I always wanted to go to Budapest, god knows why I didn’t manage to go there early. It’s a two hour flight from Berlin and I’ve heard so many good things about it before, but never made the time to go. Anyways, I was finally able to book my flight with my sister and a good friend of mine and want to give you some insights from my trip to beautiful Budapest.

We decided to go on a weekend trip from Thursday night until Sunday morning, which gave us enough time to explore the city. Our hostel was called Maverick City Lodge, located in the heart of the party street Kazinczy right in the historical Jewish Quarter of Budapest. The hostel was quite nice, the common area was very stylish and inviting to hang out and the rooms were great as each bed had its own curtain. Sidenote – every hostel should have that, it’s just too comfy and practical. If I would have to look at one thing that wasn’t great about the hostel, I would definitely say the female bathrooms. Man, girls can be disgusting! I think we were just unlucky to enter during rush when bathrooms were already in use for a couple of hours, but still, the hostel could have done a better job in fixing this issue. Hostel had breakfast which wasn’t amazing, but definetly good to start your day, so overall, I was pretty satisfied with it. As we arrived  late at night, we only walked up and down the street to see where we were at and  went straight to bed afterwards to have enough time for the next day.

 From Buda to Pest

From Buda to Pest, or in our case the other way around. After breakfast, we decided to walk around, passing the Opera,  up to the main square in Budapest, which was right in front of the St. Stephends Basilica on the Pest side. We wanted to do a four hour walking tour, which led us all the way from Pest to the Buda side. The guide walked us through the streets of Budapest all the way up the the cable bridge which is called Széchenyi Lánchíd and to castle hill where also Matthias church is located at. You have a beautiful view over the pest side, looking at the parliament houses and on the river.

I have to say, even though people say the Pest side is not as nice as the Buda side, both sides were quite beautiful. Of course, castle hill is very impressive and takes most of the view when being there. My favorite was definitely Matthias castle up on the mountain.

After the walking tour, we wandered all the way back down to our hostel. We wanted to check out typical Hungarian food, so we went to dinner close to our hostel which served really nice food. This night, we met my Hungarian friend, who took us to a bar after dinner, where we experienced Pálinka – yeah, never again. I can still feel my throat burning. I let it try my Polish friends later that evening – even they couldn’t stand it. But try it for yourself. We went to a couple of other bars in the Jewish Quarter, which is an area especially good for going out. It was really nice, as lots of people were sitting outside and had drinks, light nights everywhere. Funny thing that we met some of my friends from Berlin, who were on a bachelor party in Budapest, so we hang out and had a couple of drinks together. When they wanted to go to a club, we went home and to bed. Overall, it was a really great first day, we were just happy to fall into our beds, after a day full of walking around.

Szimpla Experience

After still being a little tired from the night before, we decided to have breakfast at a really cute breakfast place close to our hostel. Afterwards we wanted to go to one of the ruin houses, which are quite famous in Budapest. My friends roomie recommended it, so we checked it out. Even though all of the tour guides talk about it and it is probably pretty touristy already, I really enjoyed Szimpla the most during our stay. It is one of the so called Ruin Houses in Budapest, located in Kazinczy Utca, and reminded me so much of all the different hipster places in Berlin. It is really just very run down, however they managed to make it look stylish and cosy at the same time.

The building has two stories and a courtyard in which you can find all kinds of crazy art, abandoned cars, sales stalls and cafes/bars. On the second floor, there are mainly seating areas and bars, all walls are covered in graffitis, drawings and pieces of arts that give you the real hipster atmosphere. My favorite place was the space with an old bathtub as it had the nicest colors and such a cool vibe to it.

After Szimpla, we walked all the way up to the great market hall (Nagycsarnok), which is famous in Budapest for having all kinds of different food there. Unfortunately for us, the market hall was closed, so we didn’t get a chance to visit. It is in the area Központi Vásárcsarnok, which is very touristy with lots of restaurants and bars. We sat down to have lunch, Goulash, and waited for my Hungarian friend who was driving us to back to the main square in Pest where we went to eat apple strudel (yeah, you heard me – its quite big there). Because we had to get ready for our last night, we went back to the hostel and got ready to go out.

We first met the guys in a bar around the corner from where we stayed, called Legfelsobb BEERosag, which was a nice beer bar with all different kinds of beer to try. We continued our night going to the same area as we’ve been the night before. Without knowing, we were running into the groups of guys again and went to Gozsdu Mano Club, which was a fun club to dance to good music. We decided not to go to bed, as our flight back to Berlin was really early the next morning (isn’t it funny that when you book the flight you think ‘oh, not a problem, ill manage’ and when the actually day comes, all you can think is ‘man, wtf were you thinking?’), so we partied through the night and made it to the airport the next day.

In general, Budapest is a very nice city with lots to do, not only sight seeing, but with good nightlife and great people. I would definitely recommend going there, however, try to do it during late Spring, early Summer time. Köszönöm, Budapest. It’s been real.