At the end of his post-graduation summer, Red Taylor embarked on a one-way journey from America to Central Europe. After encountering plenty of strangeness along the way he decided it was a story that needed telling. He spent his first month in Hungary, and this seven-part piece is the tale of the people, food, nights and towns he encountered during his time here.
At the end of the week, I switch hostels to get a feel for a different side of town. Near the Great Synagogue, the ferris wheel and the main Metro station, the new lodging is much quainter in a relative sense. Clean facilities, nice amenities, well-lit and well-furnished. After a brief conversation with the manager, I actually get a job working here in exchange for a free bed.
The job comes with two main duties. The first is simply to foster a “party environment” for the guests by drinking in the hostel bar and bringing them in to spend their money there. The second is to shepherd the migrant flock to the hostel’s nightly organised event.
Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday are the Pub Crawl nights – the route never changes and the “pubs” are always crammed with tourists talking amongst themselves in their fractured English. At least we all get a free shot at each of the bars, and the liquor becomes a necessary indulgence while babysitting 30 drunk travellers three nights a week.
Over time, these promotional offerings have become three parts juice and one part booze – the bars are clever. But like good Darwinist organisms we adapt and begin to double our count, so everyone gets their liquor’s worth and it’s all square in the end.
Monday and Friday nights are an all-you-can-drink booze cruise on the Danube, run in junction with a company that’s similarly staffed by foreign kids hired to party. These are our favourite events to work; free beer, wine and champagne on a double-decker yacht, complete with a sightseeing deck, a DJ booth and dance floor, and a professional photographer.
The woman who organises the event tells me that Budapest has surpassed Prague in terms of nightlife and it’s quick on Berlin’s tail. This party is strong evidence.
We double fist and binge to make sure we don’t need to spend any more money on booze those nights, while the boat offers a magical view of the city after dark; the Parliament Building, the Royal Palace, hillside churches and homes, all brightly illuminated with a magnificent orange glow.
It’s an amazing experience but passing under the Freedom Statue gives me pause. Here we are, Citizens of the World, blasting our American pop hits and puking over the rails right under the nose of the city’s watchful guardian. Still, the booze cruise is slightly different in that respect. Along with the party, you can sense a deference on board.
The sights are breathtaking and almost everyone takes a few quiet moments to process and appreciate them. Many travellers say the boat ride made Budapest their favourite European destination and it’s the reason they keep coming back.
Wednesday night is an open-bar promotion at the hostel, followed by an expedition to a ruin bar for the rest of the night. The normal spot is called Szimpla Kert, “kert” meaning “garden”.
Szimpla is the only legitimate rival to Instant for the title of most famous bar in the city, but while Instant is merely a club disguised as a ruin bar, Szimpla truly has the feel of a beer garden cultivated within old Soviet ruins.
It has two stories filled with wine bars, cocktail bars, craft beer bars, bar bars, a hookah shop and a grill that offers late-night burgers and fries, decorated with a grab-bag of things and more things that would take too much time to list; saloon doors, ukulele signs and suspended chairs to name a few.
It’s a far more social place as well, buzzing with relaxed conversations from end to end. Most of the seating is banquet-style tables but in the middle of the garden there’s also a stripped-down sedan that’s been covered in graffiti and converted into a picnic table.
I actually venture to Szimpla once during the daylight after getting a recommendation for their brisket sandwiches. Turns out the establishment serves as a popular lunch/dinner/happy-hour spot as well. As I observe old friends catching up and teens slurping on Arabian tobacco tubes, the brisket melts in my mouth. Well worth the trip.
Saturday night is reserved for the fabled “Spa Party”. A debaucherous fiesta held at an outdoor Turkish bath, it’s literally advertised as “The best party in Europe!” and the cost reflects it: HUF 10,500 cover, the same price as ten great meals, 45 beers or seven nights at my hostel.
But the people flock to it and keep on greasing the cogs. From the pictures I’m shown, it’s a pool party on steroids with a free pass for sex in any of the waters –though I’ve heard they only change those waters once a month, so pick the wrong time and you’re swimming in three weeks of dead sperm, stale urine and leaked menstruation. I never make it to this party, but more on that later.
Our hostel staff looks like the B-team for “Captain Planet”. Me: the young, ignorant, cocky, insert-adjective American; an entrepreneurial Frenchman, vacationing in Budapest after finishing up work in the corporate office of a top-end German sex toy company; a Swedish girl studying Industrial Design, getting acclimated before a semester abroad in the Hungarian capital; another American, about 26, who’s made enough money as a chemical engineer to blow some of it on a mid-career Eurotrip; a Kiwi kid who joins the day after I do – he’s easygoing with a permanent smile, merely happy to be a part of the nightly revelry.
And a trio of heavy-drinking Scots who depart far too soon, leaving behind a vacuum in the building and a summer’s worth of stories to remember them. Our fearless leader is an Israeli immigrant who does not particularly care for Budapest, but saw a Hungarian party hostel as a wise investment and has devoted his life to the craft ever since.
Having the afternoons to myself, it’s during this time that I truly get to know the city, starting with the street meat. Most people, myself included, can’t afford “Tourist Menus” and there’s integrity in all of the food, so I determine that this is the authentic way.
I become quite adept at scouting out the best HUF 200 pizza joints. Not to be confused with Manhattan dollar pizza, these are fresh, ginormous slices loaded with toppings. For example, the Barbecue Chicken – rich barbecue sauce, grilled onions, and well-cooked meat. Pair it with a HUF 500 Mexican salad, a HUF 390 gyro or a bowl of Kefir with granola for HUF 300 and you can easily get by on a great variety of eats for five bucks a day.
I also take this time to visit all of the sites I’ve gazed at from afar. Up to the Royal Palace and the hilltop monastery. Then the labyrinth beneath them that famously imprisoned Vlad the Impaler, the real-life inspiration for Dracula. A walk along the Danube in front of the Parliament building, just as breathtaking up close as it is from a boat on the river.
Then a hike up to the Freedom Statue and the adjacent Citadel, an ancient acropolis built on the highest point in the city. Because of its strategic value, the Citadel has been a focal point in countless military affairs, juggled between the government, invaders, occupiers and Hungarian freedom fighters.
The walls are tattooed with centuries of their artillery rounds but the incredible view has been preserved. Towards Pest, you get the peak of the Grand Synagogue, the apex of the ferris wheel and a colourful quilt of rooftops. Looking out past the frontier of the Buda side, you get a view of the lush green mountains and all the red-roofed villages inhabiting them.
The exhibit at the Terror Museum is a gut-punching experience. It offers an unabridged look into the suffering of the young rebels taken there, followed by a walk through the basement depths where their spirits and necks were broken. A large wall in the entrance memorialises the faces of the countless victims.
Finally, there’s the great green City Park, flanked on one end by a historic moat and castle, while the iconic Heroes Square stands guard on the other. The square is an ode to the legendary Hungarian barbarians, famous conquerors and feared invaders of Ye Olde Europe.
Expert horsemen and better archers, they could split a man between the eyes while barebacking their steeds at full gallop, even swivelling 180 degrees to fire at targets in the opposite direction. This modern-day Valhalla is guarded by statues of the ancient heroes, with shoulder-length manes and weapons at their sides, as they sit astride their equine companions.
One of the most special experiences in Budapest is the Hungarian Day of Independence, jointly a celebration of St. Stephen I, the country’s first king. On August 20 hordes of locals flock and set up camp at the riverfront with bottles of wine and champagne, enjoying music and awaiting the dazzling annual fireworks display.
As expected, my hostel finds a way to monetise the tradition, so this year it becomes a pre-game for the Thursday night pub crawl. An all-inclusive deal featuring an open bar beforehand, champagne at the fireworks and the usual crawl for anyone left standing.
Naturally then, the tourists find a way to disrespect the national holiday as well. Stumbling about, dropping glass in the street, getting lost in the massive crowds as we guide them the short distance to the water. Some Australian girls playfully boast about how big of “liabilities” they’ll be to me, swigging away at DIY Cuba Libres on empty stomachs.
I actually face no liability in this situation and I don’t think the hostel does either, so if they’re brazenly determined to get blackout drunk on their first day in a country half a world away, I am of no authority to interrupt the good times.
By the time the fireworks begin, I forget about all of our cumulative international ignorance. The Frenchman and I carve ourselves a vantage point within a throng of locals and bask in the pyrotechnics, exploding and dispersing over the Danube with the Freedom Statue in the background.
The show is a thing of beauty. It makes me wonder why fireworks are so pleasurable to our human eyes. Is it visual receptor overload? Or does it have to do with the scale, that it’s painted in broad strokes across the canvas of the sky?
Anyway, the brilliant display combined with the palpable, bubbling sense of national spirit in the audience makes it the most awesome Independence Day celebration I’ve ever been part of. Back in the States, the home of the most famous of Independence Days, it feels like people forget what the bombs bursting in the air are commemorating; all those courageous men and women who rose and fought and suffered through frostbitten winters and the Battle of Bunker Hill, and all the men and women who have sacrificed their lives since.
But we just “ooh” and “ah” at the pretty lights. Here, the people don’t take it for granted; a celebration fitting for one of the greatest cities in the world.
After the independence night pub crawl and another week of exploring, I realise Budapest is a rather small city compared to what I’m used to. I’m living cheap, having fun, hanging with some interesting foreigners. But it starts feeling less like the capital of Hungary and more generically European – a city I could easily mistake as French, Spanish, Italian or Dutch.
I’m not meeting locals, I’m not trying new things and I’m beginning to waste my time. I didn’t come here to do what I would at a hostel in Split or Prague. I develop an itching need for change.
I wake up on a Saturday afternoon after my first boat party and venture into the neighbourhood for a hangover cure. When I return to the hostel, one of our receptionists (all the receptionists are locals fluent in both Hungarian and English) is smoking on the front steps. Some of the staff members think she has a cold exterior, but I’ve given her space and tried to be as little of a problem as possible, so we actually get on quite well.
She asks me if I’m planning on going to the Spa Party that night. I respond with ambivalence – I guess so, don’t really know anything else going on. I ask her if she’s ever been. “Nope.” I follow up asking if she’s ever been to any of the hostel parties. She laughs: “Never.”
“So what do you do for fun in the city?”
A pause.
“Do you know Goa Trance?”
I don’t, and a light sparks in her eyes, eager to share this passion with me. She pulls me inside and we go to the bar, where she commandeers the stereo and puts this music on.
Not much to describe, it’s trance. Quick, pumping, simple, no fuss with harmonic synths or building bass. But there’s something about it. We nod our heads to the beat in a very spiritual way, teetering on the periphery of a trance ourselves, enjoying this music quite well in our states of afternoon sobriety.
I say to hell with the Sparty, I want to go there instead. Excited by a potential new addition to the Goa community, she hops on Facebook and quickly connects me to some friends pilgrimaging to the party that night.
Within an hour those friends meet me in front of the hostel. One is the receptionist’s boyfriend, a mid-20s local walking the couple’s two dogs. They found these stray dogs at a trance festival in Portugal, domesticated them during their getaway and brought them home to Budapest.
The young beasts have a remarkable skill which the boyfriend can only describe as “synchroshitting”. When one dog vacates its bowels, its fellow canine follows like clockwork. Every time. I’ve heard of women’s periods coinciding after spending serious quantities of time with each other, but to see nature’s synergy splatter on the sidewalk right before my eyes is pretty special.
To be continued
You can read the previous parts of Red’s stories in Hungary at www.stumblingredtaylor.com and join the mailing list to stay up to date on all his adventures.