Ruin(ed) in Budapest, Hungary

There are two sides of Budapest, split evenly by the Danube. We selected for our accommodation, unknowingly, the less “good” side for city explorers. Backing up, there is a “Buda,” and a “Pest” side, semantically convenient. We stayed on the Buda side, which is the less urban part yet close enough to the Castle District that we enjoyed walking to. Transport to the Pest side was easy enough, taking buses or walking across one of the bridges. And, our private studio AirBnB was comfy and a great resting place since we were slightly sleep deprived by that point.

As with many of the cities on this tour, we did not stay sufficiently long to see everything, but got a good 1.5 days to explore.

First stop, Kozmosz.

Vegan meal in Budapest at Kozmosz Vegán Étterem

Rob and his veggie buddies. As found at Kozmosz.

That first (show-free) night, we explored the “Ruin Pubs” of Budapest, of which I tried to extract a distinction but only found them to be nice pubs. Then I read, “These bars are built in Budapest’s old District VII neighborhood (the old Jewish quarter) in the ruins of abandoned buildings, stores, or lots. This neighborhood was left to decay after World War II, so it was a perfect place to develop an underground bar scene. (Not so underground anymore, though.)”

The next day, we stretched our legs and walked up the hill to the beautiful and aptly named Castle District (before our walk we fixed our sunglasses which had fallen apart at a local glasses shop, then tried to fix our broken phones. Last, to round out the errands we mailed a bunch of postcards that arrived about a month later to Greece and other locations. Buda-post not so good?)

On the way, we encountered several side-attractions such as sculpture gardens.

Outside a sculpture garden leading to the Castle District.

A piece by Peter Raab in the sculpture garden

Me and my Budapest photo-bomb buddy. (I was probably bombing his photo, too, right at that moment.)

Castle District with view of the Pest side of town on the left.

Rob demonstrating his very “European” styled hoodie-slinging in his own unique way as we cross the Danube

Over on the Pest side now, we found another vegan restaurant, buffet-style.

The club we played, Kis Á, complete with arrow to show you (and Rob somewhat hard to see with his much-used show jacket).

The band, Anton Vezuv – melodic wave mood pop. Rob broke his beer bottle, and I stepped on it during a song, right on that pink square, but no one was hurt (physically).

Can you find our little “logo”? The club asked us to write on their wall (as do all the other bands)

1 fellow JD fan — One fan. He came to see us due to our citing Joy Division as an influence. As you can see, he’s very Joy Division. After a tough show, it was nice to meet this fella.

Interestingly (to us, anyway) though we categorized this as our least favorite show, after briefly looking back on the video footage, it was actually pretty good performance wise. I think we were thrown off by the reservedness of the crowd (especially after playing the warm Czech Republic shows).

At about 6:15 the next morning after our show, we headed out to our next stop: Sofia, Bulgaria.

Have you been to Budapest? What is your favorite “ruin pub” or place to go?