Hungarian Electrical Engineering Museum

Erzsébetváros & the Jewish Quarter


This place might not sound like everyone's cup of tea, but some of the exhibits are unusual (and quirky) enough to warrant a visit. The staff will also show you how the alarm system of the barbed-wire fence between Hungary and Austria worked before the fall of communism, and there's also an exhibit on the nesting platforms that the electricity company kindly builds for storks throughout the country, so they won't interfere with the wires and electrocute themselves.

There are tons of old household appliances (many still work), and colourful communist-era neon shop signs adorn the outside courtyard. The weirdest display is the collection of electricity-consumption meters, one of the largest in the world, which includes one installed in the apartment of 'Rákosi Mátyás elvtárs' (Comrade Mátyás Rákosi), the Communist Party secretary, on his 60th birthday in 1952, and another recalling Stalin's 70th birthday in 1948.


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