Emblematic of the transformation of Budapest public space of recent years at its very best, the spacious, jazzy "Ditch Club" is right in the heart of downtown—on what used to be the drab parking lot of the city's communist-era bus station and was later a hollowed out, sorry-looking abandoned construction site (for the National Theater, which ended up elsewhere) dubbed "the ditch." On a fine summer evening it seems that all the under-30 faces for a mile around are here, sitting about with plastic cups of wine or beer on the broad flight of steps leading down into the "ditch" or dipping their feet in a big pool of water right above the club—that is, if they're not actually inside listening to live jazz on the club's small stage.
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