Day 318: Budapest’s Great Market Hall & Thrift Store Spotting

The last time I was in Budapest, let alone in the Great Market Hall, it was without a currency converter accessible on my i-pod. I’m pretty sure I spent about $50.00 on a handmade Hungarian embroidered doily. Seriously. I remember getting back to Prague and doing the math, freaking out over how much I spent on A DOILY, and then promptly decided I shall enjoy the sh*t out of that doily.

It’s currently in a box in my parents’ house in Kentucky. I don’t think Andrew believed me, until he figured out the currency conversion of the long pieces of embroidery work on display on the second floor of the Great Market Hall.

“That’s $600.00?” He looked at me incredulously.

“Yep. Now you see how mine could have cost $50.00? Aren’t you glad I already got that out of the way? Now we don’t have to stop, because I already have one!” I tried to concentrate on the excitement of this thought, rather than the embarrassment over my rookie souvenir purchase.

The first floor, when you walk into the market has a lot of meat or fruit and vegetable stands. Some have spices including touristy souvenir spice sets. There are a few flower and newspaper stalls off to the sides.

We read in Lonely Planet not to miss out on the basement- something that I had missed out on before (when I was too busy negotiating a “good price” for my doily). We went down, but only found a few pickle shops. We did get some really tasty cheese stuffed peppers though!

The woman behind the pickle counter thought it was funny when we only asked for six stuffed peppers. I don’t think she gets many tourists as customers… She humored us though and we walked away with a little bag of peppers and an equally little bag of pickles to have for later.

One thing I regret is arriving to the market hall absolutely not hungry at all. For some really strange reason, we’ve been having a really hard time finding an authentic Hungarian restaurant to dine in! We’ve eaten Thai, Mexican, chicken wings, take-away slices of pizza… but the only Hungarian restaurants we saw were in the expensive touristy area near the river. Where were the small (and dirty) Hungarian holes in the wall that served excellent goulash and cheap langos?

The answer: The Great Market Hall.

If you have the chance, go when you’re hungry and walk around a little bit, but make a beeline for the food stalls on the second floor. They all looked wonderful!

One of Andrew’s favorite things about traveling around the world with me is when we roll into a city I’ve already been to and I have to find a specific restaurant or store or food stand that may or may not still be in existence. Half the time, this is NOT Andrew’s favorite thing. Sure, it’s great, when the bahn mi stand IS in fact still on the corner of the same hostel and serves Andrew an amazing sandwich… But when we’re in the middle of Budapest walking up and down streets looking for a bar I just can’t remember the name of, it’s a different story. (I just read this out loud to him and he insisted he didn’t mind, but it’s obvious, he’s just trying to be nice.)

“It has red walls… I thought it was called “Castro” or maybe “Cuba” or something like that… But it was sooo cooool!” I tried to remember and then stopped in front of another street insisting that we walk down. We walked past this place below. I wasn’t sure, but we stopped to have a drink anyway. I have a picture of ‘the cool bar’ in Kentucky. We’ll compare upon our return.

We wandered back towards our place afterwards, but not before I dragged Andrew into a pretty awesome thrift/vintage/independent designer boutique, Retrock on our way home. I loved it. I loved the store displays. I loved the selection. I loved that the dude behind the counter said “Sure” when I asked if I could take some photographs, and then loved it even more when he seemed to appreciate receiving my card so he could see my photos. I would have spent a small fortune on freshly designed cropped t-shirts and vintage leather bags if it wasn’t for this trip around the world. Although this store has been excellently curated, it’s not exactly the Eastern European thrift store for those traveling around the world (on a budget no less).

While searching the web to link up Retrock, I stumbled upon some possibly helpful thrift store listings in Budapest, in case you’re interested. I wish I would have done this while we were there and spent the day combing thrift stores!!! So for next time, I’ll remember to check out “How to and Where to Thrift-Store-Hop in Budapest” (although, to be fair, I did stop in Second Chance –1061 Budapest, Király Str. 28.- and I was not impressed with their selection. When I was there, it felt like a lot of racks full of 90s clothes without the occasional super good find from the 60s or 70s if you know what I mean…

I also found this map of thrift stores and a list of The best vintage shops in Budapest. Next time, I’ll spend a day cross-referencing the map and list and my own finds and see what I can come up with, unless of course someone else gets to Budapest and scouring the city’s best thrift and vintage stores before me! Let’s hope they share their list with me!

Day 317: Ruin Pub Hopping

You’re probably super impressed with our efforts to learn more about fascism and communism and what life was really like in Budapest during those times… How we spent an afternoon in the House of Terror and went on not one, but two three-hour walking tours in the past two days… After spending a week in Bosnia and Herzegovina trying to wrap our heads around the Balkans and the Bosnian War. Well, get ready to be equally impressed with our mission to check out as many ruin pubs as we could in one day.

It’s a day of drinking, folks!

In abandoned Hungarian buildings in the Jewish district of Budapest that have been transformed into what is arguably one of the coolest drinking scenes around the world. Yep. I said it: around the world. A few months ago, Al Jazeera published this pretty good read about the ruin pubs, and if you want even more information, a list of ruin pubs, a map, or even drinking coupons; then go here. (We totally should have gotten the coupon book when we first arrived to Budapest, if you like beer, or just hanging out in cool places, you should probably invest in one!)

So we got up and had breakfast… Andrew did some travel research, I blogged, and then we decided at around two in the afternoon, we could probably make our way to our first ruin pub of the day… I have to admit, we checked this out the other night after our tour and I loved it. But I wanted to take more pictures and figured it was a good excuse to return.

First stop: Szimpla, the original (and oldest) ruin pub. It was built, or transformed I should say in 2001. Even though I was here last in late 2006 (or maybe it was early 2007?) I don’t remember any ruin pubs being popular. We went out, and I remember the few places we went being very (VERY) cool- but not ‘ruin pub cool.’ According to Lonely Planet, it’s the third best bar in the world (in 2012). It’s kinda like that feeling you get of being ‘home’ when you’re drinking on a patio in Chicago, only edgier because you’re in an abandoned building surrounded by eclectic retro decorations and art installations and oh right, carrot vendors. One night we even walked past one guy performing a magic trick (which we read is a scam, so be careful!) while two fratty looking boys smoked shisha as they watched. I loved it. It’s laid back. It’s unpretentious. It’s just… cool. You can walk in as a tourist and take pictures before you sit down for a beer or you can meet your friends and film an Indian drum music video. We saw both. Simultaneously.

Yep, that’s a car in the middle of the garden. The interior had been redecorated. I was hoping it would have comfy old cushioned vinyl seats, but they had been replaced with a more outdoor appropriate bench. Although empty in the middle of the afternoon, I found the random rooms off to the side of the main entrance area just as interesting as the garden out back!

Carrots for sale? Yes, please! It’s very hard to turn down a fresh carrot. We actually went back another night and I was really sad there weren’t any carrot vendors walking around… I should mention too, that when we went back (on a Friday night) it was PACKED. There were security guards. There were groups of stag parties. There were locals expertly weaving their way through the crowd. Andrew and I didn’t even try to squeeze into the garden area and instead sat on an unclaimed bench in the main entrance area and people watched for at least two solid hours. It was awesome.

I guess some would say that the best part(s) of the Jewish Quarter are the ruin pubs that are scattered throughout. Obviously, we enjoyed them immensely. The beer was good. The atmosphere at each was pretty unique. There were a lot of international food choices in or near the ruin pubs… The list goes on. But one of my favorite parts was walking to and from each pub. The street art, the architecture, even the dilapidated buildings were fun to pass by, and of course stop and photograph.

Not far from Szimpla, is Koleves Kert (our second stop). It’s nice. In the afternoon, it was calm and quiet, but when we walked by on Friday night, it was bumpin’. I might go on a limb to say that this was the least, perhaps, unique kert. I love being in a garden, but as far as enjoying it because it’s a garden in Budapest, I don’t know if it’s worth it. The bathrooms were really nice though! I especially liked the rear-view mirrors in lieu of the more traditional type above the sink.

Directly across the street from Koleves, is Ellátó, garden and taqueria. Our third stop had a lot more character than Koleves (sorry, Koleves) but not as much as Szimpla or Fogas and the tacos are crazy small. Seriously. Crazy. Small. (There’s another taqueria next to Szimpla, so go there to get your fix.) It was still fairly early in the evening (ahem, afternoon) so maybe it’s more fun when there are more people around, but I wasn’t feeling it…

I thought perhaps we just haven’t seen a taco in awhile, and maybe sizes have shrunk… But even on the back of the door in the ladies room, one girl scrawled “THE TACOS ARE TOO SMALL!” and I wished I had my own Sharpie to scrawl “AMEN!”

Fourth stop, Fogas. Probably my second favorite ruin pub. They have chicken wings, people. How can any pub go wrong when there are cheap chicken wings available? It, like Szimpla has a lot of different rooms although, my favorite was the main garden mostly for the giant circus like ceiling.

We retraced our steps a bit for our fifth stop, Kuplung.

It looks super pretty with all of the jellyfish lamps hanging over the garden area. Had we known it was going to fill to capacity in the garden, perhaps we would have stopped in earlier instead of skipping over to Fogas. Because, instead of sitting outside and enjoying the ambiance of the garden, we had to sit inside.

And it was awful. Stop, if you can sit outside… skip it if you can’t. It’s advertised that there is dancing late night though, so maybe that’s worth it as well!

Sixth stop, Anker’t, the trendiest of trendy ruin pubs. Moby-esque music plays in the background. Wood beams and corrugated steel glow under both stark neon and soft paper lamps. The burgers looked ah-mazing. But I wasn’t hungry (after wings at Fogas, remember?) and sadly declined when Andrew asked if I wanted to order one. Every table was full, and often chairs were taken from tables of two. I’m curious what this place would be like really late. Would it stay the same amount of trendy? Would it get crazy? Go find out and tell me.

Seventh stop, Most. It was right around the corner from our apartment. It’s not on the ‘ruin pub website’ rather it’s one of their ‘recommended’ bars. It felt more like a restaurant than a ruin pub. I mean, it was a restaurant, and I think our waiter was disappointed we only ordered drinks in the garden. If you want Hungarian food (albeit a bit overpriced) go here. Perhaps the wine (bor) is great if they have an entire bar set up for it. But just to have a beer… nah…

To be fair, we also went to Instant on two other nights. Perhaps you’ll stop here at the end of one of your walking tours (we did on the Communist one). It was also right around the corner from our apartment and I was shocked to see a line down the block at around 11 one Friday. It felt a lot like Szimpla, only not as cool. The inside ‘garden’ had a retractable glass ceiling that was closed both nights we went in. It’s big. There are lots of different rooms, but it just felt like it was trying too hard. It was more on the ‘weird art’ style of things than the ‘retro cool’ that I like. If you’re into things like a herd of rabbits suspended from the ceiling, or photoshopped ‘family’ portraits, or even a very creepy mental-institution-like bathroom on display, then knock yourself out, otherwise stick to Szimpla or try somewhere new!

Day 316: What is this ‘House of Terror’?

The House of Terror was once the headquarters of the Arrow Cross Secret Police in Budapest. Many were interrogated and tortured within its walls. A plaque alongside many pictures on the outside of the building reads in part: ‘We cannot forget the horror of terror, and the victims will always be remembered’. In 2002, the building was transformed into a museum with incredibly well designed (some being interactive) exhibitions that often double as what feels like a modern art display. The museum follows the fascist and Stalinist times as well as the years after WWII leading up to the 1956 Uprising. It’s a LOT of information. So much information is not only in front of you, but print-outs are distributed in nearly every room. It started to feel like an intensive history class after awhile, but in a really great way (even if it was information overload). Because we’re gluttons for history lessons and free walking tours, we decided to spend the afternoon on the Free Communist Walking Tour.

The outside of the building was modified to set it apart from the rest on the street. I thought the move was interesting especially considering that originally the building was chosen to be the communist regime’s headquarters because it blended in so well with the other buildings. So much torture was going on right under everyone’s noses.

The museum also acts as a memorial to those who have died in the building, as you can see by the pictures behind the giant tank stationed in the middle of the closed courtyard. I remembered the tank to be dripping a lot more oil than it was today. I’m not sure if I’m misremembering or not. The flowing and oozing oil had a much different effect than the slightly dusty tank you see today. Unfortunately, photos weren’t allowed within the actual exhibition rooms. It’s a really impressive museum, and makes fascism and communism incredibly visually appealing. My favorite was the brightly lit communist propaganda wallpapered room. I LOVE communist propaganda posters. I’m fascinated by them and have a small collection. I wonder if they would share that wallpaper with me. My communist themed bathroom needs it.

The Free Communist Walking Tour was rather interesting, even if it involved more talking than walking… We both liked this guide a lot more than the one we had yesterday though, so that helped quite a bit. We walked through the same park (with the locked up love and skateboarders) and sat down to hear about what communism was like in Hungary. Our guide told us a story about how bananas were only available during Christmastime, but how her friend’s family was overwhelmed when they were in Austria for a vacation in the summertime and saw bananas everywhere! They were so excited that they bought some obscene amount of kilos of bananas to bring back into the country. Officials at the border obviously wouldn’t allow bananas to enter Hungary in the middle of summer, and our guide’s friend’s family didn’t want all of their precious bananas to go to waste… So they sat at the border and each ate 2 kilos or so of bananas before they returned home. Our guide said her friend hasn’t been able to look at, let alone eat bananas since.

I learned that the communist styled block buildings were initially created in Sweden to alleviate a short term housing crisis. In Sweden, these compact apartment buildings were made, used for a couple of months, and then destroyed. Our guide pointed a few out and talked about how many families were crammed into one apartment building. Living-rooms were non-existent because authorities didn’t want people to have any opportunity to meet in private. There was no privacy. She joked around how everyone could hear everything from neighbors fighting to… making up. Andrew and I nodded, from experience, as we can hear everything next door in our little loft/studio apartment we’re renting.

We walked by a bomb shelter. That’s a close up above, and a wider view of the cover/entrance below. Unfortunately, we missed a lot of the explanation because Andrew let our entire tour fill up their water bottles before he filled up ours. One girl on the tour smiled at me waiting for him halfway between stops on the tour so he would know where to go when he caught up.

“Your man is a good one… I saw him let everyone go before him even though he was the first one there.” She said.

“I know… He does this kind of thing all the time…” I rolled my eyes and smiled. We chatted in between stops and later when I told Andrew I had to say goodbye to my new friend, he looked at me funny, wondering when I had the chance to make a new friend.

We stopped outside the former national television station. Rent is too high these days for the station to remain in downtown Budapest. When the station would broadcast old James Bond movies, the villains weren’t Russian, they were Chinese. Everyone laughed. When talent shows were on, instead of calling in to vote for your favorite performance, viewers would turn their lights on or off depending on what they liked. If I remember correctly, kids weren’t big fans of the emerging hip-hop and would sneak down into the basements of their buildings and flip the electrical breakers off, voting for an entire building or possibly block of housing units.

This monument of the 'man on the bridge' is dedicated to the progress towards democracy, which is why the statue is facing the parliament buildings in the background.

Day 315: Budapest Free Walking Tour

Our first day in Budapest! Guess what we did? A free walking tour, of course! Now, I’ll admit it, this is not my first time in Buda(and)Pest… Did you know they once were two cities, one on each side of the Danube? It’s true! My first time in town was with ten of my closest friends from Prague (during the year I lived there) for a weekend away. It was in the middle of winter, about six years ago. Before the days of free walking tours and ruin pubs. So, I felt like I had just as much to see as Andrew. As always a ‘free walking tour’ is only as good as your guide and the others on the tour with you. Both were fairly ‘meh’ but the tour gave us a better understanding of the layout of the city, and the tour company provided a pamphlet of additional things to do, see, eat, and drink in town which made up for the ‘meh-ness.’

We started our tour in front of this statue (above) and I was somewhat intrigued when we were told it’s actually a girl AND it’s a communist statue. Usually communist statues are BIG and commanding and without facial expressions, this defied every communist statue I had ever seen before. It also made me wonder at what point she was put here, because there were a few statues scattered along the riverside that I had not remembered on my first visit. Walking through a small park with a ferris wheel and fountain, more locks were on display. Again, this was not a thing the last time I visited. When did ‘locking up your love’ become a thing? It’s everywhere these days. It started at some point during our time in Korea because that’s when I first noticed it… But I’m surprised at how many cities around the world we’ve seen it in! Andrew refuses to lock up our love. He did raise his hand when asked Who was in love though, so I guess that’s something… 

The best part about walking through Budapest is looking up. Always. Look. Up. You never know what kind of beautiful architecture you’re going to see or at least some interesting juxtaposition between the beautiful architecture and the communist block housing type structures.

This guy was pretty good. He made slack-lining look so easy!

This view is a gorgeous one and much warmer to admire in the middle of summer! 

We made our way over to the Fisherman’s Bastion, one of the sights that has been atop the hill on the Buda side of the city for quite some time. I had visited it with my friends, but it was dark and quiet. There weren’t any other tourists around and it was quite magical. This time around wasn’t the same, there were so many milling about, and it seemed as though some construction had been completed giving parts of the Bastion a Disney-like amusement park feel. I was even more disappointed when I saw the best part of the Bastion (a row of beautiful arches) had been roped off for a restaurant, taking away any possibility of a decent photo opportunity. 

I settled for a picture of this dude on his horse instead. And the view, well, the view was still lovely. 

On our way back through the same park (with the locks above) towards the ruin pubs (more on the ruin pubs later!) we saw the somewhat small skate park had been transformed into an event drawing lots of onlookers. We stopped to see what was going on, and then snuck in closer to see if these skaters were any good. I’m not into skating, but I can appreciate the sense of creativity and expression that goes with it, I’m also down for some good shots of dudes in the air. I guess these guys are somewhat well known or possibly famous? because the crowd was pretty big and there were lots of people taking their picture with some of the skaters. Andrew found this video online that was made about the event:

I was impressed (and jealous) that they had a video up the day after. And then I remembered that they had at least four different videographers and an army of others working together to make it happen.

I was able to sneak in between and below a few people to sit right by the edge of the ramp they were all coming down. It made for some good angles. This dude above kept trying to spin around on the ledge though and his skateboard kept shooting out from under him. One of those times the skateboard shot directly at me and hit me in the arm. I wasn’t phased, I mean, I was the one who decided to sit there while he was doing his thing, right? He came over to get his board and said apologized to me, something he didn’t have to do at all, but I appreciated. I told him not to worry about it, and then he looked back and told me that I should ‘Be Careful’ in a tone that kinda threw me off a bit. It was like he gave me a once over and decided I wasn’t a skateboarder, therefore I didn’t know what I was doing sitting in the front row taking some pictures.

“Why did he tell me to be careful? Can he not tell I am in my THIRTIES?” I ranted to Andrew.

“Since when are you in your thirties?” Andrew asked, teasing me.

“Since now. Thirty counts as being in my thirties. You don’t tell people in their thirties to be careful! I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing when it comes to endangering me and/or my camera. I do it all the time.” I continued my rant.

“Exactly what ages is it not ok to tell you to be careful?” Andrew asked, simultaneously teasing and humoring me. (He does this all the time)

“Well, obviously thirty. Unless you’re out with your friends and one of them has had too much to drink and she’s hanging out with someone dirty.” I pondered out loud.

“Right. Obviously.” Andrew responded.

“Until maybe seventy… I don’t know though, ask me when I turn seventy if I want people telling me to be careful or not.” I concluded.

Day 314: Budapest, here we come!

We should have stayed in Zagreb to see the sites. I even have a friend living in the city, but thanks to our magnificent timing (as always) she was out of town for the day. With the hostel prices so high (Seriously, Fancy Hostel, you charge extra for coffee in the morning?) and both of us anxious to get to Budapest, we hopped on one of the first trains out of town and arrived in Budapest late in the afternoon. We were excited to get to the little apartment we rented out for our stay, but that enthusiasm quickly vanished when we found ourselves locked in the courtyard of a building that had signs up for the hostel/guesthouse office but no one indoors to take us to our apartment. This would have been a lot funnier had I not needed to go to the bathroom. We knocked on doors. We tried to break into the locked wi-fi networks. We finally found a nice neighbor to call another neighbor to call the guy we needed to talk to. We were in the wrong location, and had to walk a few blocks, take a tram, walk a few more blocks to get to the right location. Halfway there, we discovered the tram wasn’t running. We weren’t even surprised and hopped on a bus hoping not to get caught without a ticket. We made it, and even better, found a Thai restaurant around the corner from our place and promptly splurged on dinner.

What’s with the plastic cups in the window you might wonder? It was around the corner from our place and I was so impressed with the creativity in these window displays. It’s not the greatest shot (with the reflection and all) but I wanted to share and remember it for later. I told Andrew that I needed cheap decorating tips for our future American home. Don’t be surprised when you come to visit if our apartment is covered in plastic cups…