If you’ve been to the city of Budapest, you’ll have probably already guessed the name of the bar that we liked so much that we branded it our favorite in the world. We never would have thought a drinking establishment where the walls are crumbling, the acoustics are kind of terrible with horrifying toilets would honor the title so well.
The bar can be found in the city’s Jewish District, more specifically on Kazinczy Street. The opening of the bar back in 2002 inspired a wave of other ‘ruin pubs’ to open doors and are now collectively a notorious part of Budapest’s nightlife. A ruin pub can be defined as an old abandoned mass of space within a building in dire need of a lick of paint decorated with unusual and quirky thrift and bric-a-brac. People gather in ruin pubs for food, drinks, shisha, events and live music.
The building that houses our favorite bar, at 14 Kazinczy Street, once contained homes and a factory, but by 2004 the building lay in ruin and was prepared for demolition. The front door currently consists of factory style plastic sheets making you wonder if you have entered the right place.
Four people got together and saw the building and its surroundings at a different angle than others, they saw the potential for a big community space. The philosophy of the owners remains the same now as it did since the opening, “People can come as they are, as the wish and if they don’t like the space, they can come and check it out and leave if they wish to”.
The lay out of the bar is enormous, one inside, there is a large central inner-courtyard where most of the themed smaller rooms can be seen. One of the rooms is filled with computer paraphernalia where some computer screens are playing psychedelic patterns on a continuous loop. It really makes you feel like you are in Amsterdam, not Budapest.
Finding a seat can be a difficult task during the busier hours, and when you do find one, they’re guaranteed to be as unique as the environment around you.
In some of the rooms, there are switches on the wall, dare to press them and see what happens, we hit one beside us which turned on a hair dryer in the opposite corner of the ceiling. We saw kids having fun with this which is what makes it a wonderful places for a community to unite.
The beer wasn’t so bad too, we found the price offerings much cheaper than bars closer to the city centre.
There’s even an Eastern European style open-top Trabant car where the interior has been replaced with a table and chairs.
Szimpla Kert is one of the busiest bars in the city and it is typically dominated by tourists, some of who struggle to find the place via Google Maps. If visitors aren’t enjoying a beer or one of the many cocktails on offer they are making the most of the variety of shisha flavors on offer in the shisha ‘garden’ area distinctively marked with an enormous dragon like figure.
Szimpla Kert is a place where every corner you turn you think “Why” and “What the hell?”
