Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Budapest Best: Your Local Guide to the Best Bathhouses, Beverages, and Beautiful Photo Ops

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

Willie Gevertz is a visual storyteller from the U.S. who fell in love with Budapest while visiting a friend. The city captivated him so much that he moved to Hungary, which is fortunate for us because he’s the best tour guide we could ask for.    Willie is the type of guy who lives every day to its fullest, and I asked him to join me on the Postcard Academy to share how we can make the most of our time traveling in Budapest and beyond.    We will get into the best food in Budapest, the best nightlife, the bathhouses. Willie’s also a history buff and talks us through Hungary’s past, from the Romans to post-Communist times.   I love his positive energy and curiosity, and, while I don’t spend a ton of time on social media, I do follow him — he’s at willie.tv — on Instagram because he’s always smiling, dancing, and exploring. He puts a tremendous amount of work into his videos, most of which feature his adventures in Budapest so definitely check him out.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Mike Citell, and today we are visiting Budapest, or Budapest, depending on how you want to say it. My guest today is Willie Gavertz, a visual storyteller from the U.S. And he fell in love with Budapest while he was visiting a friend there, and the city captivated Willie so much that he decided he had to move to Hungary. And this is very fortunate for us because he is the type of guy who lives every day to its fullest. And today, Willie is going to share how we can make the most of our time in Budapest and beyond. We will get into the best food in Budapest, the best nightlife, the best bathhouses, of course, and we are also going to dip into Hungary's history. I wanted to talk to Willie specifically because I just

love his positive energy and curiosity. I don't spend a ton of time on social media, but I do follow him and he's at willy.tv on Instagram. That's W-I-L-L-I-E dot TV. And I follow him because he's always smiling and dancing and exploring. He puts a tremendous amount of work into his videos and most of them feature his adventures in Budapest, so definitely check him out. This podcast is brought to you by a podcasting step by step by other podcast. If you are seriously interested in starting a podcast, but you are stuck in that cycle of just researching how to begin and you can't pull yourself out of this, head on over to sarahmicatel.com. I have plenty of podcasting resources for you and links to my podcast, podcasting step by step.

Now into my conversation with Willie. Welcome, Willie. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So foreigners often call a city by a different name than what the locals call it. Like, Italians don't call Rome, Rome. The French don't call Paris, Paris. I'm not sure why we don't just use the local names, but regardless, I remember the first time I heard a non-Hungarian say the word Budapest. And like, can you clear up how we were supposed to be saying it? Because I thought he was trying to be all fancy saying Budapest. So it's a seems like it's more sensitive over there than in other places. So what should we be calling this city? And where did that name come from? Honestly, Budapest is the name that you hear. Most people call it. Budapest is technically correct because the Hungarians with S's, the S sound is a sound. And then the sound like if it was Budapest, it would be spelled B-U-D-A-B-E-S-Z-T. Their sound or their soft S is an S-Z. But honestly, Budapest, no one will really bad enough.

I mean, sometimes you get some people, Budapest, Budapest, but really, Budapest or Budapest, either one is fine. And the story behind the name is that they actually used to be two separate cities. So there was Buddha on one side of the Danube and then Peshd on the other. And in 1873, they combined them and it became Budapest, which is kind of a funny little story, actually. It's sort of like super logical. And usually these city names have very complex back meanings, but this one was just the combination of two cities. Okay, I just wanted to get that out of the way. So I'm going to say Budapest, actually, because I feel more comfortable saying. You're well within your rights. I usually say Budapest anyway. Okay. You are an American living in Budapest. Where did you grow up? I grew up in New York. I was born in New York City, but I only lived there for about six months. And then my family actually moved to England for two years when I was three and four years old. We lived in London. But besides that brief little stint, I lived in New York throughout my whole

childhood and adolescence until I went to university. So Hungary is not your first expat experience? No, it's not actually. My first true expat experience, well, I studied abroad for six months in Sydney, Australia. That was when I was 21 years old. And then immediately upon graduation from college. I lived in Cape Town, South Africa for one year. And then I also lived in London to do my master's degree for one year. And now I'm living in Budapest. How did you end up in Budapest? I came here to visit my current roommate. He's a guy named Tom Bean. He's from Iowa. And he's a computer programmer. And he went to university with me, three years younger. But while I was in between living in South Africa and London, so this was the spring of 2000,

Tom was a junior at university and he decided to do his study abroad semester in Budapest. So I came over to visit him and instantly fell in love with the place. I mean, I was here for five days and I traveled quite a bit at this point. I've traveled more since. But I got a feeling from Budapest just being here that was unlike pretty much any other city I ever went to. So at the end of that visit, I remember saying to Tom, it would be great if we lived here one day because we have a very good relationship and good chemistry. and it would be really nice to sort of recapture the magic of that six-day experience or whatever. And then after my master's degree, I was looking for somewhere to live in Europe that was a little

bit more affordable than London because we all know how expensive London is. I hear that. Yeah. Tom ended up taking a job back here. And I was just like, why not? Let's go to Budapest. So I came here and I was going to stay for three months, go back to New York for three months, which I did. and then I decided to come back and I'm still here a year later. So it's been pretty steady in Budapest since then.

That's so fun that you could do that with your friend, just both decide to continue that journey there. Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of spontaneous naivete, I guess, but it was done with very optimistic and hopeful intentions. And it's, I think, served us both well in very different ways than we probably expected, but it's just been a great place to sort of find our feet as young adults and figure out a few things about ourselves as well. So I know you said that, like, you just had this feeling. And sometimes people ask me,

you know, why the UK? Why do you like it there? And there's like many reasons that I can list off. But sometimes it is just a feeling. But if you could like describe more, like, what was it about Budapest that made you think, yeah, I see myself living here? Well, there was a few things that stood out to me instantly. The first thing is, my, when you get down to the Danube and you have the first view of the city properly, it's a pretty breathtaking and unique thing to see. I mean, you have Buddha on one side, which is this hillyer terrain with these beautiful castles, and then Peshd on the other, which is flatter.

They have a lot of the urban life is located in Pest where Buddha's a little more suburban. We can talk about that more in depth later, but the main thing is just when you look out from the bridge and you see the city, it's magically breathtaking. I've always been interested in post-communist places. I did my undergraduate thesis on Bosnia and Herzegovina. So former Yugoslavia was very interesting to me. And Hungary has a similar, very different experience than the Balkans, but a similar post-communist feel.

So I've always been interested in those places. I just think they have something more dynamic and more gritty about them sometimes in Western Europe. I mean, don't get me wrong. I love Western Europe, but there's something very interesting to me. So historically, and then just the uniqueness of Budapest, they really have this linguistic and cultural island in the middle of all these Slavic, Germanic countries. And somehow the Hungarian or Magyat, as they call it, culture has survived and withstood the century. So I was very magnetically gravitated towards that, just the uniqueness of the place. But yeah, it was sort of a combination of those things.

And then plus, I mean, honestly, the affordability, although it is getting. increasingly more and more expensive as the months go on. But the affordability really made it a lot more attractive to me for life as a freelancer and as a creative person. How are you allowed to live and work in Budapest? Do you have like a freelancer's visa or something? The main visa that I'm on is called the temporary residence permit for other reasons. And it allows you to do freelance work. Originally, I was here to take advantage of the, you know, three months in Hungary and then go back to New York for three months, because every six months, you get three months within the Schengen zone. But then I decided that from a lifestyle perspective, it was just too quick of a turnaround to be

doing three months, three months, three months, three months. So I applied for this visa and I've been using that since. Yeah. So you mentioned that it's a lot more affordable than London. If I move to Budapest, what would it take for me to live like a comfortable life for one month? And when I say comfortable, I just mean like I can go out to eat a few times. I'm not doing like crazy things. Right. It depends what part of the city you're staying in because I mean, you have many different sides to Budapest now, but you have two main spheres, which is basically the tourist downtown zone, like you would have in a lot of tourist destination cities and then the periphery and the outside zone. And even within the tourist downtown zone and a little

bit extended, I sort of live in an extended tourist zone where people would say that my area is kind on the edge. And here, there's certain places you can go that are pretty expensive and then other places that you can go that are ridiculously cheap. If you're looking for an exact dollar amount or pound amount, I suppose it depends what your accommodation is, but you could certainly do it for under, under a thousand pounds if you were smart and clever about it. Always helps to have a flatmate as well. Yeah, it helps to have a flatmate. I mean, yeah, our apartment is pretty much in the downtown zone, and it's, I believe, around $500 each a month. So it's pretty cheap compared to other big cities like New York or London.

But it depends. I mean, if you really want to live on a shoestring budget here, you can certainly do it. I mean, a lot of the, especially the local salaries are not very high. And that's one of the big sources of friction is between you have these like two different cities where you have local people that have been living here and living under a pretense of, certain cost of living for so many years. And now all of a sudden, about 10 years ago, there's been this huge spike where a lot of the places in the downtown zone are unaffordable now. But long story short, you can definitely make due compared to most cities in Europe if you're

here for a month. What would you say are the biggest cultural differences between the U.S. and Hungary? The biggest cultural differences, I would say to be summed up, and there's a pretty stark divide between extroversion and introversion. I mean, it's a little bit of a cliched stereotype, but coming from America, America is one of the most extroverted places in the world, sometimes to its benefit, sometimes to its detriment. But regardless, there's a certain sense of, like, wanting to meet people and being very friendly right up the bat,

whereas Hungarians, it can be a little bit colder at first, but once you become friends with them, they're the warmest, most hospitable people you can imagine. But in terms of just having that culture shock, of coming here. And for example, it's really manifested less so in like a night out meeting people and more so in the service industry, for instance. Like if you come and you, you go out to a restaurant or depends where it is, but you go to a bar. And sometimes you just don't get that same level of like American cheer or friendliness, which I sometimes actually sort of prefer because it can feel a little

phony in other places. But that's one of the biggest cultural differences. And then there's plenty of other ones, but I think the extroversion, introversion dichotomy kind of starts you out with a good foundation for what you can expect. Yeah, yeah. Let's say that I'm coming to visit you for a long weekend. Like, what experiences should we have? What would you show me in Budapest? Well, there's certain things that are must do, I would say. Like, for instance, on the Buddha side, you get across the bridge and you're on the Buddha side and you instantly see this big hill. And it pretty much dominates the skyscape for most of the center of the city. And that's called the Gellert Hill. And it's beautiful walks up to the top. They have this little former military defense base that now

has these sort of surreal Soviet era statues. One of them's a beautiful statue of liberty. And then the other two are like progress. And there are these allegorical socialist era statuary. But they're just, it gives a beautiful, beautiful view from the city. So that walk up Gellert Hill is phenomenal. and then you have also in that castle district as it's called the fisherman's bastion which is this beautiful building it looks sort of like gondor from lord of the rings it's kind of bizarre actually but very very beautiful and then the matias church which is great so that whole castle district it's crowded and i wouldn't really spend much time there but you have to do it i mean it's one of the most idyllic architectural walks that i've ever seen in all of europe and then obviously from my perspective i love to go to the hungarian bathhouses They have about eight or nine, depending on how you count them, thermal bathhouses in the city. And Budapest has always been a city of thermal hot springs, even when the Romans were here. A lot of people don't realize that the Romans were in Budapest, but they used the bathhouses. And since then, that culture of bathing has sort of been integral to the city.

I know that you love a good bathhouse. What is this experience like exactly? So if I went there, like, what would I expect? Well, there's several different bathhouses in the city. One of them, the most famous one that if you look up Budapest bathhouses, you'll instantly see on the Google search is the Seychini bathhouse. And that one's more like an amusement park. I mean, you have two massive pools outside, and then about 30 indoor pools in different rooms.

And you sort of feel like you're in like the prefects bathroom and Harry Potter. Like there's all these different vibes. But that one is like a huge tourist area. It's pretty expensive. It's like 6,000 forints, which is about. probably 25 pounds. I mean, it's not going to break the bank and it's definitely worth it. But then you have on the other end of the spectrum, like the Kiwai Bathhouse, which is much more of like a Turkish style underground meditation zone. And you have this big dome on the top

and all the beautiful lights flooding in. And you just sort of soak in these natural thermal waters that are very healing and soothing. So there's many different types of experiences that you have at the bathhouse. But what I always go for is just a long time meditation. reflection because it's a forced location where you can't inherently really have any technology and you spend two hours there and you feel like a million bucks afterwards. So that's why I love it so much. So are men and women separate? Are we wearing clothes? How does? Right, right. Yeah. So now pretty much all of them are co-ed and you're always wearing a bathing suit of some sort. I mean, you can really wear whatever you want, but you have to be covered. Historically, the bathhouses were segregated. Men and

women's days. Sometimes they were probably just only men if we're going back all the way in the day. But regardless, the co-ed merging is more of a recent thing. There's still one bathhouse or maybe two, but one definitely called Rudash that has two different zones. They have a wellness zone, which includes a jacuzzi looking over the Danube, which is a great, great experience if you want to do that. But then they also have this Turkish-style room, which is gorgeous, but most of the week it's segregated. So if you go on a men's-only day, obviously I haven't been on a woman's-only day. If you go on a men's only day, the men are wearing this sort of loincloth-looking thing. It's like a white sheet that you tie around your waist.

To be honest, I only went once. I prefer the co-ed days just, I don't know. It's just more of an enjoyable experience. But mostly co-ed. Do you know if these were open during communist times? I believe they were, yes. I think they've had a big revitalization since. But there certainly were bathhouses.

And they also have these things called strands, which are like beach bathhouses. houses basically, where the ones that I usually go to are like thermal bathhouses where you go inside and there's these thermal hot springs, but there's also outdoor kind of bathhouses that are more of a water park type feel. And those were certain, I know a few of those were certainly open during communist times. Okay. So what other experiences should we have? Depending on what you're into, the bar and nightlife scene in Budapest is phenomenal. I've done less of that. in my second half of my time here, so the past eight months, than I did in the first seven months.

But there's more bars on each street than you can even possibly count. So if you're looking for like a good night out and you want to do some fun things, then Budapest is definitely a great place to do it. They have one of the most famous things to do on a night out here, which isn't necessarily my particular favorite, but they have the famous ruin bars here, which are these sort of strange, eclectically designed former flats that have been sort of ruined, I guess that's why they're called ruin bars.

Are these former communist flats then? I think some of them are. I mean, I don't think that they necessarily have for me. Here in Budapest, you get a lot of different style architecture in the inner city. Most of the buildings are old, old buildings from way before the communists were here. And then you see the very, you know, uniform style, a little bit depressing, usually buildings on the periphery that were definitely built as shared flats during the communist era. But the ruin bars themselves, they seem to be older than that because they're kind of like these retrofitted, like former Austro-Hungarian era houses that have fallen into disrepair. And then the bar has taken them over and designed them like all sorts of chaotic, weird, like toys and chairs hanging from the ceilings.

And they usually have like 20 different rooms. So they're fun. But unfortunately, a lot of them have turned into more of a tourist trap pipe place. But then you have all these great, great bars extending out. from the downtown into the periphery that are just run the gamut from pubs to clubs to hybrid pubs clubs to music venues and they do a good job of repurposing space for entertainment here I would say so if there were one like ruin bar that we wanted to check out just to get like a drink there and have that experience is there anyone that's more authentic than others

that you would recommend well with the ruin pubs I mean I wouldn't necessarily even say any of them are are more authentic. The most famous one is called Simpla, Kirtz, Kirt being garden. And that is like the one where you can just go, just go for one drink. And I usually take people here when they come to visit. Like I wouldn't go and build my night

or out around Zimpla, but just go and see what it's like because it's a very interesting place to go. And then a lot of the places, you see, the reason I'm struggling to answer is that some of them are like technically ruined bars. There's no real definition of what's a ruin bar and what's not. There's one that's actually really cool. It's sort of a hidden gem. It's called

me-point-presso. And it's kind of difficult to spell, but it's M-E-L-Y-P-O-N-T and then P-R-E-S-S-S-Z-O. And that is, that is a cool one. You have given some advice in that, what is it, like local? Like locals. Yeah. Will you share some of those hidden gems with us? Oh, certainly. So in terms of... of history, I mean, you have basically all these different eras in Budapest, so I sort of organized them in my head by the eras. I mean, you start with the Romans, and that's all the way down. I mentioned at the beginning that Buddha and Pest joined together in 1873 to make Budapest,

but there was actually three cities. There was Budapest and then Obuda, and O Buddha's Old Buddha. And if you're looking at the Danube across to the Buddha side, and you go all the way to your right, down the Danube, you get to O Buddha, which is Old Buddha. And that's where the Romans were in the settlement called Aquinkum. And it was in the Pannonia region, which was essentially, to the best of my knowledge, like the eastern half of the Germanic lands stretching out towards Hungary and then Ukraine and Poland. And Aquincum was one of the bigger settlements in that region. And so the Romans were here and they have down in O'Buda the old Roman ruins preserved in a museum,

which is very, very fascinating, just because you would never, you come to Budapest, to come with the hunger, you never expect to see Roman history, but you can walk through those, and that's really cool. They actually have the preserved bathhouses from the Roman era. If you end up doing the bathhouses, it sort of adds this, I guess, legacy to the whole endeavor that this has been going on since the Roman days. And then you go through history, and you have the Hungarians coming to settle the Carpathian basin, as it's known. So essentially this flat plain that's on the other side of the mountains in Transylvania. was known as the Carpathian Basin, and they came in in 896.

Who were the Hungarians? There were these people called the Magyars. And the Magyars, as legend has it, there was these two brothers, Hunor and Magor, and they were following a white stag that was known as the miraculous stag through the woods. And they came across this land of plenty and beauty. And Hunor, his descendants, were the Huns, like Attila the Hun. And then Magor, his descendants were the Magyars. And these Magyar people were these sort of nomadic horse tribes, kind of similar to like Mongolian people, to be honest with you.

And they came into Europe at the end of the 9th century. And there was this saying in Latin, like essentially translated into Lord, save us from the arrows of the Magyars. Because they were these fearsome horse riding nomads. And then finally they came across Hungary, settled it. And then in the year 1,000, Hungary became a Christianized state. King Stephen the first created the Hungans. Hungarian state, and that was essentially from the year a thousand, they've been a Christian nation. That's so interesting. So the Hungarians had their own thing going for a while, but then at some

point they became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Right. So even up until, so between a thousand and the end of the 15th century, about 1450 to like 1490 was sort of the Hungarian golden age under King Matthias Corvinus. and that was Hungary had a huge swat of land that they ruled on their own. And then beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Turks were here. And they ran roughshod throughout the Hungarian lands and divided up the kingdom into three spheres. And so they were left incredibly weakened. And then from there, the Habsburgs came in sort of to rescue the Hungarians under the guise of Christendom and Christianity, but basically served as oppressors for most of their relationship together as well.

well until 1867 they formed officially the dual monarchy so it was austria-hungary and that lasted up until the collapse during world war one was when that empire the hapsburg empire was formally extinguished yeah and then i read that hungry lost most of its land then right yeah so so that's a very contentious thing that still plays into a lot of nationalist and far-right narratives to these days and also much much more innocent forms of longing for their former lands yeah but But essentially after World War I, you had the Treaty of Trianon, which Trianon was a wing, I think, in the Versailles Palace. So it was part of the Treaty of Versailles, but the part that pertained specifically to Hungary was known as the Treaty of Trianon. And that took away 66% of the Hungarian lands, most notably Transylvania, which is now part of Romania, and has a huge Hungarian culture in Transylvania.

It has a huge Romanian culture as well. but they lost Transylvania. They lost their seaport, which was in the Croatian coasts leading up until that little stretch of Italy where like Fiuma and Istria are, I think that's what it's called. And they lost a big portion of Slovakia. Southern Slovakia has a lot of Hungarian history as well. So essentially Hungary became one third of its former size after World War I. Yeah, it's such an interesting history. And yeah, I did a Romanian episode a while back and somebody Hungarian wrote into me and was like, did you know that transatlantic? Pennsylvania used to be ours. So yeah, people are still thinking about these things. Well, I actually, I went to Transylvania. I did a road trip there in September and it's absolutely gorgeous. The Hungarians called it Erde, or they still call it Erde. It's like E R-D-E-L-Y. Give you a little hint at how confusing their language can be. But regardless, it's stunningly beautiful. Me and my girlfriend went through there for about nine days and I've never seen such breathtaking scenery in my life. So I can see why the Hungarians miss it so much. But for most

Hungarians that you talk to nowadays, it's more of a nostalgic, romantic feeling they have towards Transylvania. But I wouldn't say that the vast majority are desperate to have it back. Yeah, yeah. But I'm not going to speak for anyone. Yeah. Yeah. During World War II, I mean, the Hungarians were on the Nazi side, were they? Can we talk about that? It's a little bit confusing, actually. The Hungarians, they came in to World War II. on the Nazi side. And then by the end of World War II, the Nazis controlled Budapest,

but the Soviets laid siege to Budapets to liberate the Hungarians from the Nazis. So the Nazis and the Hungarians had a bit of a falling out during the war. And there was essentially part of the Hungarians,

which was known as the Arrow Crossguard. There's a word for it in Maggarat, which I forget what it is. But they were sort of Hitler's subsidiaries in Hungary and there were truly, truly evil, evil people. But by the end of the war, and it's contentious on who you talk to about this, but Hungary, for the most part, was against the Nazis. And the Nazis actually destroyed

Budapest on their way out. They blew up six of the bridges in the center of the city that had to be rebuilt. So, and then the Soviets came in and they liberated Hungary from the Nazis. But just like with the Austrians liberating them from the Turks, their liberators ended up becoming their oppressors. So for Hungary, it was just basically walking from one disaster to another in terms of the tragedy of history. Do you get a sense or have people told you what communism was like during this time? Because I think it ended in 1989. But I mean, how communism was like varied quite greatly in all these different countries. Right. So the Hungarians, they had a pretty unique experience with communism. Even after the fact, and during the fact, a lot of people call the type of

communism, particularly with economic methods in Hungary. They called it goulash communism. Gulash being like the Hungarian famous stew. It's like a paprika and beef and vegetable-based stew. But they called it goulash communism because essentially they took different bits and pieces from communism, a few things from capitalism, a few things from this, a few things from that. And it was known to be a sort of softer form of socialism than the rest of the places that were Bon the Iron Curtain. For instance, a lot of people under the Soviet sphere, under the Soviet influence, would come to Budapest to buy Western goods because it was the only place that you could get them. But that shouldn't be a misnomer to suggest that it was really a softer form

of communism as far as control of the people was concerned, particularly in the immediate years after World War II when the Soviets were really purging a lot of anti-communist elements out of the countries. There was some heinous things that went on in terms of torture and imprisonment and execution and phony trials and things like that. They were very, very repressive against Hungary, which led and culminated in the 1956 Hungarian uprising, which was briefly looked to be a successful revolution against the communist regime here. But then the Soviets came in with tanks and crushed the resistance. So from then, 1956, up until 1989, you definitely did have a softening of the authoritarian regime, but it was by no means soft.

As just economically, they had less of a strict, strict communist control over the country. Right. And people really didn't have any freedom of movement, is that right? For the most part, yeah, I think you could apply if you were an exceptional case, like a musician or an athlete or something for special dispensation to leave, but you didn't have free movement. A lot of Germans, I think particularly East Germans, would come to Hungary during those years as one of their main tourist destinations because they weren't allowed to go very many places. Yeah. That's so interesting. So it ended in 1989 with a student revolution. Was it just like contagious of communism falling elsewhere? To be honest with you, that is one area of the

Hungarian history where I'm not as completely well versed is the immediate fall of communism. Okay. So I won't speak to something that I don't know too much about. But I do know that those final years in the 80s, there was a gradual crumbling, and then at a certain point, there was, I think, a referendum against communism. And I'm pretty sure the Soviet relinquishing of Hungary happened very rapidly toward the end. But actually, one of the guys that's in charge today, Victor Orban of the Fidesz party, he was seen as a much more revolutionary, well-looked-upon figure back then, whereas now he's a very, very divisive figure in the country. And a lot of people, particularly in Budapest, I would say really loathe and despise him, but he does have a very well consolidated and an entrenched

base of support. Yeah, I mean, he was, as you said, like, seen as like quite pro-democracy back in the day, but now it was known as Europe's most authoritarian leader, actually, and very anti-immigrant, anti-migrant, consolidating power. What do you see? Is there, like, a feeling in the streets or, like, are there a lot of protests? Or, like, What's going on over there as far as that, all that? Because you had elections recently, right? They had the EU elections very recently. But the last Hungarian election, that was right when I first got here.

It was either last fall or last summer or last spring. It was sometime between the spring and the fall. And Orban's party, Fidesz, they made gains, actually, which was seen as very distressing for a lot of the more left-leading people in Budapest. In terms of the feeling in the atmosphere on the street, in the winter, it certainly was more vociferous in terms of there's a lot more tumult and more protests. There was a very frowned upon law or statute that they put in place to limit people's ability to get paid for overtime work, which led to a whole series of protests. But since the spring and the summer have

come along, not to speak to something again that I don't know too, too, too much about, but I would say that the feeling in the street has calmed down a lot, which for a big reason, of that is that there's a lot of Hungarians that are away during the summer and a lot of tourists are here. So the city has a different vibe anyway. I mean, all of Europe feels like it's in crisis right now, like the yellow vests in France and the protests for and against Brexit here. It's just, yeah, big transitions right now. Yeah, it's difficult in Hungary, to be honestly, because they have Fidesas has such a consolidation of power where that's why it really feels a little bit like an illiberal democracy because there's not a real sense of an event. for the other side to even win an election.

You have a few fledgling parties like momentum, which actually gained some seats. I think they gained two seats in the European election. So they're seen as a bright spark and a party that could potentially challenge. But there's a big fracturing on the opposition side. So it's difficult for any one party to mount a challenge against Fedez, particularly because the only party that seems to really be able to take away seats from them

is unfortunately Jobik, which is an even more right-wing, ultra-nationalist party. Yeah. So if you want to talk about super depressing, that's that's sort of the case. Well, and Orban's party controls most of the media, right? Yes, yes. He has a buddy of his. His name is Lawrence Messaroche, and he's a guy that has consolidated a lot of media

control for Fides. And it's not, it's not too open, particularly, I mean, you see, it's sort of a misnomer when it comes to Budapest. So Budapest has, again, depending on how you count it, but between two and four, and four million people or the immediate like city of budapest probably two million closer to two million but the next biggest hungarian city is like 200,000 so you have a huge gulf a huge gulf between the big city of budapest and then the outlying cities and particularly between the countryside and budapest you have a huge divide in terms of way of living so in budapest you get the feeling that there's this whole civil

society and liberal pushback against urban but it's a little bit of a misnomer because he has such a consolidation. It's such a firm entrenchment in a lot of the smaller places and particularly in the countryside. And they get fed a lot of propaganda from his regime. Yeah, that's happening in many places around the world. Well, despite all of that, which is quite heavy and quite serious, you still choose to live in Budapest and you love that city. So let's talk a little bit more about why you choose to stay there and why you like it. And so tell me like what would a perfect day off look like for you. How would you spend your day? Well, my days on and my days off are actually quite similar because I try to essentially always be working and never be working at the same time.

I'm trying to pull it off at least. But I do a lot of things on my days off that I would ordinarily do on day on. So a perfect day for me in general is a mix of going out and having my own sort of solo adventures in the city, going to really explore somewhere out in nature that I haven't seen before and has an interesting edge to it. For example, the other day, I went to this place called the Nepsegeth, where I'd been there in the past, but I hadn't really taken a focused approach

towards exploring and photographing and videographing. And it was this beautiful island with some beach bars on it. And then there was a whole other side of the island where they had these abandoned boat factories and they were covered in graffiti and there was glass and broken glass strewn all over the place.

So that in itself just as an experience sort of sums up Budapest in a nutshell for me. You have these really chilled out summer drinking spots on the beach in the middle of this beautiful island covered in meadows. And then this sort of grungy, gritty, just really different energy coming from the old, destroyed, former Soviet sort of factory sphere. So that was really cool. But then what I'm not by myself, I really like to hang out with a lot of the friends that I've made here. There's an interesting mix in Budapest between expat life and local life. And if you can try to sort of cross the bridge between the two, you, I think.

think your experiences are really enhanced as an expat. I'm speaking as an expat because I know there's sometimes a temptation to just get locked into the expat scene and all that. But the local Hungarians are really amazing people. And my girlfriend actually is Hungarian. So that's one of the main reasons why I think I've enjoyed life here so much is that she showed me a lot of the more local side of things, which has been really cool. What are some things that she showed you that you think are really special that you think we would be interested in checking it? Well, a lot of what the Hungans Arians like to do is rather than going to a bar that might be overpriced or sit indoors, they just love being outside and going to check out a nice stretch of grass by the river and bringing

either a bulgrauch, which is their version of barbecue. I actually did one yesterday at my girlfriend's mom's house, but they essentially hang this, like, tripod over the fireplace. And then for the peak of the tripod, there's a chain hanging down. and then from the chain there's this big metal bowl and you just throw everything in there, whether it's oil, paprika, vegetables, sausages, blah, blah, blah, and you make different dishes on the bogratch. That's really cool.

If you could have an experience to do like an authentic Hungarian bogratch, then that would be great. But there's also just the mountains of Buddha are particularly special in terms of getting a view. I mean, Hungary has a stereotype and it's a myth that I've sort of perpetuated since I've been here, that it's a completely flat country. But really, there is mountains. And particularly Budapest is some of the highest ones that you'll see in Hungary. And they are part of Budapest, and it extends further back from the river. And it's way out of the tourist zone.

But you can do these epic, epic hikes up along the mountains of Buddha, which are really awesome. So I know that you went on a day trip recently. I think it was a day trip to, how do you say this, Vizigrad? Fisagrad, yeah. Is that a place that we could make it to? in a day if we wanted to explore? Oh, surely, surely. So that is one of many towns that are along the Danube.

And that's actually a great thing to do is to pick one of those towns. And even during the warmer months, I think you can do it during the colder months. I don't know that you'd want to, but you can take a boat, basically a public transport boat and buy a ticket to take a boat down the Danube and stop off at one of these towns. So Vichagrad is one of them, which is great. Bichigrad is a former castle town. And you can see why it's a really important city. for defense historically. There's actually a diplomatic group. It's sort of this inner EU diplomatic

group between Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. And they're known as the Vichagrad for because that town of Vichagrad has had huge strategic importance to the region. So basically, you get there and it's this huge hill with this beautiful castle and you walk to the top. And then down below, there's all these beautiful little river bars and authentic Magyat restaurants and souvenir shops, antique shops. And then there's other towns in the immediate area like Santandre is a great one. And that was a former Serbian town hundreds of years ago. I mean, they still have a few Serbian churches there, but regardless, it's very much Hungarian now. But that's another great little beach town. And I say it's a beach town. It's really not a beach town. It's a river town. But it has this beach town feeling

where you walk down these cobblestone streets like you were in Greece or Italy or something. And it really has a feeling like that, which is unique from Budapest. So do we need a car or is there a way to get around without one? You definitely can get around without one. I mean, there's great train links to most of these places. A car certainly helps, though. I would say if you want to rent a car, if you come to Budapest for five days,

I would really spend two and a half to three and a half days in the city and then do one or two day trips on the side. Another great thing to do is to go to the Balaton Lake. And Lake Balaton, it's the largest freshwater lake in all of Eastern Europe. our second largest, but regardless, it's this huge, huge lake in the middle of the western part of Hungary. And it's really long, it's this very long, long lake. It's sort of shaped like a giant's pole or something like that. But it essentially has towns all around the perimeter, and they all have their own vibe.

But it's just a great place to get a sense for the Hungarian summertime. Because there's a lot of people in Budapest will take a month off from work, three weeks off from work, and go spend it all at the Balaton. So that's a big cultural thing for Hungary. Do you have a favorite town in that area? I've been to four, and they all were interesting and cool in their own mind. I mean, I was always staying with a friend, so it had its own vibe based on to that. There's one place that I really loved called T-H-A-N-Y, and they have lavender fields there,

so it's a great smelling town, if nothing else. But yeah, there's all sorts of different towns. I mean, the closest part to Hungary is this place, Ballotan, Milagosh, and that is very, very close to Budapest. It's only like a 45-minute drive, so that's cool if you just want to get to a closer part. But then there's all these vineyard towns that wrap around the side, which I haven't really been to yet, but there's great wines in Hungary, and some of them come from Lake Balaton. And then there's a couple that are more famous in terms of the party atmosphere. Like there's this place, Shiofok, which is S-I-O-F-K. And that's very well-known for

its nightlife, and there's like a big row of bars on the beach. And that's sort of the young people destination. But yeah, there's plenty of different towns to check out. Okay, cool. So what are the foods that we need to try when we're in Hungary? Well, Hungarian food is traditionally very, very meat and stew and potato-based. So it's very filling. One of the most famous dishes that you can get is the goulash, which I mentioned before. And that's something that you really should try when you're here. It's just like a beef-based, hearty soup. It's very much comfort food. And, then you have other comfort dishes like chicken paprika, which is a very famous dish, and it's basically chicken, grilled chicken, or however they might make it. They add it to these noodles known as nokele

with like paprika. Probably going to get one of these recipes wrong and someone's going to kill me. But regardless, that's my impression of it. Paprika, the plant and the spice, they use the word paprika for both is very, very important to Hungarian culture. So they have a lot of dishes with paprika, spice or paprika vegetable. If you see anything with paprika, that's very good to get. Also, there's a bunch of international food, particularly in Budapest. And you say international food, oh, it's not Hungarian. But they have a lot of, like, interesting.

For example, something that I eat a ton of is foe, Vietnamese foe. And there's a big Vietnamese population in Budapest. And seriously, there's like 30 different foe restaurant, if not more. I mean, foe is everywhere because they have the Hungarian, like traditional lunch break. You can get a menu, it's called, and that's the name of the order. It's like you get menu A, menu B, menu C. And it always comes with a soup beforehand. And soup is very popular here.

They have tons of different types of soups, goulash, other soups. So anyway, I think that's where the Vietnamese immigrants saw they're opening in the market because there's more faux places here than anything else. It's crazy. So that's very good to try. There's also the famous Hungarian chimney cake, which is called the Kirtosh Kalach, which people will say it's not really a Budapest thing because it's actually much more famous in Transylvania, but that is something cool to try. It's like a big spiral-looking chimney

cake. You can get them in Czech Republic also. I think they're called Trudelniks there. But regardless, that's cool. And then from the drink perspective, you definitely have to try the Hungarian wines. They have some very, very delectable wines. There's one called Egré bicaver, which is a blended cuvei wine, and that comes from the town of Eger, and they call it Egregie Bikovir. It's Bullsblood. Because when the Turkish invaders came to Egger, and this is a myth, but when the Turkish invasers came to Eger in like the 16th or 17th century, they said that the people there had the blood of the bull, but really they were just drunk on the wine because they had like these red beards

and they were fighting like crazy berserkers. And then they also have Tokai, which is from Tokai, that's a town in Hungary, T-O-K-A-J, and that's a famous dessert wine. And it's been famous throughout Europe for centuries. Like if you read old literature and it's sort of aristocratic and feeling, sometimes you'll see a scene and they'll have Tokaii as there after dinner drink. So that's been a very famous dessert wine forever. And then finally, Palinka and Unica, which are the two national spirits of Hungary.

Palinka, it's best if you can have it from like a farmer and he just gives you a bottle of homemade. You know, it's like a brandy or just a fruit-based distilled spirit that's very, very strong and usually drunk at festivals and things like that or cookouts or the Bograught, which I was mentioning before. You can get it in a bar. It's never as good. But definitely try a polinka. And then Unicum is sort of this bitter Yeagermeister that they brew in Budapest or they distill in Budapest. And you take a tour of the Unicum factory. Most people hate it. I really like it. It's very, very, very bitter. But those are all the delicious drinks they have here. Well, it sounds like a factory tour would be fun anyway, whether we liked it or not. So amounts in the city. And the Unicum factory has a bathhouse next door called the Dandad Baths. That's a super local recommendation. No one ever knows about that one. It's like a hidden gem. It's not the most fancy bathhouse experience,

but you'll only really see Hungarians there. And it's a very cool place. It's so much cheaper than the others also. It's like 2,000 for a ticket, which is basically eight pounds or so. So it's a third of the price of some of the more expensive ones. That sounds perfect. Go to a factory tour, have a few drinks.

Well, not maybe drinks, but have a little taste and then go to the bathhouse. That sounds so. Before I let you go, Can we do a roundup of your favorite places in Budapest? Yes, of course. Okay. What is your favorite bakery?

So there's a spot that just opened up literally a stone throwaway from my apartment called Freya, F-R-E-Y-J-A. And it's the Danish. It's named us the Danish fertility god. It was also called Freya. I think it might have been a different spelling in Danish, but regardless, it's a shop dedicated purely to filled croissants. And it's absolutely amazing. Like they just do decadent, delicious, luxurious croissants, and then they have coffee as well. And it's a very open interior with a lot of light pouring through on a beautiful street right around the corner for me.

And yeah, my favorite one, they have like a duck liver paté filled croissant. And then they also do like a banana, hazelnut, Nutella one. And it's really, really amazing. Wow, they are getting exotic with these croissants. Yeah, yeah. They have new ones every day also. They always come out with something new. But it's a very laid back place also.

So it's not like it sounds like it could be a little pretentious, but it's completely chilled out and very down there. It's a nice mix. What is your neighborhood like? That sounds like a pretty cool place. So my neighborhood, you basically have the party sphere of pest, or I call it the party sphere, but it's like a ring that stretches from the river up until like pretty much just before where I live. There's a big tram line called the four-six tram that links one side of pest to the other in like a sort of semi-circle type shape. and then inside that are most of the bars and the tourist destinations and the downtown. And then I live just on the other side of that.

It's a cool place to live, actually, because it's between that ring and the city park, the Varosligat. And it's more sort of suburban. If you get closer to the park, you actually have a lot of like embassies and diplomatic buildings. But it's a lot more chilled out and laid back here than it would be within the party ring itself. Would this be a good place for somebody to stay if they were visiting? Certainly. I would say it would be a great place actually to get an Airbnb. District 7 is the name of my district. But if you look to stay in District 7 and you're on the wrong side of the 4-6 tram line, it's called the Corrutt. K-O-R-U-T is like the big road that rings around. The Corrut is like the Hungarian word for Boulevard. But regardless, if you stay within that party area, it's going to be more pricey, crowded and a lot of noise, particularly at night, Budapest nightlife. It's not like the UK nightlife. Like it goes on. until six in the morning. So if you're unfortunately located, you can deal with a lot of noise and particularly like drunk British stag doze singing football chance. So I don't know.

I hate those stag doze. Yeah. But regardless, where I'm staying, you still get a little bit of that bumping out into the periphery and you get woken up every once in a while, but it's nowhere near the amount of noise. And the bright side of living where I live is that it has great access links to the rest of the city. I mean, if you want to get super sort of interesting and unique with it, like stay over in Buddha, find a nice little place over there, particularly District 11 in Buddha is very nice. That's if you're thinking or you want to just have a hint of inspiration, check out District 11 on the Buddhist side.

And that could be a cool unusual place to stuff. Very cool. So what's your favorite coffee shop? A favorite coffee shop is a place called Dorado. It's quite close to me. It's about a 15 minute walk. It is inside the party zone, but it's in an area. I mean, I say the party zone.

It sounds like this sort of demonic, like terrible thing. But it's really, it's amazing that area. It's just that at night it can be a little bit chaotic. But regardless, this Dorado copy shop is right next to a square called the Klausal Square or Klazal Ter, T-R is square in Hungarian. So you get a lot of pairs. And this is a small little leafy square with a bunch of coffee shops and bars. And there's a great brunch place around the corner called Stika.

But the Rado copy shop, it's run by a Spanish guy and this Hungarian, wife and they just have delicious delicious coffee. There's beautiful plants and they have great croissants as well and a very nice vibe. So I love to do work there sometimes. So they've got Wi-Fi. Yeah, they have Wi-Fi and they have a big communal table with some great sort of copy table books. There's one awesome one that I saw the other day about this guy, the inventor of the travel log in like the turn of the century, 19th century. I forget his name now, but they have a huge, huge copy table style book of all of his pictures and his writings, and it's very inspirational if you're into travel blogging

and all of that stuff. But that place is great to do work and great to get a cup of coffee. There's also another one called Magvito Cafe, and that's a very good place to do work. It's M-A-G-V-E-T-O, and it's attached to a huge bookstore called Libri, which is more of like a commercial bookstore.

It's not like a little bookshop or anything like that, but that coffee shop, Magvito, which is attached, has a beautiful workspace. there's a huge like balcony section where you can sort of sprawl out and sometimes on a good day there's like five or six other people there. It just feels very communal and sort of academic. So that's a great place to work. And then for lunch, you mentioned that you're a big fan of Vietnamese food. Would you say that's your favorite? Yeah, that's, it's almost like a diagnosable level where I'm a little bit scared about how addicted I am to it. I think I'm going to go get some right after this,

but there's a place right around the corner for me in Laha, Louisette, which is a hard word to spell actually, B-L-H-A and then L-U-J-Z-A, Louisa. It was named after a famous Hungarian actress, I believe, called Louisa Blaha. Because that's actually something else that's interesting about the Hungarian culture is that they put last names first. So Blaha Louisa, instead of Louisa Blaha. Okay. So for all Hungarian names, you'll see the last name before the first name. So you'll see that in print?

You'll see it in print. You'll see it everywhere. I mean, street names, things like that. They just put last name first. Like when my girlfriend answers the phone, she goes, hello, it's Savo Alexandra. Instead of, hello, it's Alexander Savo. But back to the lunch spot, there's a place in Blaha-Luizaterre called Laman Fo, and it's just this tiny little hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place.

Very cheap. You spend $6 for a big, big bowl of soup and a coffee and a water. But it just completely fills you up, and it's delicious, delicious foe. I mean, I don't know. If these two guys in the kitchen there, these two Vietnamese guys, I call them the Fo brothers, but they just are in there every day and they have it down to like a science, I guess. I love it.

I mean, there's plenty of other great places to get found, but that's my go-to-go-to spot. So where are you taking your girlfriend for dinner? For dinner? There's a bunch of really delicious places to try. There's one in the center of the city, which I really like, which we went to the other night called Kulevesh,

and it translates to Stone Soup Restaurant. The reason I say what it translates to is sometimes on Google when you search for it, it doesn't come up right away. I think they fixed it. But regardless, if you put in stone soup restaurant, and it will come up, but it's K-O-L-O-V-E-S-Kulevesh. And I'm saying these anglicized spell Kul-A-S-Spearl.

It's K-O with two dashes on the top. And it gets very, very confusing. But regardless, that's a delicious. It's sort of an Eastern European, Hungarian, Jewish cuisine hybrid. And they're open. Usually the kitchen's open until 1130 on weekends at least, which is quite rare for Budapest. A lot of the good restaurants, they call. close earlier. But it's a very laid-back environment. They have a beautiful, beautiful beer garden outside.

It's in the heart of the Jewish quarter. And it's a very nice place to go. So I would say Kulavish is a really good spot. There's other ones as well. There's a really cool Georgian restaurant called Hachiporri, which I like a lot. What do you like about it? Well, one of the things I love about it is that it's Georgian food, which I found out I took a trip to Georgia this March, a ski trip actually from Tbilisi up to Gudari, which is a ski resort in Georgia. But I fell in love with the Georgian food there. So just the memories of that are lent to the restaurant, which unfortunately I don't think I can give that experience to everyone. But trust me when I say that Georgian food is absolutely delicious. And one of the cool parts about that restaurant in particular is that there's a big basilica,

which is one of the biggest tourist destinations in the pest side of the city. It's called St. Stephen, or St. Ishtfan in the Hungarian pronunciation's Basilica, St. Stephen's Basilica. And there's a bunch of very tourist trap restaurants on the front side of that. And you get this beautiful view of the basilica if you eat there. But they're usually super, super crowded and not that good of food. But this one, Hachipori, the Georgia restaurant, it's on the backside of the basilica. So you can get your food and then walk over after dinner instead of going to eat amongst the tourist chaos. That is an excellent tip.

Thank you. Welcome. Are there food halls or like food markets in Budapah? There's a few. It's not quite like London. I mean, London has great markets. You get all those weekend markets and like Camden Town Market, London Fields, all. those different types of markets. They don't have as many of those spontaneous markets. I mean,

they certainly do have some of them, but then they have these big market halls, which are sort of based in the historical past. Like a lot of them opened up in the end of the 19th century, end of the Austro-Hungarian era. The Great Market Hall is the most famous one. And that one's right down by the Liberty Bridge, which is my favorite bridge in the city. It's this elegant, double-backed green suspension bridge, very beautiful. And the Great Market Hall is on the pest side of that. And it's a huge, huge market. The top is filled with like these souvenir stalls. So if you want to get some cheap sort of Hungarian momentum, it's a pretty good place to do it or as good of any. And the lower end of

the market is filled with different Hungarian food stalls. So a lot of people do their shopping there. I mean, it's a good place to just buy produce. They have a fish market in the basement and they have a bunch of different meat markets and butchers and places selling paprika, Hungarian spices, things like that. So that's sort of the biggest tourist destination food market. There's another one called the hold street market or the downtown market. You might see it on Google. And that's very close to Sabachag Ter, which is Liberty Square, which is another great place to go if you're a tourist. And that market's a little more laid back. They have some cool restaurants in there, which is what I like about that one. Whereas the great market hall is the restaurants aren't so good. They're more like tourist trap type

places, but the whole street market, they have a good mix of authentic restaurants as well. That sounds good. So you mentioned that there's plenty of places to go out at. nights. I know the ruin bar is not necessarily your scene. Where do you like to go out? Yeah, well, in the summer, there's a whole bunch of different things to do. I mean, a lot of the nightlife in the summer is based around festivals. The biggest one, which is on, in the beginning of August, it's called the Seget Festival. And that's like a 10-day-long festival with huge, huge headliners. They have like the Arctic Monkeys come last year. They have a lot of big rap names, techno, blah, blah, all this, all that. And then that sort of lends itself out to a little smaller festival.

which you can always look up when you come to Budapest that are going on on the weekends. But really, my favorite thing to do is just to get some drinks with some friends by the river. There's a river bar, which a lot of tourists like to go to called Pontoon, and that one's right next to the chain bridge, which is sort of the most famous bridge in Budapest. And it's very crowded, but it has a beautiful view of the Danube and usually some live music as well. So that's very cool. And then usually what I'm doing on a given night out, if I'm going to meet up with some friends, is go to some of these, you were asking about the ruin bars before, and there's some really

big ruin bars, but then there's other bars that are, they're not really ruined bars, I wouldn't really call them ruin bars, but they have this sort of unique Hungarian, eclectic architecture inside and their design is sort of cool. And some of those that I really like, there's one over near where I live called Hintolo, it's H-I-N-T-A-L-O, and it translates to the rocking horse, and it has a very cool sort of underground artsy bohemian vibe there a very good craft liquor craft beer and a nice vibe to hang out at and then there's some bars closer to the party area there's a street called the nage diofa utza and kish diopha utza nashdiofa utza and kishdiofa utza nahs means big nagy yi and kish means small and that whole street continues through that klaus altaire than i mentioned before

my favorite coffee shop dorado and on that street you have a couple of really good bars there's one called j, which is DZZS. It's the Hungarian way. DZZS apparently is the Hungarian way you would spell out the sound of like a buzzer, like j. And then there's Kishuzam, which is on that street, which is another great little bar, really cool food. And then off of that street on the Dobuza, you have the Kete Kutya, which translates to Black Dog. And they have amazing, amazing sandwiches and tapas and some very good craft beers as well. And then there's a square called the Madatch Ter. the Madash Square. And in that square, you have two really great bars, Telep and Cosponts, and there's sort of like outdoor drinking areas that bleed out onto the little square. And then

there's a couple of cocktail bars in the nearby vicinity. So those are, those are some of my favorite spots. And then other than that, I mean, a lot of places in the center of the city, like the Dayak Square is this huge square. And I have something very similar to the London Eye called the Budapest Eye. I mean, it's like a straight rip-off basically. But in that square, you'll see a lot of young people drinking. And that's sort of like the center of the party district. So a lot of the streets spray out from off of that. So that's a cool place if you want to just get a glass of.

Something that the Hungarians love to do in the summer, which I have become a big fan of, is called Fruch. And it's Hungarian sort of wine spritzer. And they have it at the bars. They always have like a tap for Fruch. And it's basically rosé or white wine mixed with soda water. But yet there's a whole different bunch of things that you can order. You can get the Hasmeister or the Vita Hasmeister, and it's basically differentiating how much wine to soda water you have.

So a lot of people like to get some footch and go to the Dayak Square. I think I'm rambling a little here, but those are some my favorite things to do. Those are excellent recommendations. Yeah. So Budapest sounds quite hipster. Would you say that there's like a big creative scene and is there like a designer market where we could support like local artists and things like that? Yeah. Well, there's a few different markets.

There's one on Sundays and Saturdays in the Gauds du Udvar, which is basically near that Madich Square that I mentioned. And the Gaudsdu Udvar is like an indoor kind of strip mall, but it's just filled with bars and restaurants. And it's a really cool place to go. Actually, I don't particularly love it. Like, it's not my favorite place because it's a little bit chaotic. And I don't know, it just has a vibe that I'm not myself particularly into, but a lot of people

have a ton of fun there. And it's a cool place to bar hop. Anyway, in that Gaudhdu Udvar, on Saturdays and Sundays, I believe, there's a local artist market, and they have a bunch of, some of the stands are not local artists. They're more like souvenir types, but they also have local artists there. And in the Simplakerts, I know on Sundays, they also have a design market featuring a lot of local artists. So that's cool if you want to go see that ruin bar that I mentioned before without dealing with the nightlife tourist vibe. You can go on a Sunday and check out the art market instead. That's a good idea. Do you have any favorite museums, or are there any museums that you would say we have to check out if we're in Budapest?

Yeah, sure. There's a few that I really like. There's one that the Hungarian National Museum. Well, there's actually two Hungarian National Museum. There's one that's the Hungarian National Museum and there's one that's like the National History Museum. The National History Museum, which is in District 8, is very, very cool. That's a very interesting museum that will walk you through the history of the Hungarian people. which, as I've mentioned, is very interesting. There's also the National Gallery, which I just went to see. They have an exhibit on right now. I believe it's until the middle of October about the history of the surrealist art movement. And it's with Dali and Magrith as the two headliners. So they have three Dallis and three Magrits, along with some of the other artists in the surrealist movement. And then the permanent exhibit there is also pretty cool because it goes through Hungarian art, Hungarian fine art.

There's another fine art museum, which goes through like European fine arts, and you get sort of the general vibe, which you'll get anywhere in Europe, like France, Italy, wherever it might be. But this one particularly focuses on Hungarian artists. And another cool thing about that museum is that it's inside of Buda Castle. So I mentioned before you have the Castle District and you have the walk up Gellard Hill to the Citadel. And then you have the Matthias Church and the Fisherman's Bastion, which are the other two beautiful places. But the real showpiece of the Castle district is the Buddha Castle. and that's the castle that you'll see with a big green dome on a lot of like Budapest postcards. An interesting thing about that castle is that it's actually not very nice when you get up close.

The shape of the castle is beautiful on the view of the river, but the actual castle is not that nice because it was blown apart during the war. And then it was rebuilt during the communist times. And like you can just, you just don't get the sense that it's as beautiful as some of the castles that have their facades authentically intact from the 13th, 14, 15th century or whatever. But regardless, the National Gallery in Buda Castle is a very cool experience because you can walk up through the Castle District and then go to a really cool art gallery inside of Buda Castle.

So I would say that's a very nice thing to do. And then the Fine Arts Museum is on the foot of the Vadochligets, just at the start of it, and right across it is the Kuntzala, which is like another special exhibition type place in both of these buildings. They're like literally across from each other. And they both look like, you know, you're in Vienna somewhere with beautiful Austro-Suscessionist-style architecture. And they usually have some good stuff inside as well. And then the middle of the two of them is Hoshok Tere or Heroes Square, which is this bizarre and beautiful set of statues.

There's like one ring that goes around the back filled with like Hungarian kings and different heroes. from the history, all done up in this beautiful faded green copper or bronze, rather. And then there's this one pole in the middle with the seven Magyar chieftain. So we're the original Magyar Hungarians that came to the Hungarian basin in 896. So that whole square is just this awesome, awesome square. And then you have the Veroslique at the city park on the other side of that, which is a great place to spend the day after you're in the museum because you have a lot of beautiful outdoor things to do. You have the Seychini bathhouse there. And a couple of of very cool places. I'll just mention them briefly to go get a drink and something to eat. There's

K-T-E-R-T-E-M, which is this outdoor bar that's very low-key and laid back, but it's basically built into the forest. So you get a very nice vibe there, especially at night. They have these cool lights. And then Patlinka, which is P-A-T-L-I-N-K-A, I think, which is another great place to get to drink outdoors in the Barishleget. So if you package one of those two museums, a trip to Sechchini Bathhouse, and then a walk around the Barishlyget City Park with a trip to one of those bars. I think that's a great afternoon. Perfect. I love it. So at bars or restaurants or taxis, are we tipping? What's the tipping culture? So what I would do if you come to Hungary is to get the Bolt app. It used to be called Taxify. I know it works in a few other Central European countries,

but it's their version of Uber. They don't have Uber here. They just have Taxify or now as it's known bolt B-O-L-T and that you don't I think there might be a tipping option now but traditionally it's just you use it the same way that you would use Uber with normal cabs so actually I learned this the other day technically you're not allowed to pick up a taxi from the street there's a lot of cab services that you can call and they'll have competitive prices to the bolt or taxify although I still think that bolts a little bit cheaper the taxis that you might pick up on the street it's illegal for them to do so so if they do it they're going to charge you a huge premium A lot of tourists don't know that.

And they might try to pick up one of the yellow taxis, like it's another city like New York or something. And you'll really get ripped off usually. So either call a taxi service or order through the app, which is Bolt. Okay. That is good to know. And do you tip at restaurants? Is it included? How does that work?

Tipping culture, it's not like it is in America here. I would say that I usually do tip. I mean, that's just sort of a habit that I have, you know, being used to tipping in America. but my general principle is like to round up to the closest thousand for rent. So like dinner would usually be a 3,600 forint bill. And I would probably leave 4,000 forints. So that's like a 10% tip. So yeah, I would say 10% is pretty standard.

But it depends on the type of place you are. I mean, a lot of places, if you're not a big tipper and like you're at a bar where they just serve a little bit of food, tipping 100 and 200 forints and no one will bat an eye. I think a lot of times if you're a foreigner, they expect you to tip a little bit more. But it's really up to you. And I would say 20% is very, very generous. 10% is more standard, pretty good service at a restaurant. Okay.

Final question. Do you have any advice for perhaps an American who's interested in moving to Budapest? Yes. I would say certainly come to the city to try it out for at least a week, hopefully more, before you make the decision to move here. I would say coming with an open mind and be ready to have some interesting experiences, but also just to try to absorb the Hungarian lifestyle, which I would say is to be a little bit more chilled out about things and not try to make Budapest something that it isn't. I mean, just really look for the local side of experiences. If you come to Budapest for the first time, as an American, you could be tempted to just view it.

it is this like paradisiable place. I mean, everything is is very inexpensive, very laid back lifestyle. The architecture is stunning. There's all this history in the city. And that's fine to, you know, have good views about it. But don't forget that there's another side to the tourist industry, which can be not always as positive. And there's a lot of problems with affordability of things for everyday Hungarians. And just to be respectful of that and not just. sort of raid the city as a tourist destination or as an expat destination and just try to have a fuller experience that way. Is there any way you would advise that they do that? Like, how could people be better? Yeah. It's a tough question. And it's one that I suppose I really say,

not as someone that has mastered the art of doing that, but something that I always try to keep in mind myself. And I kind of battle with this dichotomous feeling inside of me of living this expat lifestyle and also realizing that some of the things that are amazing about Budapest are not amazing for everyone. So I don't know if I have a great answer for that. And I hate to be cynical because I'm generally a very optimistic and positive person. But I see that there is a very, particularly in Budapest, I think I'm sensitive to it just because there's a lot of people coming here now. And it's great. It's great for the city. It's good for the economy. But sometimes that money that you spend at the really big popular downtown places does not always go to the pockets of like local

business owners and local artisans and things like that. It goes to the pockets of a very few amount of people that own all the real estate in the downtown. So I guess my general concluding advice would be just try to find things off the beaten trail that are a little bit more in the periphery. And if you're a smart discerning traveler, you can tell when something's a local mom and pop shop versus a big tourist trap. So if you can do some of the tourist traps, particularly when it comes to cultural and historical stuff that's sort of a must see, I'm only going to be in Budapest once and I need to see it. But then when you're eating and you're dining and you're drinking, just try to go somewhere up the beaten trail. Yeah, great advice. Well, thank you so much for talking to me today,

Willie. Where can people find out more about you? Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been awesome. I love to have an opportunity to get some of these thoughts out anyway. But my Instagram, is where I post most of my stuff traditionally, and that's Willie TV, W-I-L-L-I-E-E-D-V. And I do poetry, I do photography, and I do a lot of my stories where I essentially treat it like a vlog with edits. I put a lot of effort into my daily vlogs on Instagram rather than YouTube or something like that. So you can see me there. I do have a blog, have-a-go.com. That's H-A-V-A-G-O.co.

and Like Locals is the company that I'm doing some work for right now. And if you go to Budapest or Barcelona or London or even Athens, they just added, you can download the Like Locals app and they have a lot of great little tours of the city. And in the fall, they're coming out with some more stuff as well. But they have a blog. Also likelocals.com. So willy.com. Or Likelocals and Likelocals.combe. Or Like Locals.com. And like locals.com are the four places to find me.

Well, thank you again. It's been really fun talking to you. Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here. And I hope you and everyone else listening has a fantastic, whatever day of the week it is, have a great time. Thank you so much, Will. I really appreciate it. Okay, Willie has convinced me to go back to Budapest. This place sounds pretty great. I've only been once, and that was a few years ago. And at the time, Budapest wasn't one of my favorites. And I think part of it had to do with the fact that I was supposed to go with a friend and she had to bail at the last minute. And I wasn't expecting to go on my own. And I was being a little bit pouty. And I just wasn't in the solo traveler mindset, which is such a waste.

I should have just rolled with it and experienced the city for what it was. But live and learn. Sometimes the city just catches you on a bad day. And that leaves an impression on you. I visited Belgium for the first time many, many years ago. And it was pouring the entire time and not just rizzling. It was proper pouring, and that definitely had an effect on how we perceived the city. But then I returned to Brussels a few years ago, and it was a gloriously sunny weekend.

And now I love that city. It was such a fun vibe, huge art scene right now, and just a really thriving buzz about it. So I guess I will have to do a Brussels episode. But my question for you is, are there any cities that you have given a second chance to? and realize they're actually pretty great. I would love to hear about them, so write to me and let me know. You can contact me at sarah at postcardacademy.com, or I'm on Instagram at Sarah Micahettel.

And if you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe and tell a friend about it. That is the best way to grow the show. That's all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarah micotel.com slash blank no more.