Bodor Ferenc: Coffee-Houses - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1992)

Tavasz-club 21 (spring)

Not long ago, the Tavasz café and bar was closed down. It retained the Ilkovics atmosphere of bygone days for a long time. It was enough to look at the letter-type of its inscriptions to warm your heart. The airy interior — perhaps because of its stucco and plaster ornamentation, perhaps because of its dark red colours—was the last genuine art-deco place in the city. From the adjacent cinema the creaking of Svarci's biceps could sometimes be heard. The black-stockinged fly-by-nights would be readying themselves to generate a real railway station-area atmosphere. The café-brasserie-bar opened under a new name is practically the only truly modern establishment of its kind in the city. Cold grey colours, glimmering neon lighting, metal fittings brightened up with yellow paint, artistically designed interior. The white-socked waiter proudly points out the bar: some of the plasterwork has been preserved. Down below you can drink very expensive beer. But up above there is a little café. And a catering ring of the kind is a necessity aroung the Nyugati station, for where are all the old places gone, the Tejvendéglő (Milk-bar), the Sabaria, the Ilkovics, the Pastry Corner of the Westend House? And where are the railway hotels, the Lloyd and the Westend, to say nothing of the long demolished London ?

62 TERÉZ KÖRÚT, VI.

TAVASZ

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