Hey there. If you've never been to Budapest, I hardly recommend you to visit this city.
So, this is the longest remote working session I've done so far. I've been there for 2 weeks and here is my journey.
I always used to go on working session either alone or with a bunch of other remote workers. This time, I joined a project called Startup House Budapest.
I'll talk more about this project in a future post. So concretely, I was sharing a huge flat with 15 people. What an experience!
When you're in a city for just a couple of days, you have to make a schedule in order to optimize the time you're there. But within 2 weeks, you really have time to discover a city and to really live like a local.
So, compared to my other trips, this time, I think I put less pressure on me and just lived by the day.
I started to work from the house. I took time to work on side projects and to coach 3 alumni from Le Wagon that were also in the house.
That was a cool experience but I thought that it was sad to don't meet any local entrepreneur. So we decided to get out of the house!
With some of the folks from the house, we visited 2 coworking spaces.
First, Rohit welcomed us at thehub.hu. This is a coworking space with both fixed desks and hotdesks plus everything you may need to work: tea, coffee, wifi, great chairs, …
The next day, we visited LOffice which is located in the same street as thehub.hu. This is a beautiful coworking space with a café / bistro on the rooftop of the building.
The 2 spaces have a calm atmosphere: perfect to be productive. If you have to choose between the 2 of them, thehub.hu might be more for tech people and the second one more for designers. But I recommend you to try both of them and make your own judgement.
For sure, within 2 weeks I had time to visit the city. I recommend you the Free Walking Tour. They propose a classic tour of the city, a tour of the Jewish quarter and many more.
You may be interested to try the local food. They have a lot of specialties: goulash, sausage sandwich, langos, …
At lunch, test the restaurants dedicated to workers. They're cheap (~ 3€ per dish) and propose traditional Hungarian cuisine.
Hungarians use a lot of paprika in their dishes. Their coffee is also pretty famous. Both of them are heritage from Turkish.
Last but not least, if you like wine, you'll be happy to hear that Hungarian wine is pretty good.
Ok, this is the thing you should try in Budapest. The city has a lot of therms. Within 2 weeks, I tried 3 of them: Széchenyi, Gellért and Rudas.
All of them have therm baths, swimming pools, sauna, hammam and external therm bath.
Széchenyi is one of the oldest and biggest therms of Budapest. Its 2 big external therm baths are really impressive. Have a look at it at sunset.
The 2 other baths are on Pest side. Gellért is really huge with its external swimming pool, bath and sauna.
My favorite one was Rudas. The only Turkish therm in Budapest. Within the same room, there is a big therm bath and 4 smaller ones with different temperatures that go from 20 to 42 degrees. Bonus point for the view of Pest from the bath on the rooftop.
The Jewish Quarter is the place to be at night. You'll find everything you want in Kazinczy street, from really good restaurants to excellent ruin bars.
I especially recommend you Kazimir and Köleves Vendéglö restaurants. For the ruins bars, you should try Szimpla - the oldest one, Ellátó kert and Extra.
What about you joining me either in Amsterdam or in Lille? Let's meet!