Peer Inside The Soul Of Hungarians - And Their Houses...
Weekly briefings from the so-far-continuing European capital of Conservatism
Welcome back to another perfectly normal week in Budapest, the capital of very uneventful things proceeding without interruption, and still a great place to be culturally conservative, at the time of writing.
Events This Week
Every visitor instantly recognises the quantum aspect of the Hungarians.
Gentle but proud: softly-spoken yet full of a kind of Don’t Tread On Me independence of spirit. An outlier, linguistically, ethnically, and by choice.
The Soviet Empire’s most reluctant citizens; the EU’s most troublesome quarter. Mordant lovers of history, always questioning their place in modernity.
As a visiting fellow once said to Based In Budapest: “Once you recognise the Hungarians have the highest IQ in Europe and the highest suicide rate in Europe, you’re halfway to getting it.”
Part of the work of the DI is in explaining Hungary to the wider world, and our new film is a fantastic stab at it. It’s called simply, rather brilliantly, Hungarians, and takes in much of the 20th Century, before casting an eye to now — sport, art, everyday life.
It debuts on Tuesday, 5 May, at 5:30PM at the Villa. You’ll need to register in advance. After the screening, there will be a Q&A with our own Gergely Dobozi — Tom Cruise lookalike and auteur behind the project. As well as László Kondor, Award-Winning Photojournalist, and Tamás Lévai, World & European Bronze Medalist in wrestling, who features in the film.
https://danubeinstitute.hu/en/events/hungarians-documentary-premiere-at-the-danube-institute
Chantal Delsol is a fascinating figure. Like the best French philosophers, she comes bearing paradoxes. Despite being on the right, she believes in European federalism, and argues that the EU has not gone nearly far enough in binding together its parts; yet she sees populism as the expression of our frustration with the limitations of our democracy.
Delsol is the star of our panel on Thursday 7 April, 5:30PM, entitled The End of Secularism? The State Taking Over Morality. It features her compatriot and our fellow, Pierre-Hugues Barré, a Sorbonne trained legal scholar, who specialises in the collapse of the Church-State distinction, “In 21st-century societies without religion, morality itself functions as a form of religion,” says Pierre-Hugues. “Christian religious authority once held the exclusive power to establish moral norms. But with the collapse of the power of the Church, these are established by the State and its assemblies. Consequently, there is no longer a separation of powers.” With the lion of liberal-conservatism John O’Sullivan also on the panel, this promises to be intellectual rocket fuel.
Sign up here:
https://danubeinstitute.hu/en/events/the-end-of-secularism-the-state-taking-over-morality
Wednesday, Mme Delsol is up early —- it’s a 9AM start at MCC for Fashions in Politics — a compellingly meta analysis of what you might call the semiotics and mimetics of modern government.
“Current trends in power and sovereignty, the transformation of classical ideologies, patterns in political communication and rhetoric, as well as questions of symbolism, style, and attire,” in their own words. Did Trump make Milei possible? Is one way of thinking about it. Is the greyness of Keir Starmer actually a kind of postmodern performance of power in a Foucauldian sense? Are we all lost in the Society of the Spectacle, doomscrolling our way to oblivion? First panel is on “Luxury Beliefs and the Clandestine King” and it only gets fruitier from there on out.
Sign up here.
https://mcc.hu/en/event/2026-05-06-fashions-in-politics
Can you feel your Fitbit buzzing? Matt Goodwin is back in town. Thursday, 6PM, the treadmill-toned truth-teller will be threshing through his bestselling new book — Suicide Of A Nation — an account of the strange death of Britain. He’ll be joined by clean-living professor Ralph Schoelhammer — one of the most gym-friendly duos to ever hit the MCC stage.
Sign up here:
https://mcc.hu/en/event/2026-05-07-suicide-of-a-nation-a-conversation-with-matthew-goodwin-1
May the 4th be with you. Starting the week at MCC is Geopolitical Stress Test: The Middle East Crisis and Europe’s China Dilemma, a whole day featuring eminent Chinese scholars, plus Serbian hardman Misa Djurkovic 9AM till 3PM.
Link here: https://mcc.hu/en/event/2026-05-04-geopolitical-stress-test-the-middle-east-crisis-and-europes-china-dilemma
Around Town
Not quite an event, but certainly a Big Moment — David Campanale has been with the DI for six months. As his fellowship closed, he received news that he had won his landmark case against the Liberal Democrats. In an alternate timeline, David — a pal of the Fidesz founders back in the 1989 Freedom Era, and one of the guiding spirits of Tusvanyos — would today be the MP for Epsom & Cheam. Except that in 2022, he was unceremoniously de-selected by Britain’s third largest political party, for the crime of holding Christian beliefs on abortion — which he never intended to make policy.
David’s case has been rumbling through the courts for years. Now, the Lib Dems’ case has collapsed — they have effectively conceded. Suggested damages from his legal team are around 250 000 Pounds. Which poses the vital question: Would he like to buy a Central European think tank?
Read more in The Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/04/29/ed-davey-pressure-apologise-discriminating-christian/
Can it be Budapest Beer Week again? Yes. Yes it can. Dürer Kert hosts a week-long craft beer programme; unlimited tasting sessions are on Friday and Saturday, 2PM-8PM. Around 45 breweries will be on offer, with street food, live music, and a ‘dog-friendly environment’, hooch and pooch.
After the crisp sunshine of the Mayday weekend, Budapest’s rowdy Summer continues with a three day festival of ideas, music, and family at Ludovika University of Public Service. There’ll be military demonstrations for the kids, and a bouncy castle for the adults. There’s also a dog show, and a live demonstration by emergency service of cutting someone from car wreckage, for the Ballard fans.
Tibor Gate, Hungary’s astronaut, will be in the Party Tent on Thursday. And don’t miss our new favourite speaker at “The College of Professional Studies” panel — Kiss Fanni.
https://ludovikafesztival.uni-nke.hu/ludovika-szabadegyetem-reszletes-programok-2026/
Budapest100 is a boon to architecture nerds and nosy people. Basically a city-wide ‘open house’ weekend: normally private or semi-private buildings open their doors, with residents and volunteers doing history displays, walks, concerts, etc.
For 2026, it runs Saturday 9 till Sunday 10 May and the theme is “Újra!”: “Again!” — they’re returning to the original concept of celebrating hundred year old buildings, specifically those built from 1916–1926.
Forty houses and institutions are on display: inner-city apartment houses, suburban villas, churches, a cinema, a department store, even a kindergarten.
Here are some highlights:
Puskin mozi - Kossuth Lajos utca 18, District V
An old cinema.
Goldberger Ház and Blinken OSA Archivum — Arany János utca 32, District V
Sunday 3PM, there’s a house tour, explaining both the building and the OSA archive’s work. It’s registration-only.
Építészek Háza - Ötpacsirta utca 2, District VIII
There’s a Saturday evening event called Építészpadlás, about the history of the House of Architects. Registration-only.
Pasarét cluster - District II
Pasaret is lovely. A personal fave of BiB, with its stout Germanic follies set in steep hills. This tour affords you a chance to wander through some of its strangest and most handsome villas: Érmelléki utca 8, Rhédey utca 8/a, Riadó utca 2/a,b, Torockó utca 3.
The website will fill you in on everything else, complete with a map of all venues:
https://budapest100.hu
Paper of The Week
In which old friend Markus Johansson-Martis returns to a favourite topic of his. Migration. Having less of it.
He details how the EU first decried Boris Johnson’s failed Rwanda scheme, and then slyly copied it. As ever, covering fire is key to the EU’s rhetorical slitherings.
But considerable hurdles stand in the way of Third Country arrangements. Mainly around ECHR law, and duties to ensure the deported asylum seekers are not mistreated in their new home.
The solution, he says, is chiefly to be found in Subsidiarity — making individual members states legally responsible.
A shift towards a more subsidiarity-based model would resemble the previously mentioned Australian approach, which has proven effective, and could help reduce the pressure created by current migration flows to Europe.
The existing system is also more costly and, paradoxically, disadvantages genuine refugees, while irregular migrants who reach EU territory often acquire multiple legal grounds, established through European case law, to avoid return to their country of origin. Such an outsourcing mechanism would not differ fundamentally from the EU’s existing “migration deals” with Turkey and Libya, nor from the efforts already attempted by Italy, as discussed earlier in the report. This approach could be implemented either at the EU level or through bilateral arrangements between individual Member States.
Szamarat fülén, embert szaván kell fogni.
“A donkey should be taken by its ears and a man at his word”
(Keep your promise)