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I’m writing at our table in the New York Café, Budapest, although to call this ridiculously ornate former insurance hall a café seems at best irreverent. I’ve just polished off a bowl of somloi galuska, Hungarian trifle made with walnuts, chocolate and cream, soaked in apricot brandy.
I’m here with my wife Rachel in Hungary’s capital visiting friends and relatives. My parents fled the country during the 1956 Uprising, so it’s another opportunity for me to practice my rusty Hungarian, a dauntingly opaque language linked only to Finnish and Estonian.
Budapest is above all a city of bridges, connecting the commercial side, Pest, with the leafy hills of Buda, dominated by Castle Hill with its steep, cobbled alleys, atop which the imposing Castle, Fisherman’s Bastion and magnificent Matthias Church.
During your visit you’ll find yourself crossing the Danube often in order to take in this stunningly beautiful city and walk off the calories. The most famous crossing is the “picture postcard” Széchenyi Chain Bridge; designed by an Englishman, constructed by a Scot.
Pest is home also to Hungary’s 286 metre-long neo-Gothic Parliament (or Országház) in Kossuth Square. It’s well worth the visit and the No. 2 tram and Line 2 metro stop right outside. If you’ve been to Vienna you’ll be reminded of its architectural doppelganger, Vienna’s gothic City Hall.
Prior to WW2, Budapest was home to one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities. The first anti-Jewish laws had been passed in 1938; Jews were banned from working in government and from editing newspapers, and only six per cent. of lawyers, doctors and engineers were permitted to be Jewish. The events that followed Nazi Germany’s invasion of Hungary in March 1944 need no retelling here, suffice to say that my own family (both maternal and paternal sides) was severely impacted.
The Dohány Street (or Great) Synagogue (closest metro stop Astoria), built in an Arabic-Moorish style (check out those Alhambra-like domed towers), remains Europe’s largest with a capacity of 3,000 worshippers. A visit (guided and private tours can be booked on-line, or just buy a ticket and wander around) takes in the synagogue itself, memorial gardens and the Hungarian Jewish museum on the site of the house where Theodor Herzl was born. Especially poignant, the dramatic Emanuel Tree (or Weeping Willow) Memorial, which has the names of thirty thousand Holocaust victims inscribed on its metal leaves.
Dohány Street marks the border of the former Budapest Ghetto within Budapest’s District 7, an area now popular for its specialist coffee shops, falafel bars, craft beers and quirky shops. While there, admire the fusion of Judeo-Art Nouveau of the orthodox synagogue, and stop off for a superb flat white at Stika.
Do also visit the Cipők a Duna-parton (or Shoes Memorial) roughly half-way between Parliament and Széchenyi Chain Bridge on the Pest embankment. The sixty pairs of iron shoes, boots and sandals commemorate the hundreds of Budapest Jews lined up and shot into the river by the Hungarian Fascist Militia in December 1944. My father, then only eight, was one of those rounded up for execution. Mercifully, he was able to run away and avoid recapture.
Budapest is famous for the wellbeing properties of its waters. The city sits on a geological fault line with hundreds of natural springs jetting skywards. Following their conquest of Hungary in 1526 the Turks built a number of Hamman-style thermal baths, three of which, Rudas, Király and Veli Bej, operate today. However, for the full spa experience, head over to either of Gellért Baths (in the fabulous Art Nouveau Hotel Gellert on the Buda side), and Széchenyi Baths (the largest spa complex in Europe, and especially wonderful in winter) for a full range of spa treatments, and for mineral-rich indoor and outdoor swimming.
A quick mention of Hungarian politics. Hmm. Hungary continues to struggle with … let’s politely say idiosyncratic views, likely a result of being subjugated over the centuries by successive invaders (Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Soviet) and now struggling to assert its own identity. Happily, as a visitor you’ll be oblivious to the country’s growing political radicalisation on the global stage, and unless you’ve a good grasp of Hungarian you’ll miss the inflammatory political messaging on posters and billboards.
Where to stay? You could check in to one of the global 5* brands (Four Seasons, Kempinski, Ritz Carlton and others) but Budapest also has an abundance of boutique hotels and Airbnb properties. On one memorable visit Rachel and I stayed at Brody House, a former artists’ salon, now quirky boutique hotel, in which each of the ten rooms has been decorated by a different artist.
If you’re staying for more than a long weekend, a half-day in the small baroque town of Szentendre along the banks of the Danube (40 minutes on the HÉV H5 local train from Margit Bridge) provides a wonderful escape from the bustle of the city on a hot summer’s day. With its narrow cobblestoned streets, art galleries, coffee shops and churches, Szentendre is home also to the Szamos Csokoládé Múzeum (Museum of Chocolate).
Your waistline won’t thank me but trust me, you will!
On the subject of food (I keep coming back to that, don’t I), traditional Hungarian restaurants abound, and with the forint weak against Sterling and US$ you’ll find prices generally low by say London standards. I’d suggest avoiding the glitzy eateries along the Pest embankment and up on Castle Hill in favour of more authentic dinning venues like Café Kor, Két Szerecsen and, for a modern take on Hungarian classic cuisine, Szaletly. Reservations are always wise; Budapest is busy all year round.
More Budapest top tips:
ABSOLUTELY take the number 2 tram (Pest side) on its stunningly scenic 20-minute meander from Közvágóhíd to Jászai Mari Square at the Margit Bridge. For 450 forint (under a quid!) you’ll take in many of the major Budapest landmarks. When you get off, walk half-way across the bridge to Margit Island, a one-kilometre green oasis equivalent to say Hyde or Central Park. It will take you a pleasant hour or so to circumnavigate.
Download the BudapestGo app to purchase e-tickets for bus, tube and tram. Alternatively, buy books of ten from ticket machines (4,000 forint or roughly £8.50). A word of caution: ticket inspectors are ruthless and abundant, and all tickets (paper and digital) must be validated in a designated machine to avoid incurring a hefty penalty fare.
Download the Főtaxi taxi app, Budapest’s cheap and reliable equivalent to Uber. Főtaxi is the official provider of taxi services to and from Budapest Airport. Fares are transparent and reasonable. Bolt also operates in the city.
Budapest is a walker’s paradise (wear comfortable shoes) and is perhaps even more beautiful after dark!
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Back at the New York Café our waitress has returned. Would we like the bill, she enquires, her eye on the growing queue of impatient faces that now snakes all the way back to the main entrance. Not just yet. Could we see the menu again? That raspberry and pistachio tart looks rather tempting.
