ruin pubs

A trip to Budapest could easily be crammed full of museums, monuments and places of historical import, if that’s your thing, and don’t get me wrong, Budapest has quality examples of all of those. But I want to give you a quick idea of the cool things, the quirky things and the delicious things Budapest has to offer travellers. So get yourself to the Parliament, check out Fisherman’s Bastion, have a swim at a stunning bathhouse, see an exhibition and eat some Goulash, and then have yourself a look at my list below. If you throw a couple of these into your holiday mix, I promise you’ll love Budapest even more.

1. Escape Rooms

Although they’ve been around since 2011 in Budapest (and even earlier in Asia), Escape Rooms have really begun to take off in 2014 and they’re now popping up all over the world. But if you’re itching to try one, right now Budapest is the place to be. They currently have close to 50 Escape Rooms dotted around the city, all with different themes and difficulty levels. Don’t know what an Escape Room is? Well I wrote an article for TNT Magazine about Claustrophilia, Budapest’s most popular Escape Room, so have a read about it here and see what you think.

2. Ruin Pubs

Today there are countless ruin pubs in Budapest, but the first and perhaps the best, Szimpla kert, was opened in 2001. The basic concept of a ruin pub is to find a run down building, buy it for peanuts, cram it full of retro objects and fit in a bar. The idea proved so popular, not just with the locals but tourists as well, that Szimpla is now a top Budapest attraction its own right.

While I was there, trying to keep a straight face while drinking the hellishly strong local tipple Palinka, I was surprised to see an umbrella waving guide herding her flock of middle aged foreigners through a graffiti strewn staircase. But trust me, this fails to detract from its cool, funky vibe. Every ruin pub offers something different; Koloves kert, the outside beach club themed bar next to the Koloves restaurant has an array of hammocks for those who need a lie down after their Palinka shots, Foghas haz boasts an Escape Room and regular live gypsy bands and Corvinteto is a rooftop bar, so you get a stunning night view of Budapest to add to the cool surrounds. They may all share the run down vibe, but what’s even better about ruin pubs is their strong ties to the local community. As well as a pub, they’re often a cafe, a cinema or a venue for theatre, arts events, live music and dances.

If you’re directionally challenged in new cities and don’t like the idea of having to navigate your way to a selection of ruin pubs, get yourself to Kazinczky street in District VII and, as long as you can follow a straight line, you can check out Szimpla, Ellato Kert, Koleves Kert and Mika Tivadar all in one go. But don’t forget, being largely outdoors and/or on rooftops, most ruin pubs are only open for the summer.

You can read about my visit to Szimpla and see some photos here.

Koleves kert

District VII

District VII, or Erzsebetvaros, on the Pest side of the Danube, is where you’ll be able to get a feel for another side of Budapest. Not only is it where you’ll find most of the Ruin Pubs and Escape Rooms, but due to its large Jewish community, District VII has plenty of history and culture to offer too.

Most striking are the three synagogues making up the so-called Jewish triangle. Even without looking for it, you’ll probably run across the newest synagogue on Dohany Street, which is built in an imposing Moorish style and is the 2nd largest synagogue in the world, outside America. It has a museum, a cemetery and the yearly Jewish Fetival is held there in the summer. The two smaller synagogues which make up the triangle can be found on Rumbach and Kazinczky streets.

As well as a growing number of edgy, artsy, youth oriented bars and restaurants to discover, District VII also has some kosher choices too, one of which, the Frohlich Cukraszka on Dob street, is the only kosher bakery left in Budapest. Being a city renowned for luxurious coffee houses serving layered, cakey delights, you could say goodbye to a small fortune trying out the sweets in places like Gerbeaud, Ruszwurm or the New York Cafe. But my choice is the small, family run Frohlich, which has what many insist is the best Flodni cake in the city. Much more dense and flavoursome than Budapest’s famous Dobos sponge cake, Flodni is an apple, walnut and poppy seed layered pastry that is as delicious as it is calorific. It’s said to have almost 1000 calories per slice, but you know, how big is a slice? Depends who’s cutting, right? (more…)

If there’s one thing that’ll put an almighty spring in your step, it’s a couple shots of Palinka.

NB: When you write any kind of trilogy – or quadrilogy as it looks like this will become since I’m crap at that thing called editing – you’re supposed to fill in those who came into the story late, so that when you make references to the shenanigans in previous parts, they know what the hell Palinka is. But really, I’m too lazy. So, if something’s not making sense, maybe go back and read Part 1 here and then Part 2 here and we’ll all be nice and caught up. I mean, think about it, if you started the Harry Potter books with The Chamber of Secrets, you’d never know what Polyjuice was, and that would be tragic.

If my energy was in any way starting to lag from this Budapest tour Julia was taking me on, one shot of Palinka was all the jump-start this old fart’s batteries needed. To Julia, having grown up with it, Palinka is probably akin to a fruity cordial. To me, it’s the stuff we all wish Sandra Bullock found in that Russian space ship’s fuel tank in Gravity so we’d have been saved from the corniest three minutes on film ever. So when we left the Toldi cinema to move on to the ruin pub Szimpla, I was pretty much strutting down Kazinczy street like I was John Travolta at the end of Saturday Night Fever.

Don’t worry, it wore off.

Maybe I’m criminally unhip when it comes to ‘what’s hot’, but I’d never heard of ruin pubs until about a couple of years ago. So I’ll pretend you haven’t either. Szimpla Kert (kert meaning garden), probably the most well known of Budapest’s ruin pubs, opened in 2004. Well it actually opened in 2001, but moved around a couple times until it found its present location in Kazinczy street in District VII a few years later. Ruin Pubs are an amazing example of enterprise, of young people making the most of their city’s dire economic situation. Put bluntly, the Real Estate situation in Budapest is f****d and yes, I did some research so I can back up that sweary statement with fact. Excuse me while I be all professional for a moment. In their “Emerging Real Estate Trends 2014” report, Price Waterhouse Coopers concluded that of the 28 European countries they surveyed, as well as having the highest office vacancy rates, “Budapest continues to be on par with Athens as investors continue to avoid the city on concerns about politics and the general economic outlook.” In my layman’s head that means nobody’s spending any money on real estate, nobody’s building new buildings and nobody has the money to renovate those that exist so they’re falling apart and nobody’s renting them. It’s been this way for years, to the point that certain areas of Budapest are awash with dilapidated, abandoned, need I say ruined buildings ready for demolition.

But the owners of Szimpla looked at it differently. They saw an opportunity; insanely cheap rents. Coupled with their very handy ‘shabby’ decorating theme, this meant no expensive refit needed and, from the looks of most ruin pubs, no massive cleaning bills either (not in an ‘oh my god this place is so dirty I’ll get through a few packs of sanitary wipes before the night’s out’ way, more of a ‘nobody’s ever going to get on a ladder and clean those cobwebs off the ceiling’ way). They simply (hah) installed bars and filled every inch of the place, even the ceilings, with trinkets from their youth, upcycled bits and bobs and one of just about every little nick-nack you’d find at garage sales across the country. And a phenomenon was born.

Actually, it’s easier if I just show you.