[Groundhopping] MTK Budapest FC 5-1 Nyíregyháza Spartacus (+ Visiting the real Pál utca!)

🩵➕ MTK Budapest FC vs Nyíregyháza Spartacus
⚔️ 5-1 (2-1)
🏆 Fizz Liga, matchweek 10
🏟️ Új Hidegkuti Nándor Stadion, Budapest, Hungary
🗓️ 2025-10-18
🕑 14:00
🎟️ 3549 HUF
🍺 500ml alcohol-free beer 990 HUF (+cup 500 HUF)

Back in Korea there are many big football stadiums with 40~60K capacity, and the "smaller" ones(and even a lot of those have 10~20K seats) are multi-purpose stadiums. So visiting a fully roofed football stadium with less than 10 thousand seats for the first time was a quite a novel experience. And this one looks unique too, no north and south seats at all!

The match itself was electrifying for sure! It was funny when the stadium announcer perfectly nailed the General American accent with one of the away players Michael Lee Gilbert(he's a Trinidad and Tobago international though).

But there was a reason I chose MTK of all budapesti clubs to visit first…

Budapest's 8th district Józsefváros, the home of MTK Budapest, was also the background for Molnár Ferenc's famous novel The Paul Street Boys(A Pál utcai fiúk). It's taught in schools in many different countries and it was translated in many languages—even in Korean, I found it in back in middle school and loved it very much. I wonder if any of you have read it in your country?

For those who didnt: it's about a group of boys who defend their playground, an empty plot on Pál street—the "Grund" from a gang of bullies, the "Redshirts". Thanks to the smallest boy Nemecsek's heroics, the boys ultimately win the war…however it's far from a happy end. Nemecsek got sick during the confilct and dies in the end, and they learn a building will be erected on the Grund, thus all ending in vain.

I visited many of the locations that appeared in the story: Pál street itself, the botanical garden ELTE Füvészkert where the boys hid between the palms(and now with a statue of poor Nemecsek who fell in the lake), Rákos street where Nemecsek lived(now Hőgyes Endre street) as well as the school the author himself also attended. Many of the locations look much different now, but now there's also a statue of the boys nearby. For me this was a childhood dream come true!

Meanwhile, I felt a bit odd when I later learned that Hungarians consider it as a "patriotic" story, because I had never thought of it that way. Sure, the "defending of the homeland" theme is obvious, but I thought the ending felt so futile to have such a theme. Maybe I was too young, but for me it was sort of the opposite: "We fought and got hurt over what looks like the smallest things, but back then they meant everything to us." Maybe they feel that the fate of the Grund—that for the adults, it was just another empty space to build something on—parallels that of Hungary's own history: for the stronger empires, they were just another land to be conquered. Well, that's our own history too.

It was also adapted as a great musical, which I already watched it in the neighborhood theatre, twice! By the way, have I ever mentioned just how beautiful the Pécs national theatre is? 

And today marks the monumental 500th perfomance at the original Vígszínház theatre in Budapest, so just a few days ago they uploaded a brand new music video with the original cast. And I've been happy about it ever since, like a boy that found his own Grund…