Hungary

I flew into the airport in Budapest, Hungary not really knowing what to expect from this city. I was blown away by how much I liked Budapest. What struck me the most was the general atmosphere of this place. There was good street music, friendly people and many good places to have a drink. They have these things called bridges here:

And also this:

I started out in a relatively tame hostel, Carpe Noctem, where I met American Dan, and the first night out wasn’t anything too crazy. The next night, there was a boat cruise party, and I mean that’s something I’m not going to turn down. We all pre-drank, and then turned up to the boat. They gave us all a bottle of champagne, with only one rule – don’t spill champagne on the carpet. Who carpets a party boat? Not surprisingly, almost everyone spilled champagne on the carpet when they attempted to open their bottle. 

Even without drinking, the cruise would have been definitely worthwhile. I didn’t take my camera, but should have, as Budapest is nicely lit up at night. After the boat, we went to what was voted (in Lonely Planet) the best bar in the world in 2012. It’s called A38 and it’s a pub on an old boat.  It wasn't really anything that special really, and I no longer trust the opinion of Lonely Planet, or anyone that reads Lonely Planet.

Next, I moved to a different hostel – Retox. Words can’t describe this hostel. I have never in all my travels seen people as intent on drinking and partying as I did here. I was out of my league. To make it even worse, the room was unbelievably hot, so sleeping in was virtually impossible. I hung out mostly with Dan, and his friend Liz here, who were thankfully a bit more ‘normal’ than everyone else. One of the highlights was when we went to a bathhouse party, which is a cool concept in my opinion. Like a pool party, but the water is really warm.

As usual, I’ve left out of lot of details, mostly due to laziness, but suffice to say, I woke up one day and decided I had partied too much here, and should leave ASAP, so I booked a train to Poland for later that day. Given it was my last day, I finally got around to doing some proper sightseeing with Liz. Here’s a photo as some sort of proof that I was in this city:

Summary

Awesome:

Great nightlife, good vibes, picturesque

Craptacular:

Trying to keep up with alcoholics

What's Next

Poland. Where bad stuff happened in WWII