European Travel Blog » Hungary

Budapest Tourist Sights

admin — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:02:25 +0000

Sights of Budapest…

Citadella. Located at the top of Gellert Hill
(a quick bus ride or character-building, calf-bulking walk to the top) provides the best view of Budapest ‘s green hills and dense downtown. The Liberation Memorial used to be joined by Red Army soldiers, but these statues were taken down after the communists left town. There’s also a bar, a good but over-priced restaurant, and an inexpensive hotel at the top.

Heroes Square. A spectacular entrance to the city’s vast and activity-packed City Park, Heroes Square is Budapest’s version of the Parisian Trocadero, with its marble floor and statues of Hungarian freedom-fighters. Stalin – or his likeness – was torn down by a mob of angry Hungarians during the aborted revolution attempt in 1956. Now skateboarders zoom around the square while guards watch the National War Memorial.

Spas. Do not leave Budapest without visiting at least one of the city’s famous, therapeutic baths. A bath and a massage can be had for less than $5. There is no room for modesty: most of the baths (with separate facilities for men and women) are occupied by unself-conscious, body-confident people, regardless of their ages or shapes. Favorites include the spas at the Gellert and the Thermal hotels, as well as the 15th-century Kiraly Baths (Budapest II, Fo utca 84), built by the Turks and featuring steamy, dim pools. For those who are uncomfortable getting naked with strangers, there’s always the $1 foot massage.

Opera House. This is entertainment even for those who don’t like opera. The building, located on Budapest’s grand Andrassy ut, is a spectacular, neo-Renaissance style structure that is enough to hold one’s attention well into the third act. Tickets – for both the ballet and the opera – are cheap, and the sets are consistently remarkable. Between acts, sip a $2 glass of champagne in the carved-wood tearoom, or wander out to see the beautiful view from the Opera House’s balcony.

The Castle District. Walk, look, wander through the area’s many museums, ranging from the national art gallery to the smaller music museum. Just don’t buy anything from the hordes of "traditionally" dressed vendors; it’s at least twice as expensive as anywhere else in the city. Don’t miss the view from Fisherman’s Bastion of the Parliament, the Danube, and Margit Island.

Need to shop? Take the 154 bus from Boraros ter, on the Pest side, to the famous Ecseri flea market, said to be the biggest in Europe. This is the perfect place to pick up old Russian medals and uniforms, as well as home-made lace tablecloths and antique furniture.

Budapest Tourism Office

Budapest Sightseeing

Pest Budapest Sightseeing

admin — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 17:56:46 +0000

Pest

Pest, the busier side of the river, is loaded with visitor attractions. Perhaps the most imposing is the Parliament Building, a massive baroque structure whose beautiful image is reflected into the nearby Danube at night. Visitors may walk around the late 19th-century, 691-room building, but tours of the inside—with its spectacular frescos and paintings—must be arranged through a tourist agency.

Across the street from the Parliament is the Museum of Ethnography, which has a permanent exhibition called "The Folk Culture of the Hungarian People," as well as impressive temporary exhibitions. But the neo-classical building is worth a visit for its extraordinarily ornate interior alone. A quick ride on the subway brings the visitor to Deak Tere, a local transportation hub for Pest. Nearby is St. Stephen’s Basilica, the city’s biggest church. The mosaics are worth seeing, but don’t miss St. Stephen’s mummified hand. For a few coins, the hand is lit up and supposedly moves.

A few blocks away are Vaci utca and Vorosmarty Tere, pedestrian areas that are the gathering place for artists, tourists, street musicians, shoppers and trinket-hawkers. There are also a few cafes, including the famous Gerbeaud, which has rich pastries and outdoor seating. As in the Castle District, prices in Vaci utca’s fashionable stores are high, geared to the foreign tourist. Because of Hungary’s high sales tax and import fees, prices on Western goods here are more expensive than in the States. Wait to purchase such goods at the airport duty-free shop.

At the southern end of Vaci utca is the Market Hall, recently renovated and a favorite shopping place for everything from fresh vegetables to home-made tablecloths. A quick walk west, by the Marriott Hotel, brings one to the Danube bank, where there are plenty of outdoor cafes and city benches from which to watch the riverboats glide by. The boats provide a pretty trip up the river to nearby Margaret Island, where locals swim at the pool, roller-skate, jog or just absorb the sun. No cars are allowed on Margaret Island, which also can be reached from either side of Margit Bridge. Jutting off from Deak Tere is Andrassy ut, Budapest’s best-known grand boulevard. It is also the route of the city’s yellow line subway—the oldest in continental Europe—but the line is closed for lengthy repair. Take a bus
instead.

Along Andrassy are displayed some of the city’s most impressive architecture, including the neo Renaissance style Opera House. Tours are available for about $4.00 — but why bother, when a ticket to the show can be had for as little as $1.50? At the end of Andrassy is Hosok Tere (Hero’s Square), a square and series of statues honoring Hungary’s kings and leaders, including heroes of the 1956 revolution. The square is also the main entrance to City Park, a half-square mile park filled with a zoo, a theater, restaurants, the Szechenyi thermal baths, and the Vajdahunyad Castle, which now houses a museum.

But perhaps the best way to enjoy Budapest is to do nothing – or almost nothing. Sit at an outdoor table at one of the city’s many cafes, or soak in one of the thermal baths while you wait for your foot massage. Camp out at a bench along the river, or find a perch atop Castle Hill. The city bustles with a new attitude, but still finds time to relax.

Budapest – Pest — Britannica

Pest travel guide – Wikitravel

Budapest Buda Tourist Attractions

admin — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:47:18 +0000

Buda

Language aside, Budapest is a city seemingly made for tourists. Getting lost is a pleasure, since the architecture is spectacular and there are historical sights in almost every neighborhood in the city. Start with Citadella, a fortress and monument atop Gellert Hill (so named because St. Gellert was thrown from the hill to his death). From the top, reachable by bus or foot, there is a perfect view of all Budapest — the winding streets, grand boulevards and beautiful spires of bustling Pest across the Danube, and the green, almost rural hills of Buda, the more peaceful and more expensive segment of the city. At the top there is also the Liberation Memorial, a girl holding a palm leaf in her upstretched hands. At one time, the statue was accompanied by Red Army soldiers to commemorate the Soviet Union’s "liberation" of Hungary. Those figures have been taken away — with other now offensive statues — to the city’s Statue Park in the 22nd district. The fortress today has a restaurant, beer garden, and youth hostel.

Alongside Gellert Hill is the famous Gellert Hotel, known for its thermal baths as much as for its accommodations. One of Budapest’s 100-plus thermal baths, the Gellert is like something out of The Road to Wellville, with baths fed by hot springs that have been around for more than 2,000 years. There are massage services, a sauna and an outdoor pool. The Gellert also offers low-cost dental care and treatments such as underwater traction, which must be ordered by a doctor.

Nearby in Buda is the breath-taking Castle District, atop a hill overlooking the river. Be warned: the area is well traveled by tourists and thus very expensive. Instead, savor the views from Fisherman’s Bastion, the turreted remains of Castle Hill’s oldest church. Stop also into nearby Matthias Church before wandering the old, narrow streets of the Castle District. Not to be missed are the city’s national museums, clustered on the southern end of the district. These include the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest Historic Museum and the Museum of Recent History (formerly the Museum of the Hungarian Working Class Movement). In the center of the Castle District is the Budavari Labiruntus (labyrinth of Buda Castle)—touristy but fun.

Buda travel guide – Wikitravel

Budapest Language

admin — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:39:07 +0000

It is that history that separates Hungary from the other former East Bloc states. Hungary and its people cannot be lumped in with those of its neighbors. The origin of the people is different; the culture is different, and — most frustrating for the visitor — the language is different, so different that some linguists consider it to be among the world’s most difficult languages to master. It is considered a "hardship" language by the State Department, which gives foreign service staff a differential in salary for proficiency in Hungarian. Not a Slavic language, Hungarian is Finno-Ugric, making Finnish its closest cousin. This hardly helps. "I don’t understand a word they say," said a Finnish traveler, negotiating the bus system. "It’s not a language, it’s a code," a Hungarian friend explains, advising expatriates not to bother learning Hungarian. "It’s too hard."

Fortunately for the many visitors who flock to Budapest in the warmer weather, many people here speak another language. The older folk tend to speak German, while the younger Budapestians often know English. Most also know Russian — they were once required to learn it in school — but they don’t like to speak it. And Hungarians are very flattered and gracious at the foreigner’s attempts to utter a few words of the language.

Foreign Language Courses in Hungary – Budapest

Budapest Lifestyle

admin — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 17:33:40 +0000

Budapest has re-awakened, and while it is still stirring after a long sleep under communist rule, the city has kept the Old World charm that make it such an attractive place to visit. There are two moods of Budapest, representing the old and the new: the pleasantly lazy lifestyle of cafes, thermal baths, simple living and low-cost opera, and the frenetic, ambitious lifestyles of the would-be rich and famous, the young Hungarians and Western business people who came here to capitalize on a fast-changing economy. Budapest offers both, and the visitor or resident doesn’t have to choose between them. The magnetism has led more than 10,000 Americans to make Budapest home, sometimes years longer than they planned. Budapest has a character not unlike that of New York City: people will complain about it, but they find it difficult to leave. Many Hungarians, meanwhile, have come back. During the 1956 revolution, which was quashed by the Soviets, many Hungarians fled to Vienna, then to the United States or Canada. Now they are back, reclaiming their past and building a new future. They are people like Gaston Vadasz, who was a young boy when he and his mother carried their suitcases —- heavy, he remembers, to his small arms —- in terror across the Hungarian-Austrian border in December of 1956, paying a farmer to guide them. The border was marked by several feet of carefully raked dirt, fashioned to show footprints. Vadasz and his mother were two of the lucky ones who made it. Now, with his wife Linda, he is back in Budapest as marketing director for Juventus radio.

Budapest Visit

admin — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:33:37 +0000

It’s tempting to take the easy way to the top in Budapest, plunking down less than a dollar to ride the funicular to the height of the city’s ancient and charming Castle District. But if you walk instead, up a winding series of stone stairways, you will not miss the glorious views of the Danube at the city’s spectacular bridges, connecting busy, flat Pest with green, hilly Buda. Besides, the 20-minute hike will make you appreciate all the more the warm, flaky pastry and rich, milky tejeskave (coffee with milk) at the 168 year old Ruszwurm cafe.

There, you can plan your day, which may begin with several more hours at breakfast. In Hungary’s emerging, newly entrepreneurial city, one right is inalienable: spending an entire afternoon in one of the city’s inspiring cafes. Here one can read, watch the passing crowd, write a novel that never gets published, and eat as many gargantuan pastries as the stomach desires, all without any reproachful or impatient looks from the serving staff.

Budapest likes to consider itself the Paris of the East, a moniker that is at least partly enduring. For Budapestians, moving unstoppingly toward a market economy (despite 1994′s re-election of the Socialists), this is no longer Eastern Europe; it’s Central Europe. Different address, never moved. That change in many ways defines the contradiction of Budapest in 1995: there is still a maddening bureaucracy that frustrates family and business life, yet the city’s downtown carries the high paced, professional air of a Western city. There are new coins, but most street phones take only old coins. Stocky gypsy women in black-and-red skirts sell flowers and trinkets next to the Clinique cosmetics shop on tony Vaci utca; traditional old Hungarian restaurants serving up chicken paprika are situated across the street from New York Bagel.

This is a city full of character and characters. The prime minister, Gyula Horn, last year suffered an accident that led him to wear (in the middle of his election campaign) Star Wars-style headgear to stabilize his neck. Plastic copies of the device became a popular fad among young people. The defense minister, Gyorgy Keleti, is an unabashed UFO buff. The mayor, the exceedingly charming Gabor Demszky, was a former dissident and publisher of banned books. Now, he wears a suit and is trying to solve the parking problem.

Budapest Virtual Visit