• Hungarian forint
  • Budapest
  • Police news
  • HelloMagyar
dnh_logo_feher2dnh_logo_feher2dnh_logo_feher2dnh_logo_feher2
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Society
  • Sport
  • Culture
  • Special Hungary
  • News To Go
  • World
  • Contact Us
  • About us
  • About us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
✕
Breaking News
  • Financial Times: The French will put an end to the Putin-Orbán nuclear friendship?

  • Wizz Air will launch new flight to Budapest

Support us
Daily News Daily News · 15/10/2013
· Society

The Washingtin Post Travel Guide: Great article, great pictures – Budapest

Budapest

The soft gray of the morning is beginning to light the streets, but it’s far too early to be awake on a Saturday. Tossing and turning in the bed of our third-floor apartment, I wish I could say that to the boisterous men outside, who clearly have yet to greet their pillows, The Washington Post reports.

Just as I’m wondering what time it is, the sounds grow louder.

“No one’s asleep yet, this is Budapest!” a man with a British accent barks into his phone. “It’s only 5 a.m.!”

Just then, a few feet away, another sound erupts, as someone’s stomach chimes in with an uncanny PSA about what happens after consuming liter after liter of Dreher beer. A splash of water from a bucket quickly follows, solidifying what we’ve learned after just one night in town: Budapest knows how to party.

It was just a few hours ago that we, too, were having drinks late into the night and wandering the streets, in awe of the air of fist-pumping celebration surging through the capital of Hungary. We’d arrived in the city that afternoon on a train from Vienna, harried from a not-so-smooth arrival at the dusty Budapest-Keleti Railway Terminal, where we discovered that there were neither street maps for sale nor ATMs in the station.

Armed with only the address of our rental apartment and with no Hungarian forints on us, we were at a loss as to what to do, until we spotted a few banks across a very busy street from the station. We lugged our baggage over, withdrew the much-needed forints and grabbed a cab, knowing full well that we were making a mistake.

Our trusty Rick Steves Budapest guide stated very clearly that visitors should avoid hailing a cab and instead always call ahead for one to avoid getting gouged on the price. But with no working phones and no street map, we’d hit the panic zone. In that moment, this seemed like the only logical way to get to where we needed to go, at whatever price the driver charged. (It turned out to be significantly more than what we’d pay upon our departure, when we called ahead.)

Despite the hurly-burly start, it took exactly one half-liter of Dreher beer at a ruin pub to jump-start a crush on Budapest. Ruin pubs are a characteristically Hungarian breed of bar that began opening a little more than a decade ago in abandoned buildings or homes. Many are in the city’s old Jewish Quarter (now known as the Seventh District), which has faced blight and decay since the 1940s, when Nazi troops killed and deported tens of thousands of Jewish residents.

Today, the ruin pubs are credited with sparking new life in the area and are a draw for both residents and tourists. We’d read quite a bit about the pubs online before traveling here, and we knew from the Web site Ruinpubs.com that there are at least 20 in Budapest.

Szimpla Kert, where we settled in, is one of the oldest, dating to 2002. More important, it’s just a few blocks from our apartment. Having tapped into the WiFi there, we’d downloaded a TripAdvisor app, which not only has maps, a compass and reviews but also works offline and ensured a panic-free trip from here on out. It directed us to Szimpla Kert with ease.

CHECK The Washington Post Gallery HERE!

Source: The Washington Post

Budapest
Share
Daily News
Daily News

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

SUPPORT US

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to receive daily updates, news & stories about Hungary!

Select your location below or enter your country so we can deliver our morning newsletters to you in time.


Thank you!

You have successfully joined our subscriber list.


.

Latest news
  • What happened today in Hungary? – 25 March, 2023
  • Swiss wolf still on the loose in Hungary
  • What does ChatGPT think of Hungary?
  • British QS listed Hungarian university among the world’s best
  • What happened? Reese Witherspoon divorcing from her Hungarian husband
  • Hungary will introduce obligatory conscription again? The President answered
  • Financial Times: The French will put an end to the Putin-Orbán nuclear friendship?
  • Government proud of brotherhood between Hungarians, Kazakhs, Kipchaks

About us

Contact us

Copyright rules

© 2023 DailyNewsHungary. All rights reserved! | Server and development by Svigelj Levente E.V
Daily News Hungary
Manage Cookie Consent
Like all websites, Daily News Hungary uses cookies to provide you with a more pleasant experience when you visit our Website. Because we are committed to keeping your information secure, this Notice explains exactly what cookies we use, for what purposes, under what conditions and for how long.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}