The Prime Mover, a Chief Architect of the Hungarian Pavilion, was András Nyírõ, who in the meantime founded the net publication Internetto, (See BRB, 1995/4) and did not sleep much in the first six months of 1996; he even became somewhat alienated from his former friends, the other editors of the quarterly ABCD.
The focal theme of the Pavilion is a ride on the underground that runs in Budapest. It was inaugurated in May 1896, exactly a hundred years ago. When you get to the Hungarian Pavilion home page on the CD-ROM, you see a tour de force: there is a real time video picture broadcast from a ship on the River Danube. And there is a string of buttons, bearing the name of the stations, from Vörösmarty Square to City Park. At each stop, a ticket appears, with further directories. If you happen to click on any of the items, the ticket lingers on, being torn at that particular item.
I know you can hardly wait to have a look at the Hungarian Pavilion, so I will pass over the dozens of highlights like the Béla Bartók Multimedia section, Hungarian Nude Photography, Virtual National Salon (where art historians picked a couple of important contemporary artists and commented on them). I am just going to give you the address: http://www.idg.hu/expo/.
By the way, there is Crash Course on Budapest - An Exercise in Boosting Civic Pride, by the author of the present column. You can even see my photo in the About section. And do send me e-mail. From the Pavilion... Hi! Is there anything I can do for you at the moment?
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