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.

Having guided us to Szentendre, Nóra knew a particularly good little place where we could sit down and eat some lángos (pronounced lan-gosh), which was good because by that time my stomach was hungry and giving me a hard time about it. If you haven't tried lángos then you should - it tastes great, and after all that cycling I needed some energy. Lángos is kind of like a deep fried bread dough pancake, served with garlic, sour cream, and/or cheese. 

After the much needed lángos we wandered around the town, where they happened to have a fair, with stalls where people were selling different traditional foods, handmade toys, soap, bean bags, and all other kinds of things. There was also entertainment in the form of different bands playing, and lots of games for the children.


After having a good wander around and had a good look at the different stalls,  we decided to go down to the river and rest our weary legs (minus Nóra who had to get back to Budapest). So we found a nice spot under some trees, and while Kata went to have a paddle, and I got out my towel and went to sleep - probably not for very long, but after having got up so early it was a much-needed power nap.


With the Sun making its way through the trees, I woke up and looked around lazily, as my eyes adjusted to the light. It was a confusing sight - all around me I could hear a familiar accent and understand the occasional word. The Dutch had arrived. Somehow about 100 Dutch people, clad in lycra suits that revealed more than my eyes wanted to see, had rowed from somewhere (Holland?) and were arriving on the shores of Szentendre, 5 or 6 at a time. It was a bizarre sight, and after the Sziget Festival it seems as if they have some secret plan to slowly takeover Hungary.

We left the Dutch, some of whom were celebrating (either that they had won some race or that no Hungarians had realised their plan), and we walked into Szentendre again through some more very quaint streets. We were looking to get an ice cream somewhere, and just before we got some, Betti took us into a marzipan shop. It was nice, not just because of the impressive array of marzipan products, but also because they had air-conditioning (however, I guessed it was more for the marzipan than the customers), and since it was about 34C outside it was nice to cool down. They also had a marzipan museum ... I don't know what to say about that. It was ... an experience. Never before have I seen a 130kg solid marzipan Mickey Mouse, and the only thing I could think was "someone in here needs serious professional help".


Afterwards we wandered back to our bikes and began the ride home. Without Nóra there it became a team effort to work out how to get home [remember, there's no 'i' in team, Betti], and while we did go slightly wrong a couple of times, we managed to make it back to civilization. As we were on the outskirts of Budapest we stopped by the river, at some small riverside cafés, and had a much needed drink (I think we were all quite tired by this point).

Some impressive street art on
the outskirts of Budapest 

After our break we cycled the last part of the journey and in about 20 minutes we had made it back to the center, tired and (at least for me) in need of a shower and some wine :-)

* Thanks to Livi for lending me her bike

Want an iPhone 4?

Every now and again people approach me and ask me for directions. I don't really know why this is, well okay, I know they're asking (because they don't know where to go), but I don't know why they ask me, rather than, for example, a woman walking a dog or a business man.

Anyway, it was for this reason that I wasn't particularly surprised when a guy wandered up to me and started saying something in Hungarian - I just replied "sorry, I don't speak Hungarian", to which he said, almost under his breath, "Hey man, do you want an iPhone 4?" while showing me this little box he was carrying. As much as I like Apple products, I didn't want an iPhone 4, and even though I'm sure he was offering it for a very reasonable price, I certainly wasn't going to buy one on the street, from a guy who was whispering to me and constantly looking around as if the police were about to jump out and arrest him.

I thought maybe this was a one-off, that it didn't happen all that often - how naïve. They're everywhere. In the past week I've been offered an iPhone 4 everyday by different guys on the street, and I've come to recognise their type. They're in their 20's, on their own, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but they aren't the tell-tale signs - the real way to recognise them is by how they walk. They don't walk as if they have anywhere to go, instead they drift slowly up and down streets, trying to make eye-contact and ask anyone who'll listen. I seriously doubt whether any of their products actually work, or whether there's anything even in the box. A colleague told me an amusing story about how her father had proudly returned home with digital camera from one of these guys, claiming he'd found a real bargain - the camera turned out to be an empty shell, and there were no actual parts inside it. I think it's safe to assume that an iPhone 4 would probably be a similar story.

By the time you come to Budapest they'll probably be selling iPhone 5s or whatever the latest wonder gadget is, but at least now you know. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

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

Opening a Bank Account

If you're staying here for a more than just a couple of months, then you may want to open a bank account. I realised after a few weeks, when I checked my netbank in Denmark, that it costs a lot to use the ATMs - I was paying about 4 euros everytimee I withdrew cash!!! So I decided that I had to open a bank account, then I would be able to transfer the money once a month, and avoid all those extra fees.

There are lots of banks to choose from, but the biggest bank (with the most ATMs) is OTP (www.otpbank.hu) so, for convenience, I thought I'd go to them. I set out on a sunny Friday afternoon and wandered into my local OTP bank and was struck my the first obstacle: a ticket-queueing system with about 10 options entirely in Hungarian. Hmmm, this wasn't going to be my day. The thought of waiting for 10 minutes, then finding out that I'd taken the wrong ticket and having to wait again didn't really appeal to me, so I thought that this was something I could leave for another day.

Fortunately, when I told this story to one of my colleagues, she kindly offered to come with me and help me open an account. So, we went to another OTP bank and began what was to be the loonnggg process of opening an account. (NOTE! Remember that you'll need your passport and something with your address on it). After about 20 minutes of working out which account I needed and typing in all my details (btw, for some reason they need your mother's maiden name, which I found a little odd), finally we were getting somewhere. It was here that I discovered that Hungarian banks either have no love of the rain forest or they own a paper manufacturer, because I spent the next 10 minutes signing lots of forms and receiving lots of paper about rules and regulations, all in Hungarian, about my account and the rules of the bank - the only one I remember was that if my account goes below zero, then they can close my account, "fair enough" I thought. I also discovered that the bank card would take about two weeks to reach me in the post, which was quite a long time I thought, but I did at least have online banking, and that was available in English which is good. And that was that. Even though it took about 40 minutes, it was relatively straightforward, and at least now I can avoid all those extra fees.

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.

Anyway, staying at the hostel gave me some time to look at different apartments, and so here are some tips/advice:

1. If you're staying for less than a year, then some agencies will charge you a bit more (around 20%) was what one agency told me.

2. It's quite a competitive market, so agents are prepared to negotiate - one agent was prepared to drop the price by about 20 euros a month (but the apartment was a mess, so I didn't take it).

3. Location, location, location - make sure your apartment has a good tram or metro station nearby, otherwise it's going to be a long walk home after a night out. Also, you should check when the tram/metro stops running, because in some places they stop at midnight.

4. Also, think about the district you'll be staying in, because some of them are nicer than others. For instance, there are some nice places in the 8th district, however I looked at an apartment that was in the dodgy part - I wasn't too keen on living there. You can find a guide to the districts here.

5. It's also an idea to think about where you'll be studying and how you'll get there.

6. The deposit is usually two months rent, which you'll probably have to give (along with a months rent) when you sign the contract.

Great place, just expensive :-(

Overall, it's important to give yourself time to find an apartment. I only had a week before I started, and I was quite lucky to find somewhere nice - I'd allow at least two weeks, maybe three. You might be lucky and find a good apartment the first day, but I looked at about 15 apartments before I found the right one. Some of the others were nice, but they were either too expensive or just didn't feel right - some of them were absolutely terrible. One of them looked great in the pictures, however, when I went to view it parts of the ceiling had fallen on the floor and there were flies everywhere, circling the rotting food, the handle to a cupboard even came off in my hand! The agent was very embarrassed.

Rotting food and flies

That's the most important stuff ... I don't think I've missed anything, but if you've any questions you're welcome to write to me.

Just some of the rental websites for Budapest:

Budapest Property Solutions
I went with them in the end - they've been really helpful.

Tower Property Group
Helpful and some nice apartments, but a bit expensive. [Update 8/1/15: Have heard of a problem with them - see comment below]

Apartments of Budapest
This is really just a website where people can advertise there apartments, it's quite useful though.

Budapest Rent
The website gives a good impression, but I found that most of the apartments were already rented - it just seemed to be a list of ALL their apartments. So it wasn't particular helpful, but maybe you'll have better luck.

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 :-)

Obviously you have to have a valid student card - if you're studying at an EU institution then a valid card should be fine. If you're from outside the EU and studying here, then you should be able to get a card from the Hungarian institution and use that. It's important to carry your student card around with you (because the inspectors can demand to see it) AND make sure you write the student card/id number on the pass (where it says Diakigazolvany szama, see picture below) I've heard that if they're in a bad mood, then the inspectors will fine you if it's blank.

A ticket for just one ride costs about 350 forint, and if you buy these then remember to stamp/clip them in the tram/bus/metro. I met some Dutch students who accidentally forgot to clip their tickets and they got fined 6000 forint each - if you can't pay straight away then it's double! So remember to validate your ticket.

For prices and other information, have a look at the official website www.bkv.hu/en/

* Of course, exchange rates and prices may change, but nonetheless, I think it's a huge difference.

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.

After making my way to the platform and a short wait the train arrived on time, and I waited patiently for everyone to board, safe in the knowledge that I'd reserved a seat. I have quite a few German friends, who are all very nice, however the Germans I met on this train, well, they were a moody bunch. I made my way to my reserved seat - if I'm going to be sitting on a train for 12 hours, I don't want to have to keep moving seats. The two girls, one of whom was sitting in the seat I'd reserved wasn't particularly pleased when I said that I'd reserved the seat and, very politely I'll add, asked if I could sit down. "Uh, it only says it MIGHT be reserved" she barked, in the tone of an alcoholic Irish sailor with a German accent, "Yes, well I'm afraid I've reserved it - sorry", I replied in my most apologetic voice. "Uh, well thank you SO much", she growled as her and her friend dragged their rucksacks out of the way. I resisted the urge to slap her verbally and decided that it was probably best to just let this miserable thing leave without incident. Fortunately I had no contact with these girls again who found seats close by in the same compartment, however right opposite me a young Hungarian couple politely asked a classically German man, with black hair and a green sweater, probably in his early 30s, if they could have their seats. He made the sour thing I'd been dealing with look positively sweet. He complained for several minutes before relinquishing his seat, and for the next 6-7 hours he would pass and make snide remarks to them. He was also much odder than the sour thing ... he seemed to befriend a young German couple, and then when they were obviously bored of his conversation after an hour or so they waited until he was in the toilet, and then escaped to the buffet car. He then paraded up and down the compartment, quizzing people as to whether they'd seen the couple. I had only understood a little of what he was saying, but from the expressions on the German couple's faces, he was obviously unaware of how boring his thoughts really were.

The rest of the journey was relatively uneventful. Some beautiful countryside, with mist rising from mountain forests, and an impressive array of graffiti and street art in different places. I spent most of the time either reading, playing sudoku, listening to music or sleeping. I'd had the foresight to make sandwiches the previous night (ham and cheese baguettes with a good helping of mustard) as well as buy yoghurt, which I quickly realised that I would need a spoon to eat it. In one of those McGyver moments, I decided to fashion a spoon out of the silver foil that my sandwiches had been rapped in. The result was an unusual, yet very usable, spoon.

Finally, after 12 hours ... well, actually more like 12 1/2 hours due to a delay, I arrived at Keleti Station in Budapest, and even though I'd technically been in Hungary for just over an hour, you could say that this is the beginning.