It's a bad, bad pun, I know. I can hear you groaning from here. But I am
still thinking about – and often – one particular meal I had in
Budapest. A giant goose drumstick, which I had never eaten before,
nestled on a bed of red cabbage stewed with plums and apricots, on
top of another bed of mashed potatoes drizzled with paprika
scented gravy. Now Hungary is notorious for heavy, fatty, coma
inducing food and normally I am one for fish and something, anything,
smothered in truffle. But this meal will go down in history as one of
my favourites. It was heaven on a plate. Same with a local cake shop, creatively called 'Cake
Shop' that we thankfully discovered on our first afternoon (thus
leaving plenty of time for repeat visits). It was an essential stop
every day of our trip, and while I should be ashamed to admit this,
once I even ate two pieces because I just could not choose. The local
drink – Tokaj – a fermented wine of sorts, is sweet but highly
drinkable. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you get lucky
like we did then Budapest can be an amazing food and drinking city.
Just avoid local 'value' favourite Frici Papas. Yes it's cheap and really fun to say, but I promise that you can and should do much better.
My first impression of Budapest was disappointing. It's not a fairy tale come to life like Prague or
Krakow. Its big and dirty (really dirty, half the buildings are
stained black from pollution) and filled with socialist realist
architecture, a polite way of saying communist concrete boxes. It
grew on me, but it wasn't until day three that I really started to
like it. Maybe my expectations were too high – a lot of people
raved to me about it being their favourite city before hand – or
maybe I have seen so many places at this point that I am becoming
hard to please. Whatever the case, it's a nice city certainly, but I
wouldn't go so far as to rank it in my top ten or anything like that.
That being said, there are some great
neighbourhoods. As always seems to be the case, the Jewish area was
my particular favourite, filled with wine bars, gardens and street art. The city
is actually two cities divided by the river Danube, Buda on one side,
Pest on the other. Buda is more charming and hilly and topped with
the beautiful Matthias Church, the scenic Fisherman's Monument, and the grotty Royal Palace ( lived in by royalty for exactly one night).
There's also, further along, the one remaining (massive) monument to
communism that Hungarians decided to leave standing because it
looks nice and it is, after all, a piece of history. The views from
this side of the river at night are spectacular. In this area, I will rate
Budapest really high – after dark when the bridges and Houses of
Parliament are illuminated it is absolute magic. The view from the
Fisherman's Monument is quite simply breathtaking.
While Buda is arguably prettier, Pest
is where the action is. Lots of restaurants and bars, including ruin
bars, a Budapest phenomenon in which crumbling old communist blocs
are upgraded to meet minimum safety standards and then converted into
bars channelling the spirit of Ostalgie. If I'm honest, we went
to one and it was kind of...gross. There's plenty of shopping also
but it's the same generic stores you find all over Europe, with the
same prices too. You'll have to travel further east than Budapest if
you want to find deals. Also on this side are the UNESCO heritage
rated Houses of Parliament, a building which is impressive by day or
night. In this area there are actually lots of grand old buildings,
many of them embassies and government departments. In fact, much of
Budapest is covered in these decaying (boarded up windows, crumbing
walls) but amazing old buildings. It looks not dissimilar to Vienna
except that ours are better preserved and painted colours other than orange yellow or brown. Between here, Czech Republic,
Slovakia and Austria, you can definitely tell all were once linked through the Austro Hungarian Empire. Austria may be in better shape but there
are architectural similarities to be sure.
Also on this side you find the
Hungarian Champs d'Elysees, Andrassy Avenue. It too is heavily
populated with crumbling buildings that must have been quite a site
during their hey day. The avenue is very long – believe me, we
walked the whole thing – and ends with Hero Square, decorated with
statues of Hungarian war heroes from throughout the centuries who all
sport massive moustaches. In Hungary, every time you see masculinity
symbolized in some capacity, be it on statues, on signs in the
subway, wherever – the man always has a giant moustache. In
Hungary, you see, real men have moustaches – the bigger it is, the
manlier they are. As well as Hero Square, the end of the avenue is
also marked by a big fake castle surrounded by fake historical buildings from
different eras and styles. And one real ice skating rink. I will give them credit where due– they
did a decent job and the fakes look pretty convincing. Even better is that here sits one of the city's two
massive hot spring bathhouses. You better believe we spent hours
lounging in those baths – partly because it was raining and cold,
but also because they felt amazing. We even splurged on massages. I
chose for my masseur the man with the strongest looking hands. My
instructions to him were "hurt me". When it comes to massage I
believe that no pain equals no gain. Afterwards, my back had never
felt so good. He kneaded every knot and every muscle to the point that I couldn't walk properly for two days. My body felt like
jello, and actually it also felt like I was walking through jello now that I
think about it. I couldn't move fast to save my life. A day at one of
the bathhouses is an absolute necessity if you happen find yourself
in Budapest. Trust me, you deserve it.
In all, the city has lots of nice
museums and is great for wandering, whether it be the old side
streets, the grand avenues, or along the banks of the Danube. Just be
warned that on Buda there are many steep hills to be climbed. There
are plenty of museums here, many great restaurants and bars too (if
you want to splurge, hit up the Four Seasons – that feels like a
slice of old Budapest). And how can you not love a city that has a
Michael Jackson memorial tree in its main park? Just know in advance
– you will not understand one word outside of 'cya' (hello/goodbye)
in the local language.
