Comments on: Budapest

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 18:27:14 +0000

As someone who has lived in Bp on and off for 7 years now, I would say that the ?Fleece the Idiot Foreigner? industry is definitely in decline.
Of course beautiful women on Vaci still invite me for a drink but I put that down to my roguish charm rather than anything more sinister?
Yes,well, one place I would advise tourists still to be a bit wary about is the Gellert Baths.
The little helper there who is supposed to give you a refund depending on how long you?ve been decadently soaking is rather forgetful of both the system and the English language when it suits him.

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 18:27:01 +0000

By: EU-Serf

EU-Serf — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 17:04:46 +0000

I love Budapest. It has a slightly forlorn worn out look to it, but a beautiful city none the less.

I was either ripped off very skillfully or I had no problems with waiters, and enjoyed some very fine food and wine.

By: Robert Waldmann

Robert Waldmann — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 06:41:57 +0000

Different prices on menus in different languages seems to me to be honest price discrimination. I’ll pay rather than order something in Magyar and find out that I just asked for the mens room (ferenz or someting).

Now my Budapest restaurant experiences. We arrived at midnight and looked for food across the street from our hotel. There was a “night club,” that is a strip joint, with free admission for hotel guests and a menu promising over priced food (and just imagine how accurate the arithmetic would be). There was also what appeared to be a bar where they served us excellent food at midnight and the bill corresponded to the menu with accurate arithmetic.

The hotel was the mercur corona and the wonderful little bar restaurant was right across the street. Tell them Robert sent you and they will charge you tourist prices, so just pretend you were at the “night club.”

By: DoDo

DoDo — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 04:56:26 +0000

Restaurant bills all added up.

Ho-ho-ho, but our waiters are more skilled!

1) Did your bills also add up with prices in the menu?

2) Are you sure there weren’t two versions of the menu card (one brought for locals, another for rich tourists)?

By: Robert Waldmann

Robert Waldmann — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:56:48 +0000

Dear dodo

My earlier not so positive impression of Budapest did indeed have a lot to do with a very severely undercurbed dog. Note my very last post as a guest blogger above. I didn’t mention that because while I’m willing to be considered full of shit, I don’t want people to think that I am obsessed with it.

I think I didn’t meet the waiter. Restaurant bills all added up. Recall I live in Italy, where rules are such that law abiding restaurants always end up charging about twice the sum of the prices of the entr?s.

As for the major, well any major who doesn’t live in the city he governs doesn’t deserve re-election.

By: DoDo

DoDo — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 16:21:27 +0000

Also, I’m reminded by that fake policeman (and the severely-upward-mis-calculating restaurant waiter you didn’t even notice - always ask the US embassy for a list of the worst offenders), and I don’t mean to insult anyone, but there is a whole industry in Budapest built on selling mostly American tourists cheap gitch of no value at high prices as authentic local souvenir…

By: DoDo

DoDo — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 16:13:55 +0000

Heh. It may be that one of your relatives was my classmate at ELTE university.

Regarding comaprisons with Vienna and Prague, I won’t play the local patriot here: Budapest is the European capital of dog manure on the street and of air pollution dominated by dust. And the changing governments and our unchanging major (whom I voted for in all four elections he won, but may reconsider next time) won’t do much for public transit and keeping green areas green (no wonder after he himself moved to the suburbs) - case in point: the 15-year-ongoing saga of building a fourth subway ‘in the next few years’, while Vienna and Prague are building their systems apace.