Long-term Budapest Bucket List

For those who don't know, I'm officially back in the States after a wonderful semester abroad in Budapest. Throughout the semester, I collected some experiences that I didn't get to write full posts about and decided to make them into a Long-Term Budapest Bucket List.

Lots of people travel to Budapest for a couple of days on the way to some more glitzy locations (BIG mistake, but whatever) and if that's your situation then by all means do the big stuff, (Buda Castle, Fisherman's Bastion, Buda Caves, bowl of goulash, ruin bars, etc., etc.) But if you find yourself with a week or more in this beautiful city, then you have the opportunity to do some of these more off-the-beaten-tracks activities. Here we go!

1) Dance to traditional folk music at Szimpla Kert.
That's right, this foreigner hotspot actually hosts folk music nights every Monday night with live music. Dance with a bunch of drunk foreigners and a few Hungarians who have been folk dancing since they were five. If you're lucky, one of them (maybe a sprightly old gentlemen in bell-bottoms) will take pity on all of you and start teaching everyone to dance! Spinning in circles, holding hands, doing mini can-cans-- this is not to be missed! Even if it's not at Szimpla, it's definitely worth trying to learn some Hungarian traditional dancing. Ladies, being spun around at high-speed velocities is an incredible experience!

2) If you're in Buda, go to Pest. If you're in Pest, go to Buda.
I was based in Pest during my five months in Budapest, but there are pros and cons to both sides of the city. In general, my friends and I agreed that Pest is where the fun stuff is, but Buda is where the nice stuff is. If you're a young twenty-something-year-old, Pest is probably a slightly better fit (with the Jewish quarter, all the bars/clubs/parties, lots of restaurants/cafés, more shopping, etc.) But when I took the effort to go to Buda, I was rewarded with lush green parks (ahem, Buda hills), beautifully paved paths by the Danube (the Danube walk is much better on the Buda side than the Pest side), and just a quieter, more pleasant experience. The upshot is this: no matter where you're based in the city, try to see as much of it as possible.

3) Visit (lots of) cucraszdas. 
I love these little sweetshops dotted all over the city. In particular, though, I'd recommend a tiny, independent bakery called Hatcuki tucked into a corner of Buda. Not only do they make the Best Cheesecake I Have Ever Tasted (and deliver it to my favorite café, Magvető) it's rare that you find a place where everything tastes as divine as it does there (the chocolate cake is also good). It may be a trek if you live in Pest, but see Point #2.

4) Visit places in Hungary outside of Budapest.
I've been pretty good about documenting the places I've been in Hungary: check out my posts about Eger, Szentendre, and Mohács (scary sheepmen!), among others. Places like the Danube Bend are so accessible from Budapest by train or by ferry that it would be crazy not to go. If you need inspiration, try taking the train to Visegrád and getting off at the wrong stop! I also wrote about a failed bike trip around Balaton. But, not to worry, a successful bike trip does exist within my semester! A few weeks ago some friends and I biked to Szentendre, proving that it is possible for me not to mess up a bike trip :)

Back at Szentendre: it's warm this time! 

5) Go to Király Thermal Baths
Forget Szechenyi or Rudas. The award for best baths in the city in my opinion belongs to Király, tucked away next to Margaret Island on the Buda side. It's the least touristy, most local bathhouse that I've been to. Don't be fooled by its relatively worn-down appearance: it has all the same functionality and features as the bigger baths, just with fewer actual tubs (and people). It's still got the chamomile steam room though, which is honestly the best part of the any bathhouse.

6) Café hop A LOT
If you haven't already, check out the big list of cafés I published earlier this year. One café that I only found out about after publishing the list: Dorado, an amazing café for doing work in. I tried my first cappuccino there, which was a magical experience in itself, and having had a few more at other places since then can affirm that it compares very, very favorably to other cafés. Another good cafe to check out is Rengeteg Romkafe, where you can try the best hot chocolate you've ever had. A word of warning though: go to Romkafe for the vibe, not so much to do work.

Me with my first cappuccino, which means my first basic Insta-esque coffee photo. Also, throwback to the Original Lonely Nut Club. You are missed. 

A sour-cherry/caramel/rum hot chocolate at Romkafe.

7) Go to Lehel Market
My FAVORITE market in the city. Cheap, fresh, local produce. Also it's enormous. You can pretty much find anything you're looking for here in the way of food. Walnuts are pretty expensive everywhere, but here I can get a half-kilo bag of huge, delicious walnuts fresh off the tree for about $5.

8) Explore the parks in Budapest.
Budapest is a remarkably, wonderfully green city. I've posted about nice spring things to do in the city before, which include the ELTE Botanical Gardens, City Park (obviously), the banks of Danube (Pest statues), and Normafa. I have one more addition to that list: the Garden of Philosophy in Buda is absolutely breathtaking on a sunny day and features some of the best statues I've seen in the city.

This uber-cool statue was a model of Budapest with King István, the first king of Hungary, standing over Buda and his wife standing over Pest.

Why can't Manhattan have greenery like this?? 

9) Admire a spice wall and find Asian cooking ingredients
My first few weeks in the city I thought I would be okay without my usual Asian cuisine. I was wrong. With my pantry bare of even soy sauce, after a few weeks I was craving something with tofu, bean sprouts, and spicy sauce. After an extensive search of some of the "Asian markets," I'm convinced I have found the best Asian grocery store in the city which will fulfill all your Asian cooking needs (also, everything from canned goods to tofu is cheaper here, trust me). Go to Asia Bt.!! In addition to every kind of ingredient your heart desires, they also have the biggest most extensive variety of spices I have ever seen, all stacked neatly on their spice wall. It's truly an experience for anyone who likes to cook (or eat).

10) Be spontaneous
The city is beautiful, and public transportation is imminently accessible. You'll never get lost enough to be seriously in trouble. If there's anything I've learned from my time abroad, it's that it's worth taking chances even if you're not guaranteed a perfect or even predictable experience. So say yes to an impulse and get lost!

Balaton Part II: Return of the Balaton

A mere two weeks after a rough weekend at Balaton, the largest lake in Hungary, I experienced a profound sense of deja-vu as I embarked on yet another train to the lake. This time, it would be different. I didn't have a bike, and I was heading down (with friend Eric) to meet some (other) friends at a lakeside town called Révfülöp.

Nothing was going to go wrong!

Well, when the conductor came down the aisle and checked our ticket, his face scrunched up in the way I was so familiar. We were supposed to have transferred at Székesfehérvár, and now we were stuck on a train bound for the south of the lake instead of the north.

Well, no matter. Eric and I reasoned it would be easy enough to take the ferry across the lake to Tihany, and from there find another train heading to Révfülöp.

I won't bore you with the details, but we ended up taking a ferry, hitchhiking on a hillside trolley, taking a bus to Balatonfüred, then finally the train to Révfülöp. But but BUT the weather was absolutely beautiful, and, honestly, I was happy to get to see Tihany and ferry across the lake (I really really like ferries).

Me before the ferry.

Honestly it's fine to get lost when your surroundings look like this.

Anyway, the weekend only got better after that slight mishap. On Saturday (after a brief icy dip in Balaton), we took a trip to an underwater cave river where we got to paddle a metal boat through the narrow rocky tunnels. It was sufficiently sunny and warm that I assume not a lot of people were interested in cave paddling, so we had the teal-clear waters and echoey rock faces all to ourselves.

Teal-clear water and echoey rocks

When we felt that we were nearing the end of the tunnel-loop, too exhilarated by our nautical independence, we tried to navigate backwards by pushing off on the rock walls. It was going well until the loudspeaker crackled to life-- "no going backwards please."

One friend, in utter disbelief, said "they can hear us?" only to receive a tinny reply: "yes, we can."

So we paddled forward.

Rocky caves

 That evening was a lovely one back at the country house. The seven of us answered the age-old question, 'how many mathematicians does it take to keep a fire burning?' Answer: seven and a lot of hard work. We roasted mushrooms, potatoes, and bacon-wrapped sausages well into the night and feasted while passing around a bottle of pálinka.

Embers of the seven mathematicians' triumph

The next morning, while everything was soft and green, we walked to the bus stop to travel to Héviz, a town by Balaton (but not on Balaton) famous for its thermal lake.

A beautiful morning, passing fields and vineyards

The town profits on the masses of old people who flock to the thermal lake for its supposed healing powers and year-round tepidly warm water. The lake was murky and green and smelled of sulphur, and had a temperature like cooling bathwater. We swam around among lilypads and flitting black birds and rested on old, slimy wooden "benches" built just under the water. I wasn't able to take any photos (my iPhone is sadly as non-waterproof as you can get), but here's one aerial view of the lake courtesy of Wikipedia.

Héviz from the sky. You have free range to swim anywhere in the lake if you pay the 2000 Forint fee. (Source)  

It's kind of incredible the kind of freedom you can buy in Hungary for just a few dollars. Some overprotective mother would have sued an American landmark years ago for allowing people to canoe in a cramped underground tunnel, or swim in a huge sulfurous lake. It's one of the many things that I will miss about living here.

Speaking of which, my time in Budapest draws to a close, and my last day is this Friday. I have a few more posts lined up about my time here, but they will probably be published after I leave the country. I'm sad, and I'll have to think more about exactly what I'll want to say.

Anyway, to sum all this up: I have officially redeemed myself of the bad luck of Balaton. It was a lovely weekend.

Thank you to everyone who didn't let me die at Lake Balaton

At some point last weekend, in a moment of clarity in between the tears and snot and so on, I realized two very important things:
(i) My day could have been a lot worse and in a lot of ways I was incredibly lucky it wasn’t and
(ii) My day was so crappy that, all things considered, it was kind of hilarious.

The weekend started out promising. The plan was I'd take the train down to Lake Balaton, around which two friends of mine had been spending the last few days biking. I'd meet them Saturday morning at some point halfway around the lake and finish the tour with them on Sunday. It was a foolproof plan. One might even say unsinkable. My friends had even found me a bike to use, a professor's bike from the program. On Saturday morning, my saddle bag packed with food, my helmet strapped, and my spirits high, I set off for Déli Palyaudvar to begin the journey.

Déli is a simple subway ride away from Keleti (no transfers needed). The station is across the river and some very busy streets. I left the house an hour ahead of the 8 am train, which was fortunate because (foreshadowing!!) as it turned out bikes are not allowed on the Budapest metro system. 

After I was kicked out of two different subway stops on the M2 line, I realized that there was no help for it; I would need to ride my bike to Déli. The prospect was unexciting. In addition to my complete lack of knowledge about where the bike paths were in the city, the roads to Déli both in Pest and in Buda (in an area of Buda I am very unfamiliar with) are quite big and busy. And it was raining.

But, despite all odds (and a very nerve-wracking bike through a tunnel), I made it onto the 8 am train with two minutes to spare.

I arrived at Balatonfüred right on schedule at 10 am and begin the bike ride around the lake. 

On Saturday morning, I started where the red star is, my friends at the two blue stars.

My route was a simple out-and-back. My two friends started at Keszthely at 8 or 9 in the morning and were biking towards where I got off, Balatonfüred. I'd bike backwards and meet them, then we'd bike together to our accommodations in Örvenyes. 

It was raining at Balaton, too, but the lake was beautiful; the water looked pearly under the grey clouds, and I was biking too much to be chilly.

A view of lovely Tihany

The trail, too, was a pleasure to ride on. Well-maintained and completely independent of the road, it was marked clearly by signs that told you which towns you were headed towards so there was no chance of getting lost. For the first three or four hours of the ride, I was having a lovely time along the lake.

Signs like the one on the right littered the trail.

I was just passing a tiny town called Zánka when I saw that I would be riding through some kind of bike tour finish: participants in casual athletic gear were pedaling into the town where I could see some sort of finish line + loud music + announcer. Seemed interesting enough. 

Pedaling over an increasingly narrow road, I rounded a corner heading downhill when I saw four people pedaling up the hill in front of me; two tour administrations in bright red jackets, a young man, and an older woman. I slowed down at the downhill and moved to the far right to let them pass. 

Then, without warning, somehow, just as I was passing him, the young man swerved into me and, in slow motion, we both toppled over in an epic fall, him and his bike on top of me and mine. 

I was dazed, but other than a sharp but fading pain in my jaw and what turned out to be several large bruises on my legs, I was unhurt. The young man seemed fine as well. He got up, inquired to see if I had died (I had not), then promptly biked away. The two tour administrators, who had seen everything, stopped to help me prop my bike back up. 

I insisted I was fine, wanting to bike away from this incident ASAP, but something was wrong-- my bike wasn't moving. I checked again, and my heart dropped. The front wheel had somehow gotten bent into the fork and was no longer turning. 

A photo I took later of the damage. 

Thankfully, the race administrators helped me carry the bike to the finish line of their tour, where I was informed that the bike was probably too damaged for their mechanic or for any bike repair shop on the lake to fix (the entire fork needed to be replaced), which effectively meant that I'd have to return back to Budapest having spent only four hours on the lake. 

I was not a happy camper. But I cannot emphasize how lucky I was that the accident happened in the middle of this organized bike tour. The hero of this story, a wiry tour administrator named Tamás, drove me and The Bike in the van to a bike repair shop at Balotonfüred to confirm what we already knew-- that it was unrepairable. Back at the tour finish, Tamás and the other administrators tracked down the guy from the tour who had hit me in order to ask about reimbursements for repairs. Thankfully, the young man seemed willing to give his contact information to help pay for the repairs of the bike. I even got fed goulash and Hungarian pancakes at the finish line, courtesy of their catering services for the participants of the tour!

If the accident had happened somewhere random on the lake, with someone who was not affiliated with some larger event, I have absolutely no idea what I would've done. 

Anyway, as Tamás and another administrator were driving me and the broken bike back to Balotonfüred (me wistfully watching the bike path I had labored down that morning unfold in reverse), I asked about the subway situation back in Budapest. I couldn't bike back home now from the train station. 

One of the administrators helpfully told me that the M4 line allows bikes on the weekdays, and if I got off the train at Kelenföld, a more remote station far from downtown, instead of at Déli, I could just take the subway directly into Keleti. Ah, I thought, how easy! It was 1 pm now, the train ride back was just shy of 2 hours-- I could be back in my warm house by 3 pm! (Having not biked for over an hour, I was nicely chilled now) 

I got off at Kelenföld, exactly as planned, and when I dragged the bike to the subway, the guards reacted as if I had tried to take a bomb into the metro, angrily gesticulating that I was not to bring my horrid bike on the underground. A passer-by informed me that I had to buy a bike pass for my bike. But it made no difference. The subway guards were not impressed with the bike pass, told me it was for the bus, and kicked me out of the subway.

So I went to the bus. Luckily, there was one that would take me back into downtown. When the bus finally pulled up, as I was hobbling through the double doors with my Great Burden, the bus driver angrily started using the word that was becoming the theme of the day "nem, nem, nem, nem, NEM!" pointing to my pride and joy, this lovely, broken bike. 

In defeat, utterly out of ideas about how to get back into the city, I went to the public transportation information desk, where I was informed by a very frustrated lady that I had to buy two new bike passes, take another train to another station outside of the city, then take yet another train back into the city to Keleti. Exasperated, she asked why I "didn't just ride my bike into the city." 

On the final train, when the conductor came to check my ticket, I was sweating in fear, sure that he was going to tell me that I wasn't allowed to ride this train, either. The conductor gave me and my bike and cursory glance, and like my own personal holy savior signed off on my ticket. 

The relief was so palpable that I wanted to fall upon my bruised knees in joy.

So, back at Keleti five hours later, the last leg of my journey awaited: the twenty minute walk home. Arms heaving, feeling like a Spartan warrior trudging through the rain with my poor broken steed, I finally made it home. 

So not a great day. But a week later, thinking back on it, I was incredibly fortunate that so many people were so willing to help me. Even though they'll probably never read this, thank you to Tamás and the other tour administrators for not letting me, well, die on Lake Baloton (and for feeding me!). You guys really went out of your way to help me out. Thank you to the three ladies at Kelenföld who independently patted my back in sympathy when I was trying to stop crying next to the escalators. Thank you to the information desk lady, who, while a little crabby, got me back to Keleti. Thank you to that last train conductor for giving me what was undoubtedly the happiest experience I've ever had on a train.

And thank you even to the other guy in the accident. Because without you, what would have been a routine biking excursion turned out to be one of my most important and memorable weekends in Budapest!

Hungarian Food: Impressions

My first reaction to Hungarian food was that it’s not very photogenic. In the first week, the Babilon Language School took us to a small restaurant in Taksony for a sampling of the Hungarian culinary tradition, and after I had loaded my plate with all manner of roasted pork, stuffed cabbage, and other stewed meats and grains, I thought to myself “the only two colors on my plate are white and red.” So besides the fact that I was ravenous and couldn’t wait to dig in, that’s the unfortunate reason I didn’t take a photo of the food.

Luckily, when we went to Eger (more on that later) our bubbly guide Emese took us to a glorious contemporary restaurant that served Hungarian food but very prettily. So without further ado, a glimpse of the Hungarian palate:

The first course: the famous Hungarian goulash. This version featured a rich beef base thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (and blood red to boot) but I’ve also had less fancy more soup-like variants of this delicious, paprika flavored dish.

The main course was a lovely chicken paprika dish with an egg noodle base, a modern take on chicken paprikash. Note the heavy use of tejfol here!

Dessert was Hungarian pancakes. When I first heard “Hungarian pancakes,” I was expecting latke-like things, but these are sweet crepes stuffed with túró and topped with apricot jam and berries.

The stars here are meat and dairy. Hungarian food is very heavy and not very vegan friendly (at all). But with all the fat and spices, it’s honestly objectively delicious, even if it’s not the best diet for avoiding heart attacks.

I have three major observations about the food:

1. One of my new favorite ingredients is the Hungarian tejfol (pronounced “tay-fol”) which is an interesting mix of sour cream and yoghurt that’s perfect for cutting through all the fatty spicy meat and sausage, or for dolloping on a bowl of thick goulash. In the previous picture, there are about 2 pints’ worth of tejfol dolloped on the main chicken dish. Two of my friends on the program like to joke about how they killed a liter of sour cream here within a week thinking it was Greek yoghurt (mixing with peanut butter and such) before they realized otherwise, but honestly, I think it's an understandable mistake. Tejfol tastes more like yoghurt to me than American sour cream. I’ve put a little in oatmeal to make it creamy and it’s pretty good.

2. If the “white” in Hungarian food is all that tejfol and carbs and such, the red is definitely paprika (Hungarian for the Cubanelle-like peppers that are cheap and ubiquitous here). Paprika, paprika powder, paprika paste (which comes in toothpaste-like tubes), and all derivations of the spice are in everything here. Which means, at least according to me, that Hungarian food has all the heaviness of British food with none of the blandness!

3. Sweets. Good God, Hungarians know how to do their sweets. My sweet tooth is having a field day. Pastries and cakes, in fact all manner of sweets, are ubiquitous here in what are known as cukrászdas, which are “sweet shops” that sell any kind of sweet a sugar maniac can think of in one convenient location. In one particularly famous Jewish cukrászda, I sampled flódni, a three layer pastry of crushed walnuts (mmm...), poppy seeds, and apples. At a Hungarian restaurant on the first week, my roommate and I had the good fortune of ordering Somlói Galuska, a beautiful sponge cake trifle drenched in chocolate sauce as dark as hell and a little boozy (so, in a word, divine). But the sweets don’t have to be fancy. In every subway stop I’ve been to I’ve seen pastry shops galore where everyone lines up to buy pastries filled with csoki (chocolate) or túró (like cream cheese).

Unfortunately, I have lost many a two hundred forint coin at such shops.

Flódni from Fröhlich Kóser Cukrászda

The beautiful Somlói Galuska from the first night. The little fruit on top, we discovered, is a delightfully sour “ground cherry”!

And finally, to talk about drinks. Hungary is wine country (not beer, like its western neighbors) and thank God for that- I’ve always disliked beer. I’ve had two official wine tastings so far, and have swirled and breathed in wine as pretentiously as I possibly can. But by far the best thing about Hungarian wine culture is that it’s extremely common to drink wine at bars (even not-fancy bars), which means I no longer have to look like a dweeb drinking a glass of wine while all the cool kids drink Coors Light or something.

Wine and desserts, friends. Pray I don’t come home with diabetes.

Me at wine tasting numero uno trying to be fancy with a fancy rosé.