Nightlife Among The Ruins In Budapest Pubs

But there's also an edgy side to Budapest evenings — "ruin pubs" (romkocsma), which are smoke-filled, ramshackle bars crammed with 20-somethings. To find them, you'll have to explore the dingy streets of the city's Jewish Quarter. After World War II, this area was deserted and then resettled by mostly Roma (gypsies). It remained dilapidated even after the Iron Curtain fell, and the rest of Budapest was rejuvenated.

This unusual combination of a very central location and low rents has attracted a funky new breed of bars. Their low-profile entryways look abandoned, but once you walk through a maze of hallways, you emerge into large rooms and open-air courtyards filled with people and thrift shop furniture. It feels like a gang of squatters made a trip to the dump yesterday and grabbed whatever was usable, moved in today, and are open for business tonight. Enjoying a drink here, I'm reminded of creatures that inhabit discarded shells in a tide pool."

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