Europe Chevron. Hungary Chevron. Budapest Chevron. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. I fell in love with Budapest on my first evening there.
Cyclists whizzed along paths, and people crammed onto bright yellow trams. Aside from the incongruous graffiti, the setting resembled a 19th-century period film. A building pockmarked with holes from World War II mortar fire was a reminder of the miracle of this cityβthat so many of its old-world treasures remain intact. The Danube was astonishingly broad, the light-flecked hills of Buda towering on the other side, the blazing dome of Buda Castle perched at the very top.
Standing on the Buda side of the river, I took in the fantastical double view of the House of Parliament and its reflection. The building's neo-Gothic domes and spires were lit up against the indigo night, creating Impressionist dapples on the river. I hadn't expected the elegance and splendor of the grand Art Nouveau buildings, both imposing and delicate, casually arrayed along streets and boulevards in various states of decline, as if they weren't architectural marvels.
I'm ashamed to say I'd imagined Budapest to be blockier, dulled by Soviet brutalist design. As someone born and raised in Beirut, I thought I was above making easy assumptions about a place. After all, my city, too, surprises visitors with its vibrancy. The city rewarded me for my attentiveness: exquisitely carved moldings above entrances; wondrous courtyards hidden behind nondescript doors. The nightlife was raucous, with revelers dancing among the ruins of their painful past.
The Seventh District, with its underground nightclubs and eclectic ruin bars that started cropping up about two decades ago in abandoned homes and dilapidated stores, was one of Europe's largest Jewish ghettos before the Holocaust. When I first arrived, every Hungarian I met assured me that all Hungarians were dour and unfriendlyβusually as they were insisting on paying for a drink or patiently explaining the finer points of Hungarian grammar or history.
