Skincare founder, and a former chief of staff at the US embassy in Hungary, MARGARET DE HEINRICH DE OMOROVICZA describes her GLOSSY WEEKEND in soulful and energetic BUDAPEST …
My days of relaxing and winding down have passed, with having a fourth baby, Felix, twelve months ago: all four children are under ten so we have our hands full. But we love music and art and we’ve got the kids into that too: it’s not hard to find a student who is passionate and will take time to interest the children.
I travel a lot, and we spend a lot of time in London, but it’s Budapest I know like the back of my hand. Hungary is so many things – it’s a very glamorous place, but not in an ostentatious way. You have to have a soul to appreciate Budapest. I love the fusion of east and west and the fact there’s so much culture here. It’s a very young city, with a lot of energy bubbling over: people are curious and want to explore, and there’s amazing music, food and fashion.
Whatever location we’re in, we tend to do similar things at the weekend. On Friday nights Stephen and I will have a date – the place we love is Café Kör on Sas utca. When I worked in the embassy it was just down the street so I’d go every day for lunch. It’s very much a local place, casual and very Hungarian – you can have anything from the whole hog, like beef tenderloin goulash or, in the summer, cold fruit soup which they’re famous for, or goose crackling and a light salad. For dessert, they’re known for their palacsinta, crêpes with homemade apricot marmalade – it’s excellent. There are wonderful Hungarian wines, too.
SATURDAY
On Saturday morning we all have breakfast around the table – we have an apartment on the Danube so it’s a beautiful place to sit and watch the boats floating by. Then we’ll head into town – the girls have an art class in the morning at the Museum of Fine Arts [the museum itself is closed for renovation until March 2018, but masterpieces from its collection including Rodin sculptures, are on show in the Hungarian National Gallery]. There are wonderful teachers – art students. Art is such a focus for us, and we are enthusiastic collectors of modern art. I get a real kick from it – we starting collecting twelve years ago and the scene has really exploded, so I find it really exciting. At the moment we especially admire Judit Reigl, a 93-year-old Hungarian painter based in France.
For lunch we’ll go somewhere like Memza, which is in our own office building on Liszt Ferenc, for a bowl of traditional bean soup with ham and cabbage, or beetroot cream soup. Afterwards we might go to the Liszt Music Hall, and then to the park on Margaret Island, in between Buda and Pest in the middle of the Danube, which has a little zoo. We might take a picnic and sit by the thermal lakes and pools. In the evening we’ll take the younger children to the Liszt Academy for music classes, or have friends for dinner. I love to cook so we’ll do a big dinner, usually duck – such a Hungarian thing – and we have lots of wonderful farms that deliver so I’ll get whatever’s fresh, such as rabbit, duck, pork and organic vegetables.
SUNDAY
Sunday we’ll wander around Falk Mikfa Street which has wonderful galleries – it’s where all the New York galleries come to for deco furniture and antiques. I love that area of town – the 8th district near Hungary’s National Museum. We might stop off at Brody House, a fantastic hotel and bar which combines artists in residence and a cool club where you can have coffee or lunch. I’d choose a Pálinka, a traditional fruit brandy, like Schnapps, or Unicum, a herbal digestif.
The older I get, the younger I dress – at the moment I have some great green army pants with sequins on them, and I love Sonia Rykiel designs – I have a bird T-shirt for weekends. I’m also loving Trademark, which I buy in SoHo when I’m in New York, and Ulla Johnson (available at www.madewell.com) – amazing. And I’m wearing some great Stella denim overalls all the time – I prefer clothes that are comfortable but also fun. There are so many local places to shop for clothes, like Use Unused (on Sas Utca; www.useunused.com), designed in Budapest, and Áeron (www.aeron.hu), both are right in the centre of 5th and 6th districts.
Omorovicza Skincare is at SpaceNK, Grafton Street and Harvey Nichols, Dundrum
Image by Tina Hillier
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