Buda-Pesth? Budapest? 1935? 1989? What's the difference?

We recently finished reading Dracula, published in 1897, the opening scene spilling us into Buda-Pesth (still hyphenated in Dracula because the city had only recently been created, remember, "on 17 November 1873 from a merger of the three neighboring cities of Pest, Buda and Óbuda").

Today the children gave their reports on Romania (Benjamin and Alexander) and Hungary (Zoë) and we had a Zoom call with my friend Amanda, who currently lives in Bahrain. 

Bahrain has little to do with Romania or Hungary, but we're looking into Middle Eastern countries right now and thought it would be fun to chat with her about her experience. I had the kids write some interview questions and then we woke up this morning to workshop them a bit before the interview. Many of their questions were yes/no questions, so we worked together to create "open-ended" questions and wrote our revised questions on the whiteboard.

Five minutes prior to the meeting I went to open the Zoom room. 

"No internet connection," my computer told me. 

After a few frantic moments, I messaged Amanda from my phone to tell her that...we had no internet...and to give me 15 minutes or so to drive to the church (the library wasn't open yet). 

So we called her from the church. And by the time we made it home whatever hiccup our internet was having was over. 

I need to find a good book to read that is set in the Middle East somewhere...

In the meantime, I thought The Good Master would be a lovely follow up to Dracula (go figure). It's much more Christmassy (ending on a Christmas chapter) and is set in Hungary so fits in well with what we're learning.

It, too, opens with a mention of Budapest. 

Jancsi is excited because his cousin is coming to stay at their ranch—"a real city girl from Budapest."

"Wait...I thought it was Buda-Pesth," Alexander objected.

"Well, you know the history," I reminded him. "It was hyphenated at first because it combined multiple cities but over time the hyphen was dropped and it became simply Budapest. This story takes place quite some time after Dracula. Let's see when this story was published..."

"1989!" Alexander guessed.

"1935." 

"So I was close," he said. 

"You were close?" I chuckled.

"Yeah—1935? 1989?—pretty close."

"Sure," I squeaked out (feeling just a smidge hurt by his rounding).

Like, be so real, son:

Dracula was written 38 years before The Good Master. 

And The Good Master was written a full 50 years before I was born.

You're telling me that in your mind 1989 and 1935 are, like, basically the same thing? Wild.