Yeah, I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.
The Man With Two Brains: there have been about 200-235 forints to the dollar in the last couple of months. Not the roundest of numbers but not a nightmare to convert either I shouldn’t have thought.
I’m going to Budapest in about two weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes. 
Armchair traveller, here.
Understandably few [English-language, post-WWII] movies came up in IMDB.com in a search for “Budapest” as a plot point.
However, the made-for-HBO Citizen X (1995) was filmed entirely in Budapest (albeit passing for Rostov-on-Dom, Russia). Decidedly unglamorous-looking, but that was what they wanted: realistic socialist grit, circa the early 1980’s. Damn good true-crime flick, too!
Hungarian is supposedly one of the hardest languages on Earth, and the language is related to Finnish, Turkish, and Korean.
What would be worse, being from Buda, or PEST?
bumping to hear about Gyrate’s trip.
Whoa – I was looking for this thread. Freaky.
The trip was fabulous, helped in part by the warm sunny weather we had for the full five days there. The people were generally friendly, although the fact that my mother speaks fluent Hungarian certainly helped.
[Apologies in advance for leaving off the various accents and other marks; I’m leaving them off in the interest of typing more quickly.]
We stayed at the City Penzio Matyas by the Elizabeth Bridge (Erzsebet hid), which was nice, and has a “famous” restaurant in the basement. The hotel was in a majorly tourist area, near the Vaci utca (which is the main tourist shopping street); while this means that most everyone spoke at least passable English, it also meant that prices (especially restaurant prices) were inflated accordingly. That being said, by Western standards they still weren’t that high, and the food was plentiful and delicious (although it is very rich and heavy and very sparing on the green vegetables).
My main recommendation for visitors to Budapest planning on seeing the sights is to get a Budapest Card (Budapest Kartya). This will not only allow you to travel on all forms of public transport – Metro, buses, trams, trolleybuses, and trains within the Budapest area (but not the funicular) – but also get you into pretty much all the museums, art galleries, churches, etc at a full or partial discount (they “swipe” them when you go in, which I presume is for recordkeeping). You can buy them for 48 hours (3950 forints) or 72 hours (4950 f); you can buy them in advance and “start” them when you first use it. Most hotels sell these. You also get a little booklet explaining where the card can be used and how much of a discount you get. In addition to the cultural sites, it’s also good at a few shops and restaurants.
If you’re not planning on seeing many of the sights, you can also just buy a one-day pass which gets you on all transport for the day; you can get this at the Metro stations. Tickets are checked periodically by inspectors (identified by their armbands) while you travel; we got checked once the whole time we were there.
We went to several of the art galleries and museums, plus the zoo near Heroes Square and the swimming pool complex (Palatinus Strand) on Margaret Island. If the weather’s good and you’ve got a suit AND it’s a weekday, I recommend going to the pools just for the wavepool (waves generated at the top of the hour every hour), but avoid the highly dangerous and unsupervised waterslides, from which I still bear scars. Of course, if you stay at the Hotel Gellert it has its own indoor pools (although according to the commentary in the Rough Guide the Gellert Baths are apparently a prime gay cruising spot).
Incidentally, the Folkart Centrum on the south end of the aforementioned Vaci utca has some decent souvenir-type items (especially embroidered pillowcases and pottery) for decent prices (20% off with the Budapest Card too!); although the embroidering is all machine-done these days, there’s some nice stuff in amongst the tat nevertheless. Look for the black pottery upstairs too.
Beware the gypsy beggars – women with young children usually, with a piteous and well-rehearsed spiel. Not only will giving money to one get you a whole crowd of them (I told my father not to give her any money…), but it also can get your pocket picked once you’ve shown them where your money is. Also beware people flogging tickets for “authentic” folkdancing shows – these are about as authentic as Disneyland (although they may well be entertaining anyway).
Um…what else?
I’ve never been to Budapest, but I’ve been Hungary.
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And the trouble with eating in Budapest is, half an hour later your still in Hungary.
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thanks Gyrate! I leave tomorrow and I’m so excited.
So far our plans are to spend 2 nights in Budapest, 1 night on the Danube curve (not sure what town – the one close to the Slovakian border), and one or two nights in Eger, the wine region.
Its ridiculous how much there is to see and do, especially considering so many people respond with “why” or “whats there” when I tell them I’m heading to Hungary. I hope I have your good luck with weather!