RUIN BARS -Szimpla Kert

Buda has churches, and fortress walls of the Old City BUT Pest has the Jewish quarter, Parliament and its RUIN BARS. In the evenings, Budapest lights up in the city's "ruin pubs" (romkocsma), which are ramshackle, cavern-like bars crammed with people having the time of their lives. To find them, you'll have to leave the wide streets with modern stores and delve into the older streets of the city's Jewish Quarter/Ghetto. After World War II, this area was deserted, then resettled largely by members of the Hungarian Roma minority. It remained quite rundown under communism and was slow to rejuvenate even after the Iron Curtain fell. It looks like a bunch of squatters made a trip to the dump yesterday and grabbed whatever was usable, moved in today, and are open for business tonight. See 3 videos.

Szimpla ("Simple Garden" in Hungarian) the first and most famous ruin bar (where we went) began as an experiment, a counter-culture bar for the young and creative crowd in Budapest and is now an iconic phenomenon that is crowded all the time. It is a large structure divided into several spaces and distributed on two levels, with a large garden, various bar corners dedicated to cocktails, beers and wines by the glass, different chairs and benches made from old bathtubs, with different music depending on the setting. It is more like a Community center with movie showings, live music performances, an art gallery, the Kazinczy Living Library, the Szimpla Farmers' Market, and the Szimpla Bringa bicycle flea market held at the bar.Read more