Serious Travel Article (STA) 2: The Dribbling Nutcase of Budapest

The city of Budapest, prides itself in being one of the worlds most popular short break destinations. It's exquisite architecture, vibrant night life and breath taking views, makes Paris (a more traditional city break destination) look like an swirling vortex, plagued with pretentious, cheese eating, surrender monkeys.

A panorama of the Beautiful City of Budapest. One of Europe's most Spectacular Cities.

Despite its growing popularity, the most daunting aspect facing anyone visiting Hungary is the tongue shredding Language. Reputed to be the hardest language in the world for an outsider to learn (beating even Welsh), any traveller to Hungary will be heartened to learn that Budapest has precious few English speakers, so you will have to (at least attempt) mutter a few simple Hungarian phrases. Two phrases were of particular help to me. “Nem bessielek mud yarool” - “I do not speak Hungarian” and “Harom Dreher Kayrem” - “Three Drehers (Budapest's most popular brand of lager) please”. If you manage to break down the language barrier, even partially, you'll discover that the people of Budapest are a friendly bunch, unlike many other European capitals. If you venture off the tourist trail, into the grimy back streets of Budapest, the booze hounds that spend their lives stagnating in the many oasis' of grog will always strike up conversations with you. Most of them, puzzle over how you found your way out of tourist town and into their local. But beware, there is a thin line between a friendly local and a dribbling nutcase.

One fateful evening, my friends and I were innocently staggering back to our hostel, smashed out of our minds when we were pounced upon by a crazy man (We named him Vladimir). At first he seemed to be just another friendly drunk, wanting to talk to a seemingly lost foreigner. His English was as bad as our Hungarian, our conversation consisted of “Hello!”, to which we replied “Nem bessielek mud yarool”, this repeated itself for almost an hour. It was during this monotonous conversation that I started to notice Vladimir's greasy almost bald hair was suspiciously wet. His mouth foamed with an endless stream of saliva, most of which ended up on his head. His teeth, no more than pegs oozed an odour so spine shilling that my eyes began to wince.

 I managed to keep my distance but my friend mark was square in the firing line. As well as a pool of phlegm seeping out of Vladimir's mouth, the snot was streaming out his nose like a gooey flame thrower. Most of it ended up on his smiley bald head but Mark wasn’t safe. Our new friend decided he wanted to shake hands with all of us, I told him it was against my Zoroastrian faith, he didn’t know what I was on about but it did the job. Mark didn’t manage to weasel out, at the moment they shook hands, Vladimir sneezed all over my friend, covered in snot, Vladimir decided he had bothered us enough, content in his evening, he left us with nothing but mucus and a dirty wet fart to remember him by.

Blue Sky Budapest, quite a novelty to see a city with blue skies now I live in China!

Real travel isn’t glamourous, people only think it is when they get back. The next day we spent the day drinking absinthe and talking to random passers by. “Alright Jimmy! Good old Jimmy, doesn’t say much, top lad Jimmy”. This continued all, day and all through the night. Sure you can visit cites and go to the attractions, with the hordes of tourists, but you never experience a city unless you live the life of a bum, at least for a few days. Saying that, if you do go to Budapest, do visit the attractions, the Parliament, the galleries and see the amazing architecture, it is an unforgettable city, just don't be a tourist.