Szablyár Péter: Sky-high - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2007)
Smokestacks
to the reinforced-concrete body of the smokestack with steel supports. It is through an iron door that one enters the smokestack body, a twilit ''hall" comparable to a basilica in its dimensions. High overhead are the incoming flues snaking around as the lift cage descends from "the skies” at a stately slow speed. Vertical movement inside is facilitated by an indented-bar lift, which stops at all four levels. While earlier the balconies were only fitted with red flight-safety lights, today an increasing number of aerials and telecommunications devices are mounted on the outer surface of the chimney stack. The reinforced-safety lift takes seven minutes to rise to the uppermost level at a height of 188 metres. From here it is on a ladder that one can ascend further to the top of the smokestack, where smoke is exhausted into the air from below conic caps. The topmost point may have a sway of half a metre, but this can hardly be noticed up there, as there is no point of visual reference anywhere near. The view is truly magnificent: walking around, one can look well beyond the city in every direction all the way to the huge, wounded mass of Naszály Hill to the north, as far as the slopes of the Gödöllő Hills in the east, Csepel Island in the south, and the group of hills around the Nagy-Kopasz peaks closing the horizon to the west. It is an unforgettable sight. Having discovered the potentials of the height and environment of the smokestack and making all necessary precautions a few years ago in October 2004, a number of skydivers going in for accuracy jumps - BASE jumpers, as they are known — performed a few successful jumps from the top of the structure. Gold medals were awarded to the three winners, who all jumped into a ten-metre circle. The special event was broadcast by several television channels. David and Goliath - the smokestacks of the power plant on the Kelenföld Housing Estate No. 52 Budafoki út, District XI When approaching Budapest from the south - from the direction of the busy Szerémi út or Budafoki út - one cannot but notice the steel sheathing of a chimney stack reminiscent of a spacecraft on the launch pad and another one, much shorter, simpler and more modest than the first, in the background. Although electric power was first supplied to the recently-unified Budapest from the Révész utca plant since its inauguration in 1893, soon enough plans were 60
