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Name: Budapest, Hungary
Good Points: The Danube, the architecture, the views.
Bad Points: Becoming too westernised, losing it's uniqueness.
Review: A beautiful, picturesque and interesting Eastern European city that straddles the majestic Danube, is now in danger of becoming too westernised.

I first visited Budapest in 1997. Then I found it to be a typical Eastern European city. Wide boulevards, dirty buildings, extremely polluted (those Trebants have a lot to answer for), incredibly cheap but, most importantly, it was very, very Hungarian – if you didn’t like Goulash or Pizza, you were in danger of starving. The British Pub – Becketts (now Becketts the Irish Pub) was considered the height of sophistication and a major night out.

There’s now a superb choice of international restaurants. Any traditional Hungarian dishes are usually at the bottom of the menus.

So much has changed since then. It’s now like many other middle European city. The buildings have (mostly) been cleaned and renovated. Trebants, Yugo’s and Skoda’s have been replaced with BMW’s, Audi’s and a better class of Skoda.

Globalisation has affected Budapest in a big way. McDonalds on every main street, and a lot of minor ones too. Tesco’s, Bennaton, D&G and a host of other Western shops appear to be thriving. Walking down Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, one of the main Boulevards, you could be forgiven for thinking you were walking down Regent Street or Marianplatz.

Inevitably, with all these changes comes the subsequent rise in prices. In 1997 I had difficulty in giving the money away, it’s very different now.

There is a pedestrian area, Vaci utca, a short walk from the city centre. Tourist bars, restaurants and souvenir shops abound. It has an excellent public transport network with trams and buses criss-crossing the city. There is also a small but efficient, three line Metro system. Multiple and day tickets are available in hotels and stations

Budapest is a beautiful and historic City well worth visiting and exploring with plenty to see and do.

Perhaps I’m either being too nostalgic or negative but I preferred it when the menus were written in that bizarre code normally referred to as Magyar and you used to have to mime and use sign language to the waiters.
Username: wickerman (Stockport, UK)
Entry date: 1 Jul 2006
User Rating: stars
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