Guide To Budapest

I wrote some notes that turned into a visitor's guide before going for a brief vacation in Budapest. As usual, I was the lazy blogger and didn't finish before I left, so here it is, after the fact.

Doing Stuff in BP

Gellert Hill

Gellert Hill is one of the best places in the city and walking to its summit is awesome. It's a long, hard walk up the hill – it's a harder run, but that's another story – yet the view is absolutely worth it. Bring a bottle of something and begin your walk just before dusk to watch the city light up as the sun sets.

Gellert Hegy.

The Baths of Budapest

I'm all for lazy days, but my traditional idea of a lazy day made me feel guilty: watching an entire season of some television show, ordering takeout, and wondering if sweatpants is appropriate for picking up my Korean takeout.

On the other hand, Hungarians know how to handle a lazy day: Head to the baths. You get out of the house, put on your bathing suit, and laze comfortably in the thermal mineral water.

My pick: Szechenyi. It has a sunny main bath in the middle of its courtyard and a bevy of smaller mineral pools. It was the first bath I visited on my first New Year's Eve and it's the one I soaked in this weekend.

Just go for a walk

Be your own Hop-On-Hop-Off Tour and walk around the town. It's a big city, so I wouldn't recommend this if you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry, but otherwise Budapest is made for the Discovery Walker. There are surprises down every side street and I would recommend this for the architecture alone.

Side streets of Budapest.

Drinking in BP

For starters

The beer in Hungary is good, but Hungary is a great wine country. On offer are great dry whites and full-bodied reds. I appreciate this more now that I've moved to beer-chugging Germany.

And, of course there is the palinka. Drink one to try it and see what it's all about. Drink a few more for better stories, and rougher mornings.

Wine Tips

I'm no wine connoisseur, but after almost two years in Hungary, I learned a few things. If you're in the mood for a red, reach for the Bikaver, which translates to Bull's Blood. It's a full red from Eger with a badass story about its name.


As for whites, if you like dry stuff then you're in the right country. Kata and I spent some time crawling from one winery to another in Badacsony on Lake Balaton. I recommend almost any white from there.

Oh! Fröccs! Let's say you meet a few friends on a terrace or patio for some day drinking, then the fröccs is your friend. Wine and sparkling water is refreshing, light, and will keep hydrated, unless you throw palinka into the mix.

Ruin Bars

My tenure in Budapest happened to include many visitsto pubs in the courtyards of old apartment blocks. There are more than I can keep track of, so you can probably find nice, random drinking holes by simply wandering the Jewish Quarter. 

You should at least have an afternoon drink in Szimpla to take in its glorious squalor and its weekend farmers market – while avoiding the multiple UK bachelor parties bar crawls that pass through at night. For an evening ruin pub experience, try an evening at one of my favourites: Fogashaz.

Fogashaz! In all its Tueday afternoon glory.

Haunts in My Old Hood

During the winter, Csendes is an unassuming, yet cool, bar with cheap drinks and walls covered with knick-knacks and what-nots. During the summer, they put out tables and chairs beside Karoly Kert, where you can munch on breads with yummy spreads and sip coffee and/or fröccs. Go there, sit on a quiet street under the shade of the trees and sip a beverage.

It took months for me to get around to hitting my friendly, neighbourhood rooftop patio: Tip Top Bar. I confess, I was far too focused on the breakfast bagels from their ground floor walk-up bar. I was also intimidated by their complete lack of signage out front, which means it's a cool place, I suppose

Down by the River

When in doubt, grab a friend and bottle, and drink by the Danube River.

RIP Kertem 

Budapest is changing fast, and in its haste to update itself, the city is eliminating some of the things that make Budapest beautiful. Calling Kertem a bar isn't quite accurate. It's more like a garden or backyard where you hang out with live music, a bar, and a grill. 

This is its last summer before it closes forever and construction on museums begin. Get there for a drink before the Kertem era is over.

Eating in BP

Primer on eating like a Hungarian

Yes, you're going to eat goulash. It's going to be good. But remember that goulash tastes great because of the paprika, which is liberally added to many Hungarian dishes. When you tire of the goulash, try the pokolt, lecso, or the fish soup – definitely the fish soup.

Do you like cabbage? Well you should, because it's delicious, healthy, and smells great. So try the stuffed cabbage.

While you're eating your goulash and cabbage, remember there is more to Hungarian food than the traditional Hungarian foods. Go beyond the traditional fare. 

I firmly believe Budapest is a fantastic burger city and W35 has the best burgers in the city. There, I said it. 

New, cool restaurants are opening every weekend. There are even vegetarian places. What I'm trying to say is eat the goulash, but think (and eat) beyond the goulash and try something else out.

Eat like Marshall in a Strange Place

If you want brunch, or a nice dinner, go to Jelen. It's a true 7th district dining experience. You sit at a sidewalk patio, enjoy your Eggs Benny, and watch the sketchiness at the sketchy internet cafe across the street.

On the Buda side of the river, Majorka has a great tree-covered patio (well, they call them terraces in Europe) and some great grilled foods on offer.

Someone is going to say something about Raday utca, which is lined with restuarants. If you venture that way, go to Puder. It's great food, verging on gourmet, but the prices don't verge on gourmet.

A girl and her burger at W35

One more thing

Everyone's Budapest experience is different. Some love the city. Some don't, which is sad but it happens.

My experience was unique. No one knows what happens when they leap at a job in a strange, new city they know nothing about. The stuff I have just listed are my favourites, and is a product of my unique experience with the city. It is by no means the final say on what's good in Budapest.

Budapest's greatness doesn't come from its bars, parks, restaurants, or baths. It comes from its people, who are constantly opening new bars, parks, restaurants, or baths – or making the existing one's better. So, trust the people, and take this list as a guidelines and ask the locals for advice, they might grumble about their city, but they are proud of it. 

Shooting St. Andrew's Links

Day 1 – Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Friday began with a 6am wake up to catch a train to Cologne. From Cologne we would catch a flight to Edinburgh. From Edinburgh we would rent a car and drive through the Scottish countryside to reach St. Andrews.

We were actually using planes, trains, and automobiles. 

The purpose of this trip was to shoot footage for an Allianz film. Friday was a travel day, Saturday was for filming, and Sunday was a little bit of filming before our noon-time flight back to Germany. There was no time for lolly-gagging – this was work. 

They say you get four seasons in one day in Scotland. The locals repeat it like a mantra. If its true every one of their seasons is bloody cold. The other seasons? Windy, cloudy, and rainy.

We went up and down fairways and into bunkers on the Old Course looking for the exact scenery we needed. The course was open for a normal day of golf so we were dodging play balls while we were looking around. No injuries, so we never had to find out if a German film crew is in play.

When we were finished, we punched the address for our bed and breakfast into the GPS – no rooms available in town.  We followed the directions, going from a main road to a side road to a dirt road, until we arrive at a horse farm. The GPS was either unreliable or our B&B was very remote. 

Stuck in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, we called the B&B. This did not help because I didn't know where we were and that's a good starting point for getting directions. 

Google had the right answer in the end. We arrived at our countryside, wifi-free B&B, which was run by a kind mother and a son. 

The director, sipping the host's homemade beer, thought it felt like a really fun sitcom. The producer squinted suspiciously around at the farms that surrounded the house and said it was more like a horror movie.

Scouting for spots as golfers play through.

Day 2 – Shooting the Course, Drinking Irn Bru, and Remaining Conscious

Today is the day I also discovered Irn Bru (pronounced Iron Brew). A fluorescent orange energy drink that got me through a day that started at 5am.

It was already bright out when I awoke to begin the shooting day. But the brightness didn't bother me as much as the cold did. 

It being June, I didn't think I would need any wool sweaters. Amateur move, Bellamy! Not only was it as cold as balls on the coast, it was windy as well. I had several layers underneath a windproof jacket, none of those were a match of the fierce Scottish weather. I learned the hard way why all those Scots wear wool sweaters.

And those clouds! The sky was a uniform, thick-as-pea-soup grey, which maintained its gloom all day. Oh, and there were bleachers and TV camera towers littered all over the Old Course for the British Open, preventing the clear landscape beauty shots that we required.

But! We progressed and persevered in the face of wind, rain, sleet, and British Open infrastructure. We got our shots and I got the chance to chip one out of Hell bunker. It's famous, but it also reminded me that golf can be an easy way to get angry.

Plus, despite the rain, our film crew managed to unpack its drone and buzz it around for a few shots of the Old Course, which was closed for maintenance that day. It's a loud contraption with eight propellers and a moveable camera. 

I thought it was pretty cool, while all the St. Andrews' employees were unfazed as they worked away on the course. When you've seen one flying spider robot, you've seen them all, I guess.

The German film crew sneaks up on the unsuspecting groundskeepers.

Making sand castles in one of St. Andrews Links' infamous Bunkers.

A flying spider robot has been sighted over St. Andrews.

Day 3 – Scotch Tasting on the Run 

Sunday. A day of rest for some people in some parts. Not for us. 

We came to the 18th hole at the Old Course bright and early at 6am to get some rare St. Andrew's footage with no people in it. But we got it, just as the first tourists were approaching to get their photos with a stone bridge.

Oh, and we managed to get a homemade Scottish breakfast at the B&B in the process – something we missed out on the day before.

Then! Everything was hauled into the rental vehicles and we automobiled to Edinburgh to catch our plane to Cologne where a train waited to return us to the Dorf. But! Before we boarded our plane, we managed to sneak in some scotch samples at the Duty Free, chased with Irn Bru.

See you again Scotland, hopefully in a non-work-related manner.

One Weekend, Two Port Cities – Port 2

I was sent to Hamburg for work and, due to labour strife and confusion with my Hamburger friends, I couldn’t stay for the weekend. Instead I returned to the Dorf and boarded another bus to a second port city. In this the second port of two blog posts, I write and ramble about our trip to Antwerp.

Our Lady of Antwerp

Antwerp

What pops into your head when you think of Belgium? Beer. Okay, that was easy. But what else? Waffles? Fries? Jean-Claude Van Damme?

Sadly, fries and waffles do not require a secret recipe or a local ingredient. Van Damme is, well, that's a blog post on its own. Is Belgium really that blah? Is it really just about starchy foods and washed out action dudes living off the irony of their washed-ness?

No. Belgium has Antwerp. You know, that city where diamonds come from. Amsterdam's less well known little brother. The biggest city in Flanders, you know? "Flanders Fields, where the poppies grow..." That one? The place where they don't speak French and they don't quite speak Dutch either.  

You can be forgiven for not knowing much about Antwerp, I didn't until a colleague mentioned what a cool place it was. Antwerp? "Yeah, it's a cool town. Better than Brussels. Don't go there. Brussels is a hole."

With a long weekend approaching and no couch to crash on in Hamburg after the ADC, we decided to get onto a bus to see what all the fuss is about in Antwerp. And give Brussels a wide berth in the process.

An unexpected surprise

If you wanted to be anywhere in Medieval Europe (if you don't mind lack of hygiene and a high risk of disease, dismemberment, and/or death) Antwerp was the place to be. It was an international port, filled with merchants and artists and thinkers and beer. Its fortune was built on wool, and, to this day, it's still a cool fashion and design city. 

It was also a hub of religious violence. It was sacked by the Spanish during the Eighty Years War. There were street fights and looting during the Reformation. It had a 'Great Fire' and was blocked from the sea (the city's livelihood) for centuries, then showered with V2 missiles during the troubles in the 40s.

They didn't give up on it. They always moved back. They rebuilt what was destroyed. They maintained what wasn't destroyed. They brewed beer. They kept on going, and today Antwerp surprised me – it's a fun, cool city with a great vibe.

The old town, like the old town in most Western European cities is touristy, but a 10-minute walk in any direction (except towards the river) takes you to a cool neighbourhood. It might be a student hood or the hipster corner of town where streets are lined with antique shops filled with knick knacks. On our first day we even chanced upon a food truck market. 

Culture, Motherf**kers!

I mentioned artists earlier. Some of my favourites put brush to canvas around here: Bruegel, Bosch, those guys. Needless to say, I didn't need a few beers to get excited about checking out the Fine Arts Museum. That excitement evaporated when I learned it's closed for renovations until 2018! 

Rather than sticking the collection into a basement somewhere until 2018, the museum has spread its masterpieces around. There was a Bruegel Land somewhere in the countryside, which I hope didn't look like this:

So, instead of anger-drinking beer on patios and binge-eating fries out of sadness, we managed to see some of the great altar paintings. They were put on display in Antwerp's cathedral, so for an easy six euros we saw a beautiful gothic church and some Flemish masters.

Beer your beery beers, beers.

I might have been a little too hard on Belgium earlier on. They make good beer. And a lot of it. They also age the stuff. They stick bottles into basements and forget about them for a few decades. At one place, Kata ordered a fruit beer that was almost as old as her. They have delicious darks and awesome ales. Most of the wheat beers are palatable enough that you don't need to stick tropical fruit into them.

We were also lucky. We visited on one of those rare weekends in northwestern Europe where it was sunny. Naturally with weather that good in a beer country, we hit the patios. Who has ever told you they got a tan in Flanders? I can! But that was two weeks ago, so it's gone now.

Many of us have a bucket list of places we'd like to visit. Antwerp never rated as a place on my list, but it has earned a spot on my list of places worthy of a second visit.

Kata's fruit beer from 1987. It tasted as bad as that sounds.

Going to the Toilet Disco, complete with a DJ.

Artsy Antwerp and its street art.

A photo of the photo taker.

So long, Antwerp. See you again soon!

If you go:

Drink beer and eat Flemish food at Bille's Beer Kafeteria. There are plenty of great beers, which can be a little overwhelming. But overwhelming is good, because you just ask the staff for advice, they are nice, attentive and all-knowing about the Belgian beers. The bar's mascot is a French Bulldog, who is not as nearly as nice and attentive as the staff unless you're sharing your Flemish rabbit stew.