I am always amazed to discover anything new about seltzer – and each month I am surprised. Last month my surprise regarded a seltzer museum in Hungary, perhaps the world’s only seltzer museum.
Here is some information I obtain by emailing someone who had posed these fantastic 360 degree photos of the exhibit:
Hi,
I am sending the informations and the pictures of the Soda Museum of Szeged.
The Soda Museum of Szeged
One attraction of the water tower (called Old Lady) of the Saint Stephen square in Szeged is the Water Museum placed on the ground floor in the tower. István Bánffi collected its pieces. In the permanent exhibition the audience can get to know the story of the soda, from Ányos Jedlik’s invention to novadays.
István Bánffi’s father – who was a sodamaker, either – kept the ornamental soda bottles, and he started to collect the relics in planned form approximately 15 years ago. In the exibithion, there are 1200 soda bottles and 30 kind of sodamaking machines, just the most beautiful ones. There are also commercials, plaquets, postcards and specifications of soda water making.
Panoramas:
http://www.360cities.net/search/soda-szeged
Best regards:
Illés Tibor
I later learned that this was a traveling exhibit that, after touring the country, found a home in Szeged.
Soon after a book was published based on the collection – “Soda water, a cult drink in Hungary” – which was mailed to be by it’s gracious author Imre Kiss.
When I got home today I found waiting for me a package with this postage attached:
Written in Hungarian alongside an English translation, with many photos, it is just fantastic. I am only a few pages in, but here are a few details:
“Dear Readers, when reading this book, please, think of the colleagues of ours who were purposed to supply the buyers with soda water by working hard on icy or sultry days, be it winter or summer time, who survived two works wars, economic crises, revolutions, the horrible time of nationalism and the years of socialism.”
“Soda water symbolizes sparkling life, activity and dynamic force and there, deep in our minds, it works like a volcano to erupt, and that is why we like this drink. Knowing the maxim that says ‘we get identical to what we eat,’ we come to love it easily because we ourselves want to be something like that.”