When in Hungary, Drink Like A Hungarian!
Posted By Kristabella on October 15, 2013
When we last left off, I was blabbing for a lot of words about a plane trip and time spent in airports. I’m a wordy bitch, it’s true!
Now to the good stuff! The actual travel and what we did!
So we landed in Budapest in the early evening. We checked into our hotel and got ready to go out. Since travel can be fickle, as we experienced on our trip to Hungary, we made sure not to make any real definite plans the first night in Budapest. We decided that the best thing would be to do a free pub crawl, because why not?
View from our hotel room.
Seriously, because at the very worst, we’d go to 4 bars and see a part of Budapest and at the best, we would have an amazing time! We did both, really, except for getting hosed by the guys who ran the tour.
We were early to meet up, so we decided to find a bar nearby to have a beer while we waited. We found one that was full of 18 year olds. (Side note: I wish I had enough money to travel in Europe before I was 21 and it didn’t matter.) It was a cool looking place, but loud. But they played all the music in English so I felt pretty cool singing along. We ordered what everyone else was, determining after our first sip that we just drank Buda’s version of Busch Light or another cheap beer. But when in Rome, right?
We started the tour outside a Burger King. The guy leading the tour was really nice and spoke English. We were older than everyone on the tour by about 10 years, but we didn’t care. We’d never see these people again.
The leader guy told us that there was an option for a wristband deal. It would get you free shots at all the bars and then we could drink all we wanted at the second bar. We thought this was a good deal, so we signed up! Because we were on vacation and we wanted to drink!
(We later found out from a Swedish guy that we got hosed because we never spent more than an hour in a bar and never really spent close to what we spent on the wristband. So! Don’t get the wristband on the free pub crawl!) (And to thank them for screwing us, we gave them a very small tip.)
The reason we went on this tour was a) it was free and b) it was going to take us to the Budapest Ruin Bars. And since we didn’t know what ruin bars were, we figured this was a thing we needed to see.
Turns out the ruin pubs we went to on this tour weren’t really ruin bars. See, real ruin bars are like a hodgepodge of stuff. There were these buildings that were just empty and abandoned until recently, so people bought the buildings and then just furnished the bars with stuff from the building and other stuff they found on the street. So that’s how you end up with a bar with mismatched tables and a car in the middle.
The bars we did go to didn’t have toilet paper or paper towels or any way to dry your hands or lady bits. There was a lady outside the bathroom with a tray of napkins that you could tip her for, to be able to wipe your hoo-hah. And even tipping only got you one dinky piece of a napkin. I’d hate to have the Kristin Johnsons in a bar in Budapest!
But we did learn about the local drink in Budapest on this pub crawl. It is called a mozzi and it is half wine, half sparking water with a dash of liqueur. It doesn’t sound like much, but it will knock you on your ass. We had some called Shreks because they were green and really that’s about all I remember from the pub crawl. (It probably isn’t even called a mozzi and that translates to idiot in English and that’s how they know what to serve us in Budapest.) (But who cares! They are delicious!)
At the beginning of the evening, I was in love with one of our guides, Martin. In fact, every time I mentioned his name or looked at him, my stupid glow bracelet (our proof we were idiots and bought the wristband deal) would pop off. But then we found out he suckered us into the wristbands with his good looks, and I was over him. And the glow bracelet.
We ended the night in a club of some kind and got a photo with the adorable Martin.
And then the dude taking the photo snapped this when we asked for a second photo.
Stay classy, Budapest.
With the bass beating and giving us a headache, especially after all those Shreks, we decided to leave the club and the company of people half our age and head back to the hotel. The fact that we hadn’t slept much or eaten anything since the airport was catching up to us.
On our way back, we inhaled some gyros and I somehow drunkenly navigated us back from the bar to the hotel. And then we all passed the hell out in a real bed to prepare for the next day, our walking tour of Budapest!
Since brevity is not my strong suit, up next will be our walking tour and pretty shots of Budapest, including our guide Zoltan. (No really, that was his name.)
Oh happy day, you are writing again.
Obviously you need more vacations.
This is hilarious…and completely the opposite of any vacation I ever take. I love it!
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So happy you are blogging! And sharing your stories!
(Sorry so late but holy hell I’m working too many hours in a day.)
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My Aunt Vera keeps a ziploc of toilet paper in her purse. She would be so prepared in Budapest!