Notes on Prague & Budapest

my thoughts from a quick trip

My buddy Corey and I just went to Prague and Budapest for a little over a week. He and I became friends in college as we had lived on the same floor in our dorm, and for years we have talked about traveling together—and then recently finally pulled the trigger. We decided on Prague and Budapest with little knowledge of either. The TL;DR is that I liked Budapest a lot more than Prague and you’ll find out why. Here are a collection of notes on each city.

Prague, Czech Republic

• This is a beautiful city. Walking around the city is easy and all of the buildings are detailed and colorful. Its beautiful cobble stone streets add to the romanticism. I just couldn’t take my eyes off of the architecture—every building is gorgeous. This is reason enough to visit the city at least once in your lifetime.

in the square in Prague

• It’s really touristy. Given the beauty, there are many tourists and it's overwhelming. I realize that I too am a tourist but the way I’ve tried to travel is by getting off the beaten path and not just hanging out with people like me. The issue here is that the beaten path is in fact still.. touristy. It’s all due to the size and layout of the city—you’re sort of crammed in like sardines. (I hear some of you saying, "you just have to visit the non-touristy areas" and I would say yes, I know, but Prague is hard to escape.)

• It’s small in both good and bad ways. As I mentioned you’re crammed in here because the city center and even the surrounding areas are quite small. But the nice thing is that it’s all very walkable. We walked many miles each day—it’s the preferred mode of transportation given the size which means you can easily hop from place to place without too much worry.

• It’s a party city. I don't mean raging parties like Vegas or anything, but there are certainly squads of drunk people walking around looking for parties every night of the week. So you can imagine that it’s a quite loud when you’re trying to sleep. So if you value high quality sleep while traveling then this place isn’t where you’re going to get it.

• We were able to take an Uber a little outside the main city areas and went to a mostly-Czech steampunk-themed bar. It was a neat place that had lots of stairs and rooms and spires and lights. There was an older Czech man on an acoustic guitar up on stage, of which everyone was singing along to his tunes. It felt very Czech.

• Credit cards are pretty much used anywhere here making it super easy. I think we only had to use cash once while in Prague.

• Beer, beer, beer. They love their beer in Prague and it’s unlike the beer you’d have elsewhere. There's so much of this liquid hold here and it's all super light and tasty-delicious. You get served beer in these short, stout glasses. And it's funny because they use a lot of foam vs Americans or the English or Germans who pour lots of liquid and hardly use any foam at all. This can be shocking at first but you quickly adapt and is actually kinda fun.

at the castle on the hill

• Sometimes the beer is too filling. So our saving grace from the beer and the tourists was this amazing cocktail bar that was very chill, below ground, darkly lit, with an incredible Spotify playlist. The bartender was the owner—the only person there. He was so fun and creative and “only carried high quality stuff.” He made us many a cocktail and I asked him to make me “Prague in a cup” and he made me something so beautiful and delicious… it was purple and tasted/smelled just like poppyseed muffins. This drink was a work of art.

• We had a Google Maps list from a friend who takes pride in his Euro lists and recommendations. This list was amazing because it really saved our asses on many occasions.

• We escaped the city for half a day and went to the Karlstejn Castle which is about an hour outside the city by train. Absolutely recommend going here, and the surrounding countryside is equally as gorgeous as the city. We really hit the time right in Autumn as the leaves were changing colors which reminded me of back home in Oregon.

• Overall we had a great time but it felt more like a quick weekend getaway with lots of loud drunk people strewn about the streets. It’s absolutely worth a visit if not for the architecture alone. I know people all have their preferences and some people like touristy areas. IMHO: A few days, max.

walking in the square

Budapest, Hungary

• To say that I loved Budapest would be an understatement. I could live here. It’s a cozy city at the hills of a mountain and a wide open terrain to it’s south and southeast. It’s stylish yet unpretentious and you get the sense that this city has some character, some culture. It’s international and the mix of food, people, and architecture, all give off a sense that you’re in a unique place.

  

• The beauty of Budapest is that you'll be walking along the river and see some cocktails bars, with the city stretching into the distance, and then you’ll walk up a random cobble stone street in a cute neighborhood with locals cheerfully sipping coffee and music coming from the school.

• Hungary has historically been known for the arts and I remember walking down the streets on multiple occasions and hearing beautiful music from single instrumentalists like a trombone or cello. It's lovely. You feel the arts have had a major impact on this place.

• I learned that Hungarians are related to Estonians and Finnish people with similar languages which are entirely different than Slavic or Germanic languages from their surrounding neighbors.

• The city is split into Buda and Pest. The Danube river splits the cities which have come to form Buda-Pest. Buda seemed to be the area where people live and Pest is certainly the more touristy area (but still super cool). It reminded me a bit of Brooklyn or Portland in Europe.

• It’s harder to get out of the city. The train system isn’t nearly as good as Czech Republic so having a car would be helpful. But given that you probably wouldn’t have a car when you’d go, you have to rely on Bolt (their Uber) or the train. We were planning on going to a winery but weren’t able to go for this reason. (Side note: Hungarian wine is a thing and it’s really good.)

the parliament building in Budapest

• There was a mystique to this city that felt a little Transylvania/Romania but not quite… it felt as though it had a slightly spooky vibe.

• Budapest feels a lot less touristy because it’s spread out. So it’s totally different from Prague in this way… it felt a bit more livable and less like Disneyland.

• Everyone was friendly but not fake. Eastern Europeans don’t mess around and aren’t clicky the way other Europeans might appear. Many of my Euro friends admit that much of Europe is high brow af, and fortunately you get a lot less of that in Budapest. There's a humility and lack of pretentiousness. They also like Americans and appreciate our earnestness and graciousness. (Side note: I think a lot of well traveled Americans get wrapped up with the bad stereotypes of the annoying, less traveled Americans who are loud and ruin it for the rest of us.)

• Prices were 25% cheaper than Prague. Prague was probably 25% cheaper than Portland.

on the Danube river

• Food-wise it was sort of all over over the place. It’s a pretty multicultural city with a lot of different influences and so you feel that in the food. One thing we ate was langos which is like a deep fried piece of bread, like a savory Elephant Ear, and boy oh boy did I love these things.

• We were staying in the Jewish quarter which had lots of cool bars and restaurants. We were there when the shit happened in Israel… just tragic. The police ended up guarding the synagogue near us which is the largest synagogue in Europe.

• The level of English is quite solid. Wherever we didn’t run into much of a barrier.

• We did have one Airbnb issue in Budapest where the hot water went out on us. That sucked because we had to move Airbnbs, and out first Airbnb was sooooo cool. We were on the top floor of this old building that looked like it was ex-Soviet (or it looked a little Israeli or something). It had a beautiful crumbled character, looking war torn, and you'd never know from looking at the outside that there’d be this luxurious, well-designed place on the top floor.

• I absolutely loved this place and would go back in an instant. Next time I go I plan on visiting some wineries and perhaps staying for a couple weeks. 10/10 would recommend.

Please excuse typos or grammatical errors as I tend to do only 1-2 rounds of edits.