogenizing objects can be marked as nationally significant both by insiders who make claims to exceptionalism, and by outsiders, the tourists, who ascribe each difference encountered from their own cultural milieu to the fact of being in another, as the example glossed by one photographer on his location card indicates, “hand in street sign—not seen anywhere else.” Looking through Wanderlust, (Litten 2004) a collection of photographs of quotidian objects encountered during travel, despite the fact that they carry no captions, these are easily attributed to their nation of encounter by those in the know. On the page of subway train interiors, the other three trains are elsewhere, but the mint green and chrome interior of the Budapest subway immediately jumps out at those familiar with Budapest, as does the red post box which, lacking words, nevertheless stands out amongst the other examples as clearly Hungarian. And on the page of traffic signs, the stick man with the hat holding the little stick girl’s hand is the “Hungarian example” as it differs slightly but significantly from the other similar tablets. Lajos Csordás (1997) wrote in his Népszabadság article entitled “The Stickfigure eats a hamburger: About what do the Budapest pictograms say?” even these most cross-national of icons reveal a great deal about the national cultures in which they originate and in which they function. “[T]hey can not mean the same thing, arising from one people’s distinct mentality, they have to be a little divergent, even if it [the idea] is from a common principle” (66). The signs, in their form and type, while attempting to be universal are upon closer scrutiny culturally specific. Csordás continues, “[o]n the Viennese subway, the signs are smaller because the Viennese people travel 30% slower than the residents in Pest … the sign [in Budapest] which informs the residents of the capital that dogs must be picked up on the escalator is mostly about us. In other places most likely even without this sign they know this. Thus it turns out, that a pictogram becomes a

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characteristic Budapest phenomenon” (66). One of many of the difficulties faced by the reunification of East and West Berlin was the controversy over the icon on the crosswalks used in East Berlin and the homogenizing, deculturating threat posed by the stripped down figures in the West. And if the pictogram can be “culturated,” we can see the path down which other mundane objects from buildings to bridges can be as well. Such is the case, as we have seen for example with the Chain Bridge. Although designed by a Scotsman and built by an Englishman it has nevertheless become an iconic image of the city of Budapest. Thus we can say that European capital cities illustrate a paradox of national culture. While it is clear that certain objects are intended to be “national,” statues of indigenous heroes, monuments commemorating historically significant events and toponymics which all have deliberate mnemonic meanings, there is an entire other layer of meaning making that is attached to more mundane objects based upon their roles within the cultural, social and political history of the state, and upon their simple geographic locale, though these are often mutually dependent. In the case of Budapest, what has come to be seen as “Hungarian” by those coming to the city, is really representative of the complex interaction between place and the indigenous and foreign influences which have been reshaping Hungarian culture since the time of the conversion to Christianity by Szent István, or as he is known outside of Hungary, Saint Stephen. What one finds in the interviews and photos taken by tourists is that besides the language, there is little that the visitor encounters that could be considered “really, uniquely Hungarian,” except for the fact that each neo-classical building, each bloc flat, each yellow tram encountered, is imbued with Hungarianness by virtue of its emplacement within the Hungarian capital and within the historical trajectory of events transpiring in place. Thus geography and location conspire as powerful indices of cultural identity, contributing to place signification for visitors even for foreign objects such as the East German Trabant. And perhaps we could simply chalk up these cultural mis-understandings to the fact that tourists often have but a limited view of the cultures in which they sojourn and could be forgiven for reading a neo-classical apartment on the most grand boulevard of the city or the street sign with a pointing finger as uniquely “Hungarian” objects. But the photographs taken by Hungarian locals (MetroRoland 2009a) who were also asked to capture Hungarianness in the prosaic sites of the city resulted in pictures of many of the same things—neoclassical and eclectic buildings; window boxes and balconies; graffiti; renovated and crumbling apartments; shops and shadowy courtyards; the entry way to the Millennial Yellow line underground station and streetcars; the Párizsi Arcade; Andrássy Avenue; the sgraffitoed façade of the University of Fine Arts Building at 67 Andrássy; and the Liszt statue. Thus returning to the indexical nature of geography and location, we can see that these exert a powerful influence upon the meaning making which ensues when we travel to place. In answering the question of how Hungarian is Budapest the answer is tautological, it is a Hungarian city because it is filled with Hungarian

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things, but these things have become Hungarian by virtue of their emplacement, their embeddedness in the urban and cultural geography of the city. There are two important conclusions to be drawn from the results of interviews with tourists and their photographs. While those given cameras were asked specifically to focus upon the everyday city, as noted above, the subjects of their photos hew quite closely to the comments made by interviewees in that their experience of culture within the city is a record of the tourist prosaic grounded in the ensemble of elements, from street signs and general architectural details of buildings in the urban landscape rather than the specific experience with any one site. If Budapest were Paris we could say that while the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral help give the city its characteristic identity, they are not what makes Paris Paris, but rather it is the ensemble of cafés and boulangeries, the Seine and the chestnuts in blossom which contribute to the mise-en-scène which tourists seek. In other words, in urban tourism—and this seems also to be the case in other settings as well (Rickly-Boyd and Metro-Roland 2010)—the whole is greater than any one part, but the parts are significant to constituting the whole. Thus while the highlights and the idea of a city, so-called branding, contribute to the pre-trip decision making about where to travel, once on the ground it is the elements of the tourist prosaic that mix of the cityscape and touristscape which appear to most contribute to place signification and the experience of having been to a destination. Secondly it is clear that the emplaced nature of these mundane objects in the cityscape–touristscape nexus is indexical, drawing the connection between the culture of a place and culture in place. Phone boxes, street signs, buses, the design of buildings, and markets are all encountered within a cultural milieu that gives them a patina of identity, in this case Hungarian. But there is a limit in that objects must be free to be interpreted as Hungarian, that is, they must not have any other cultural codes already attached. So the numerous McDonalds which fill the Budapest cityscape with their golden arches are already culturally marked so to speak and thus when one did show up in the photographic record the Hungarian aspect was glossed as “new signs on old buildings.”44 As the Hungarian Academy of Sciences building or the Parliament, draw heavily upon non-Hungarian elements in their design, their emplacement within the physical and cultural geography of the nation transform them into examples of Hungarianness. But just as a pointing index finger, the indexical nature of emplacement does not say anything about the actual history or origins of objects—such as the East German Trabant. In order to approach a fuller understanding of the object, the dynamical object of Peirce’s theory, collateral knowledge must build up the layers of meaning to move interpretation closer towards its finale. As there are multiple stopping points along the interpretive road, we can see that for many tourists emplacement is the starting and stopping point and objects are Hungarian by virtue of their geographic location. This of course is the link between tourism and 44  Photo 1.8T.

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geography, the place making of geographic imagination and the reason for travel, to see other places/times. For the local resident, the same object, the sgraffito decorated façade of the former Drawing School building along Andrássy Avenue, for example, the interpretation of its Hungarianness may start with its emplacement but it is not the end point as their understanding of the intricacies of Hungarian history and culture are brought to bear. Geographic location is simply one aspect in the cognitive flow of interpretation, but it is nevertheless an important one, and one which is preeminent in the spaces of the tourist prosaic.

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Chapter 7

Markets and Culture Monday through Saturday the Központi Vásárcsarnok, or Central Market Hall, in Budapest opens its doors for business. The massive structure, built in the nineteenth century, and reminiscent of a train station in its span, is filled from top to bottom with stalls offering produce, fish, fowl and meats, breads, pastries, eggs and dried noodles. While local residents walk the aisles filling their shopping bags, they are joined, and watched by, the curious tourists who also flock to the site. The Market is one of the highlights of a trip to Budapest and it appears prominently in guidebooks and tourist materials, and is a featured stop on organized tours. The DK guidebook notes: Markets of all sorts are an essential part of life in Budapest, and offer a delightfully traditional shopping experience to visitors. Perhaps the most spectacular are the five cavernous market halls which dot the city … The three level Great Market Hall … on Fővám tér is the largest of all. More than 180 stalls display a huge variety of vegetables, fruit, meat and cheese, under a gleaming roof of brightly coloured Zsolnay tiles (Olszańska and Olszański 2004: 203).

And although the Market Hall has made accommodations for tourists, offering a large selection of handcrafts and souvenirs in the gallery and decorative food items on the main floor, interviews with tourists reveal that it is the bustling market culture that draws tourist to the site and holds their interest once there. This raises the question however about why the Market is such an attractive site? The answer is that the market, as an ensemble of objects and people—pork and potatoes, Hungarian housewives and butchers—is of interest because it is representative of Hungarian culture in a most basic way. Among the most fundamental customs enveloped by the concept of mode of life are those having to do with the feeding of the body and the social intercourse which is embodied in food (Barthes 1961; Lévi-Strauss [1968] 1978; Douglas 1972; Goody 1982; Flandrin and Montanari 1999). From production to procurement and consumption these are closely linked to culture, and the Market Hall—with its roots in history and tradition, the seasonal ebb and flow of produce and the types of meats one finds in abundance—offers a snapshot of the Hungarian mode of life. The Market Hall is the quintessential example of the tourist prosaic.

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Figure 7.1

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Central Market Hall

As the Hungarian essayist Török (2005: 120) laments “[t]he market is changing. The old-fashioned market-women, dressed in black or black and white, and always ready for some loud bargaining, are slowly disappearing. Instead, the rowdy, 30–40 year old small businessman with his well-dressed wife at the stall, cracking endless jokes with the customers, is becoming the typical figure.” In spite of the changes in the faces of the sellers and the fact that provisions are no longer brought in on rail cars or straight from the dock but by trucks pulling into the underground garage, the Market, compared with the hypermarkets and supermarkets, still retains and evinces strong connections with the countryside and with the past, and yet also it is a sign of the changing economy and culture of the contemporary city. This chapter offers an ethnography of place at the same time that it is concerned with the epistemological aspects of place interpretation. How does the meaning of place get educed, interpreted and made meaningful, and how does that which is outside ourselves become familiar? The market is a meeting ground, a tourist space and local place, a sign of Hungarianess in the material culture of the architecture and the food, but it also appears as familiar, offering basic food stuffs. While visitors to the sight may be led there by guidebooks, recommendations or even organized tours, once inside the guides give way to the empirical and phenomenological experience of being in place. It is the accidental equivalent of a

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semiotic laboratory. First the history of the halls will be addressed, followed by a description of the role of the Central Market Hall within the tourism circuit of the city. An experiential ethnography of place will be offered of the site based upon participant observation, archival work, and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with over 100 foreign visitors to the site.1 The chapter will conclude with an exploration of the iconic character of the market. The Market Halls in the Cityscape Market halls, as a specific cultural space, play an essential role in the landscape of the city, and their function serving the surrounding local population with fresh foods underscores their place in the life of the city (Szalai 2005). As an exemplar of the prosaic side of Hungarian culture, the Central Market Hall offers an ostensible glimpse into the authentic for foreign visitors. The market is an iconic sign of the culture. Its form is a reflection of late nineteenth-century civic investment in the growing capital (Vadas 2005), the advances in iron girding technology and the public health and hygiene movement. Its appearance today, renovated and busy, reflects the importance that marketing still holds in Hungarian daily life. The seasonal cycle of produce, their appellation indicating from which county they originate, and the types of products, from túró [cheese curd] to pacal [tripe], from ponty [Balaton carp] to paprika reflect the culturally infused, place-inflected dietary habits of the Hungarians as well as the agricultural heritage of the country. And the market customs, an unwritten set of precepts that guide interaction in the hall, offer a glimpse into Hungarian society, both as it has been in the past and as it has evolved since the change of regime. Within Budapest there are six original market halls, the Central Market Hall on Fővám Square, and five district halls at Rákóczi Square, Klauzál Square, Hunyadi Square, Hold Street, and Batthyány Square.2 These were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as part of a campaign to manage the food supply of the city and the markets which until then had been open air sites full of the smells and odors of foods, stalls and people (Nagy 2005). When the Central Market Hall opened in 1897, a whole set of regulations were established to ensure order and hygiene:

1  Participant observation was undertaken at all the market halls between August 2005 and July 2006, and interviews with 109 visitors in 53 separate groups, ranging from individuals to a group of six, were conducted between April and June 2006 at the Vásárcsarnok. 2  The main history of the Market Hall was written by Gergely Nagy (2005), who was on the architectural team which worked on the reconstruction of the market in the 1990s and this brief survey is based on his work as well as the articles in Vásárcsarnok: minőségét korlátlan ideig megőrzi/Market Hall: Expiration Date: To be Determined (2005).

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Tourists, Signs and the City Meat could only be sent to the hall in pieces smaller than 5kg, in sacks, or packaged in cloth. A health certificate had to be included with the delivery. It was urged, that a special delivery company should be established to ensure expert transportation of meat. Poultry and eggs could only be sent to the hall in crates. After cleaning and sorting, 1,440 eggs had to be packed into a crate measuring 175 x 48 x 24 cm. If a smaller number of eggs was sent, this could only be done if they were in baskets, or wrapped in parchment paper. Further hygiene regulations were introduced. The sale of meat from buffaloes or young calves was banned. It was forbidden to pack the carcasses with straw. Only clean paper or wood shavings were permitted for this purpose. Poultry were not allowed to roam free in the building. A special permit from the director of the Central Market Hall was needed to allow the “exhausted and parched poultry” to have free run of the hall poultry yard for a short time (Nagy 2005: 46).

With the establishment of the market hall system, the sale of products which were deemed “market hall goods” was forbidden in any other market. The list included “meat, game and poultry; fresh-water and sea fish; bread, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, raw and cooked vegetables, potatoes, fruit, flowers, live birds, household utensils and all other goods which were mentioned in the rent regulations for the market hall” (Nagy 2005: 43). Very little was left to be traded at the old outdoor markets, the regulation in effect shutting them down. While the market halls thrived throughout the twentieth century, even during the socialist period being sites overflowing with foods, they began declining in the later part of the century, and became places that people did not want to go. Since the 1990s they have been revived, undergoing extensive renovation (all except the Hunyadi Square site) and now function as hubs of commerce and activity. The original plan included the Central Market Hall which was designed to serve the main part of the city, located along the wharf near the old customs house, and several district halls to serve local communities around the proposed sites. At the end of the 1800s the city was growing though still fairly compact compared to the city today. As a consequence these halls are all today found within or just off the Grand Boulevard which rings the city (more obviously on the Pest side than the Buda side) and which marks the area of the Inner City. In the twentieth century other markets were built to serve the outlying areas though some of these are in the form of an outdoor covered market place [piac] such as at Lehel Square. The original market halls, with the exception of the last one built at Batthyány Square, are all on the Pest side of the city. In spite of the fact that since the change of regime large scale “western” style shopping malls have grown like a fungus throughout the city, offering huge grocery stores open late into the evening and all day on the weekends, the market halls, with their “old fashioned” hours—closing at 6pm on weekdays, 2pm on Saturdays and closed entirely on Sundays—have continued to flourish.

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The Central Market Hall which is also called the Nagycsarnok and Vámház piac, is by far the largest of all the halls in the city and much busier, both in terms of sheer volume of business and number of visitors. The building is 60.61 meters wide, 220 meters long and 28 meters high with 24,000 square meters of floor space (Nagy 1999). Originally the market was set up to house the wholesale and retail markets for the city and to provide food distribution for the district halls as well. It was situated near the quay, along the customs house [Vámhaz], in order to take advantage of deliveries by boat along the Danube. A special tunnel was built to provide access to the riverside, though deliveries in the early years were also brought in by wagons which could enter through the main aisle of the hall, before the area was taken over for new stalls as the need for space increased in the wake of the success of the market. Deliveries were also made by a rail line which brought the cars directly into the hall for unloading, up to 22 at a time. The streetcars system was also utilized with special trams which made deliveries to the market and from the market to residences. Today, it is the underground parking garages which serve as the main delivery point. Samu Pecz, the architect who designed the building, had to meet a number of engineering challenges including solving the problem posed by the different levels of the surrounding streets. The function of the building also imposed conditions on the design with the need for adequate space for stalls, for deliveries, for light, ventilation and cold storage. The design shows similarities with other market halls; an iron frame created a vast open space with multiple entrances and lots of high windows allowing light and air to circulate. The building suffered some repairable damage during World War II. During the socialist period, changes were made to the interior such as the enclosing of stalls and the building of lift blocks so that according to Nagy (2005: 52) “the attractive appearance of the imposing interior was thus marred.” The market lost its appeal and customers. More serious however, was the damage which time inflicted on the structural elements of the hall. The majority of the iron bases of the supporting pillars were damaged and the ceiling girders in the cellar under the fish mongers were eroded. The market was closed in 1991 and an extensive threeyear renovation and restoration was undertaken, including painstaking attention to historical detail in reconstructing the architectural elements such as the door handles which had made the market so stunning when it first was built. When the Central Market Hall reopened it reclaimed an important place in the day-to-day life of the city. It continues to offer the most affordable and fresh produce choices, compared with neighborhood green grocers which offer fresh goods but at a price for local convenience and the supermarkets which offer only low prices. It is not unusual to find chefs from nearby restaurants coming in to the hall to buy produce and meats for that evening’s menu.

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The Central Market Hall in the Touristscape As noted above, the Central Market Hall is not only a feature in the everyday lives of the Budapest residents, it is also a highlight in the tourist landscape and as such is emblematic of the tourist prosaic. While organized tours bring visitors by the bus load, many arrive at the site by tram, but many more come on foot after strolling down Váci Street, the main pedestrian path in the Inner City. Reaching the end of the narrow pedestrian zone, lined on both sides by four-storey nineteenth-century apartments, it is a remarkable site which greets the visitor when they reach the end. Fővám Square opens to the left allowing views of the Danube, the green iron Szabadság Bridge, and Gellért Hill with the eponymous Hotel Gellért and bath complex just across the river. The Market Hall itself is an imposing and impressive structure. Built of brick in a style similar to other nineteenth-century market halls across Europe, it nevertheless has its own unique Hungarian cultural markings, most notably the brilliant green and yellow Zsolnay roof tiles. While Zsolnay is known for its pottery production, the factory in the southern Hungarian town of Pécs also produced brightly glazed roof tiles, as well as architectural elements such as the ventilation caps and chimney pots. Ödön Lechner chose these for the roof of the Museum of Applied Arts and they can also be found on the roof of the Technical University the National Archives. They are a distinctive sign of Hungarianness. The actual approach to the Market Hall from Váci Street poses a certain challenge to those foreign visitors unfamiliar with the vagaries of Hungarian traffic control. The road which runs between Fővám Square and the market is a busy interchange between the Pest and Buda sides of the city via Szabadság Bridge. There is a street car line which runs along the bridge and Vámház Boulevard with a tram stop just outside the Market Hall. The pedestrian crossing is divided into three segments with three separately timed signals. Coming from Váci Street, the first stretch turns green and allows for pedestrians to cross the Buda bound lane of traffic. The pedestrian then finds herself standing on the narrow end of a traffic island that to the right will allow her to board the Buda bound tram. And here is another pedestrian traffic signal with red hand and green walking person that is linked to the signal for the trams. If a street car is coming and a person is in the way a pleasant little ding ding, similar to a child’s bike bell, will ring to warn the person of her oncoming demise. Across the tracks is another narrow traffic island which is the end of the platform for the Pest bound tram. Here is yet another pedestrian signal demanding attention, this one linked to the Pest bound lane of traffic where cars come speeding off of the bridge. Each of these three signals operates separately, so that a single uninterrupted trek across the road is rarely possible and tourists in particular are often seen jumping back or running across to get out of the way of speeding cars or trams bearing down upon them. The short distance across the road at this point, no longer than 10 meters and the fact that the tourist on the Váci Street side may see those on the Market Hall side begin to cross, combined

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with the narrowness of the traffic lanes between the tram stop and the sidewalk make this a very scary place to observe tourists. In the most dangerous situations, the tourist remains intent upon reaching the Market Hall and is oblivious to the speeding truck which somehow has just barely managed to miss the person. The cross walk is in line with the side of building and successfully negotiating this crossing will bring the person to the door leading up the Danube side aisle which is known, not accidently, as the gazdag sor, “the wealthy aisle” (see below). Many people however make their way to the formal main doors and are treated with the amazing sight of the soaring roof, busy shoppers and a sunlit space filled with the scents of perfectly ripe fruits in summer. The main entrance is open almost the entire year, and in the colder months when the large central doors are shut the smaller flanking doors will be open, and heavy curtains are hung inside to keep out the cold. In the warmer months however both the large doors and the smaller flanking doors remain open. There is an arcade in front of the market which keeps the sun away in warm weather and the rain and snow away in inclement times, in front of which is a set of posts and heavy chains which keep people from wandering straight out the door and into traffic. It was here, as people exited the main doors that visitors to the site were interviewed. In interviews, many people said they intentionally sought out the Market Hall but many others arrived at the market by accident while wandering. As noted above, the Market Hall sits across the end of Váci Street the pedestrian zone close to the Danube. The colorful Zsolnay tiles and the massive size of the building make it impossible to miss, though it does lack any obvious signage other than the gilded inscription above the door, I. SZAMU VÁSÁRCSARNOK [Number 1 Market Hall] which is easily overlooked by the tourist and means little to those not familiar with the Hungarian language. Guidebooks vary in their appellation for sites in the city, and this makes it somewhat challenging to locate things both when asking for directions on the street and searching for sites in the indices, since some use the Hungarian names while others simply translate the terms.3 For example the terms Nagycsarnok and “Great Market Hall” are used by Lonely Planet but the DK lists it as the “Central Market Hall.” A comparative study of market halls from the same era in Europe would show a remarkable similarity in form but as the techniques of iron framing which allowed large spans to be covered (as in the Market Hall) were also utilized for the other major civic building projects of the late nineteenth century, namely train stations, it is not surprising that the building is easily misinterpreted as such by visitors. One pair said “we saw it to the left, wow, and thought it was a train station” (Interview 30V). Another pair were walking from the hotel and “thought it was a railroad station” (Interview 54V). Both couples were pleasantly surprised, 3  One couple with whom I spoke lamented the fact that the previous day when they were asking Hungarians on the street for directions to the “City Park” no one was able to help them. This of course was an issue of translation since the place they were searching for was the Városliget, which in Hungarian means exactly City Park.

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the former because they were quite hungry, the latter because they said they love markets. Of course being inside did not stop others visitor from assuming that it was a converted train station. As one person said, “it reminds me of a train station. It is very old, like the one built by Eiffel. There is one here [in Budapest] you know” (Interview 18V), and another man when asked what he took pictures of said the “historic details of the railroad station” (Interview 41V). The most unusual mis-interpretation came from a pair who misread the architectural details of the exterior of the building. When asked how they had chosen this site, one of them responded “We just happened upon it. It looked like the Synagogue. Then we went inside and saw all the pork” (Interview 47V). While a comparison of the façade of both buildings would show significant differences, there are however some similarities so it is not so outrageous that a visitor, having in her mind’s eye a remembrance of a picture of the Synagogue could perhaps mix the two up. Both use brick as the main material and both employ contrasting brick courses, symmetrical wings and large center entrance doors with inscriptions above. The roof pinnacles of each feature sculpted elements, on the Central Market Hall the coat of arms of the city of Budapest, on the Synagogue two inscribed tablets. The Great Synagogue is the largest in Europe, the second largest in the world and so is, like the Central Market Hall, a massive building utilizing iron frames. They are also located relatively near to one another in the city, along the little boulevard. Pecz’s design for the Central Market Hall lacks any obvious “food” specific decorative elements that would reveal the meaning of the building, unlike some of the district market halls. As Orosz (2005: 144) notes “[i]nsomuch as market hall architecture had no formal, nor literary-associative traditions, the stylistic symbolism appearing in its ornamentation was also rather divergent from nation to nation.” The same can be said of those in Budapest, though the district halls reveal far more explicit iconographic reference on the exterior to the products of the interior. The main entryway of Rákóczi Square Market is bracketed by two stone carvings which utilize sheep and bull heads along with fruits and vegetables, fish and fowl. The Batthyány Square Hall on the upper story is decorated with cartouches featuring carved heads below which on one side hang assorted fish and fowl and on the other an assortment of fruits and vegetables. The Hold Street and Hunyadi Square sites are even more exuberant in their deployment of iconographic references to food on their exterior decorations, as they were both designed by Győző Czigler who also was responsible for the Széchenyi Baths and the giant Gozsdu udvar apartment complex, which prior to World War II was a vibrant part of the capital’s Jewish community but which today is being renovated as part of the area’s ongoing gentrification. The Hold Street market was incorporated into an apartment block and has only two freestanding sides. The rear façade is graced with carved stone heads of sheep, deer and hogs, fanciful fish, and caryatids on the upper story surrounded by fruits and vegetables, and the front façade, a bit more subtle, has stone rams heads. The Hunyadi Square Hall is also connected to apartments and features an extensive use of animal motifs including boars, sheep

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and bulls’ heads framed by putti, fruits and leaves and caryatids with fruit below supporting the half-windows above the entrance. These decorative elements mark these buildings as having some function dealing with food, without the need to read the signs above the entrance. Tripe and Trinkets The vastness of the hall as one enters through the double high main entrance way, often stops visitors in their path. The wide central aisle is flanked by pavilions which on the right side house stands offering deli meats and sausages while on the left produce predominates in the next three pavilions. Many of these stands advertise déli gyümölcs, literally “southern fruits,” such as oranges, lemons and bananas which are a mainstay of the Hungarian diet despite their “tropical” origins. These fruits sit alongside grapes, raspberries, watermelons, orange melon, green leaf head lettuce in summer, and apples, onions, carrots, cabbage, parsnips and potatoes in the colder months. Farther down the main aisle the poultry stands, offering chicken, parts and whole with head and feet, and turkey breasts dominate one side. Also here are the butchers offering multiple cuts of pork including the feet and ears, pacal, or tripe, beef tongue and liver, beef cubes for Hungarian soups and stews and a small selection of ground beef and pork. Slabs of szalonna (or fatback) and dried Hungarian sausage and salami hang above the counters. Most stands also offer tinned Goose liver pâté which, along with the famous Pick salami, draw tourists to these stands. The goose liver tins, Rex Ciborum, are unique to the Central Market Hall meat stands missing from the butchers in the district market halls, a clear indication of the way in which sellers have recognized the profit to be made from foreign visitors who may not be ready to take tripe home but are eager to take advantage of still relatively low prices for “Hungaricum.” This is the term for items such as liba máj [goose liver], pálinka [fruit brandy] and Unicum [herbal liqueur] which are unique to Hungary and considered specialties of the country. The Hungarian Tourism Office explanations says “primarily it’s a consumer good or other product linked with Hungarian production culture and knowledge, with the traditions of the generations of people living here, characteristic of and accepted by us Hungarians as Hungarian. It is some generally recognised outstanding peculiarity that even an outsider sees as typifying Hungarianness” (Tourinform n.d.). The butchers stand behind the counter in their blood stained white coats calling out absently tessék, an all purpose polite word which in this case means something like, “yes how may I help you?,” to persons passing by and any who happen to stop and stare at the items on display behind the high glass counters. Along the main aisle are two separate sets of wooden benches, two apiece. As there is scant seating throughout the hall, there is often stiff competition between the local néni and bácsi, the pensioners, old ladies and men who come daily to the

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market to shop, complain and just spend time, and tourists who seek somewhere to sit while waiting for their companions to finish shopping. The majority of the stands along the main aisle serve the basic quotidian needs of the local shoppers though there are two stands across from each other midway down the main aisle which are clearly directed at the tourist. The stand run by Kmetty and Kmetty has split its space; one side is a produce stand aimed at locals, the items on offer are often of very poor quality, with lots of blemishes that are reflected in the low price, while the other section, aimed at tourists, prominently displays a photo of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she visited this stand in the late 1980s and then delivered a speech directed at the Soviet Union calling for the opening of a market economy in Eastern Europe. On offer is paprika in decorative packages, beautiful braided strands of garlic, and dried pepper wreathes. The Hungarian colors and folk motifs decorate this portion of the stand. Facing Kmetty and Kmetty is another stall which is directed at the tourist. It is decorated with ceramic Hungarian style plates and jugs, dried pepper and garlic strands, and is festooned with table top size flags from all over the world. The permanent signage is mainly in German. At the corner are displayed several dolls in traditional Hungarian dress which have become a photo stop for many of the visitors to the market. The stand itself offers typical tourist fare; paprika in decorative containers and packaged with painted wooden spoons, painted wooden spice cellars which are found, in a less flashy variety, on Hungarian tables, Édes Anna and Erős Pista [sweet and hot paprika paste respectively] sold in glass jars, caviar, tinned pâté, the braided garlic and dried pepper wreaths, honey as well as “canned” peas, beans, peaches and pears in glass jars, some decorative, others similar to what is on offer at the typical grocery store. On one side is a small selection of dried nuts and fresh fruits, which, as they are priced per piece, are nearly twice the price of the same fruits at the stand next door, from which some of them come. The narrow aisles along the outside of the building have the same general layout of the main aisle in that at the far end are meat stands on the pavilion side while small produce venders predominate along the entire length of the hall on the outside wall. Further along on the pavilion side are large-scale produce sellers. Fruits are also abundant in this aisle and in the peak months of July and August, when the berries, peaches and watermelons fill the stalls, the air is intensely fragrant. In the winter months, the air in the hall is just cold—on the few unexpectedly mild winter days that come it is even colder indoors than out—and the sellers, bundled up in snow suits, gloves and hats, still have to stomp around to keep warm. Signs at the stands are either hand written or on small chalkboards where the name and the price is given. A very few stalls, mostly on the main aisle have printed signs. Only one stall has no prices written for most items. It is likely that this has to do with its position in the tourist trade. Its displays, which include Hungarian folk items and the prominent posting of a picture of the Central Market

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Hall from Frommer’s, mark it as a tourist site, and one suspects that the prices float. This stand is on the Danube side of the hall which at the opposite end is another crowded route through the hall, especially for those who enter the first set of doors they see after crossing the street (rather than continuing to the main entrance). This aisle is also arrayed with small stalls, but, as mentioned above, is known as the gazdag sor, or “wealthy aisle,” for the supply of exotic and outof-season produce available. These include wide varieties of dried fruits—pears, strawberries, raspberries, candied oranges and ginger—and more adventurous fresh selections such as yams and cranberries, radicchio and assorted spring greens, avocadoes and “California” peppers (bell peppers), truffles, fresh herb plants, lychee and tamarind. Sprinkled amongst the fruit and vegetable stalls are stands aimed directly at the tourist, offering Hungarian paprika in decorative containers, with multilingual signs (in some cases up to 12 languages) on each of the offerings; as well as saffron and honey products. In the midst of all this “wealth” sits one lone stall offering standard Hungarian produce—in the summer months Hungarian peppers, both sweet and hot, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, corn, fresh “painted beans,” apples, nectarines, raspberries, red currents, and cherries both tart and sweet—and prominently displaying a handwritten sign in Hungarian, “In this shop, Hungarian prices are offered.” The proprietor of the stand insisted that only Hungarian products were on offer, not like the sub-quality imported produce on sale across the way in the other row. Whether it suits her to be situated here facing less competition, or whether she misses out on customers shopping along the other aisles she did not say. While food items, paprika, salami, honey, and goose liver, are commonly purchased by visitors, the main tourist trade takes place in the gallery which follows the exterior walls of the hall with walkways connecting the two long sides. Folk items and souvenirs predominate, and along one side are hot food vendors and bars. The Fakanál [The Wooden Spoon], is found at the front of the hall, an overpriced, tourist-friendly, cafeteria style place that serves typical Hungarian fare that has been rated as mediocre by the food critics of the Hungarian weekly program magazine Exit. The walkways that join the two sides of the gallery are filled with carts also filled with “Hungarian” products and standard souvenirs. A few offer high quality and high priced, though affordable by tourist standards, leather handbags and briefcases. In spite of the fact that the gallery of the Market Hall is a veritable shopping mecca for tourists, the prices are reasonable on most products, transactions are simple and orderly, bargaining is really low pressure, sales people are attentive without being pushy, and some places will even pack and ship fragile items abroad. The obsequious attention to the tourists and the more transparent market practices here in the gallery are in contrast with those catering to locals on the main floor. For those who venture to buy at a non-tourist shop, the experience of the Market Hall offers a glimpse into a unique cultural code in terms of behaviors and items which is potent but invisible, and which can cause no end of confusion.

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As Szalai (2005: 153) writes “it is palpable that the attributes attached to the traditional concept of the market are vanishing. The nature of spontaneity and exchange is fading, and in fact, are exchanged for the sole activity of shopping, which is not at all the same as marketing, in which there was/is interactivity and reciprocity, while shopping is a one-sided thing.” For those “marketing” in the market halls as opposed to the supermarkets, there is a well established, though unarticulated, set of practices which are expected and observed by sellers and buyers, a “market culture” so to speak. There is a unique vocabulary for the produce on offer which include metaphors, méz édes [honey sweet], locational markers which give the region or origin, and diminutives, such as kovi ubi. Short for kovászos uborka [leavened cucumbers], these small cucumbers which are pickled using a large glass jar, salt, a sprig of dill and a kifli, a water based crescent roll that is placed above the cucumbers while they sit for a few days in backyards or on balconies in the city, brining in the sun. Each stand is generally set up with some items in front of the seller on shelves about one meter high, with other shelves set up inside the stand which only the seller can access. If there are small baskets provided, the produce can be picked out by the buyer but in most cases, the produce can not and should not be touched. At certain times during the year, for example when oranges are prolific, sellers will put up signs saying that yes the buyer can pick out his own oranges. It becomes important to establish a type of relationship with your vendor of choice because for most products they get to choose what to give, the onions which are going to seed, or the ones which have just arrived. Sellers have little patience and the buyer is expected to know ahead of time what and how much she wants, though questions about quality or origin will sometimes be tolerated by some sellers, who at times can be friendly and loquacious with customers that they know well but who will more often than not avoid all miscellaneous chit-chat sometimes not even making eye contact with the shopper. While older ladies get special dispensation, for the most part shoppers will line up, usually to the right, though in some cases the line will form straight out into the walkway. Long lines are rare though one seller along the left outside wall has perfected the “discount” and once buyers line up, more naturally congregate. One woman, when asked about why she was queuing in a line almost 15 persons deep, answered that lemons were 98 forint4 a kilo, which was nearly 100 forint cheaper than those nearby. Yet it was not totally unheard of at the market that day. If a person does not stay on their toes, the crafty néni next in line will move in without hesitation. This is an especially frustrating affair for the tourist, as most sellers not catering directly to foreigners will not or can not inform the person lining up to the left that she is in the wrong place. The seller of course will usually follow the market culture and continue serving customers to the right which leads to aggravation for the tourist. Two American women who had been waiting in front of the counter at one of the milk stands, complained as other customers were 4  The average exchange rate in 2006 was 211 HUF to $1.00.

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waited on ahead of them, and it was only someone also waiting informed them to stand on the other side that they actually got to make their purchases. What might have been perceived as rudeness and an intentional slight on the part of the counter person became a simple matter of cultural confusion and getting into the right place. These unwritten rules are never mentioned in guidebooks even when admonitions against bargaining for produce (since this is not a bazaar) are offered. The rule of lining to the right in fact is so ingrained in Hungarian practice that some of the stands which because of their end locations require lines from the left have posted signs. This includes one of the produce stands on the ground floor which posted a handwritten Hungarian sign and the lángos [Fried Bread] stand in the gallery which for a while had a sign posted in English, German and Hungarian. Customers are expected, in most of the stands, to have their own shopping bags and will be charged a small surcharge for the seller supplying one. Some stands have digital scales and the price can easily be seen by the customer, though many others still use analog scales and the price is calculated by the seller and announced to the buyer, which of course leads to difficulty for the non-Hungarian speaking foreigner. Paying requires the threading of a fine line between too fastidiously looking for and giving exact change and giving too large a bill. Hungarian venders in the Central Market Hall as well as in larger shops in the city will not hesitate to ask for smaller bills, a source of continuous complaint and frustration for the tourist who believes that either the seller is being unreasonable or is trying some sort of scam. For the local steeped in the unspoken and unwritten custom of paying this is rarely an issue. In fact pensioners will routinely open their change purses to let the seller pick out the correct amount. Speaking about the Market A number of issues were considered when talking to people about the Market Hall in order to gauge their interpretations and the possible means for coming to these interpretations. These include questions about how they would describe the market to those who had not seen it, what seemed particularly Hungarian, what particular things jumped out at them, what they took photos of, and how did the site fit into the dichotomy of tourist/local place. These help us approach the individual acts of semiosis which are constituent of the larger experience of place. As Relph (1976) contends regarding levels of insideness and outsideness, our interaction with and our grasping of the intricacies of place are highly contingent on our engagement. Thus observing people as they entered in the Market Hall revealed vastly different levels of being in place, as some tourists kept to a path in the middle of the floor, glancing only briefly at the stalls which lined their path, while others would stop, get close, lean in to see something more closely, take pictures and be fully engrossed. While Peirce would say the universe is perfused with signs, many of these remain simply potential since we are not omniscient and can not possibly see

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everything at every moment; much of the cognizing of our environment takes place without our awareness and even those immersed in the objects of the Market Hall would draw significance from some things and not others. An analogous example is given by Peirce when he writes of the way in which we recognize our friends (EP 1.17). In spite of the fact that our friend has two eyes, a nose and a mouth, just the same way that the stranger does, it is the particular arrangements of those features which distinguish the two from one another. But were the two identical twins we would be hard pressed to articulate what distinguishes the one from the other, and yet we know. Even more to the point are his further comments about our grasp of space and time. That the course of time should be immediately felt is obviously impossible. For, in that case, there must be an element of this feeling at each instant. But in an instant there is no duration and hence no immediate feeling of duration. Hence, no one of these elementary feelings is an immediate feeling of duration; and hence the sum of all is not. On the other hand, the impressions of any moment are very complicated,—containing all the images (or the elements of images) of sense and memory, which complexity is reducible to mediate simplicity by means of the conception of time (EP 1.17).

That our interactions with the world out there are knotty tangles of various objects and interpretants, ad nauseam, means that the flow of experience is both continuous and discreet, and which prevails at any moment depends upon the intentionality of our reflection. The tourists coming out of the Market Hall were questioned about the general and the particular, their descriptions of the place and the constituent elements, in the things they looked at and photographed. There are always issues to contend with when working with people, among them questions about the concordance of what they say they did versus what they did, how they shape their answers based upon their estimates about what they think the researcher wants, issues of simple miscommunication and misunderstanding, and the absence of perfect memory. While the ability to have full access to one’s own thoughts, to be omniscient about one’s self, has been questioned, we must leave that for others to debate and instead take for a given that people when interviewed answer in good faith (Hay 2005). The challenge of this type of research however lies in the fact that a triple hermeneutic leap must take place. First is the adjustment between expectation and empirical observation which occurs when the person enters the hall. Those who have intentionally come here carry with them a set of preconceived ideas based upon what they read in guidebooks or what others had told them, while those who simply wandered tend to have a set of ideas which may have to be radically reworked when faced with the scene before their eyes (see below). Because Peirce’s sign hypothesis is also a general theory of epistemology, all knowing emerges from the interaction between object, sign and interpretant this means that the term object must include small discrete entities, a potato or an

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exclamation point for example, as well as an ensemble of such, as an entire stall or a novel for instance. The next step in interpretation takes place during the interview in which the person reflects back upon his experience inside the hall and formulates answers to the questions posed to them. As has been noted about answering questionnaires, this may in fact be two separate steps—the mental reflection differing slightly to substantially from the articulation of those reflections (Schwarz 1999). In the case of those who are not native English speakers, there may be yet another layer of interpretation, from English to some other language and then back again. The thought process is itself a semiotic exercise in that according to Peirce all thinking is done in signs (EP 1.30). Adopting an anti-Cartesian stance Peirce asserts that even our introspection is cognition, that is, we can only glimpse the internal through our hypothesizing from the external. The final step of interpretation then emerges in the analysis and synthesis of their answers, which is premised on the researcher’s belief that the way in which tourists make sense of a place is by interpreting signs. Now few people other than Umberto Eco (1986) can claim to be semioticians and none of the participants made any such confessions. It was not reasonable to ask someone “what signs did you read in the Market Hall” because invariably the answer would have been “none, we don’t read Hungarian.” And it is questionable how much more successful asking someone “how did you interpret the Market Hall” would have been, because the idea of “interpreting a place” is an awkward idea for most people. It is perhaps analogous to asking someone about their ontological status, it will not get you very far, but it does not mean that it can not be discussed, or that they do not have one. Asking questions about what kind of place it is gets at the end product of interpretation as does observation, since people act based upon their interpretations. The questions about what people looked at, what gave the place a Hungarian character, and what they photographed reveals some of the middle stages, some of the objects which they focused their attention upon although it would be difficult to recall everything that a person saw, smelled, heard, touched or tasted while inside. The person who commented upon the quality of the carrots certainly saw the other vegetables arrayed alongside (Interview 26V), but perhaps these conformed to previous beliefs and did not inspire a process of signification. Besides asking people about their understandings of place in an admittedly oblique way, the other avenue to gauge interpretations is by observing how people use a place, what they do there, how they move and how they act. The genius of Peirce’s sign theory lies in the scope of the interpretant; it can be a mental event but it may also be kinesthetic and the being in place that is acted upon in the market offers a glimpse into the translation which takes place from interpretation to habit in action formed in belief. As Peirce explained in his 1903 lecture on Phenomenology at Harvard,

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Tourists, Signs and the City But you will mark the limitation of my approval of Ockham’s razor. It is a sound maxim of scientific procedure. If the question be what one ought to believe, the logic of the situation must take other factors into account. Speaking strictly, belief is out of place in pure theoretical science, which has nothing nearer to it than the establishment of doctrines, and only the provisional establishment of them, at that. Compared with living belief it is nothing but a ghost. If the captain of a vessel on a lee shore in a terrific storm finds himself in a critical position in which he must instantly either put his wheel to port acting on one hypothesis, or put his wheel to starboard acting on the contrary hypothesis, and his vessel will infallibly be dashed to pieces if he decides the question wrongly, Ockham’s razor is not worth the stout belief of any common seaman. For stout belief may happen to save the ship, while Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem would be only a stupid way of spelling Shipwreck. Now in matters of real practical concern we are all in something like the situation of that seacaptain (EP 2.156).

As noted in Chapter 2, belief while concerned with the ontological and epistemological issues of being in the world, is also manifest in the many trivial decisions of day-to-day living, like which coins one should use to pay the taxi driver (EP 1.128–33). When touring, the daily tasks of being in the world are brought to the fore as we endeavor to undertake them in a foreign locale, an environment which presents constant challenges of interpretation, from locating our morning coffee (half the places in Budapest which call themselves presszo, as in espresso, are actually bars) to figuring out the unwritten etiquette for paying for things. We are, also, when on tour, constantly presented with challenges of interpreting place, and our determinations will be reflected in our behavior. Is a church a place of worship or an object of cultural tourism? For the tourist who enters, and walks around gazing at the objects inside, the church is first and foremost a cultural relic compared with the person who comes in, crosses himself with holy water and kneels to say a prayer. For this visitor the church is a sacred space, an integral part of his spiritual landscape. Thus the researcher, sitting in a dark corner of one of the side chapels can get a clue into the interpretive process of the person by clueing in on their actions, which are the physical manifestation of their interpretations or beliefs in a Peircean sense. In the Central Market Hall, tourists who entered and brought their backpacks to their front were acting on a belief that crowded markets are ideal havens for pick pockets. But of course, observing from a distance entails another hermeneutic leap of faith, but triangulated against interviews, and other sources, can get us close to a rich descriptive narrative of a meaning embedded in a place as it is lived. The conversations with visitors overwhelmingly pointed to the ways in which the Market Hall rather than simply being a shopping stop instead was conceived as an integral part of their experience with Hungarian culture in the city, on par with other key sites on the heritage circuit. While the Market offers extensive

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shopping for souvenirs, it was the view into Hungarian life which the ensemble of food, venders and buyers offered which came up over and over. The fact that the topic of food products garnered so much attention is not surprising considering the place is a market, but it should be noted that there were no questions which explicitly dealt with food. Comments ranged from general observations about the “incredible diversity of products and merchants, good local foods” (Interview 2V) to more specific items like “paprika, what is it with this country and paprika” (Interview 11V). Food was mentioned when people spoke about how they would describe the market though it came up most frequently when people were asked what specific things they looked at, what they took pictures of, and what was particularly Hungarian in the market. In noting the specific things which interviewees looked for, food items were mentioned 43 times. These ranged. There were comments about wine, beer and cooked foods and general comments about fruits and vegetables, meats and sausages and paprika, both the spice and the peppers which appear in the market, dried on strings and fresh during the summer months in huge heaping piles. One visitor referred explicitly, though obliquely, to his own semiotic search for meaning in the market place. Having no previous knowledge of either the country or the culture, he said he went through the market trying to figure out what was Hungarian. The predominance of “some sort of chilli” (i.e. paprika) all over the place led him to conclude that this particular item was something that is “more Hungarian” (Interview 28V). The majority of interviews took place in the late spring and summer and the market was at its most impressive, overflowing with produce. “The vegetables, lettuces, scallions, the colors, the size of the lettuces” were noted by one pair who wished they could take a lettuce home with them (Interview 39V). “Paprika, asparagus, mushrooms everywhere” (Interview 11V) and the “variety and freshness of vegetables” (Interview 42V) attracted the attention of others. Several people commented on the radishes which are quite amazing in the spring, being in size somewhat larger than a golf ball and slightly smaller than a baseball and tasting exquisite. As noted above, the prices in the market for the same products as well as the quality varies throughout. One pair specifically commented upon the difference among the carrots on display in the hall, noting that “some are beautiful, some you wouldn’t give to your horse” (Interview 26V). This is the case with parsnips as well. At some stands these root vegetables have been scrubbed of dirt while at others the mud remains caked on; some stands offer large well shaped carrots and parsnips, while others offer knobby skinny roots that taste no worse for their stunted size. The produce on offer at the stalls is all from wholesalers as opposed to small holders bringing in their own products. The one exception however is during the late spring when mushroom sellers set up in the hallway across from the Mushroom Examination Office [Gombavizsga]. Tables are heaped with mushrooms gathered by hand in the hills outside the city and certified as edible by the inspector across the hall. The small holder selling homegrown produce, a dozen or so paprika and

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potatoes, can still be found at some of the district halls but for the most part, the Central Market Hall is the domain of the professional fulltime greengrocer. The poultry stalls and butchers were of interest with many people mentioning sausages and salami or meats in general. Hungarian cuisine is heavy on pork and poultry—chicken, goose and turkey—though beef including the special Hungarian grey cattle from the Hortobágy can be found in the market as well. Observations of the items for sale provided a glimpse into the Hungarian diet, one unmediated by restaurant menus. As one pair noted, Hungarian cuisine uses “more insides that we throw away at home” in Sweden (Interview 17V). Another participant observed that “we don’t eat so much lards and fats” (Interview 33V). This is reflected in the glass cases of the market which feature humongous dark haematic cow livers and pink tongues, and pigs’ feet and heads as well as the huge slabs of fat which the older generations still slice off and spread on bread for a morning meal. For those who prefer their meat to be neat and tidy the butcher stalls can be quite shocking but for those who don’t mind, these are a source of endless fascination. One group talked specifically about the “unusual items like trayfulls of brains” (Interview 41V). Another pair remarked upon what the guide told them were “sheep’s lungs … the white folded over things” (Interview 51V). This couple had two sets of guidebooks with them but did not mention on which tour they had gone which would be interesting to know since in fact the tour guide was incorrect in his/ her identification. What appears to be a wet bath towel folded up in the butchers’ case is in fact pacal, the stomach of the cow, which is made into tripe stew [pacal pörkölt], or served breaded and fried. When people were asked about what things they photographed pictures of food items were among the most frequently photographed mentioned. Even the few pictures taken of people revolved around food. These included four reported pictures of participants or their fellow travelers which featured in two cases the place at which they had eaten, another with one of them in front of jars of Russian caviar and another in front of a stand with lots of paprika. Only two pictures were reportedly taken of other people in the hall, the servers at one of the food places and a picture of people drinking. This pair were from Norway and they thought it was quite clever and convenient to be able to drink beer and buy meat at the same place; “it is not snobbish” the woman said, “in some areas they have places for putting your children, here is a place for putting the husband” the man added (Interview 35V). Pictures of foods and food stalls were cited 42 times. These included the overall appearance of the stalls, for example the displays, fruits, vegetables, meats and wine but the most detailed descriptions were of individual vegetables, cauliflowers, peppers and paprika, asparagus, and the shockingly large radishes. Despite the abundance of folk items filling the gallery from embroidered linens, Hungarian crystal stem ware, carved wooden boxes and chess sets, folk style blouses, vests and children’s dresses, the special “haban” style pottery from the small village of Leányfalu—a style reminiscent of Italian blue and yellow pottery, found only here and at the National Gallery in the capital—when visitors

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were asked specifically about what was particularly Hungarian about the site, the most frequently cited answers were the foods especially paprika and salami or sausage. Other specific food items appeared such as gulyás [goulash], lángos, chicken feet and especially Tokaji wine. What was most noteworthy in the interviews where the ways in which the items and the scenes observed in the market seemed to shape the ways people viewed Hungarian culture. The market was a “very good sample of ethnic culture” with a “variety of things [and] local traditions” (Interview 41V). It was a place “for everyone interested in Hungarian specialties” (Interview 37V). While “if you walk the main streets you find the same things as everywhere else” the market was “very authentic, relaxed, delicious, [a] part of ordinary Hungarian life” (Interview 35V). As one couple noted the market is “evocative of your Hungarian woman … woman are always related to food stuff. Get a sense of life in the country by the food” (Interview 32V). As already noted, the types of meats and the overwhelming presence of paprika “thousands of them” (Interview 14V) provided a vivid snapshot of the Hungarian diet and the market and the people in it offered a glimpse into quotidian life in the country. As one man said as he walked through, “I paid close attention more to the impression of Hungary” (Interview 28V). Several American visitors commented on the way in which products were sold by the kilo. “A lot of it [the market] is groceries sold by the kilo … walking around I saw a woman buying a box of tomatoes” (Interviews 30V) while many said, “beef, for example, I’m not going to buy a kilogram of beef steak tartar. I couldn’t eat that much in a day or two” (Interview 51V). One couple received a language lesson, as the woman explained, “I learnt how to buy friss tojás [fresh eggs]” (Interview 25V). Others commented upon the people, especially the shoppers. You “can speak with everyday people” (Interview 43V). We saw “a Hungarian lady in black with a black scarf carrying two bags” and the local shoppers “knew what they are looking for” (Interview 39V). The Hungarians have “little bags of fruits” (Interviews 45V). There is “the occasional old lady with a cart” (Interview 41V). You “see people with bags of food; but people with nothing, those are the tourists” (Interview 25V) and while talking this respondent pointed out an example of each type. Another respondent pointed to the same distinction, locals buying things and tourists wondering around “extremely fascinated by the variety and way it’s displayed” (Interview 33V). This comment reflects one of the notable aspects of passage through the hall observed over the year, that is the way in which different people moved through the main floor of the hall. As the Geographer Edward Relph (1976) contends, our interaction with, and our grasping of, the intricacies of place are highly contingent upon our engagement resulting in various levels of insideness and outsideness. While many visitors intentionally sought out the Market Hall many others arrived at the market by accident while wandering. In either case, there were definite differences in the level of engagement with the site. Some people arrived and proceeded slowly up the aisles, intent on seeing everything and taking a closer look at the items on display in the cases. Others were apparently less interested, and

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they would walk straight up the middle of the main aisle at a brisk pace refraining from stopping too long or looking too closely at any one site. One suspects that the latter type were either uninterested in food and had expected something else, or perhaps they felt as if they had entered a locals’ site and felt like interlopers. For the most part, the hall offers a comfortable space in which to observe the day-to-day culture of Hungarian life including some things which strike particularly the American viewer as odd in terms of hygiene. While smoking is allowed at certain points in the building which are away from the food, it is not at all uncommon to see stall owners lighting up while standing in front of the posted no smoking sign in their stands. And for Americans who are bombarded with messages about the dangers of raw meat, the meat stands provide endless examples of seemingly unhygienic behaviors; one of the most memorable being the butchers who used the meat cleaver and the chopping block to slice lemons which they then in turn sucked on while working behind the counter. But this vignette underscores why this market, and markets in general, have so much appeal to visitors since when we are traveling, visiting far-off countries and foreign cultures markets offer a simultaneous glimpse of the unexpected and the utterly familiar. Related to this issue of hygiene is the remarkable number of times that the word clean appeared; at least 11 times in response to the question about how they would describe the place and two times in comparing this market to those back home. “Clean, lots of products” (Interview 1V). “Large, clean, cheap food” (Interview 9V). “Clean, food heaven” (Interview 11V). “Clean, big, quite affordable” (Interview 12V). “Clean” (Interview 20V). “The place is attractive and clean” (Interview 39V). “Found the market very clean” (Interview 42V). “It’s much better than years ago, cleaner, nicer, less congested, there’s more variety of things” (Interview 45V). “Clean” (Interview 43V). “Very nice, very clean, very silent in its span, its load. There is no fish, it’s very good” (Interview 53V). “Big, huge, very clean, wonderful looking food. Orderly” (Interview 54V). People who compared this market to those at home noted that the latter were “Not this size or as clean, more temporary” (Interview 11V). “[This is] better organized, very clean” (Interview 33V). The use of the word clean is significant as an index pointing to the expectations that people had. As Peirce notes, our beliefs are fixed until they are met with an experience that makes us reconsider what it was we held firm. The many times which people used the term “clean” points to the fact that this was something which was in their minds, a new fact, recently acquired. Just as the cleanliness of a hospital for example is expected and the absence of it would be something which people would comment on, so here the absence of filth was a noteworthy characteristic. It is true that the market is kept quite orderly but the cleanliness is no different than that of a typical grocery store in the US, UK, Germany or Singapore where many of these respondents hailed from. One group of respondents called the market filthy and overly priced though the filth was the result more of the pork rather than the place itself (Interview 50V).

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Eat, Drink, Culture About mid-way through in the upper gallery on the Danube side, the dominance of the souvenir stand gives way to the büfé [buffet] and söröző [beer place]. These stands offer cheap, traditional, and typical Hungarian food—hot meals such as chicken paprika [paprikás csirke] and stew [pörkölt], with sides such as cucumber salad [uborka saláta] and gherkins [csemege uborka]. Other stands offer fried fish, and sausages, kolbász and blood sausage, priced by the kilo, with thick slices of fresh bread. Pre-wrapped sandwiches made with butter, Trappista cheese, wax peppers and Hungarian salami or Prágai ham are also on offer. These are made to appeal to the tourist with the addition of the Hungarian flag toothpick stuck into each one. Although there is, as we will see below, sometimes more sometimes less effort exerted to attract tourists, these should not be considered “tourist” restaurants since their offerings are exactly the same as those found outside the Market Hall. Throughout the city some more adventurous restaurants have sprouted, offering fusion cooking (Rail 2005), and fast food Chinese and Middle Eastern places are plentiful, the vast majority of eating establishments still offer traditional Hungarian food. As lunch tends to be the biggest meal of the day, working folks flock to homey cafes and cafeterias for a full meal of soup, fried meat and potatoes, and pickled peppers. The stands in the Market Hall are thus a typical Hungarian phenomenon found all over the country. During the noon hour many locals who work nearby, both blue and white collar, come into the Market Hall for lunch in spite of the competition from tourists. The food is displayed behind glass windows, cafeteria style, and patrons can either order by what they see in the windows or according to the “menus” posted in front of the stands which tell the offerings for the day and the price. Stand-up tables along the railing offer a place for patrons to eat. The sharing of table space is a familiar practice to locals and causes no sense of discomfort when space becomes tight, though it tends to make tourists uncomfortable. The meal is meant to be consumed not lingered over so turnover is brisk and conversation is at a minimum. Two stands which sit side-by-side offer a good comparison of the different messages being sent to the visitor and the local. Café Brumi mirrors those stands on the ground floor which are aimed exclusively at the tourists. The Hungarian tri-color, red white and green, are featured prominently including on the red, green and white printed and laminated menu cards listing prices for dishes identified in German and English. The dishes in the glass case also have similar style laminated cards listing the name of the item and the price. This makes it easy to order by sight, as well as by name. The counters are filled with decorative objects evocative of a traditional Hungarian restaurant as opposed to a lunch counter. The stand up tables also feature linen tablecloths, candle wax sculptures and glass tops. A small portion of the büfé, separated from the main food section, with honey colored wood shelves and subdued lighting sells bottles of the famous Tokaji wine.

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Next to Café Brumi sits the Fanda Büfé. Occupying only half the space of its neighbor, nonetheless the options are fairly similar, traditional Hungarian dishes. There are no menu cards in English or German, however, and the daily offerings are listed, in Hungarian, and sometimes in abbreviated form, on yellow strips of cardboard, handwritten and pinned to a cork board which hangs in front of the stand. Most of the offerings have two prices, one for the small portion, the other for the large and a sign says Az etelek a köret arakat nem tartalmaznek informing the locals, in traditional Hungarian fashion, that “the dishes, unless indicated, do not include the garnish” which must be purchased separately. Nowhere are these details explained to the tourist, so that some confusion may arise when they are asked to pay for their meal. The dishes inside the glass case do not have labels attached to them which poses a number of challenges for the tourist in linking the Hungarian name, gombás, hagymás csirkemaj at 550 forint, to the correct dish, or correctly identifying the stew on display as marha pöri [a nickname for beef stew] or sértes pörkölt [pork stew]. Interestingly, there are two picture menus linking photos of the items and the prices. These have been given by Coca-Cola to the stand and feature a half liter bottle of the global beverage prominently sitting in front of a dish of traditional pork stew with dumplings, sour cream and a sprig of parsley on the Pörkölt menu for 1,030 forint, and a breaded fried slice of meat and French fries on the Rántott szelet menu for 1,150 forint (the text of both is in Hungarian). While the stand is legible both in terms of language and “signs” to the local, but offers only opacity to the outsider, a few intrepid tourists are still found making their way through the challenging experience of eating at Fanda Büfé. The reality is that in spite of the visual display which makes little accommodation to the tourist, the women who work behind the counter speak English and will do so, but as there is little indication, no signage in English, often the tourist will begin the interaction by pointing at which point the encounter proceeds in English. Perhaps the most sought out place by visitors is the lángos stand. Several times while interviewing, tourists asked specifically where they could find it. Lángos is a Hungarian specialty though which has great significance in modern Hungarian life. It is associated with the summers at Lake Balaton and the many thermal baths and pools found around the county. During the “goulash communism” of the 1980s when small scale private business was allowed and encouraged, the lángos stand operator became an iconic image in Hungarian society. Slaving away in the hot greasy confines of the small stand, this entrepreneur made millions of forints and presaged the rise of the western style business man. With wide-scale economic transformation to a full market economy after the fall of socialism, the lángos operator lost some of the earlier prestige but the product continues to be a beloved part of Hungarian life. Essentially it is a potato flour batter poured into a deep fryer. It thins out in the middle and gets puffy on the edges as it reaches a golden brown color. Traditionally one can have garlic [fokhagymás], or sour cream and grated cheese [sajtos téjfőlős], though a number of variations can be found including ones with

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cabbage, mushrooms, ham, or Mexican [Mexikói], a somewhat piquant bean-insauce offering. The paper on which it is served gets more grease soaked the longer one takes to eat it but it is so filling that it will sustain a person for several hours. It is also incredibly cheap; a sour cream lángos cost 190 forint though a sour cream and cheese lángos, the most expensive, would put you back 300 forint. Lángos is closely associated with summer excursions, and within the city, the stands are only found in very specific sites. There is one across from the zoo in the city park, in the large outdoor swimming pools on Margit Island, in the train stations and in several of the market halls and outdoor markets. This stand draws a large tourist crowd though other than listing the prices in Euros and forint and the beer sizes in Hungarian and English, there is little that it does to explicitly cater to the tourist.5 Hungarian beer on tap, both dark and light, is offered and soda, iced tea and mineral water are sold in bottles. A half liter bottle of Cola is 270 forint and a half liter of beer costs 260 forint. The toppings are noted on a board in Hungarian, though above the stand there is a backlit sign with pictures of lángos with some of the possible toppings and names which differ slightly from those on the price sheet. A paper tray carries handwritten instructions in Hungarian, “Figyelem! Fokhagymás, szándékát előre jelezze!!!” [Attention, for garlic indicate your intent in advance]. The staff behind the counter are more than likely able to speak German or English but do so reluctantly and without the obsequiousness of those manning the souvenir stands. Next door is a stand which exemplifies the varied uses of the hall. What used to be a söröző, a bar offering measured cheap beer, wine and spirits, has recently converted half of the stand to offer rétes, [strudel]. Super thin layers of pastry dough envelope a variety of fillings, sweet cheese curd, poppy seed, sour cherry, and apple as well as savory fillings such as sauerkraut. The stand employs multilingual signage and makes obvious overtures to the tourist crowd. The other half of the stand caters mainly to Hungarians, especially full-time drinkers desiring to consume large amounts of alcohol at extremely cheap prices throughout the course of the day, as well as manual workers stopping to have a beer, a shot of pálinka [strong fruit brandy] or a few deciliters of red wine at noon. The young white-collar workers in the area will instead head to the trendy restaurants and bars along nearby Ráday Street to drink. The characters which populate the drinking side of the stand offer a stark snapshot of the underside of post-socialist Hungary and the challenges faced by wide-scale privatization and economic restructuring, but their presence remained unnoticed by the tourists interviewed.

5  Since the time this research was undertaken the stand has branched out to offer customized French style savory crepes.

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Consuming Culture—The Iconic Role of the Market Hall The experiences of tourists as revealed by their responses to interview questions highlight a number of key issues in interpretation, in making that leap between mind and world. Each visitor to the site, if Peirce’s claims hold, will enter into a state of semiosis, resulting in meaning being given to the objects on display, both discreet entities such as a head of lettuce as well as the grouping of objects in an individual stall. Our comprehension of objects is the sign hypothesis in action, meaning being a melding of both the physical and mental. We have seen many of the results of this process in both the ethnographic picture which has been given as the result of participant observation in the market and the statements made by visitors to the site, but it may be useful to underscore this process again by looking at one woman’s reaction to the asparagus on display. In April the stands fill with the vegetable both green and white. If we take for the moment a bunch of the latter type we can walk through once again the semiotic process. The vegetable constitutes the object, and the bunch here and now is the immediate object. As one’s attention is drawn to the asparagus, a sign is produced. Let us assume for the moment that the person has never seen such a vegetable and has no idea what it might be. The object itself provides the constraints upon the interpretive process in one sense by being as it is, and not being otherwise. Thus the asparagus can not transform its appearance into a pepper or a toothbrush. In this particular act of semiosis, a number of ancillary facts are brought to bear, the collateral knowledge with green asparagus being one such. But so too the ground in which this interaction takes place, and the other individual semiotic exercises which allow the viewer to recognize that the proximate objects are vegetables and fruits, and one can then arrive at an interpretation—these white stalks are vegetables, very much like, if not the same, as green asparagus. For any particular visitor, this is the end point of interpretation. But the asparagus, like Proust’s madeleine, were for one visitor endowed with meaning beyond their culinary appeal, serving as a link to her mother, now long dead, whose birthday it was this particular day in April. The asparagus took her back to all the birthdays they had spent together which, falling in the midst of spring, featured these tender shoots as one of the highlights of the celebratory dinner. She told me about this with a reverie that demonstrated the way in which objects can become meaningfull going beyond their simple utilitarian descriptions. This idea is of course not unique to Peirce as idolatry and Marx’s notion of commodity fetish, to name just two, demonstrate, but Peirce’s theory of meaning making highlights the process by which an object becomes more. The dual nature of the site, being both a produce market relied upon by locals and a major tourist destination, is evident throughout the environment of the Market Hall and was of prime interest in the interviews. This line of questioning offered a way to indirectly gauge the interpretive undertaking by visitors since the ensemble of objects in the hall, including the “human” objects which populated the place, contribute to both the experience of the visitor and the meaning they ascribe

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to that experience. The gallery with its vast collection of Hungarian souvenirs is a clear indicator of the tourist presence in the hall, as several respondents noted. The main floor offers a more nuanced set of signs, since ostensibly it does not differ that much from what one sees in the district market halls, especially those which have been renovated. However, few if any of the visitors were aware of these other halls. Nevertheless even within the Central Market Hall there are vast differences between “the tourist” stalls and the rest. And the differences entail signs both subtle and obvious. The presence of stands which utilize English signs was noted as one indicator, or sign, of the tourist nature of the place. In spite of the fact that one of the most obvious signs of the tourist nature of the site are stalls which turn paprika into an aestheticized folk item through the inclusion of decorative bags and wooden spoons, not one participant mentioned this. The shops which offered these types of objects were also the ones which displayed multilingual signage as well. The presence of these items can be seen as illustrative of the multiple ways in which Peirce contends signs can relate to their objects in that the paprika is iconic, in real connection with the culinary life of the country, while the decorative elements function symbolically and the multi-lingual signage (itself both symbolic as all language is Peirce contends) is indexical drawing the attention by saying “here we are cognizant of you the nonHungarian language speaker and have made accommodations for you.” The same goes for the meat stands. For some people these were clearly delineated local sights because of the difficulty for tourists to take home a whole chicken or a kilo of pork. However, the presence of the highly sought after (by foreigners) Rex Ciborum goose liver, offered at the meat stalls in the Central Market Hall and not at those found in the district halls is one sign of the more touristic nature of these stands, though this may be a less obvious sign than the salamis wrapped for transport and the credit card signs, something which marks these particular stalls as more accommodating to outsiders than those without credit card access. The most palpable though seemingly contradictory signs of both Hungarianness and accommodation come from the most photographed stall along the main aisle, the one with Hungarian folk costumed dolls, Hungarian folk motifs alongside the flags from countries around the world and German throughout the permanent signage around the stand. The resulting message is apparently not confusing for the tourists who flock to take pictures there and to purchase overpriced paprika, and caviar since what it seems to say in its hyperarticulated Hungarian folk language is that here is Hungarian stuff but you can buy it in your own patois. Another semiotic issue arose in the process of mis-interpretation and this highlights the flexibility of Peirce’s theory, underscored as it is by fallibilism as well as the path of semiosis. The interaction between object, sign and interpretant that Peirce identified can be conceptualized as a discreet event, a particular semiosis at a particular moment, though it is but one stop in an ongoing conversation with the world around us. The visitor who comes expectant will have already engaged with the Market Hall having heard it described, having read about or seen it in

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pictures, and even the person who stumbled upon it will have had a thought about the building which will have drawn them to enter. Once inside all their senses from—aural to olfactory—will be engaged in interpreting the site. So the pair who believed they had found the Synagogue were struck forcefully by the facts on the ground, so to speak, and their beliefs, still in their incunabula, were abandoned, replaced with a new set of ideas about the place. The process of interpretation does not end when visitors exit the doors, but will continue whenever their thoughts are brought back to that place. So the person who left believing that he had taken pictures of the historic details of the train station may one day come across a book on market halls in Europe and his mind will go back and with new information he will re-engage the semiotic interpretive process. Thus like Gadamer’s (1989 [1975]) assertions that understanding is never complete, the process of semiosis can always be re-entered when our beliefs are disturbed by facts which do not fit our interpretive narrative. Understanding the ways in which meaning is educed from the material world is one contribution of Peirce’s thought to understanding place in general. But can Peirce’s theory tell us anything about this place in particular, namely why this place, a seemingly banal corner of local life, holds such interest for the hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors who come here each year? The visitor who said the site was “very interesting, I think it is something closer to what Hungarian life is like. I see tourists also but it shows a lot of what you have in Hungary” (Interview 28V) reveals much about why tourists come. The market offered for many a snapshot of Hungarian life. As we have seen it “tells about the prosperity of a country” (Interview 33V), “you get a sense of life in the country by the food” (Interview 32V). What the interviews indicate is the iconic nature of the Market in the tourist imagination. Although Peirce offers a number of definitional statements regarding the icon, let us look at one from the Logical Tracts: An icon is a representamen of what it represents and for the mind that interprets it as such, by virtue of its being an immediate image, that is to say by virtue of characters which belong to it in itself as a sensible object, and which it would possess just the same were there no object in nature that it resembled, and though it never were interpreted as a sign. It is of the nature of an appearance, and as such, strictly speaking, exists only in consciousness, although for convenience in ordinary parlance and when extreme precision is not called for, we extend the term icon to the outward objects which excite in consciousness the image itself. A geometrical diagram is a good example of an icon. A pure icon can convey no positive or factual information; for it affords no assurance that there is any such thing in nature. But it is of the utmost value for enabling its interpreter to study what would be the character of such an object in case any such did exist. Geometry sufficiently illustrates that (CP 4.447).

This definition posits an object that does not exist in nature but exists in consciousness. Like a chimera, made up of many parts drawn from vastly differing

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origins, mode of life exists in the numerous quotidian acts undertaken each day by each Hungarian in village and town, in private and public, but one is hard pressed to locate it as a tangible concrete object. And yet like other impalpable concepts the evidence of its puissance is everywhere. Food, from the types of things that are eaten, the way they are fixed, and the practices which develop along with them, its role in ceremony and celebration, and its linkage to certain times and places is a fundamental part of culture. The products on sale in the Market Hall, the sometimes grotesque organ meats, the seasonal progression of produce provide a glimpse into Hungarian life beyond the tourist bubble. The reason that tourists visit the marker is not necessarily that they are interested in buying chicken legs or cow tongues, carrots or potatoes—few if any tourists actually purchase these things and they rarely actually go and visit other butchers or green grocers in town. Rather the market as an ensemble of objects and of people who are there to buy these things are of interest in that they are representative of “Hungarian” culture. In the same way that a painting is said by Peirce to be an icon, providing a resemblance or sharing in the quality of that which it represents, so too the scene of the néni purchasing fruits in the Central Market Hall is an iconic representation of what life must be like in Hungary beyond the tourist bubble. As Peirce notes, the icon gives the interpreter access to the character of the object, existing or not as such, and this is the case with the Market.

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Chapter 8

Conclusions and Implications Benjamin Disraeli wrote “a great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art. In modern ages, Commerce has created London; while Manners, in the most comprehensive sense of the word, have long found a supreme capital in the airy and bright-minded city of the Seine” (142). Cities are a type of great idea, though it is because they are sites of commerce and art, faith and many other things as well. What this research has sought to explain is how tourism in urban areas is intricately linked to the activities and sites of urban life. What distinguishes the sites of urban tourism, what makes them unique, is the interaction between the cityscape and the touristscape to create the tourist prosaic, constituted by the “everyday sites of tourist practice” which are the cultural, heritage and kitsch spaces that tourists visit, along with the “everyday sites of urban life” the banal elements of street signs, buses, parks, cafés people etc. In making sense of both of these categories of sites, it has been argued that tourists bring to bear a set of interpretive processes which can best be accounted for by the theoretical insights of Peircean semiotics, rooted in and explained by understanding interpretation as a physical as well as mental capacity for action. This chapter will summarize some of the main points of the previous chapters, and lay out some of the implications for tourism studies. Interpretation as Destination Peirce, in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy explained his view of cognition: 1. We have no power of Introspection, but all knowledge of the internal world is derived by hypothetical reasoning from our knowledge of external facts. 2. We have no power of Intuition, but every cognition is determined by previous cognitions. 3. We have no power of thinking without signs. 4. We have no conception of the absolutely incognizable (EP 1.30). But Peirce was not an idealist, and the brute force of the world he understood existed to guide our understanding, thus his conception of the dynamical object. And because Peirce was not a realist strictly speaking, though he moved closer towards that view, the thing-in-itself was like a tree falling in the forest with no

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one to hear it, that is, the thing had potential but had no effectual meaning without being interpreted. While Peirce’s theory is a general theory of understanding, it is an especially suitable heuristic tool for explaining meaning making in landscape, and the tourists who are like an army of semioticians, to use Culler’s (1981) term, are the ideal subjects through which to see this in action. As has been argued above, tourists by the very fact of their traveling to different places are attuned to semiosis, interpreting street signs, monuments, architectural details and manhole covers among other things. While the long relationship with place that one develops in one’s home community depends just as much upon sign interpretation, in a sense, the practice of being a tourist requires a conscious attention to detail in simply undertaking the most routine tasks, from crossing the street to paying the taxi driver, and as Peirce noted, even these mundane tasks require cognitive flexing in moving from thought to action. The key insight that Peirce’s theory offers besides explaining the process by which mind cognizes world, to paraphrase Lowenthal (Olwig 2003), is to be found in Peirce’s contention that interpretation bears directly upon belief and hence habit as action. A belief is what one is willing to act upon, and action is the end result of interpretation. The process of interpretation of any sign in particular is, in Peirce’s conception, the meeting of mind and object, the latter providing the limits of the interpretive space and the former bringing to bear the collateral observations which in essence are the tools which make discovery possible. Peirce’s theory of sign interpretation extends the tradition of perception and interpretation in landscape, the phenomenological experiencing of the world around and the emphasis upon the way in which people shape and hence utilize their environments a step further to say that the landscape broadly understood is meaningful as a set of signs which are cognized, and which in turn shape our way of being in the world. This is the case in touring. When we are faced with cross-cultural difference we nevertheless make meaning, even if it might not be accurate; thus the conviction by some visitors that the Central Market Hall was a converted train station, for example. But because our knowledge is contingent, and the world exists “out there,” the fallibilistic nature of our conclusions will eventually bump up against something that does not hold, and boom, the exercise of interpretation begins again. The pair who said, when asked how they chose to come to the Market Hall, “we just happened upon it. It looked like the Synagogue. Then we went inside and saw all the pork” (Interview 47V) present an extreme example of being hit with the force majeure of facts from the world out there, facts which do not fit a mentalist picture. But because the idea of truth—which Peirce proposes as an ideal that possibly but doubtfully is ever able to be reached—does have some wiggle room, the chance that our mis-interpretations can hold out is there. Collateral observation, the satchel of knowledge garnered from previous semiotic encounters, can be seen as the Achilles heel in the chain of signification from object to interpretant in that in drawing on these bits of knowledge we can come to incorrect or less than

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correct conclusions. In a sense these preconceptions color our view so that we may only see that which conforms to our preheld ideas. In the case of tourism, this can manifest itself in many different areas including the geographic phenomenon of regionalization. As one participant said when asked about Hungary’s position within Europe, the labeling of her tour “Eastern Europe” meant that what she saw conformed to this preconception and as contemporary Budapest can go either way, this was not an exempted conclusion (Interview 14V). And yet, as was the case with people interviewed on the street, collateral observation, especially garnered from weaker secondary sources—guidebooks and accounts of friends or fellow travelers—can be superseded by more im-mediate observation when need be, as evinced by the large number of people whose expectations were challenged. This work highlights what Peirce’s theory brings to tourism and landscape studies: that all space is place constituted by elements from trees and hills, to signals and smells, which are endowed with meaning and that by being sentient we enter into meaning making with our environment for lack of any other possible ontological status. Some of this is active and some is less so as Tuan (1974) and Relph (1976) cogently argue. This is not to say that all places will become significant but that they are all meaning-full given our ability to cognize. Just as the dynamic object can, like a game of 20 questions, only be hinted at, so too with “testing” Peirce’s assertions about signification. In spite of the fact that Peirce is the acknowledged founder of pragmatism, his theoretical insights do not lend themselves to pragmatic explanation. It was just by happenstance that one of the interviewees happened to be a philosopher, specializing in American pragmatism, and even he was not fluent in Peirce. The topic of semiotics did not reach the ears of any other participants. But the beauty of Peirce’s work lies in the two poles it straddles, the metaphysical and the pragmatic, the same tension that is evinced in each piece of Peirce’s writing. So although the unique vocabulary of Peirce was not used with participants, our conversations were infused with his ideas. People did interpret, they did act on habits and beliefs, and they did have these challenged by their bumping up against the force of the real. In the experience with the city, much of that dissonance, the bumping up against the world, occurred in the space of the cityscape. The Tourist Prosaic—The Cityscape–Touristscape Interface Tourism is infused with geographic imagination and in the best of cases it can be a powerful motivation for heritage preservation. In the worst of cases, it results in the effacing of minority cultures and the loss of more complex cultural inheritance through the paradoxically homogenizing effects of the heritage industry (Ashworth and Tunbridge 2000) with its off the rack historicizing lamp posts and cobblestones and the demands of tourists for cultural pablum. In the multifaceted environment of cities what constitutes sense of place and how place is experienced is a vitally important question not just for tourism boards, but also

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for urban planners, preservationists, local governments, community activists and residents. The tradition of landscape studies within geography offers an ideal set of tools with which to approach the role that place plays in urban planning and in urban tourism in particular, a topic which has received less attention than one might think. Hayllar, Griffin and Edwards (2008) echo other researchers who contend that urban tourism and cities as tourist destinations have only recently begun to receive the attention they deserve (Selby 2004). Franklin and Crang (2001) argue that there is a need to both unite theoretical and applied studies and “cast the theoretical net” much wider in tourism studies such that it can be renewed by work done in other fields. In undertaking this research, one of the principal motivations was to understand the ways in which tourists experienced culture within the urban landscape. The interviews and photographs which people produced reveal the role that the ordinary objects, places and people of the city play in creating a sense of place. In this case it was a sense of Hungarianess which was at issue, but the interviews also can be read more expansively, taking Hungarianess as a proxy for a general sense of placeness. Relph’s (1976) work on authenticity, modernism and the existential relationship of individual and locale juxtaposed place with placelessness. Although he strongly criticized modern society, tourism, big business and big government for contributing to a planning and architecture that results in the creation of absurd places, ones greatly out of scale or full of incongruous juxtapositions, he is just as critical of historical preservation and efforts at restoration since he argues they introduce inauthenticity into the built environment. His condemnation of the former for ignoring local custom and scale and the latter for ignoring contemporary custom and practice might be considered a curmudgeonly obtuse no-win position, but his argument has much to say about the urban tourism destination. Historical preservation taken to the extreme threatens to turn cities into museums devoid of real local life, and the world-wide spread of global brands threatens to turn them into interchangeable indistinguishable shopping malls, devoid of local culture. What makes a city a destination is the quality of placeness, the balance between the local culture and local life, the historic and the contemporary. Placeness accounts for the uniqueness of the past, the historical contingencies that played a role in the history of the site, and the things which make cities in general vibrant locales to live in, such as restaurants, public art, busy streets, and markets. But placeness also turns on issues of “authenticity,” that overly obsessed about concept in tourist studies. As we have seen above, this work attempts to stake a workable solution for the question of what constitutes authenticity by suggesting the conceptual category of the tourist prosaic. Here there is room for the “authentic” local everyday spaces of the city experienced by the locals, as well as the “authentic” heritage of inheritance in culturally important sites such as museums, monuments and places of worship, as well as the purely manufactured “authentic” tourist kitsch site. An expansive definition of the various ways in which to conceptualize this problematic term does not remove all potency from it, but rather makes it more

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relevant because the various activities that are subsumed under the category of urban tourism have to be judged differently. This relates directly to what it means for the cityscape and the everyday city. As has been said above, this aspect of the tourist prosaic draws heavily upon the everyday lived city, what makes urban life vibrant. But it is critical to make clear that this also entails all the things which constitute the full messiness of urban life, graffiti, refuse, uneven investment, and all the attendant ills which mark cities as disorderly spaces (see more below). These all contribute to experiencing place, and as we have seen while this research treated a particular concept of Hungarianess, as a proxy for placeness, if this research were replicated in other cities one suspects the importance of these prosaic elements of the city would also come to the fore. In interviews with visitors to Budapest, overwhelmingly it was the general feel of the city, the atmosphere created by the buildings with their varied architectural styles, the river running through the city, and the sense of magnificence and faded grandeur which were mentioned over and over and not any specific monumental sites. Despite the fact that photographers were asked to concentrate on the “nonmonumental elements of the city,” those interviewed were not, but the results of these two modes of asking about Hungarianess were eerily similar, the sole exception being the paucity of socialist era objects in the photographic record. This emphasis in interviews on the quotidian is important but the research on the mundane and banal in the tourist experience is slight. This work points to the significance of the tourist prosaic and has important implications for tourism in both applied and theoretical veins. Implications for Tourism Tourism is considered a major economic driver and cities devote a great deal of attention to attracting visitors, and ensuring them a pleasant experience once they arrive. Each day a cacophony of activity fills the typical city though and touring is only one among many. Unlike purpose built sites, urban areas have other pressing business than simply catering to the needs of the tourist, the hub and din of the work-a-day world of the city is part of the attraction this research has shown. Rather than a flattened world of cities filled with Starbucks and McDonalds, the uniqueness of places still matter, especially so in tourism. While urban areas share a common profile, they are not simply interchangeable. The unique attributes still matter, the monumental and symbolic sites, the particular geographic location and the banal landscapes in which these are set differentiate places from one another. It is true that as Pons, Crang and Travlou (2009: 5) argue the “significance of the banal in tourism has been systematically overlooked by dominant perspectives which have privileged the exotic and the spectacular.” In an era of globalization, much of the tourism which takes place in urban areas does not so much juxtapose two opposing cultures, but brings together hosts and guests, that, as urban

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dwellers, have more in common with each other than each might have with those in their own hinterland. Thus the question of the exotic and the spectacular shifts to making extra-ordinary the mundane and ordinary. Blanchot’s (1993 in Seigworth 2000: 232) assertion that “the banality of ‘the human everyday’ is inaccessible because one cannot make the choice of entering or not entering into it: it exists at the level of ‘“there is.” “there is” the everyday”’ offers an invitation for thinking about the banal in tourism. Traveling forces one to contemplate the everyday because the tourist is no longer in her own quotidian world, and as she is forced to awaken from her stupor, what is banal at home, in fact takes on an air of the exotic. An example from the interviews, though outside of the realm of landscape per se may be helpful. One pair, when asked about the most noteworthy experience, mentioned the presentation of the silverware which in Hungary is brought upon a plate, all together everyone’s various soup spoons, knives and forks, and set upon the table only after the meals have been ordered. It is difficult to conjure a more banal event than this. But we can see in this a semiotic interpretive moment in the guise of what Peirce argues about our certainties being questioned when our habits and beliefs bump up against difference. It is unlikely that this couple had spent much of their lives thinking about silverware in restaurants, and had they been asked immediately before they entered the Hungarian restaurant what their beliefs were about the way in which silverware should appear on the table, it is unlikely that they would have expressed any fundamentalist views either way. But this particular means of laying the silverware on the table somehow agitated their habitual expectations and hence made an impression, becoming a sign of something particular to Hungarian cultural practices. Binnie et al. (2007: 516) suggest “routine and banality afford us assurance, they allow us to hold things together, they give us ontological security.” In the spatial dislocation engendered by traveling, and in the absence of routine, the work of the banal seems poised to carry this extra burden. As we have seen Peirce’s theory of semiosis crucially brings interpretation into the realm of embodied experience as belief shapes habit. While those scholars working from a non-representational theory perspective would most likely find fault with Peirce’s perceived confidence in the ability of semiosis to reach Truth in the final interpretant, it is not clear that this point is really ever reachable or whether like the post-structuralist semiotic theories which come out of Saussure’s work, truth is always deferred. The conditional nature of his statement about the final interpretant as “that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached” (EP 2.496) tends towards the latter interpretation of truth deferred. If that is the case, then there is room to bring to bear upon the field of tourism studies a semiotic theory of interpretation which accounts for the sensual and embodied interpretation of tourist sites. This relates to the other sense of the tourist prosaic as a site of everyday enacting of being a tourist.

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What was apparent from the participant observation work was the ways in which these spaces afforded visitors the opportunity to perform as tourists more comfortably and freely than they might in other less tourist spaces of the cityscape. As an example of the link between interpreting the material space and performing accordingly, one can think of the enabling role that international chain hotels play in facilitating the English speaking tourist who ventures out to foreign lands. Let us assume for a moment that our tourist is a culturally sensitive person who does not expect to travel within the confines of the tourist bubble, and makes efforts to learn some few polite phrases in the local language and feels a sense of indignation and shame at being unable to really make more than this meager effort. Within the confines of the hotel, the tourist expects the staff to speak English and feels no sense of shame, but instead a certain amount of relief. And to borrow momentarily from another form of tourism, sun, sand and sea, we have probably all encountered at one time or another one or two people who found their straw hats and flip flops entirely appropriate to the beach that they had virtually been living on for the past week, but who now, waiting for a connecting flight in the middle of an airport far from any sand or sea or sun, seem to feel somewhat underdressed and out of place. These examples point to the importance of tourist places for being a tourist. Tourism engenders a set of behaviors, actions and dispositions, some of which are particular to the adopting of the role as tourist, but these require the spaces to allow for them. In urban tourism the reading of signs in the environment is crucial to the success of the tourist experience, is crucial for finding a place to “be at home” in the foreign world of the city. Successful urban tourist sites are those that present an ensemble of elements, symbolic and quotidian, touristic and local. But it is not enough to just pay attention to fabricating seemingly prosaic spaces, by attention to infrastructure and background elements. In the “tourist-historical city” for example where the scene is set with newly installed cobblestones and historicized lamp posts one sees an example of the creation of tourist kitsch, often surrounding actual cultural historical sites which serve as the core feature embedded in the surrounding infrastructure. These banal elements are not enough to create the “everyday” experience of the city since many tourists want more than cultural pablum, and seek out or happen upon the scenes beyond the sites. Thus the overall atmosphere of place matters as it is certain that the unscripted and unorganized parts of the city will be seen and interpreted and that the messiness of city matters. Cities should not take this as a mandate to undertake forceful and anti-humane policies to “police” the messy parts of the city, turning the modern metropolis into the equivalent of a shopping mall, with its utterly controlled neo-bourgeois environment. What makes urban areas attractive sites of tourism is the dynamism of cities, not the sterileness. Of course this does not mean that cities ought to ignore the plight of their underserved populations, and as part of the mandate of governing they should try to ensure a livable space which serves the needs of all the citizens.

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Tourism has the potential to be a source of contestation between hosts and guests but also between different groups among the hosts, as precious resources are put into tourism advertisements as opposed to school budgets, or into “gentrification,” or simply the maintenance and upkeep of certain areas of the city for the sake of drawing visitors while the less picturesque and more needy areas go without. Maitland and Newman (2008) in their study of central London argue that it is gentrification which makes the areas under question attractive to both residents and tourists in the first place and that rather than competition the two groups experience what they call a sense of conviviality. But “tourist gentrification” has the potential of making sterile the city, and to do this would miss the point of much of the excitement of urban life and touring. Urban tourism plays on the cognitive dissonance of smells, sounds, sights and sites. The unscripted is a crucial part of the urban experience, and what distinguishes it from more controlled spaces, heritage parks, shopping malls, or the paradigmatic Disneyland where the streets are steam cleaned each night to remove bubble gum. But also important are the tourist spaces, The Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Tower of London, the Castle District in Prague, and the gift shops, tour buses, and overpriced touristfriendly cafés. While MacCannell claimed that tourists search, in vain, for the “authentic” of the backstage, the argument being put forth here is different. The entire composite space of the touristscape and the cityscape offers chances for “authentic” experience from visiting an historic site to shopping for souvenirs, to walking through a nearby neighborhood. These various activities all entail a semiotic engagement with the world. Minca and Oaks (2006: 14) suggest that “travel seems to bring us closer to the abstract qualities of space as opposed to the lived messiness of place” but this promise is unachievable because “we always travel through places to other places, we reencounter disorder” (19). The tourist, it can be said treads a fine line between disorder and harmony in taking up urban tourism. The “daily grind” is what has been left behind, but that does not preclude taking an interest in seeing a downtown park fill up at noon with office workers on their lunch break, reading the notices posted around town for an upcoming city election, or poking one’s head into a local bookstore. The concept of the tourist prosaic is the space in which the everyday life of the places in which we tour comes in; it is not synonymous nor coterminous with the cityscape as a whole but instead helps order what of the banal might be of interest, those things which seem to create placeness, because at the end of the day we can not be equally enthusiastic for all we can see. Like the early guidebooks that sought to organize the experience of travel to foreign locales by showing what out to be seen rather than what can be seen, so too do our interpretations help order the physical space of the city, as Kevin Lynch (1960) argued, and provide a sense of order. This is clear from speaking with people about their experiences of Hungarianess in the city. The architecture mattered but were they to endeavor a house by house account of what they were seeing the holiday would turn to work far too soon. Instead the composite elements helped set the scene creating a sense of texture and depth.

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The city does this, framing the highlights, since in the end we want to feel like we have been somewhere, a destination, rather than just a place that mimics our own quotidian lives or worse, a set of museum pieces or tourist kitsch.

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Appendices Appendix A: Questions for Street Interviews General information about the type of tourist they are: 1. In general, how do they go about site-seeing? 2. What types of things do they like to see? 3. How do they interpret what they see? Specifics about interpreting the city: 4. How does one know they are in a Hungarian city? 5. Has the language posed a barrier? 7. Most striking things, both positive and negative? Basic demographic information: 8. Nationality, country of residence? 9. Occupation? Information about their current trip: 10. Length of time in the country? 11. Total length of stay? Preliminary knowledge about Hungary: 13. Familiarity with Hungarian Culture? 6. How does the city meet preconceptions? 12. Guide book? Note: The numbers indicate the order in which questions were asked.

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Appendix B: Questions for Market Interviews Specifics about the Market Hall: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Why this place was chosen? How to describe this place to someone who has not seen it? Similarity and differences with Market Halls back home, if they have them? Specific things looked at inside, photos taken? Particularly Hungarian items? Locals site or tourist site? Path taken in the site and the ease of movement? How much time spent inside and how much of that was eating?

Information about their current trip: 9. Length of time in the country? 10. Total length of stay? Preliminary knowledge about Hungary and the Region: 11. Guide book? 12. Other European travel? 13. Budapest’s place in Europe, the West, East, or Central? 14. Familiarity with Hungarian culture before you came here? Basic demographic information: 15. Nationality, country of residence? 16. Occupation

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Index

Note: Numbers in italics refer to figures. A Room with a View, 34, 52 Alpar, Ignác, 46 Andrássy, 47, 66, 78, 84, 92, 96, 96, 107, 109 Andrássy, Count Gyula, 46 Anonymous, 80 Architecture, see also particular styles, 4, 7, 8, 9, 27, 45–9, 55, 57, 58, 60, 70, 72, 73, 74, 81, 84, 86, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 112, 118, 142, 146 Architexturality, 7, 8, 99 Authenticity, 32–5, 37, 38, 142, 146 and Hungarian architecture, 46, 47 and Hungarian culture, 113 and Hungarian life, 129 Baedeker, 25, 52, 53, 54, 56 Baroque architecture, 44, 46, 54, 66, 86, Baths, 44, 55, 58, 59, 60, 73, 79, 80, 116, 118, 132 Batthyány, Lajos 44, 90 Batthyány Square, 83, 95 Batthyány Square Market Hall, 95, 113, 114, 118 Bauhaus, 48 Belief, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 34, 40, 68, 77, 101, 125, 126, 130, 136 140, 141, 144 Bibliotheca Corviniana, 43 Buda, 41, 43, 44, 48, 57, 58, 80, 84, 87, 114, 116 Budapest: A Critical Guide, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60 Buttimer, Anne, 29, 31

café(s) see also coffee house 7, 9, 39, 58, 59, 76, 78, 84, 85, 86, 99, 108, 131, 139, 146 culture 51, 102, 103 Central Europe, 46, 47, 48, 51, 96 Central Market Hall (Központi Vásárcsarnok), 3, 9, 33, 47 64, 66, 81, 95, 111–21, 112, 123, 124, 126, 128, 135, 137, 140, 150 building, 116, 117, 118 and eating, 131–2 and Hungarian culture, 111, 113, 126, 129, 137, 150 and hygeine, 130 interior, 119–22 location in the city, 116–17 and market culture, 122–3 regulations, 113–14 Chain Bridge (Széchenyi Lánchíd), 44, 54, 57, 58, 59, 84, 107 Children’s Train (Gyermek vasút), 87–8 Citadel, 44, 71 City Park, 47, 49, 58, 80, 84, 90, 96, 98, 117, 133 Coffee house, 76, 102 Collateral knowledge, 6, 8, 16, 38, 53, 54, 68, 73, 75, 93, 108, 134 Collateral observation, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 140, 141 Commens, 13, 73 Compromise of 1867, 44, 45, 90 Connotation, 16, 88, 102 Corvin Áruház, 85 Courtyard, 95, 95, 96, 107

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Destination, 3, 8, 25, 36, 37, 39, 53, 69, 81, 108, 134, 142, 147 Disorder, 8, 74, 75, 81 143, 146 Disraeli, Benjamin, 139 DK (Dorling Kindersley) Eyewitness Travel Guide, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 111, 117 Drechsler Palace, 84, 84, 98 Eastern Bloc, 49, 51, 85, 86, 88 Eastern Europe, 57, 84, 85, 86, 91, 120, 141 Eclectic architecture, 45, 107 Eco, Umberto, 16, 35 125 Electrotechnical Museum (Elektrotechnikai Múzeum), 60, 76 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, 34, 76, 77 Epistemology, 4, 13, 23, 124 Eurobarometer, 92–3 European Union, 15, 51, 92, 93 Fallibilism, 16, 17, 135, 140 Fiatolok, 47 Fin-de-siècle, 60, 78, 84, 101, 102 Folk motifs in architecture, 47, 48, 49 Food, 1, 2, 7 25, 33 and architectural details, 118, 119 in the Market Hall, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 121 prepared, 131–3 references, 127, 128, 129, 130, 136 Fountains, 99, 101 Gadamer, Hans Georg, 22, 73, 136 Gellért Baths, 59, 60, 80, 116 Gellért Hill, 44, 116 Genius loci, 3, 8, 25, 29, 30, 36, 37 German Language, 25, 44, 46, 77, 79, 120, 123, 131, 132, 133, 135 “Goulash communism”, 51, 132 Graffiti, 7, 9, 57, 61, 73, 75, 77, 80, 81, 99, 107 n5, 143 Guidebook(s) see also individual guidebooks, 6, 7, 8, 33, 39, 52–60, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 75, 87, 88, 123, 124, 141, 146 functions, 52–3, 60–61 and interviews 80, 84, 128

and the Market Hall, 111, 112 and treatment of the past, 59–60 Gul Baba, 43, 44 Gyógyszertár, 77 Habit, 4, 8, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 38 64, 68, 125, 140 141, 144 Habsburg, 44, 45, 46, 59, 60, 81, 83, 89, 90, 91, 94, 97, 102, 103 Hadik, András statue, 56 Heroes’ Square (Hősök tere), 47, 71, 84, 90 Historicism, 37, 47, 48 Hold Street Market Hall, 113, 118 House of Terror (Terror háza), 60, 85, 92 Humanistic geography, 29–31, 38, 97 Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ building, 45, 46, 108 Hungarian National Identity, 44, 45, 68 Hungarian Plains, 41, 47 Hungarian State Opera, 45, 59, 60, 84, 96, 98 Hungarianess, 3, 45, 72, 75, 94, 99, 112, 142, 143, 146 Hungaricum, 119 Hunyadi Square Market Hall, 113, 114, 118 Huszka, József, 47, 48 Icon, 8, 22, 24, 70, 107, 136, 137 Ideal Type, 65–6 Index, 8, 22, 23, 70, 83, 88, 105, 106, 108, 130 Infrastructure, 39, 51, 73, 82, 86, 90, 94, 99, 105, 145 Inner City, 3, 41, 42, 60, 80, 82, 89, 90, 99, 114, 116 International Style architecture, 28, 48, 49 Interpretant, 4, 6, 8, 12–17, 21, 38, 73, 124, 125, 135, 140 dynamic(al), 15, 16 final, 15, 16, 17, 38, 144 immediate, 15 Interpretation, 3, 4, 8, 9, 12–15, 18–20, 22–4, 31, 70, 73, 105, 108, 134, 144 and culture, 3, 68 and guide books, 52 as habit and action, 4, 5, 8, 15, 38, 125, 139, 140, 144,

Index and landscape, 2, 3, 9, 12, 29, 31, 39, 68, 93, 104, 112, 126, 140, 146 of interviews and photographs, 72–4, 125, 126 and the Market Hall, 118, 123 and misinterpretation, 118, 140 of objects, 88, 134, 136 Interwar Period, 48, 97 Jackson, J.B., 25, 27–8, 38 Jakab, Dezső, 47 Jewish Museum (Magyar Zsidó Múzeum), 60 Joseph II, Emperor, 44 Király Baths, 44 Kiscelli Museum, 76 Klauzál Square Market Hall, 113 Knowledge, 6, 13, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 32, 63, 73, 139, 140 and Hungaricum, 119 and photography, 70, 73 of place, 66 previous of Hungarian culture, 65, 67, 68, 73, 81, 127, 144 Komor, Marcell, 47 Kossuth Bridge monument, 90 Landscape, 4–9, 12, 22, 25–32, 38, 39, 53, 63, 64, 69, 74, 91, 105, 113, 116, 126, 140, 143, 144 Budapest, 1, 45, 68, 102 cultural, 9, 25, 26, 27, 51, 91 linguistic, 25, 75, 77, 78, 80 studies, 25, 26, 28, 31, 141, 142 urban, 2, 3, 9, 25, 35, 68, 75, 86, 92, 102, 108, 142 Lángos, 123, 129, 132, 133 Language, 4, 8, 15, 19, 22, 25, 26, 36, 44, 64, 65, 74, 79, 145 and interviews, 75, 78, 79, 80, 129, 149 and the Market Hall, 132, 135 Latja, Béla, 48 Lechner, Ödön, 47, 48 Liszt Ferenc statue, 107 Locality, 9, 29, 105 Lonely Planet, 33, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 117

169

Lynch, Kevin, 5–6, 27, 146 MacCannell, Dean, 21, 32–5, 146 Magyar Narancs, 1 Makovecz, Imre, 49 Maria Teresa, Empress, 44 Market halls, 111–18, 122, 133, 135, 136, 150 Matthias, King, 43 Meaning making, 2, 30, 37, 107, 134, 140, 141 Medieval Hungarian Kingdom, 43, 45, 48 MEMOSZ, 49, 90 Millennium celebration of 1896, 44 Millenniumi Földallati vasút, see Yellow Underground Mindszenty, Cardinal, 90, 92 Modern architecture, 48, 49 Musuem of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Múzeum), 47, 60, 94, 95, 116 Museums see also individual museums, 5, 7, 9, 32, 33, 34, 37, 40, 47, 55, 59, 60, 84, 93, 142, 147 Nagy, Imre, 92 National Gallery (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria), 59 National Museum (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum), 56, 59 National Romantic architecture, 47, 48 Neo-Baroque architecture, 48, 83, 98 Neo-classical architecture, 45, 46, 47, 58, 85, 98, 107 Neo-Gothic architecture, 45, 46 Neo-Renaissance architecture, 45, 85, 98 New York Palace, 85–6 Nyugati pályaudvar (Western) Railstation, 50, 93 Object, 2, 4, 5, 8, 12–19, 21, 30, 36, 105, 106, 124, 134, 135, 136 authenticity, 34 classification, 21 dynamical, 14, 16, 20, 22, 103, 108 and emplacement, 106, 108, 109 final, 16, 108 and Hungarian culture, 2, 47, 107, 108, 109, 137

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immediate, 14, 17, 18, 134 in landscape, 9, 39, 40, 55, 75, 105 and the Market Hall, 111, 124, 125, 131, 134, 136, 137 material, 31, 33, 35, 36, 71, 88, 99, 101, 106, 107 relation to interpretant, 2–24, 136 and photographs, 69, 70, 73 and Saussure, 36 tourist, 33, 34, 39, 52, 55, 126, 135 unreal, 17–19, 21, 24, 136–7 Óbuda, 41, 50, 92 Organic style architecture, 49 Ottoman Turks, 43, 44 Palatinus Strand, 79–80, 79 Paprika, 113, 120, 121, 127, 128, 129 as icon, 135 Paris, 57, 81, 108 Parliament, 3, 59, 60, 64, 66, 71, 81, 82, 90, 91, 92, 98, 108 Participant observation, 3, 9, 64, 113, 134, 145 Pecz, Samu, 115 Peirce, Charles, 4–5, 11–14 Pest, 41, 43, 48, 56, 57, 58, 84, 86, 98, 106, 114, 116 Phenomenology, 29–31, 125 Photography, 3, 8, 63, 69, 70 Pioneers (Úttörők), 87 Postal Savings Bank, 47 Post-modern architecture, 98 Pragmatic Maxim, 19, 20 Pragmatism, 4, 13, 16, 17, 18, 141 Prague, 3, 37, 39, 51, 81, 82, 83, 86, 88–9, 105, 146 Preisich, Gábor, 87, 91 Public transportation, 58, 65, 66, 73, 99, 101 Rác, 44 Rádáy Street, 102, 133 Rákóczi, Ferenc II, 44 Rákóczi Square Market Hall, 113, 118 “Real existing socialism,” 51, 88, 92 Relph, Edward, 29, 30, 125, 129, 141, 142 Representamen, 4, 6, 8, 12, 13, 21, 34, 55, 136

Restoration, 50, 81, 86, 95, 104, 115, 142 Ringstrassenstil (Viennese Ringstrasse style), 46 Roosevelt Square, 45 Rudas, 44, 60 Rundbogenstil, 45 Sauer, Carl, 26, 27, 28 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 4, 15, 19, 22, 24, 35, 36 Semiosis, 6, 16, 19, 21, 38, 54, 123, 134, 135, 136, 140, 144 Semiotics, 3, 4, 8, 11, 13, 15, 34, 35, 38 101, 139, 141 Shopping bag(s), 65, 111, 123 Shopping mall, 32, 55, 58, 59, 76, 78, 99, 111, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127, 146 Sign, 4, 9, 21, 134, 135, 140 and collateral observation, 16 composition of, 12, 13 definition, 13, 34 examples, 15, 16, 19, 76 examples of Hungarianess, 49, 51, 75, 80, 83, 87, 92, 93, 94, 98, 144 and guidebook, 54 and MacCannell, 34 and the Market Hall, 112, 113, 116, 135 relation to interpretant, 16 relation to object, 13–20, 21, 22–4, 70, 136, 140 and representamen, 13 Saussure, 4, 22, 35 theory (see also semiotics), 2, 3, 4, 11 12, 16, 21, 35, 40, 124, 125, 140 Signification, 2, 21, 105, 106, 107, 108, 125, 140, 141 Signs, 15, 63, 75–6, 77, 78, 79, 79, 91, 101, 103, 106, 108, 119 in the Market Hall, 120, 121, 122, 123, 130, 132, 133, 135 and shops, 75–6, 77, 91, 103, 108, 119 street, 5, 66, 75, 77, 78, 90, 99, 100, 101, 106, 107, 108, 139, 140 Socialism, 1, 51, 86, 91, 132 Socialist Realist, 49, 89, 90–91, 97 Soviet War Memorial, 89–90 Stalin, Joseph, 49, 101

Index Statue Park (Szoborpark), 60, 85, 89 Stüler, August, 45 Süleiman, 43 Symbol, 22 Symbolic, 4, 5, 8, 9, 22, 24, 28, 35, 36, 54, 86, 88, 135, 143, 145 Synagogue (Dohány utcai zsinagóga), 47, 97, 118, 136 Szabadság Bridge, 98, 116 Széchenyi Baths, 58, 60, 80, 118 Székely architecture, 47 Szerb, Antal, 101 The Blue Guide, 54, 55, 56, 64 The Little Prince, 12 Török, András, 50, 51, 55, 56, 60, 101, 112 Tourist prosaic, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 25, 38–40, 52, 53, 58, 64, 66, 72, 75, 80, 94, 99, 103, 105, 108, 109, 111, 116, 139, 141–4, 146 Trabant, 88, 88, 89, 107, 108 Tram, 66, 67, 107, 115, 116, 117

171

Transylvania, 47, 93 Trolley bus, 101, 105 Tuan, Yi-Fu, 29, 30, 37, 96, 141 University of Fine Arts building, 96, 107 Váci Street, 33, 59, 66, 78, 101, 102 Vajdahunyad Vár, 46 Vendég Váró Guide book, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 76, 87, 102 Vienna, 3, 44, 81, 82, 83, 86, 102 Villamos, see tram Vörösmarty, Mihály, 78 West, 43, 45, 46, 50, 51, 52, 83, 86, 91, 92, 93, 114, 132 Ybl, Miklós, 45 Yellow Underground, 78, 101, 107 Zala, György, 47 Zsolnay, 47, 94, 111, 116, 117