Rich in history, culture and grand architecture Budapest is still one of Europe's cheaper capitals to visit, writes EMMA CULLINAN
THE GROUP beside us is sitting in a Trabant with the roof sawn off, we are on wooden-stump stools gathered at a small round table and all around people are sitting at variously pimped makeshift furniture. This previously derelict building, now a “ruin pub”, is still half open to the skies and is partly confined by graffitied and deconstructed walls. People lean out of glass-free windows on a floor above, shots of fruit-based pálinka (Hungarian brandy) in hand. Modern Budapest doesn’t just live with the past, it really knows how to live with it in a dynamic way. Szimpla was the first “ruin pub” that began a trend of converting derelict buildings into nightclubs.
Much is made of how Budapest is two cities: it was created from Buda (and Óbuda) on one side of the river and Pest on the other but if you landed here without that knowledge it would seem to be one coherent city. But if you go to each side of the wide Danube you can see at ground level where the division lies: the Castle Hill (a Unesco World Heritage site) part of Buda has been turned into a sort of living museum, with old buildings to visit – such as Buda Castle and the Royal Palace – and narrow streets humming with tour groups trying to make sense of a see-sawing history, and tourist shops and cafes with tables on the street so you don’t miss a thing.
Yet the Pest side – the commercial part – is just as majestic architecturally (except where international hotels occupy some boxy-shockers on the waterfront). That’s the big surprise when you come here with notions of drab cities east of the former Iron Curtain. We arrived into the city at dusk on a cycle path from the west (we’d cycled from Vienna down the Danube for five days) past citizens at play: beautiful people strutting, hearties cycling and playing football, and in boat after boat coxes coax lively oarsmen.
We were struck by the vast and awesome parliament building, washed in early evening golden light. Recesses in its neo-Gothic spires and carvings create black shadows against the orange glowing sections. The building’s scale announces that you are about to enter a sumptuous city.
And it is not lying, when Budapest had an industrialisation fuelled boom in the late 19th century it used its money to build well and the legacy is a city of wide boulevards flanked by solid Baroque, neoclassical and Art-Nouveau buildings (or Secessionist as the art and architecture of that period is known in eastern Europe). A walk down Andrássy út (another World Heritage site) on the first evening had us comparing it with the Champs-Élysées (and designer brands have set up shop in its splendid, carved-stone Renaissance-style buildings). But it is not the only grand thoroughfare in the city by a long way.
Yet, as ever, the tourist rose-tinted view often contrasts with a long-term resident’s jaded vision: a Mullingar-man who came here on a stag weekend and fell in love with a local, married and stayed, says that the traffic is a nightmare. And looking down from those glorious facades to the centre of the streets you realise that those vast boulevards can become quite the motorway if traffic is given priority.
Yet there are more pedestrian areas being created, such as the one off Andrassy út, on Liszt Ferenc tér (named after Hungary’s most famous son), where people sit out by bars and cafes on the street. That flow of human interaction is replicated in the open-plan, tiered Menza restaurant where the in-crowd drinks punchy cocktails and connects over contemporary cuisine. Or you can wander around the car-free Vörösmarty square which is home to street performers and a Christmas market but also to an influx of global brands sited in major retail palaces here, and bringing Western price tags with them. Budapest is still cheaper than Ireland – by about a half or two-thirds – but more expensive than other parts of Hungary. Yet the lower prices bring a great treat with it in the form of a Michelin star restaurant just off the Vörösmarty tér where a set lunch costs around €13 (see panel above).
And for all the city’s incredible buzz there’s a sense that people know how to sit and enjoy themselves, a dying trend in a world in which pondering and people-watching is classified as doing nothing. Budapest’s bathhouse legacy encourages it. The Széchenyi Baths is a complex of large hot and cold pools – both indoors and out – which has the feeling of an old-fashioned lido. Here people wander from pool to pool, some reading, others playing chess, and most just chatting and laughing, in friendly groups, going with the flow.
One local told us that the hippos in the zoo next door were having trouble procreating until they were given the water from the baths to wallow in then – lo – baby hippos galore. No wonder everyone in the water looks so happy.
But while much tradition has lasted this is a city that has coped with a lot of bloody change: its position as the former joint capital of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the crossroads between East and West, has seen all sorts of power-seekers calling by and wresting charge.
As we walk around Budapest with Zsófi, a Hungarian woman who studied Irish literature in Scotland, she often points to gaps on walls or plinths, saying that a statue of Stalin was here, and now gone, or a Classical monument used to be where a rubble section of wall is now. The citizens are still steeped in the effects of the Communist past, and are dealing with the transition into the next phase. For outsiders some of it has a charm: Zsófi declares that the underground trains are still from the Russian era. “Absolutely beautiful,” I declare of the boxy, solid metal industrial age vehicles but she pulls a face. It’s the same in the flea market she takes me to. Original John F Kennedy plates are on the wall, violins hang baking in the sun, Soviet era military paraphernalia is all around: if it weren’t for the restricted plane luggage allowance, I would have come back clanking with historical metal. I did buy a red tin wind-up clock. Again Zsófi, who bartered for me, couldn’t believe it when I stopped at the equivalent of €10. “I wouldn’t pay that,” she laughed. But it represents something that I once knew and lost, in our part of the world, and it is part of the incredible mix of Budapest which makes it a very rich, albeit cheap, place to visit.
Where to . . . in Budapest
STAY
ValueHotel Flandria, Budapest XIII, kerület Szegedi út 27, 00-361-3503181, hotelflandria.hu. Functional hotel just outside the city centre ring road close to the parliament. Rooms from around €21.50 a night.
MidmarketLeo Boutique-Hotel, H-1053 Budapest V, Kossuth Lajos utca 2/A, 00-361-2669 041, leopanzio.hu. In the city centre close to Váci út shopping district and two minutes from the Danube. From €59 for a room.
UpmarketHotel Astoria, Kossuth Lajos utca 19-21, 1053 Budapest, 00-361-8896000, danubiushotels.com. Within walking distance of many places of interest, this refurbished hotel offers modern comforts in surroundings that embrace Budapest's golden era, with its ornate, Classical style and pleasant, quietly attentive staff. Doubles with buffet breakfast from around €90.
EAT
ValueNagi Palacsintázója. Branches include: I Hattyú utca 16; I Batthány tér 5; and V Petofi Sándor utca 17-19 among others, nagyipali.hu. Chain of pancake houses, with branches in Buda and Pest, whose name means Granny's Pancake Restaurant. Functional Hungarian pancakes. Prices from 52 cent for a sweet pancake.
MidmarketMenza, 1061 Budapest, Liszt Ferenc tér 2, 00-361-4131482, menzaetterem.hu. Open-plan buzzing restaurant in a pared 1950s style, flowing up and down half levels and out onto the pedestrianised street. Satisfying cocktails and food. Mains from €6.50.
UpmarketOnyx Restaurant, 1051 Budapest Vörösmarty tér 7-8, 00-36-305080622, onyxrestaurant.hu. Michelin star restaurant where a three-course set lunch costs around €13. Sculpted dishes served by white-gloved staff who perform their task in unison: they stand around the table, all holding plates and, after giving each other a nod, everyone's plate is placed at the same time.
PARTY
SzimplaBudapest's first ruin pub began when a few guys rented a building in Kertész utca which was to be pulled down. It went so well another was opened and it started a trend (another we went to was Mika Tivadar Kulturhivatal, on Kazinczy street (mikativadarmulato.hu). Both places are in the old Jewish district. By their nature ruin pubs may not be in situ forever, check ruinpubs.com.
SHOP
Ecseri flea marketGreat for historical finds but a trek from the city so allow a morning (Nagykörösi út 156, Budapest, Pest, District 19). In the city Andrássy út is the place for designer stuff and the general shopping district is around Vörösmarty tér and Váci út.