At the beginning of October, Sean and I thought we had our whole trip figured out: We’d head to Greece for a couple of weeks, then to Romania, and kick off November in either Croatia and Montenegro or Turkey.
Ha! Hahaha!
Croatia and Montenegro are seaside destinations, and like the nearby Greek islands, they start closing up shop at the end of the summer. After running into boarded up restaurants and empty beaches on Paros, we figured it’d be best to save Dubrovnik and Kotor for another, more temperate time.
Istanbul and Cappadocia, on the other hand, are open year-round. We applied for Turkish visas, looked into hotels, found affordable flights—and then all hell broke loose at the Turkish/Syrian border. Trump and Erdogan started exchanging barbs, and Sean and I had to scramble to make other plans.
Buda Castle, Budapest, Hungary
Enter Hungary. Sean had just visited Budapest in 2017, so we were never really considering Hungary as an option for this trip. But it was cheap to get to from Romania and we were desperate, so we decided to go for it. And wouldn’t you know: I fell head over heels.
Eger: The classiest town you’ve never heard of
Since Sean had been to Budapest so recently, we didn’t want to spend all of our time there. Trouble is, Hungary isn’t exactly flush with famous tourist towns, so we asked ourselves: “Where would Rick Steves go?”
Eger, Hungary
What’s that? You don’t know Rick? He’s only our favorite guidebook author ever. We trust him implicitly. So when Rick said “go to Eger,” we booked it first and researched it later.
As it turns out, Eger is a very fancy town in Hungary’s wine region.
Eger, Hungary
The country’s famous Egri Bikavér (Bull’s Blood) red is produced there. We sampled it (and a few other local varietals) at the Valley of the Beautiful Women—a cul-du-sac of tasting rooms and restaurants at the city’s edge. We had one of our most upscale meals at HBH Bajor Sörház (and only paid $25 for it).
Beef cheeks and rosemary bread pudding (Sean had the best potato croquettes with paprika-cheese sauce)
And we soaked up Hungary’s thermal bath culture at Török Fürdő—an historic Turkish bathhouse with a massive golden dome over its central pool.
But the biggest and best surprise of all was Eger’s Beatles museum. It’s curated by a couple of superfans, but it wasn’t some slip-shod operation.
A homemade model of the Beatles’ residency in Hamburg
The huge collection of paraphernalia was extremely well organized, and the story of the Beatles’ rise and fall was presented very professionally. We expected amateur hour but ended up spending an entire morning there.
Budapest: Like Berlin, *whispers* but…
Cheaper! What? You expected me to say something else? No no, Berlin is one of my favorite cities in Europe! Definitely top 5. But as with Paris and Vienna, I noticed a lot of similarities between the two.
Parliament building, Budapest, Hungary
They’re both beautiful, for starters: Budapest’s parliament building is one of the most striking I’ve seen, and even in the pouring rain, the Fisherman’s Bastion and Buda Castle took my breath away.
Fisherman’s Bastion, Budapest, Hungary
And history? Budapest—like Berlin—has that in spades. My fondness for the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial is well documented. (It’s dedicated to the 20,000 Jews who were murdered along the Danube at the end of World War II.)
Shoes on the Danube Bank, Budapest, Hungary
The Hospital in the Rock is another gem. At the beginning of the war, Budapest converted part of its extensive underground cave system into a Red Cross hospital. (It was used as a hospital again during Hungary’s failed 1956 revolution, and as a nuclear bomb shelter during the Cold War.) Today, it’s a museum and a time-warp—full of old medical equipment and life-like wax figures. Sure it’s a little macabre—wax patients have blood-soaked bandages on their heads and wax doctors and nurses prod at broken appendages—but, the museum warns, war is even worse.
Of course, plenty of European cities are beautiful and historic. What really vaults Budapest (and *ahem* Berlin) into the upper echelon is its quirkiness. These capitals march to their own beats. They don’t care if you don’t like their street art or their septum piercings. They keep Central Europe weird, y’all.
Funky and affordable restaurants are everywhere in Budapest: We passed a tiki bar, a Cajun joint, and a live bluegrass and barbecue spot all on the same street. And we ate cheap Hungarian snacks at Street Food Karavan (a funky food truck lot) not once but twice.
A very happy girl and her lángos (fried dough topped with sour cream and cheese)
But the best example of Budapest’s off-beat energy is its ruin bars. After World War II, Budapest’s abandoned Jewish quarter fell into disrepair. In the early aughts, creative hustlers converted the down-and-out buildings into bars—but they didn’t really fix them up.
Szimpla Kert, Budapest, Hungary
The results are impossibly cool places like Szimpla Kert, where every crumbling nook and cranny is covered in graffiti, and if you’re lucky you can drink your beer in an antique claw foot tub or a rusty old car in the courtyard.
Szimpla Kert, Budapest, Hungary
We were only in Hungary for seven short, rainy days, but when it came time to leave, I was despondent. There were still too many restaurants to try, too many ruin bars to visit, too many chimney cakes to eat at Molnar's Kürtöskalács. Hungary had such a unique vibe, and I wasn’t ready to move on to the next country.
This delicious Hungarian (not Czech or Romanian) dessert is baked on a spit over an open flame
Even though Sean’s been to Budapest twice now, he placated me with promises that we’d visit again some day. But if you’re headed that way before Sean’s ready to take me back, can I go with you?
What’s the first thing you think of when I say Colombia? Cocaine? Pablo Escobar? Narcos? FARC? Terrorism? That’s fair. But what if I told you everything you thought you knew about the country is wrong?