The “smartbench”, playing Chopin and Liszt pieces, was inaugurated by Polish ambassador to Hungary, Sebastian Keciek, who said the institute was working to “build bridges to reinforce ties between the two countries”.

He said he trusted that this cooperation would “further reinforce the thousand-year-old friendship between the two nations”.

Joanna Urbanska, head of the Polish Institute, said “this present is from our heart and I am certain its users will receive it with love.”

László Baán, the ministerial commissioner in charge of developments in the City Park, said the bench was “a symbol of true and deep friendship not only present in high culture but in everyday life, too”.

The solar powered bench offers a selection of Chopin and Liszt pieces played by pianist Gábor Farkas through a touch screen. Passers-by can also use it as a WiFi hot spot or charge their mobile phones. It also indicates levels of UV radiation, atmospheric pressure, humidity, and air pollution.

Presidents Mark Hungary-Poland Friendship Day
 
President Katalin Novák and her Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda held talks by phone on Thursday, marking the Day of Hungarian-Polish Friendship, according to a statement by the Hungarian president’s office.

The two presidents highlighted the importance of the centuries-long friendship between Hungarians and Poles, and made a commitment to doing everything to maintain and further strengthen those ties.

“It is a friendship that has stood the test of time and in which solidarity for each other has always played an important part,” the communications director of the presidential Sandor Palace said.

The two presidents also said they were glad that their good personal ties could contribute to the friendship of the two nations. Before the talks, Novák laid a wreath in Balatonboglár, near Lake Balaton, at a building in which Polish refugees had received schooling during the second world war.

The ceremony was attended by the Polish ambassador and a delegation from Poland’s parliament.

Meanwhile, the head of the Polish Prime Minister’s Office, Marek Kuchcinski, marked the day of Polish-Hungarian friendship in a Twitter post on Thursday, stating that despite the attacks against Polish-Hungarian friendship “we are still connected by a bridge built on centuries of support and solidarity”.

He noted that the day of Polish-Hungarian friendship was established by former President Lech Kaczynski

Three Hungarian Soldiers Re-Buried in Poland
 
Three unknown Hungarian soldiers, who died fighting the Soviet Red Army in 1944, were re-buried in Poland on Thursday. Orsolya Zsuzsanna Kovács, Hungary’s Ambassador to Poland, attended mass and the re-interment in the Holy Trinity Basilica in Kobyłka, near Warsaw.

Polish institutions and the Hungarian government footed the bills for the exhumation, research and reburial jointly.

The soldiers were members of a mounted battalion of the 2nd reservist command, and must have fallen fighting the Soviet army on 9-10th September, 1944.

The grave inscription says, in Hungarian and Polish: “Here rest three unknown Hungarian soldiers, fallen in 1944. Not unknown to God. Erected by the government of Hungary, 2023”.