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 ...

Vapiano: é fantastico

At the risk of making a very cool, very popular place even more popular I have to mention this Italian restaurant a friend and I went to last night. It's called Vapiano and it's in the city centre, in the 5th District on Bécsi utca (here's the review and map on Google).

It's an italian restaurant with a nice modern style. The first thing you notice that's different is that they have a swipe card system, so you get a card when you go in to the restaurant and then swipe it when you buy something, so that on your way out you give them the card and pay the bill. The second thing that's very cool is that you order your food directly with the chefs, who cook the food right there in front of you.

When you've ordered your food (I had the ravioli with chilli and garlic, which tasted fantastic) you can sit down in different areas - on bar stools, at tables, there's even some comfy lounge sofas and chairs. A really nice touch is that there's olive oil, spices, and fresh herbs plants on the tables, so you can add some fresh basil or thyme yourself :-)

The price was also really reasonable - sure, it's not the cheapest place to eat in the city, but for the quality of the food it's certainly not that expensive. I paid about 1800HUF for my meal which is about 6-7 euros.

I can't praise it highly enough, it was great, and I've decided that whenever someone is visiting, we'll have to eat out at Vapiano.

www.vapiano.hu

Cycling to Szentendre

Since I've been in Hungary I haven't actually been outside of Budapest (the train journey from Berlin doesn't count). In fact, the farthest I've been from the city centre was Ikea, which is conveniently located at the eastern end of the red (no. 2) metro line, at Örs vezér tere. But Ikea doesn't count - it's just a little piece of Sweden, albeit one where they speak Hungarian. So, I was pleased when some of my lovely colleagues organised a bike ride* to a town called Szentendre, about 20km north of Budapest. The only downside was that it meant getting up early on a Saturday.

We all met up at Batthyány tér, well that was the plan, however Kata seemed to be missing. After about 15 mins Betti called Kata to discover that she was waiting for us at another place further along. Anyway, we all managed to meet up and began the journey along the number 6 cycle route.



It was a beautiful cycle ride (I'm sure the sunny weather helped) as we followed the Danube north for about 10km, and then turned off to cycle through a forest  and open countryside. After about 2 hours, and a few stops to drink water, we arrived in Szentendre. The cycle route takes you to a busy main road, and my first thought was "is this it?", however, after about a kilometer we turned off from the main road and onto the quiet backstreets and cycled alongside the river again into the town. The town is a beautiful place, with cobbled streets and colourful buildings. It's a bit touristy, so there are lots of cafés and gift shops, but that's okay - it's still very picturesque.

The Sziget Festival

One of the events that had only been on the periphery of my consciousness, was the Sziget Festival. I'm not a festival person, never have been really, and I have to admit that I'd never heard about it until I started to look for hostels in Budapest - I soon realised that there was a reason that they were all nearly fully booked.

The festival takes place in early August (this year it was the second week of August) on a small island in the north of Budapest and it's huge - apparently approximately 400,000 people attended this year. It's also very expensive - 45 euros for a day ticket, and then 140-200 euros for the week, depending on whether you camp on the island and when you buy. There are though lots of really big names who play there - this year they had: Prince, Good Charlotte, Pulp, Skunk Anansie, Kate Nash, The Prodigy, Kaiser Chiefs, Manic Street Preachers, and lots more. That was just on the Rock-Pop stage - they have lots of different stages to suit your mood.

I would've liked to go for the day, but I couldn't really afford to go and sadly that seems to be the case for most Hungarians too - it's become very commercial, very international, and therefore very expensive. And for some reason I kept meeting Dutch people going to the festival.

Anyway, if you're a festival person and want to experience it while you're here, you can find more information here: www.sziget.hu

Getting a Hungarian SIM Card

One of the first things I did when I got here was to get a pay-as-you-go SIM card, since it still costs a lot to use international mobiles across Europe (although it's much cheaper than it once was). Anyway, it's the kind of thing you're going to want to do if you're staying here for longer than a few weeks, and because I was looking for an apartment and needed to speak to agents, I knew it would be cheaper.

Of course, there's no reason you can't get a contract mobile if you're going to be here for a while, but I'm a guy and so phone conversations usually consist of "Hi", "yeah good thanks, how about you?", "okay, 8 o'clock - at Szimpla?", "yep, okay, see you then" - and that takes all of 45 seconds, so a contract phone with "free" minutes, and all the other nonsense that some people find useful, wasn't worth it for me. So I just looked up some of the big mobile companies websites to find out what they were offering. After a chat with my Hungarian friend, I settled on T-Mobile and their Domino scheme.

http://www.t-mobile.hu/english/all_plans/domino_sim/domino_sim_card

There are quite a few mobile phone shops across the city, but I to the T-Mobile shop on Petőfi Sándor utca 12, in the 5th District, just because it was nearby. They have an electronic ticket system for queuing, and thankfully you could choose English, so I was able to get a ticket for Mobile Sales, rather than some other department. When it was eventually my turn (it took at least 15 minutes, which is a long time to sit in a phone showroom with nothing but smart phones to look at, btw I'm not in the slightest bit interested in smart phones - my phone makes calls and sends SMSs, so it's smart enough). The girl I spoke to fortunately spoke good English, but I noticed that some of the others didn't - there was a late 50s German guy who was clearly having some trouble explaining something. All I needed was my passport, an address, and some cash to pay for it - and the girl installed the card straight away - the domino contract I got seems quite cheap and the card cost about 5000 forint (about 17 euros) and included some credit, so I really can't complain.

The only thing I've found slightly annoying is that I've no idea how to check my balance, and see how much credit I have left - if I work that one out I'll post it here.

Update (28/03/14):
To check balance on T-Mobile Domino dial *102# and press call.
You see a message displayed.
"Egyenleg" Means balance.
(Thanks John!)

Finding an Apartment

Finding an apartment when you're not living in the city is difficult. Before I arrived in Budapest I'd found a few websites (listed at the end of this post) offering apartments for rent, from about 250 euros + bills, and there were lots of nice pictures on the websites, but don't be fooled - I've come to realise that the agencies are very good at taking good pictures. After e-mailing some of the agencies I decided that the best way to find an apartment would be to actually be in the city so that I could see the apartments and then decide - it was a wise decision. When I viewed some of the apartments, a lot of them looked nothing like the pictures, which were obviously taken when the apartments had been refurnished and cleaned.

I decided to just go to Budapest and stay in a hostel while I viewed some apartments, so I had a look for hostels on www.hostelworld.com (which is great btw - I've found the reviews really helpful in finding good hostels, and more importantly avoiding the bad ones) . I booked into the Good Morning Budapest Hostel, on Bajcsy-Zsilinszky utca, which had good reviews and was well located. From the reviews there are lots of good hostels in Budapest, Njoy Hostel is one of them, but GMB Hostel was great - the staff were really friendly and helpful and on Thursdays and Sundays they make traditional Hungarian dishes, which was a nice touch - I can really recommend it.

The Transit System

This map makes it look complicated - it's not.

The tram, bus and metro system in Budapest is really good. Sure, some of them are a bit old and well-worn, but that's all part of their charm. In saying that, there are some new trams with air-conditioning, which has been really nice on those days when it was 30+ C and you're baking hot.

The other good thing is that a monthly ticket, with which you can use the tram, bus, and metro, is really cheap - ok, cost is always a relative thing, but at just under 15 euros for a monthly student pass, I think that's pretty cheap considering a 3-zone monthly student pass in London costs almost 100 euros*!!!). And that reminds me, there's no zone system in Budapest - you can just travel around on the buses, trams, and metro as much as you like :-)

Before the Beginning

The best place to start is often at the beginning, however I'd like to start before then, since it will hopefully be of some help to anyone else who is thinking of moving to Budapest.

The story then starts 13 hours before the beginning, with me getting dropped off at Berlin Hauptbanhoff by a friend in an old white Volkswagen Polo. I was a little early and so it didn't surprise me when I looked up at the departure board and couldn't see the direct train from Berlin to Budapest listed. So I waited patiently, as any polite Englishman would ... 15 minutes passed or approximately four songs (Rolling Stones: Beast of Burden, Lilly Allen: The Fear, Imogen Heap: Hide and Seek, Bill Withers: Use Me). Ok, there's a long queue at the information desk and I've got two ridiculously heavy bags, so I can't be bothered to drag them around and stand in line ... as you'll no doubt encounter throughout this diary forward-slash alternative travel guide, many of my actions are based upon my loathing of queues and doing anything to avoid them. Anyway, the helpful people at Deutsche Rail or whatever they're called have paper timetable which list the platform number that trains depart from. This could never happen in England since you never know in advance how late the train will be or whether it will turn into a bus.