I am not sure if the Cow Parade in Budapest is the official one, as it is not mentioned on the Cow Parade’s official web site. According to this site parades currently only taking place in Denver, Athens, Edinburgh, Lisbon, Wisconsin, Boston, Belo Horizonte Minas Gerais and Telemark, and not in Budapest. But I guess that it is just lack of updating the web site. I am writing this, cause me and Steinar were running down the street of Budapest finding these life-size cows to take pictures of them. According to The Budapest Sun there can be seen 54 cows on various spots in Budapest. We found many of them, but far from all. In Telemark there is about 30 cows placed out, all designed by Norwegian artists.

The Cow Parade started in Zurich back in 1998, and has since then become one of the biggest art exhibitions in the world, a so called “moo-seum”. The parade has since then taken place in more then 40 cities, among them Brussels, Buenos Aires, Dublin, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Prague, Tokyo and Warsaw.

By the end of the parade a number of the cows are auctioned away to benefit charitable and non-profit organisations. The local organizers are not earning anything on the parade, but organisation is taking royalties and doing commerical activites around the cows. You can for instance buy miniature cows in shops across the world or directly from the organisastion’s webshop.

Most of the cows in Budapest are exhibited downtown at the following places: Liszt Ferenc tér, Művészetek palotája (Palace of Arts), Deák tér, Budai Vár, Gellért tér, Déak tér, Mozskvá tér, Vörösmarty tér, Oktogon, Fővám tér, Szabadság tér, Kodály körönd, Bazilika, Andrássy-Bajcsy corner, Andrássy-Nagymező corner, MOM park, Széna tér, Corvin köz, Hősök tere, Erzsébet tér, Astoria, Kálvin tér. Running around in the centre of Budapest, just trying to find one more cow, turned out to be the perfect way to get to know the city better. So hurry up, as the exhibition only last untill Sept. 10th.

You can find an online gallery here, and for those of you who are interested, I have added a Cow Parade set over at Flickr.