I like fake news, conspiracy theories, urban legends. They give me the chance to tell the true story. Because each photo tour is also about history, culture and more.
So take a look at the “news” first.
The Hungarian Great Market Hall chosen as the best market in Europe
The source
You would trust in a source titled ‘Daily News’, wouldn’t you? But take care because it’s ‘Daily News Hungary‘. And we, in Hungary, we suffer from a national disease called inferiority complex. We are infected by that because we have been living for centuries between two big empires and felt frustrated by them: the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turks, then the Germans and the Soviets, etc. So we desperately need to be the 1st, or at least one of the leaders up on a champions’ platform stage on some lists. And we work for it by using creative lists.
Practising long time exposure on a moving object. Photo of one of my guests on Best of Budapest photo and history walk.
We, tour guides are proud of being the 1st (2nd, 3rd, or whatever)
If you have already been to a guided walking tour, to a private or group tour on a Budapest sightseeing program, you most probably heard that the yellow line metro has been the 1st in the continent, completed to the millennial festivities, 1896. Okay, the 2nd in Europe but London is out of the continent, got it? And I’ll bet anything your tour guide mentioned that the building of the Hungarian Parliament is the 3rd largest in the world. Won? (And we are shy enough to confess that the first two are in Bucharest and in Beijing, as I know.) Also, on your Jewish tour you were 100% told that the Synagogue of the Dohány street is the 2nd largest in the world. But built before the largest one of New York, so…
The 2nd largest synagogue in the globe. Urban safari with smartphone photo and history tour.
The truth
So what about this “chosen as the best market” statement? First of all, the reputedly trustful ‘Daily News Hungary’ article is from 2016. But it’s being circulated in the Hungarian media, Facebook included at least twice a year (hot season and low season). Now, the original source of this news goes back to 2013 but it’s still alive and will stay so for the next 50 years, for sure. This article, as a daily practice on the Internet, is a copy-paste of another article which is the copy-paste of a third one, and so on, this list is really long. Today’s journalism is characterised by copy-pastes and abstracts.
But here you are the original source:
http://travel.cnn.com/europes-amazing-city-markets-354731/
Well, if you read it through carefully, you will realise that there is nothing chosen at all. That list doesn’t mean any ranking, it’s only an accidental enumeration of a journalist traveling around. And, er… watching the globe from the US, even Istanbul is in Europe. (OK, part of it is, really.) Nothing has been “chosen”, or voted, or whatever. We like our Great Market Hall, it’s beautiful, indeed, but these stupid articles with lists are only frustrating copies of other uncontrolled stupid articles with lists.
What’s the learning?
The Great Market Hall in Budapest is one of the five favourites of Jo Foley, journalist, when they traveled around in 2013. Period. Is that good enough? Yes, for me, it is. And one more thing: if you want to take good photos of this beautiful building, inside, outside, with or without PhotoSherpa on a photo tour, please go there before 8 o’clock in the morning, weekdays only. After that time, you won’t be able to move, you will feel as a herring in a tin can. Sunday it’s closed.
Come with me to a photo tour and get to know more about this building and many others.
Capture the moment. Or the fragment of a second. In front of the Great Market Hall. Photo of one of my guests on a Best of Budapest photo and history tour.