If you have ever walked through Budapest’s Keleti Pályaudvar (one of the Budapest main railway stations), you probably did not immediately think of German pop music. Yet more than twenty years ago, its platforms, iron roof and grand old architecture became the setting for one of the most successful European ballads of the early 2000s.

In 2001, a young German singer called Sarah Connor was just beginning to make a name for herself. Her first singles had already brought her into the charts, but it was From Sarah with Love that changed everything. The emotional ballad became her first number-one hit in Germany and soon found an audience far beyond her home country.

For Hungarian viewers, however, the song came with an unexpected connection. Its beautifully melancholic video was filmed in Budapest, with Keleti pályaudvar at the centre of its story. Trains, farewells and memories turned one of the city’s busiest stations into the perfect backdrop for a song about feelings that are discovered just a little too late.

But before Sarah arrived at Keleti with a film crew, her own journey had already started years earlier in a small German city.

From Delmenhorst to the Charts

Sarah Connor was born Sarah Marianne Corina Lewe on 13 June 1980 in Delmenhorst, in northern Germany. Music entered her life early. According to German broadcaster NDR, she was already singing in a gospel choir at the age of six and grew up listening to soul music. Michael Jackson was one of her musical heroes, and in 1997 she even appeared with a children’s choir during his concert in Bremen, performing as part of Heal the World and Earth Song.

Her own breakthrough arrived only a few years later.

In 2001, Connor released her debut single Let’s Get Back to Bed – Boy!, featuring American R&B singer TQ. The song immediately attracted attention and reached number two in Germany. Her debut album, Green Eyed Soul, followed that same year and introduced listeners to a mixture of pop, R&B and soul that would define the first part of her career.

But while her first single made people notice her, it was a much slower and more emotional song that showed another side of her voice.

That song was From Sarah with Love.

A Love Letter That Came Too Late

Released as a single on 5 November 2001, From Sarah with Love was written by Sarah Connor, Rob Tyger and Kay Denar, with Tyger and Denar also handling the production. It appeared on Connor’s debut album Green Eyed Soul.

The title itself is a clever play on words, recalling the title of the James Bond film From Russia with Love. But there are no secret agents or international adventures here. Instead, Connor’s song tells a very personal story about bad timing.

The narrator has been friends with a man for years. He loves her, but she does not realise that she feels the same way – at least not until it is too late. He moves on and finds someone else. Only then does she understand what she has lost. Her answer is a letter, sent from a distance, in which she finally admits her feelings.

It is a simple idea, and perhaps that is exactly why it works.

Most people know what it feels like to understand something too late. Maybe we did not say what we really felt. Maybe someone left before we realised how important they were. From Sarah with Love takes that uncomfortable little question – “What if I had said something earlier?” – and turns it into a five-minute pop ballad.

Musically, the song is quite different from many of the faster pop and R&B tracks that surrounded it in 2001. It builds slowly, giving Connor’s voice plenty of space. Strings, backing vocals and orchestral elements gradually make the arrangement bigger, but the song never loses its intimate feeling. The production supports the emotion rather than trying to overpower it.

The Song That Changed Everything

From Sarah with Love entered the German singles chart at number four in November 2001. Just one week later, it climbed to number one. It became Sarah Connor’s first German number-one single and stayed in the charts for months.

Its success was not limited to Germany. The song also became a number-one hit in Switzerland and performed strongly in several other European countries. It helped establish Connor as something more than a promising new pop singer. She was suddenly one of the biggest young voices in German pop.

More hits followed during the next few years, including Music Is the Key, Just One Last Dance, Living to Love You and From Zero to Hero. After a creative break, Connor changed direction again in 2015 with Muttersprache, her first album sung mainly in German. The decision opened a new chapter in her career and introduced her to another generation of listeners.

Still, for many fans outside Germany, From Sarah with Love remains the Sarah Connor song.

And its video gave the ballad an unforgettable visual world.

From Sarah… with Love from Budapest

Watch the music video today and Hungarian viewers may notice something familiar almost immediately.

Those platforms, trains and enormous iron structures are not somewhere in Germany.

They are in Budapest Keleti pályaudvar.

The video was filmed in Budapest in 2001 and produced by DoRo Berlin. Director Daniel Lwowski’s professional archive lists From Sarah with Love among his projects, with Frank Wilde as co-director and Stefan von Borbely as director of photography.

The main filming took place at Keleti pályaudvar in October 2001, only a few weeks before the single was released.

It turned out to be the perfect location.

Rather than making a typical glossy early-2000s pop video, the team created something much more cinematic. The story moves between the present and memories of the past, while trains, platforms, steam, luggage and autumn leaves create a feeling of departure.

And departure, of course, is exactly what the song is about.

A railway station is a place where people meet, but it is also a place where they say goodbye. Someone arrives. Someone else leaves. Sometimes we do not know when – or whether – we will see them again.

That makes Keleti more than a beautiful background. It becomes part of the story.

According to information about the production, the filmmakers wanted a visual atmosphere inspired partly by classic cinema, including Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 film Shanghai Express, famous for its dramatic railway imagery and Marlene Dietrich’s unforgettable screen presence. Keleti was chosen not only for practical reasons, but also because its architecture could create that older, almost timeless atmosphere.

The station we know as one of Budapest’s busiest transport hubs suddenly becomes something else: a romantic railway terminal from another era.

Hungarian Details Hidden in the Video

There are several little details that make the clip especially fun to watch from a Hungarian point of view.

Budapest-based sources have pointed out the clearly recognisable Keleti platforms, railway equipment and even a pack of Hungarian playing cards appearing in the video.

There is another interesting Hungarian connection too.

A young Marcell Nagy appears in the video. Only a few years later, he became internationally known for playing György Köves in the 2005 film Fateless (Sorstalanság), based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Imre Kertész.

Connor’s own family also became part of the production: her younger sister Sophia-Luisa “Lulu” Lewe appears as the younger version of Sarah in the story.

All of these details help the video feel less like a normal performance clip and more like a small film.

When the Place Matches the Song

Perhaps that is why the video has aged surprisingly well.

Many music videos from the early 2000s immediately reveal the period in which they were made: fashionable clothes, special effects and editing styles can quickly make them look dated.

From Sarah with Love largely avoids that problem.

There are no futuristic sets and very few visual tricks. Instead, we get an old railway station, trains, autumn light and people remembering moments from their past. Budapest provides something that would have been difficult to create inside a studio: atmosphere.

The Keleti pályaudvar, opened in the 19th century, gives the video a sense of history that fits perfectly with a song built around memory.

There is also something wonderfully European about the whole combination. A German singer performs an English-language ballad in a video filmed at a historic Hungarian station, while the visual inspiration reaches back to classic Hollywood cinema.

And somehow it all works.

Fotó: Gergőfráfia

More Than an Early-2000s Ballad

Sarah Connor would go on to have a long career, experiment with different styles and eventually become just as successful singing in German as she had once been singing in English.

But From Sarah with Love still holds a special place in that story.

It was her first number-one single in Germany. It showed that behind the confident R&B image of her early career was a singer who could carry a big emotional ballad. And more than two decades later, its melody is still immediately recognisable to many European listeners.

For those of us in Hungary, there is also a small extra pleasure in watching it again.

Behind one of the most famous German pop ballads of the early 2000s, there is a piece of Budapest.

The trains may have been carrying fictional characters away from each other, but the Keleti pályaudvar stayed exactly where it was – quietly becoming part of pop music history.

And that makes From Sarah with Love not only a love letter from Sarah.

In a strange little way, it is also a love letter from Budapest.