Buzzing Budapest and beyond
Urban delights and night time frights just around the river bend
Your two favourite heroes are now holed up in Bratislava relaxing and recovering before setting off again. Things are currently looking ropey after too much good luck. But don’t worry, like the tiny boy of Chumbawamba fame, when we get knocked down, we get up again.
“I think I have something you want”
So not long after Iain and I arrived in the heart of old Budapest, I demanded that we must set off and find a huge steaming bowl of Hungarian goulash and a cold beer to quench my thirst.
I might have been rubbing my belly and singing a little song that went something along the lines of: “Goulash, goulash, gooooulash!” (I’ll leave it to you to imagine the tune — or lack there-of), as we walked the back alleys of Budapest’s Jewish Quarter until Iain said I should probably stop as it was scaring people.
Nevertheless, despite this spectacle, a car still pulled up beside us, thumping out drum and base, a man with spiky blonde hair and a chain necklace leant out of the open window and said “I think I have something you want”. For a brief blissful moment I thought this might actually be a bowl of goulash.
Sadly, of course he meant drugs. Late-night roaming dealers of unregulated hot thick broth (unless this is a street name for something) are yet to find their business niche. Iain was impressed that there was a Wednesday night drug dealer, declaring “we’re in a proper city now”, that said, he’s also told me that Milton Keynes has made it as a proper city now that we have more homeless people than we did in the past.
The traditional Hungarian café, the Blue Rose, that we were hoping to grab a table in was jam-packed and we were turned away twice, much to my dismay. Iain, never being a man to turn down the chance to eat two dinners suggested we have a pre-goulash gyros (which is like a small, less greasy, chicken kebab if you’ve never had one).
We took these for a walk around the neighbourhood and ended up sat outside an impressive synagogue, which I later learned is in-fact the largest in Europe. Iain and I sat here for a what seemed like a polite amount of time before returning and demanding goulash.
We’ve decided we are masters of the art of sitting on a park bench and watching the world go by talking bollocks. I think we would actually make quite successful tramps. Iain confided he’d learn the recorder if he was ever homeless as his begging schtick, saying “see, the thing is people are only used to kids playing the recorder, which is shit. So they’ll be pleasantly surprised by an adult mastering it.” I remain unconvinced, I said he should whittle things that he sees.
Eventually we delicately insinuated ourselves in the intimate café [ie stood by the bar generally taking up space]. And whilst I was satiated by my first meaty bowl of Hungarian broth, ultimately I have to say I prefer my mum’s inauthentic goulash to the real local stuff.
Anyway, all inflated tales of goulash aside, the following day as I worked on the last blog update in a trendy café cum bookshop that looked like the kind of place that would host painfully right-on poetry readings about “My Right To Weave Yoghurt is Inalienable” (or something of the like, but presumably in Hungarian — in fairness, the Hungarian left has some serious and immediate struggles around the growing despotism of Viktor Orban).
Iain didn’t seem to care for the place, and also unusually for a builder doesn’t approve of the concept of hot drinks, so promptly left to get the bikes serviced, and does whatever it is he does whilst I work on the blog.
I’ll politely assume he just sleeps, or else moves into some variety of meditative state where he does his “deep thinking” (we now call this “being in the present” [in New Zealand accent] courtesy of our hipster mediation advocating friend we met in Athens).
The bike shop did an amazing job of cleaning the chains and they now glide silently along, we would very much recommend getting a chain professionally cleaned (not by a weird Romanian hotel janitor who wants to know about protestant church design) at some point during a long bike tour.
After our errands were completed (save one, I needed to buy velcro tape, for reasons I’ll leave up to your imagination. This was mildly challenging but not impossible, to quote Iain doing an impression of his mum as I searched for it “well you’re long way from Hobbycraft now, you’re fucked aren’t you?”) we were free to wander and drink in the sights of Budapest.
Budapest — a “proper” city
Iain captured the essence of it, really, in his not quite eloquent, but poetic nail-on-head idiomatic style: “Budapest it’s a proper city.” In the next breath he compared the place favourably to Athens, pointing at a cafe, saying “look at that cafe, that cafe has more going on it in that Athens”.
Which is to say it is big, busy and cosmopolitan. In a short walk along a bustling boulevard you will people of many different races, hear several different languages and be bombarded with the colour, bombast and swagger of one of the great cities of the world. A struggling brochure writer might resort to calling the place “vibrant”.
The traffic on the main streets is hectic, with taxis, trams and busses choking the streets and filling the air with a vehicular roar, but jump to a back street and you’ll find yourself in a labyrinth of small streets where all sense of direction can be quickly lost, in way that I find similar to London’s Soho.
Enjoyably, unlike central London, several odd shops remain that sell a bizarre collection of junk and have yet to be expunged from their prime real estate locations by anything as mundane as the need to efficiently turn a profit.
As to the iconic side of the city, it goes without saying the views along the Danube are beautiful and doubtless become the subject of many an Instagram hashtag, with the mix of gothic spires, baroque palaces and domes of the skyline making an ideal backdrop for a curating an image of oneself on social media. The profusion of selfie sticks amongst the crowds of tourists mooching the banks of the river would seem to attest to this.
But it is an impressive view, and I’d be at risk of being something of a curmudgeon if I only described this magnificent city through such a cynical lens.
On the northern bank of the river a steep ridge of hills loom over the flat alluvial plain and are decorated in the grandiose architecture of the monarchy and the church, though the spectacular old Hapsburg palace has become a museum now with the once mighty dynasty having long since disappeared.
As to the looming gothic cathedral, whilst picturesque it does have something of a vibe of Disney-esque eerie perfection to it. It offers views over the river to the famous edifice of the Hungarian parliament building, which is one of the world’s finest examples of gothic architecture and is something like a hybrid of the UK’s houses of parliament, the Florence cathedral and a bit of unique Hungarian flair.
Crossing the Danube here on the broad bridges that unite the city can’t help but dredge up a sad memory of a troubled friend of mine from university who was lost to depression in the turbulent waters of the river below. Daniel remains the only man I’ve ever known who managed to unequivocally drink me under the table, and took me out on of the most riotous benders I’ve been on in my young life. He was a difficult, but good man and deserved a better end. By rights I felt I should have had a dram of whisky to pour into the waters as a goodbye, but I gave a simple salute, reflecting it is more fitting to associate memories of lost friends with the places where good times were shared.
New friends and pub crawls
After this sombre note our explorations returned us to the hostel where we retired for a quiet night in its cellar bar. Here we made friends with two other guests, Ben and Elinor.
Ben was from Burnley and had been a trainee solicitor, until he decided it wasn’t for him and packed in his nascent legal career to travel around Europe and hopefully think of something he’d enjoy more as a profession in the meantime. Elinor was from Gothenburg in Sweden, and studied microbiology there, but had apparently enjoyed exotic study exchanges to all corners of the world. She had followed the cheapest flights on sale and found herself in Budapest for a long weekend.
The following day Iain and Ben left for three hour walking tour that began at 10am. This didn’t entirely fit with my ambition to have a lazy day and seeking out an overpriced hipster coffee, so I left them to it and I ended up going for an idle stroll with Elinor.
Without wanting to sound too creepy, it was quite pleasant to spend time in the company of beautiful Swedish girl as opposed to what we’ll call Iain’s general blokey fug (Iain said “Whoa, whoa, what? But yeah, I understand” when I told him this).
She said to me “I think it’s good for you two to spend a day apart”, she’s likely more correct than she realised on this. But if nothing else, it was simply refreshing to have some female company on what has been a trip with a social side mostly dominated by “banter with the lads” (I’m no gender studies expert, I’m sure there’s bound to be someone on medium.com who can expound on this phenomena if you’ve never come across it).
On that note, Iain believes more laughs were had on his and Ben’s riotous “lads day out” on the walking tour.
But we went on a pub crawl that night where all the guides seemed to be exclusively attractive women anyway, though sadly enforced a no flirting rule with the punters.
Non-the-less we spoke to guides more than the other pub-crawlers, as it was more interesting to learn snippets of Hungarian culture with them, than it was to talk to bladdered backpackers (the others couldn’t really hold their drink like me and Iain — in fairness we have a distinct mass advantage-Ben matched us drink for drink and it almost seemed to kill him).
Budapest has a buzzing and lively nightlife scene, with many trendy bars and nightclubs hiding down the back alleys. Most notable are the “ruin bars” which were built in old abandoned buildings left from post-communist dereliction. Now, whilst these are a blatant expression of gentrification they are great fun to get pissed in.
Leaving Budapest behind — haunted by our past
As predicted, our ride away from Budapest was a hungover one. But it was actually generally quite refreshing to be out in the fresh air and away from the humid closeness of the city.
We discovered the Eurovelo 6 route along the Danube, which saw us all the way along the river to Bratislava in quiet comfort away from busy roads and we effortlessly hammered out 200km or so over the course of a couple of days.
However, there was an ominous rumbling behind us. A malevolent ghost of our past following us. An untoward feeling somewhere in the pit of our stomachs. It began innocuously enough, just a quiet anxiety on the edge of our minds, but it soon would catch us in its terrible grasp.
Things came to a head one cold night at our quiet and isolated campsite on the banks of the Danube. I lay safely zipped in my sleeping bag, blissfully asleep until a monstrous gurgling noise disturbed my slumber.
I lay there, still, hushed, hoping it would disappear. But again and again the terrible noise sounded. Until desperately I found myself squirming to escape my cocoon, scrabbling at the stuck zip with sweat on my brow.
In the midst of a moonless 4am darkness I searched with blind hope to find the only tool that could save me from an awful fate. The relief I felt upon unzipping a pocket and feeling it in clammy grasp made me elicit an involuntary breathy “fucking yes!”
I leapt out of the tent and purposefully strode off to the nearest bit of respectable cover I could find, dropped my trousers and went about exorcising the malevolent presence from my body, in a manner of speaking.
It goes without saying I’ve never been so pleased to have found a roll of toilet paper in my luggage, as I was at that moment.
For those missing the subtext, the dreaded “shits” had struck. They took me first, but claimed Iain soon after.
Anyway, whilst things haven’t gotten quite so desperate since, there have been a few urgent and lengthy stops in petrol station restrooms on the road. We’re currently blaming our drunken kebab in Budapest, but it could also be a Lidl sausage. We’ll never know.
As to the rest of our cycling it was at least the stuff of dreams, as we quite literally breezed into Bratislava on a strong tailwind along an easy cyclepath all the way into the centre of town.
Bratislava is a small town, quaint and relaxing compared to the hubbub of Budapest and has a charming intimacy to the place, it seems like a town you could get to know. It’s somewhere I’d advise a stressed person to come to and decompress with ice-creams, cakes, coffees and cheap beers. You’ll hear more about it in the next instalment.
We had been planning to head to Vienna today, but both Iain and I feel it would be prudent to wait for the digestive engine to start functioning again. As not being able to process food is problematic when you need to consume several thousand calories a day to keep our heavy bikes rolling.
Either way, we’ll need to be on the road soon as we’ll be meeting Iain’s brother Ryan in Prague on Sunday, which is at least a three day ride away. Our current opinion on our ability to do this is hmmmmm.
