There’s hardly any better place to visit this year than Hungary. Below are all the exact reasons why.
Our country is rather safe
First some rather boring, but still important facts.
Hungary is part of the European Union and Schengen area. All EU residents can enter the country without restrictions or border checks. If you come from outside the EU, please look after the requirements for entering the country.
COVID restrictions were lifted on march 7th, so you don’t have to get vaccinated, take tests or quarantine yourself at your own expense when you intend to visit us. There’s no guarantee however that things will remain this way, so its important to always revise your travelling plans right before your departure and check if any changes were made.
In 2022, Hungary ranks 8th on the list of countries with most valuable passports – Hungarian residents can enter 183 countries in the world without having to obtain a separate Visa. This fact seems to contradict the diplomatic tensions you can always see and hear in the media.
Hungary ranks 19th among the most peaceful countries out of 162 measured, which puts us to the top 15 percent of nations ranked by safety.
The weather in Hungary can be checked through met.hu. Unfortunately, the best weather report system called Időkép doesn’t have an English version.
You won’t get a heart attack from our price levels (mostly)
Depending on where you come from, you might find our price levels for tourists to be rather friendly. There’s a few tourist traps you definitely want to avoid, but other than that you won’t get bankrupt by discovering our country and the cultural programs it offers.
The most pricey territories are downtown Budapest and lake Balaton. Outside these, you can find places where you feel like robbing the owner when they hand you the receipt of purchase.
It’s important to take a note for the sake of completeness of information that various festivals and night clubs became much more expensive compared to just a decade ago. Many of these programs run at prices comparable to western European countries.
We are a spa kingdom and despite being a landlocked country, we have a lot of beaches and aqua parks
Hungary is number one country in the world in terms of thermal water sources, with over 1300 of them. Our number of spas is also one of the highest. Most of our spas are suitable for young people and pensioners alike and for everyone else inbetween. Some of our baths provide night programs for the youth like techno parties combined with midnight bathing.
If one wants more excitement, our aqua parks are the best bet, and they are well spread out through the whole country, they don’t just concentrate in or around Budapest.
Mostly it’s forbidden to swim in the Danube or Tisza, but our lakes provide great alternatives to the dangerous rivers.
Lake Balaton is the largest lake in central Europe, but it’s also pretty shallow. Its water temperature sometimes reaches 28 degrees Celsius at the peak of summer season. Although the lake itself doesn’t seem to be very interesting, it’s perfect for families where there are little children. With some supervision, small children or even babies are safe in the water, especially on the southern shores where you can walk hundreds of meters into water with your legs still touching the mud on the bottom.
Balaton and its surroundings also serve as venue for many events and festivals in the summer. Balaton Sound, central Europe’s EDM headquarters takes place every year at Zamárdi beach.
Lake Velence is essentially the smaller version of Balaton where less moneyed locals spend their time. A few years ago, an artificial sandy beach with a little mall was built on the eastern shore.
There are also some artificial beaches mosly converted from previously abandoned mine lakes. Lupa Beach is a venture by the original orgenizer of Sziget Festival, while lake Rukkel, named after its current owner hosts a complete aquapark with slides inside the beach. Both offer wakeboard and waterski opportunities on the deeper side of the lakes.
If you want something more peaceful, Öböl Music Beach is an even shallower variant of beaches around Balaton or Velencei lake, and as the name implies, some lighter parties, usually house music are occuring on the shore. Tisza lake, the calmest artificial lake in Hungary is mostly undeveloped and very natural – that’s why it’s the favourite of more mature visitors.
Our summer programs are excellent for people equipped with common taste
The third largest music festival in the world, Sziget occurs every year in Budapest on Óbudai island. As one of the world’s most famous festivals, it serves as venue for many international artists with booking prices unaffordable to any other event in the area.
Similarly, our summer party venues like Budapest Park, Siófok Plázs, Dürer Garden, A38 ship, Cinema Hall and Akvárium Club usually provide quality programs for the mainstream audience. In this regard, our cultural life is easily on par with western nations.
What we’re lacking in numbers wise is the riskier underground events, so special underground genres in electronic music like trance, hands up, hardstyle, hardcore are not being represented at all.
We see some slow and gradual changes in this regard: This year’s Sziget Festival is hosting a whole day of Q-Dance artists on its party stage, and july’s Electric Fortress techno festival lists Angerfist and DJ Anime as headliners, in addition to more popular techno & acid artists.
Rent out a place for your party
If anyone’s interested, there are many places for rent to host your event, be it a simple small private party with friends, a wedding ceremony or even a bigger club night with guest Djs.
The list of places can be browsed through this website (switch to English manually as it doesn’t support direct linking to the English version). Another site lists some additional venues, but it’s in Hungarian only. The beach clubs & bars around Lupa lake are also offered for renting out.
If you crave for something more exclusive, there are rentable party boats on both lake Balaton and river Danube. For the list of available ships on Balaton click here, and for Danube here.
Some unconventional attractions often left out of tourist catalogues
Here are some not so common leisure activities where you can spend your time. Many of these aren’t being listed in official catalogues as tourist programs.
Margaret Island
Directly under the Óbudai Island hosting Sziget Festival lies Margaret island, an isolated, uninhabited territory within Budapest. The thing is that this place is mostly the favourite of local populace, so many catalogues simply leave it out from the list of places to visit. Many bars, parks, an open air theater and two baths lie on the territory of this nice island.
Népsziget (People’s Island)
A newly emerging peninsula directly next to the northeastern part of Óbudai Island, but on the other side of the Danube. It’s unique in its properties as it’s mostly undeveloped and quiet, only hosting some buffets and bars. If you go to Sziget festival but want to spend some time a bit away from the noise it provides, Népsziget is an appropriate place, although it’s not completely quiet during Sziget. Google maps coordinates here (Sziget on the left, Népsziget on the right side of Danube).
Buda hills
Despite Hungary being filled mostly with low-land territories, you don’t have to leave your hiking boots at home. The Buda hills provide many square kilometers of hiking trails, lookout points, and also some hidden but very guest-friendly restaurants, event places and guest houses.
Flippermúzeum (Pinball Museum)
Europe’s largest collection of pinball machines. I think I said it all. What’s even better, every machine is operational and can be tried out for free (without time limit) just by paying the small flat entrance fee. Coordinates here, website here.
Selfie Museum
When the name says more than I can. Coordinates here, website here.
Vasúttörténelmi park (Historical park of trains)
Also a host venue for various events, this museum probably has every type of trains ever rolled on the railroads of Hungary. With around 100 vehicles to show, this place definitely will be a favourite one to visit with your kids.
Sziklakórház (Hospital in the rock)
Used as an underground hospital safe from bombs during WWII, this unique museum setup presents us a dystopic environment filled with dystopic appliances from the era of nuclear war scare. Of course the main focus of the exhibition is life in this hospital during WWII bombings.
Red Star Graveyard (secret & forbidden!)
If parkour or disaster tourism is your cup of tea, you might try to visit this exceptionally spectacular deposit of rusting trains left to rot under a gigantic hall filled with holes and grown around by vegetation. There’s only one single catch: entering the place is considered illegal as the territory is private property, and there is no direct access to the area.
Rákosi-bunker (hidden & forbidden!)
The bunker, designed specifically for dictator Mátyás Rákosi was being built in the 1950s until the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 broke out. After then, the plans for the bunker were modified to serve as nuclear shelter for the Socialist Party elite, and later for selected residents of Budapest. The Budapest metro railways are randomly filled with entrances, some directly opening from the metro tunnels. Although there were plans to put these abandoned venues into good use, none of the plans materialized yet. Currently it’s forbidden to explore the tunnel system as visitor, but you can sneak in if you know the right people.
The top of Megyeri bridge
Occassionally, the stairway to the top of Megyeri bridge (originally Chuck Norris bridge) gets opened and you can enter in 7-10 person groups. It’s impossible though to predict when that happens. You have to obtain special permits and even then it’s not guaranteed that you’ll be allowed on the top of bridge. Another hindrance is that you’ll never be permitted to use the elevator as it’s being reserved for the maintenance personnel. You have to climb the stairs to reach Budapest’s tallest lookout point.
Our food is also good, although a bit weird for some people
I don’t intend to waste much time on recommending our cuisine, as it’s the most common theme in every travel catalogue.
Eveyone around here is obsessed with paprika and potatoes like we used them forever, which is weird as both plants are native to South America, and they weren’t distributed to Hungary until the mid 1500’s.
What you definitely should try outside of the common foods recommended everywhere (eg. Foods with tons of paprika, potatoes and fish, túró rudi & pálinka) are our often neglected but excellent sweets: somlói galuska, my personal favourite; dobos cake; lúdláb torta (goose feet cake), rigójancsi (ask for a discount as prize if you can pronounce its name correctly), gundel pancakes, kürtős kalács (chimney cake – street food), madártej (birds’s milk), túrógombóc (cottage cheese dumplings).
Also don’t forget to find out what „főzelék” is.
