Located in the jewish quartet of Budapest, today we will post and talk about the famous ruin bar Szimpla! With more than 8k reviews on trip advisor, of course we couldn’t leave this one out. The Bar claims, that the opening in 2002 has been a milestone in the alternative life of Budapest. What used to be an open-air cinema and pub is now a unique framework for hosting concerts, theatre shows and many different cultural events. In Short Szimpla is a “cultural reception space”.
But enough history, let’s talk about the real deal. If you ever walked past the ruin bar on a Friday or Saturday night, you would notice the huge queue in front of the building. Of course, everything changed during and after the pandemic, since the bouncers must check every vaccination certificate which takes quite some time with the amount of people trying to enter the venue. Once you made it past the security through the entrance, the real fun starts. You stand in the middle of what it feels like 100 bars and alternatives to order your drink. We can highly recommend starting with a palinka once you enter, since you will need some sips to deal with the intoxicated rest of the crowd. With many bars on the right and left side of the hallway one might wonder – where is the dancefloor? But you are standing right in front of it.. It will get quite annoying to dance while people keep bumping into you to get to the back of the venue, but the unique vibe in the bar definitely makes up for it! The music will be quite random, a little bit of pretty much every genre, like the styles of the bars in the venue – random.
Regarding the drinks you will find a wide range, from wine, to beer, to aperol spritz, to shots, to other cocktails, and so on… you might have to check out a few bars to find one with a doable queue and then you might have to keep looking for the right drink since the bars offer different things.
If you are done dancing, you can sit down in the open air area in the back and sit at a table with friends – or strangers. The Bar also has an upstairs area where it is more chilled but usually very crowded.
But be careful, the bar claims to take a “deposit” for cups, but to us it seems more like an additional fee, since we were not able to get back our deposit anywhere… make sure to take the cups that you pay for home to get something out of it - haha.
All in all, we can highly recommend going to Szimpla since it is always an experience and a lot of fun! On the weekends you can usually stay until early morning until the Bar needs to start cleaning for the Saturday markets.
Have fun and enjoy yourself until we will see you at the next bar.
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