With another asphalt-melting summer officially upon us, the place to be in Budapest is outside. This is easily achieved in our fair capital; walk down any leafy avenue or amble around the city center and you cannot help but stumble onto the terrace of a fashionable café or chic restaurant serving the latest in European haute cuisine. You will also find that nine out of ten times you’ve landed in the lap of a tourist or businessman on his lunch break from one of the multinational corporate HQs nearby.To experience a truly local ritual the way the natives do it, you have to take a turn into one of the side streets and seek out one of the establishments that have sprung up in recent years in the courtyards of uninhabited residential buildings or abandoned industrial estates. Fit for demolition, these places have quickly gained cult status among the young urban intelligentsia.
Szimpla Kert (Garden)
The Szimpla Café, hiding in the Jewish Quarter shadows of up-market Liszt Ferenc tér, started the uniquely Budapest phenomenon of „ruin pubs” in 2001, and remains the prototypical example today. It gave a new meaning to minimal design: think less New York condo with white cubic furniture, more no design whatsoever, just a spontaneous accumulation of mismatched objects rescued from skips and attics. The founders remained true to the no-design and no-marketing philosophy when they opened their outdoor division, Szimpla Kert, a couple of years later. Entering through the run-down hall of an uninhabited building is at first off-putting, but when you are finally through to what once was the internal courtyard of the building, a lively buzz hits you in the face with a warm gust of friendliness. The walls of the ground floor flats have been largely knocked through to create an exciting architectural space with arches and pleasing little hidden corners. A narrow staircase leads upstairs to the generally quiet non-smoking area, which has its own bar and serves simple hot sandwiches and snacks. Out back is a large open area with a third bar and long tables that inspire spontaneous social interaction. The conversations flow in a variety of languages, young sociologists sipping Absinthe rub shoulders with American tourists trying to chat up a couple of Czech girls while some English boys leaning against the long bar are singing about frogs. In one corner a small store sells retro knick-knacks and Szimpla memorabilia. The Szimpla Kert is not just a pub, but a cultural institution that frequently houses exhibitions, flea markets and also functions as an open-air cinema showing movies you are unlikely to see anywhere else.
Kuplung (Clutch)
Kuplung is situated along the up-and-coming Király utca in a delightfully out of place single-story building that used to be an auto repair garage. Although the entrance is unmarked, the large doors decorated with a few hundred stickers give it away. The venue is mostly comprised of a hangar that was once the workshop floor, defined by the curved wooden roof and giant installation hanging underneath it. The paper sculpture can only be described as the ribcage of some prehistoric creature, maybe a super-ant, or a fish with tusks. The furnishing is minimal, a place run on plywood-and-empty-beer-crate-technology, with uniform rows of garden tables and collapsible chairs lazily spaced about the concrete floor. Attention was reserved for the walls, where creativity is allowed to spill out unchecked from floor to ceiling in a chaotic urban collision between fine art students and dedicated followers of hip hop. It is a tableau in flux on a renaissance scale of graffiti murals, stencils and stickers, reflecting the very flavor of the moment. If you’re wondering whether kids still say ‘cool’, this is the place to find out. In addition to the table-football tables found in every ruin pub, you can also play table tennis in one of the side galleries. In the other corner is a small gallery in what must once have been the office, usually displaying abstract photography. There are concerts and DJs most nights playing the freshest urban tunes, officially starting at 9pm; however, befitting the overall laid-back atmosphere, there’s a relaxed attitude to starting times too.