Greetings from Budapest! (Budapest (Hungary))

Member Name: Fu-Manchu

Product:	Budapest (Hungary)
Date:	20/05/01 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Beautiful

Disadvantages: People seem a little unfriendly, Extremely hard language

Hi there, this is your old pal Fu-Manchu here, speaking to you live from an Internet Cafe on Vaci Utca, what seems to be the main tourist drag in Budapest. Yet for all the Yank accents round here, they might aswell rename Vaci 'Little America'.

Withnail himself, Richard E. Grant hated it here - he was filming the latter stages of the ultra-turkey 'Hudson Hawk' in and around
the city. His vitriolic account in his memoirs 'With Nails' makes hilarious holiday-from-Hell reading, but that shouldn't deter anyone from giving Budapest a try.

Budapest is a sprawling and occasionally bewildering city. Comparisons with my beloved Prague are inevitable, but size-wise, Budapest to Prague is like London to Ipswich. Before I got here, I read in one guidebook that Budapest has an "Architectural Majesty" grander than that of "Toyland Prague". I took this to be a derogatory comment, but now I understand - this is a huge place, while Prague seems like something out of a snowglobe.

The feeling of the place seems more laid-back and almost Mediterranean, while the people seem more relaxed than the melancholy Czechs. Again, I'm stunned by the women in this city. Budapest is home to some of the most gobsmackingly gorgeous girls in Europe, who walk round in a self-conciously Cosmopoliitan manner. Sit in a terrace cafe by a row of fashion shops, and watch them walk bz THIS F**KING HUNGARIAN KEZBOARD!!! THE Z IS IN THE PLACE OF THE Y') catching glances of themselves in the windows.

Sorry if I sound a little stressed - I didn't hit the sack until six this morning. Last nite was a big one, fuelled bz the local spirit, Unicum. Unicum is simply the evillest shit I've ever tasted. It smells like the Czech Becherovka, but drinking it is like getting hit round the head with a plank of wood. Bitter and vaguely minty, this makes Absinth (30% stronger) seem like Panda Pop. Palinka, a kind of fru
it brandy, goes down easier, but is similarly unforgiving.

If the Hungarians seem withdrawn or even rude, persevere - when you get to know them, they are the warmest people I've ever met. We've made friends with a group of locals who have really taken to us, and dragged us everywhere with them. The warmth is touching - ridiculously, I was on the verge of tears when the girl of the group kissed us on both cheeks goodbye.

They did have a few laughs at our expense, though. Thanks to them, I ended up telling the barmaid that I wanted to lick her clit. They creased up with convulsive laughter, and it got a weird reaction from the barmaid. Not as weird as when I pulled later on, and I told the girl I wanted two pints of beer and a bag of pork scratchings.

That's a poor joke, of course, but telling bar staff back home you want to go down on them would get you assassinated by the bouncers.

The size of the place makes it difficult to find anywhere, especially as most places hardly scream at you for attention. Little
doorways and cellar hatches lead down into crypt-like disco bars.

Now we've got some Magyar buddies, we shouldn't have a problem. No more wild scenic rides in decrepid Ladas posing as taxis. In London, taxi drivers have to do 'the knowledge', but here the taxi drivers seem to be having trouble distinguishing Buda (hilly and scenic) and
Pest (flat and chaotic).

Still having trouble actually finding anywhere full of people, we tend to fall back on our 'local', Morrison's. This is your typical cellar disco bar, with the usual British relics such as a red phone box. The atmosphere is hot and sweaty on the tiny dance floor when packed, and the tunes are a mixture of cheesy party favourites,
Hungarian mainstays and various European oddities. (Including my favourite Turkish song, 'Simarik' by Tarkam!) Oddly, the DJ seems to have none of the tunes I
wanted playing, but maybe Vindaloo by Fat Les was pushing it somewhat.

This problem of finding the main nerve means that we're having a kind of out-of-body nitelife experience, but we'll just have to go with it...

Yet to find any English out here, which is fine. Met Randy the Canadian, who is probably the rudest person I've ever met. He was chatting to my mate outside a pizza place about Ice Hockey, and his first words to me were, "Dude, the Coyotes can kiss my fuckin' ass.", referring of course to my tenuous support of the Phoenix Coyotes.

Great guy, though, he left his wife in bed to spend a couple of hours drinking piss poor wine and smoking fags in our apartment.

Thanks to his Hungarian born wife, we were
given a Fanta bottle of home-made Palinka. This stuff smelled like meths, and had about the same result drinking it.

Eventually found some English on the third day, hanging around at St. Stephen's Basillica, a monstrous cathedral that exists in a perpetual state of restoration (Since 1980). It's close in size to St. Pauls Cathedral, with the added gimmick of being able to get on the roof for a stunning panorama of the city.

My genius idea of taking out my entire stash on the first night to see how much a night out in Budapest would cost ended in disaster - naturally, after a few Unicums, I started splashing money around like a lottery winner. This meant when I emerged from my hangover the next day, I found I'd blown almost half my holiday fund.

Not good, and the desperation led me to pantomiming my monkey ass around the Westend Shopping centre (one of the biggest in Europe) trying to get six quid changed. All the straight-and-narrow change places won't swap coins, so I eventually got a Hungarian girl to lead me to a dodgy kiosk in the Metro, where I got stung 30% commission. Still, it was better than a kick in the nuts.
r>Things were still pretty bad on our last two days in Budapest. The only feasible solution was to duck out on our hotel bill. The idea
was, chuck the cases out of the window, stroll nonchalantly out through reception like we were going for a few beers, then pick up our cases and check into another hotel. We figured this idea would roughly treble our spending money.

The first problem was, we were on the third floor, and below that was a lowered courtyard. Even dangling the cases from tied together bedsheets wouldn't cut it - they were still too far from the ground. Dropping them from this height would result in them busting open and spilling our crusty boxers all over the courtyard.

We already had one escape - one of the maids entered the courtyard to tip out some rubbish, failing to notice the suitcase being frantically dragged up the hotel wall above her head. So, stoked up on the home made embalming fluid they call Palinka, I ventured down into the courtyard, hollering a cheery "Ahoj!" to the receptionist (I kept forgetting I was in Hungary and not Czech Republic).

Again, my mate dangled the case from the blankets, and as I braced myself for impact, I noticed some of the locals in the surrounding buildings gathering on their balconies to watch. Maybe this kind of thing was commonplace in Budapest - two dodgy looking English guys bunking out of their bill by throwing their cases out of the window.

Nevertheless, the attention was making me nervous. We could just about get away with our clueless tourist act when it came to subway tickets, or "Accidentally" walking out of a bar without picking up our tab. But there was simply no way to explain to the Hungarian police why you were half-pissed and catching cases your mate was throwing to you from a third storey window.

The first bag came down, and I truly appreciated the power of gravity for the first time. Catching a sixty pound piece of l
uggage dropped from three floors up is as punishing as trying to stop John Prescott committing suicide, jumping off the ramparts of the Houses of Parliament. It knocked me flat.

To my surprise, the accumulated crowd on the balconies celebrated my successful catch by cheering and clapping, like rugby fans celebrating a conversion. The second one came down, and I re-assumed my horizontal position. After that, I had the relatively simple task of catching the hand luggage.

Grabbing the cases, I pulled off a quick theatrical bow to my audience, then ran to the Metro station. I met my friend there, and we indulged in a couple of slices of pizza and some rough-as-guts Hungarian cigarettes before jumping on the Metro to safety.

Sorry this seems a bit disjointed - I'll tidy everything up and add to it as soon as I get home. For now, take it easy - Fu Manchu in Budapest.