The Ibolya - "violet" in Hungarian - has been one of the few places in Budapest where one can still experience the capital's true café culture. Anxious to keep it as such, five investors who attended the nearby Eötvös secondary school and were regulars at the café, decided to buy the Ibolya when it was put up for sale in 2008, after several changes of ownership.
The café's interior was recreated - with a touch of irony -- as the regulars' remembered it from their childhood by the Dinamo Architect Group in just a few weeks.
"The biggest change was that the catering area became bigger: we opened up the upper level, which was earlier used as for storate, to make a functional space, transforming it into a loft with parquet flooring," said building planner Imre Csaba Rimóczi.
The refurbished Ibolya, which is open from 8:00am until 2:00am, has brought with it only the positive memories of the past 40 years. The jukebox is still next to the bar, the pinball machine is still upstairs and the same neon sign above the entrance still welcomes guests.
Among the Ibolya's regulars are the director Ferenc Török, who used it as a location in his film Moscow Square. Török has his own memories of using the public telephone at the bar, at a time when few Hungarians had a phone in their homes.
The writer Géza Bereményi would rest up at the Ibolya after studying at the library with his girlfriend.
The film director Csaba Bollók also brought his girlfriend to the Ibolya and has fond memories of the venue. "Beside this place, I know of only two authentic cafés, and I really miss places like this because they remind me of my youth. It would great if today's students could get to know how we felt in places like this," he said.
"In the 70s, when I was a university student, the Ibolya - which could cure our early morning hangovers and inspire world-changing debates -- was one of our favourite places," said the aesthete András Réz.
