6 – 21 May 2018
On a Monday night I arrived in Budapest. After getting off the bus, I got on the metro and the tram to get to my first host family in Budapest. They live 50 minutes outside the city center in a large house. My host was Ági, the mother of the family. She lives there with her husband and her three sons and a daughter. Two of them are also on Couchsurfing, which means that the house can get really crowded at certain times. But the family loves having people over and luckily they have a big house to be able to host this number of people. When I was there, there were two other visitors, who were originally from Poland. I got a place in the basement, in a small room under the stairs. Now I know this might not sound that great, but it was actually a cosy place and I didn’t mind staying there. What I liked about Ági, is that she is a writer. She writes all kinds of books, for both children and adults. I even got to see the preview of her upcoming children’s book. Naturally, I also got to ask her about writing and whether she had any advice for me. For me, this was really interesting. That night we had some drinks and I got to know the family a bit more. One of the sons also marked some places on my map that he thought would be interesting to visit here in Budapest.
Anyway, first a bit of background information. Budapest was not always a city as we know it today. In the year 1873 The cities Pest, Buda and Óbuda merged together to form a new city: Budapest. Even though Pest was the largest city, they didn’t name it Pestbuda, simply because that doesn’t sound as good as Budapest. One of the earliest settlers in this area were the Celts, who built some settlements on the plains of Hungary. They also built a town, that the Romans later took and named Aquincum. However, the first people to form a nation that recognized Hungary as a country, were a semi-nomadic people, who came all the way from Siberia. They crowned Árpád as their king and first ruler over the Principality of Hungary in 896. That is why this year, and the number 96, is very important for the Hungarians, since that was the date that their country was born. It’s easy to see just how important the number 96 is for the Hungarian people: both the parliament building and the St. Stephens’s Cathedral are exactly 96 meters tall. It is even declared by law that no building in the city is allowed to exceed a height of 96 meters, which is why you won’t find any skyscrapers in Budapest. This is very useful for filmmakers who are trying to recreate the looks of an old city, so a lot of movies use Budapest as their movie set. Another reason is that Hungary is quite an inexpensive country. A few examples of movies that were shot in Budapest are: Underworld, Transporter 3, The Borgias, Silent Witness, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Inferno, Blade Runner 2049 and Red Sparrow. Besides the fact that buildings cannot exceed 96 meters, there are also other examples where the number 96 is central: the staircases in parliament have exactly 96 steps and the Hungarian national anthem should be sung in 96 seconds, if sung in the right tempo. Interesting right?
On my first real day in the city I was seeing my friend Sergi from Poland (the one who had given me the keys to his apartment in Wroclaw). The previous day I heard from a mutual friend that he was also in Budapest, purely by coincidence. So I wrote him and we met at Kálvin Tér, a central point in the city. Since he had already seen most of the city, we decided not to go sightseeing and just wander around the city instead. I would have plenty of time to go sightseeing later. While we were walking around the city I also told Sergi about my plans of finding a job to earn some extra money while traveling. So at some point I just walked into a random pub next to the river and asked them if they could use a waiter. At first, one of the men working there was afraid that I wanted to steal his job, because he was the waiter. Then they discussed it with each other and eventually they told me that they could use a promoter: someone who would try to persuade people on the streets to have a drink. I would be paid 2000 Hungarian Forints per hour, plus a bonus for the people I brought. So I accepted and after my walk with Sergi I went to the place to start ‘working’. Apparently I had misunderstood them and I was getting paid 2000 Forints in total, instead of per hour, which is of course quite a difference. I still did it, and I tried to get people to visit the pub. Unfortunately it was a very quiet day and in the evening the weather turned and it started raining and thundering for a while. It wasn’t too bad for me though, since I got free drinks. In the end I had earned myself 3000 Forints. With that amount it is possible to buy two meals in Budapest, so it wasn’t that bad.
On Wednesday I joined a sightseeing tour in the afternoon. I had also invited someone from Couchsurfing to join me. His name was Andrei and he was from Romania. During the tour I also met some other people: Hannah and Sandie from the States and Ian and David from the UK. They were a fun bunch of people and after the tour we stayed together and went to get something to eat in a restaurant. We got some traditional dishes like goulash, and, in my case, beef with some fried dough. To wash our guts and almost literally burn our food, we had some local liquor named Pálinka. They come in a lot of different flavors, but the most popular ones are cherry, plum and peach. When visiting Hungary, I recommend trying at least of those. After dinner I had to go to my next host, who was supposed to host me for the next couple of days. Before I went to see him, I first had to collect my bag from my previous hosts. After that I met my new host and he brought me to his apartment. The apartment was quite a mess. Well, honestly, it was a big mess. Somewhere buried under the junk was a table and some chairs. But still, this was only for a couple of nights and I thought that it would be ok for me to handle. So I took a shower and then went to put something in my bag. However, when I did that, I accidentally pulled the cable of the table light that was standing on the edge of the desk. So the lamp, that was also the only source of light in the room, fell to the ground and broke. And it was dark. It took me a few seconds to realize that the whole apartment, and not just the room, had gotten dark. . . And quiet. For some reason we had been cut of from electricity and my host couldn’t fix it by putting the power switch back on. There must have been some kind of short circuit. My host got really stressed since he had no time to fix it in the following days and he would leave for Belgium soon. After this little incident we went back downtown to have some drinks with the friends I made earlier. During this trip I lost the ticket I had just bought that was valid for 24 hours. This really wasn’t my night. . .
The next day my host and I decided that he wouldn’t be able to host me for another night. Well, he basically couldn’t even host himself, so let alone me. So I took my bags and went into the city. Here I was going to meet with my friends from the day before and we were going to the most famous spa and thermal bath in Budapest: Széchenyi Gyógyfürdo. In Budapest there are a lot of hot springs, where hot water is coming to the surface. This is why you can find lots of thermal baths around the city. The building itself looks like a palace and both in- and outdoors there are lots of pools with both warm and cold water. There are also sauna’s, a wellness center for massages and a beer spa. We had bought several drinks, like wine and champagne, and we were having a great time. After the baths we had some Italian food in the city. After dinner I went to see my next host, Jonas. He is a Belgium guy who currently lives and works in Budapest. He is from the Dutch part of Belgium, which means that we could both speak Dutch to each other. I had to get used to that though, after speaking and writing in English for 24/7. It was quite funny to talk about the differences between Flemish and Dutch, since we sometimes use different words to describe something. That night we didn’t go out, but we had some drinks with his Polish flatmate and we drank an entire bottle of homemade Rakija. That night I slept like a baby.
On Friday morning I went for a walk to a nearby park. Once I got there I found out that in fact it was no park, but a large cemetery. A bit disappointed I returned back home. Later I met with Sandie, the American woman from our group of friends. She is a very friendly and cheerful woman, so I thought it would be nice to hangout with her. We went to visit the large indoor market Központi Vásárcsarnok, where Sandie bought some souvenirs and I got a very touristy bag with ‘Budapest’ on it. After we did our shopping, we got some Hungarian food for lunch. I’ve had goulash quite often in the past few weeks, so this time I had beef with duck liver and some fries. After we finished our lunch, we crossed the green bridge. Once we got on the other side of the Danube, we walked through a park up the hill where you can find the Citadel. From this hill you have an amazing view over Budapest. First Sandie blamed me for letting her climb all the way up the hill, but then she said the view was absolutely worth it. I couldn’t agree more. If you want to have an amazing and a cheap night out in Budapest, you should buy some drinks at the supermarket and take them to the hill at night. This will give you a guaranteed best view of the lit up city below you. After we took the time to enjoy the view with some freshly squeezed orange juice, we went back down. Here we split up, and I went back to see Jonas, my host. He had made some tasty spaghetti for dinner. Later that night we bought some cans of beer at a supermarket and went to Pontoon. This is a nice place just below the famous Chainbridge, where you can sit outside next to the river. It is a place where a lot of people just come to relax and drink at night, while enjoying the view. Some of his friends joined us and we spent the whole night talking and drinking (or the other way around).
On Saturday I mostly hangout with my host. In the afternoon we went to one of Budapest’ famous ruin bars, Szimpla Kert. A ruin bar is something else than sitting in some ruined building though. After WW2, there were a lot of abandoned buildings in the city. Some people decided to use these buildings and create a cheap place were the young people could go for drinks. To create these bars they took every bit of furniture and decorations they could find. This resulted in bars that were styled in a very creative way. If you would like to visit Szimpla Kert, the most famous ruin bar, I recommend doing so during daytime, since the place will be packed with people at night and people will queue up in front of the pub. Before we went back home, we went to get some groceries, since I would make dinner that night. Back at Jonas’ apartment I started making moussaka; one of my favorited dishes. Jonas’ girlfriend also came over and we had dinner together. That night Jonas was going to a friend’s birthday, but I could come along if I wanted to. I’ll never say no to some birthday drinks, so we went to the bar where his friend was. We had a fun night together.
Dawn Under 