Almost a good story

June 2, 2024

While writing a post about visiting the Castle District in Budapest, I included a picture I took on Hess András tér just northwest of Matthias Church. I took the photo because it reminded me of my first glimpses of the church in 1990 as I approached the church on the street from that direction. I even made note of that in the caption of the image.

After I Included the photo but before I published the post, I decided to look at my pictures from 1990. I found a photo I took and realized it was about the same spot. The lamp posts on the streets helped me to figure that out.

About a week later, I looked through pictures I took in 1997-98 when we lived in Debrecen, Hungary for nine months. We made several trips to Budapest at that time. I was looking for pictures that we might have taken on a tour of the Parliament building to compare what I took this April.

As I went through the photos, I found one I had taken on Hess András tér in May 1998. I had taken a picture of the Matthias Church from almost the same spot. I probably took that one because it reminded me of my first visit. I showed it to my son and he got a kick because I had taken 3 pictures from almost the same spot on different occasions in 34 years.

Okay, I was wrong.

After scanning the photo from 1998 and adding it to this post, I realized it was the same photo that I thought was from 1990. So I did not take 3 photos from the same spot. But I did find a photo I did take from 1990. It was from further down the street (2 lamp posts further from what I can tell).

I believe the reason I made the mistake is that I had included the picture from 1998 with some pictures from 1990 when I made a Facebook post about my first trip to Budapest. I found those photos on Facebook when I did my recent post in May and didn’t realize I had included the one from 1998 because I was not sure I had taken a picture up the street in 1990. If I had read the post on Facebook closer, I would have seen that I made a note that the picture of the church was from 8 years later (1998).

Cue facepalm.