Sightseeing: Heroes Square

Since I have quite a lot of family and friends visiting over the next couple of months, I thought that it would be a good opportunity to play "tour guide" and learn about some of the sights of Budapest. And so, in no particular order, I'm going to start with Heroes Square, or Hősök tere as it's known in Hungarian.

Heroes Square is on the Pest side of the river, and at the end of the lovely tree-lined Andrassy Avenue (oh dear, this is already starting to sound like a tourist brochure - I apologise in advance). It's also on the number 1 metro line (the yellow line), and rather unsurprisingly you just have to get off at Hősök tere.

As you can see from the picture, it's a big column along with lots of statues - yeah, okay, that description doesn't really do it justice. It's actually a really nice place, a large square with the Museum of Fine Arts on one side and the Palace of Art on the other - both beautiful buildings in their own right.

The main monument was finished in 1900 and is called the Millenium Monument. It was apparently constructed when Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The statues at the base of the main column are the 7 tribal leaders who originally formed Hungary, while the statues in the semi-circle part of the monument represents various saints and important figures in Hungarian history. The first one is Szent Istvan (Saint Stephen), the first king of Hungary, the rest ... well, I'll leave that to you to find out :-)

Just one more thing ... around the square there are also some other places worth visiting ... there's Széchenyi Spa Bath, Vajdahunyad Castle, an ice skating rink, all in the city park behind Heroes Square. Here's a link to some more information about them on Wikipedia.  

Ok, that's my tourist-brochure bit of the day :-)

The "Ruin" Bars

One of the many cosy corners
 at Szimpla

After having been here a couple of months now I've been to a few of the bars in the city centre - certainly not all of them, because there are literally hundreds ... from small, 1-room bars crammed in-between shops, cafés where you can sit outside and people watch, open-air bars (which I assume are closed in the Winter), to the posh (and not so posh) multi-floor discos.

Anyway, of all of these bars my favourite are the "ruin bars" as they're known, mainly because of the atmosphere - relaxed, friendly, and there's always a buzz about them. They're called ruin bars because they're set in the courtyards of large, half-derelict buildings in the VI and VII districts. The biggest ones that I've found so far are Szimpla and Instant, with lots of different levels and rooms and styles. Okay, maybe the styles aren't all that different - the furniture is a mix of old chairs, sofas, benches all thrown together around an old table. Szimpla is a more relaxed place, where the music isn't so loud, and you can even rent a water-pipe if you want. If you want to dance then I'd recommend Instant, since there are dance floors playing different styles of music hidden away in the building.

You can get lots of different drinks (soft drinks, beer, cocktails, shots), which are all relatively cheap (about 2 euros for a beer). And even though it's a little expensive, you should try at least one of the many different flavours of pálinka - a traditional fruit flavoured brandy - sour cherry was my favourite, at least, from what I remember it was :-)

The Devil Never Sleeps

I got the locks changed,
not THAT one in the end.

I'd heard rumours that there was a lot of crime in Hungary. A few months ago in Denmark, my Hungarian friend was laughing at one of the bike locks, "In Hungary that lock wouldn't last five minutes" he joked. He seemed to suggest that anything not bolted to a building or streetlight would be automatically stolen. Also, I have to admit that it didn't actually make me feel particularly safe that I had an iron gate as well as the regular door for my apartment, bars on the windows and a total of 5 locks. I asked one of my colleagues whether it's normal to lock all the doors when you're at home - her reply was "The devil never sleeps". I couldn't help but wonder whether that meant that God was often asleep ... Anyway, admittedly I can't understand the news reports, so maybe lots of crime is reported, which heightens this fear, but I decided to try and find some statistics, so that at least I could compare Budapest to other European cities.

According to a report from 2006 (see 1), I discovered that Hungary has a similar number of police officers (under 300 per 100,000 people) as England, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and a few other countries. In comparison to other European countries it's not that many. Other countries, such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, Russia and Cyprus has many more (over 400 per 100,000 people). But then again, maybe this fact doesn't tell us all that much, how about crime statistics ...