Budapest Central market hall

Ever since I stepped into Budapest I've been wanting to go and visit the central market hall of Budapest, I have this thing for Bazaars, I crave them, like the first thing I look for when I search for a place is if they have a bazaar or flee markets. So ever since we got to Budapest, I wanted to go and visit the central market but of course my med school schedule had to get in the way. This time two of my old friends came from Malaysia and so we had to meet up I mean come on and imagine it was during my examination period, can you believe it that I went out like 3 days before an exam? oh god I know i sound like such a big nerd but I swear I'm a lot of fun (okay I'm probably not that fun If I constantly say it). Anyhow getting back on the topic of the Central market so yes we decided to meet our friends on a saturday and on saturdays the market is only open until 3 pm and so we decided to meet up at around 11 so we can get there on time and have a good look. The market is closed on sundays and on other days it's until 6 pm. from 9 am to 6 pm.

We took the 4/6 tram and got off at Boraros ter and decided to take a long walk to the market, since it wasn't that far and the weather was pretty good that day. Not like today where it's -6 degrees and I'm shivering as I'm typing these. Back to the market, you guys can also go via the metro line M4 which is the green line and get off in "Fovam Ter", there is about a 4 to 5 minutes walk from there which you can easily get to using google maps. Now that we've got that covered let's move on to the magnificent beauty of this Market hall.

It's much more elegant than a flee market, it actually has a lot of proper shops and stalls, it's well lit and well decorated and mostly importantly warm as hell since it's not located in open air. We started wondering about the stalls, so many different shops and souvenirs, I wanted to take everything home. There were a lot of meat stalls, and since I'm not that big of a meat fan, that didn't catch my attention much, however the variety was cray, all types of wurst, omg did I just say Wurst? I have become so German, but yes I don't know the exact word in English but I guess we can say Ham, smoked beef, pork legs, even pork head which was the most disgusting one for me to be honest.

Apart from the meat stalls the next abundant type of stalls were the paprika stalls, I mean it's not a Hungarian market hall without a little Paprika is it? well certainly not a little paprika but as much as one can imagine. There are dried paprikas, normal paprika, paprika powders which can be sweet, spicy or mixture of both, paprika paste which is much like tomato paste that we use except with paprika, there's so many options it has just made me insane. My friends bought some dried paprikas which looked so freaky spicy by the way that I didn't dare to try any.

The other stalls included the Hungarian famous alcoholic drinks, first of all we've got palinka, which I'm going to write a little bit on, I honestly haven't tried it yet because it is super strong and I'm scared of what might happen to me, it has 50% alcohol, can you believe it? I know I will get shit faced for sure and so I have been waiting till the right time to give it a try. So basically Palinka is a fruit brandy which originates from Hungary, many hungarians actually make their own Palinka during festivals or harvest seasons, we've got cherry, plum, apricot, dark cherry, peach and etc types of palinkas. I know it's super easy to get drunk with palinka but hungarians don't take pride in just making a drink for getting drunk it's the fruity taste and aroma of palinka that gives it it's fame and popularity. I absolutely suggest trying this drink and the price is about 20 euros for a moderately large bottle. There are really small ones for about 6 euros and so if you want to try all the flavors you can definitely use those.

Hungarian wine, Tokaji. Another popularly found drink the market was this Hungarian Wine, as the hungarians pronounce this "Toekay", I know talk about weird pronounciations. This wine is really famous all acroos europe and tastes nice to be honest, it's also not too expensive. It actually used to be a wine for Royals and kings back in the day and so maybe you can feel like royalty too with this wine. if you are interested about reading more about the wine and it's history I suggest checking this page out : Tokaji wine. I stumbled across it when I was doing research for writing this piece.

(Some random pictures of the market I thought to include)

And last but not least, Unicum, I mean I know we can find Unicum anywhere in Europe but well it actually comes from Hungary, yes something to be proud of! and so if there is one place you want to try Unicum in, it should be Budapest. The history of this bitter drink goes back to 255 years ago when the Zwack family manufactured this drink and it has been running in their family for generations. There is actually a Zwack Unicum museum here in Budapest, I haven't been to it and I'm not that enthusiastic to go to it but I guess it would be a great option for Unicum lovers. Apprently during the communism time the unicum drink was produced in the US but after communisim they returned back to Hungary and resumed the production of this National Hungarian drink.

Well I sound like an alcoholic now with all these talks and information about alcohol. let's move on to the next items.

On second floor of the market, there are food stalls which I will talk about in details later but before that the second floor has a lot of clothing and jewelry shops. Hungarian traditional winter knitted clothes, some leather stuff and some jewelry which are all expensive by the way. We didn't spend much in those sections because well we were getting hungry and it was hungry hour in Hungary, I know I'm really funny thank you for agreeing with me. There was a lot of variery but like I said they were kinda expensive so let's move on to the food section already.

Oh god the foods didn't just look like normal street food I mean you felt like you went to a fancy buffett, the choices were endless and you couldn't just simply pick one, we took about 10 turns just to be able to settle for one. like really man the sitting space is so limited and we had to wait for another 20 minutes till a table was emptied and we couldn't even sit all of us at once, like two of us sat while the other two were eating while standing up. I mean I know we went during a saturday but they really should do something about that sitting space. Anyhow this should not discourage you guys from not trying out the amazing food they offer. Oh and another disadvantage is that well they are kind of used to ripping off tourists so be careful. I mean we live here, and they still tried and may have succeeded in ripping us off. It was basically that I was guarding our table while our friends went to buy their food and so my brother was also in the line for buy the food for us, he told me that the guy was putting extra of everything for his sandwich so they would charge more and later on when we asked for take away boxes, they claimed that they don't have any even though we saw them give it to other people like 5 minutes before. I don't really know the reason for that kind of behavior but it was the first time and hopefully the last time that it happened in Hungary. But yes let's focus on the good stuff, please don't be discouraged but I just had to rant to make sure you guys are careful.

(The last one is our food! )

The food was amazing for foodies of all tastes, there were goulash soups in a bread, langos with different toppings like pizza toppings, vegetable or even nutella toppings. There were mixed rice something like spanish paellas, there was chicken parmesan, eggplant filled with different things, steak, pork ribs, and finally the food we ordered was basically like sausage, bacon, chicken and you could fill in your own vegetables or cheese. It was like a better and much better version of Subway. The taste was also amazing but oh my god the price was not, we paid 7000 forints for a sandwich and even though the sandwich was extremely huge and the both of us could eat it together it was still way too much for a sandwich, I mean a person can go eat in a normal restaurant for like 3000 forints or even less. So yea it was worth trying out once but not more.

This pretty much wraps up the central market experience, I had a blast here, the vibe and energy is irreplaceable. Make sure you go here or else your visit to Budapest isn't complete, just saying.

Hope you enjoy this piece, let me know what you think!

Cheers!

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