The mini-break is nothing less than complete submission to
ungovernable chaos.
For once you leave the house,
how the flip can a cat be expected to find food,
shelter and adequate entertainment?
In short , once you leave the borders.
How the heck can you locate the Guccis?
But do not unsheathe your secret fury
for I, the barely human Richard Ayoade,
am here to make your short-haul holiday game
the stuff of dreams that could one day become anecdotes!
I, while saddled with some of the available people
in the world of entertainment,
am going to savagely barrel you
through the colossally clustered mini-break.
This is travel without mercy.
Tonight, 48 hours in the city that affixed a "Pest" to its "Buda".
3.7 mill cats congregate in the Hungarian capital each year
to take its waters and bask in bohemian beauty.
SHE SNEEZES
Joining me to shoulder the burden is writer, comedian
and actor Aisling Bea.
Barmy army.
Together, we will take a train staffed by youths.
They grow up so fast, Richard.
..behave like ruddy students,
and brook aural assault.
Where the heck are these meaty pancakes?
We're here! But should we have come?
Checkmate.
I'm not focusing, yeah? I'm presenting.
In a manner that's very much off screen,
we traverse the 906 miles twixt Britain and Hungary
before thudding down in its principal vill.
Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for 50 years,
it withstood 40 years of communism
before the final indignity of our two-day occupation.
So, Richard, why Budapest?
A full answer awaits outside of this frame.
Budapest was so named on 17th November 1873,
when the three settlements of Pest, Buda and Obuda
were united into a megacity.
Let's weaponise the stat cannon.
Hungary is home to 1,500 thermal springs,
450 public baths,
eight indigenous grape varieties and six different types of paprika.
It's the birthplace of the Biro and the Rubik's Cube,
as well as being the very place in which vitamin C was discovered,
which makes it something of a personal pilgrimage.
The cash-strapped mini-breaker
can broker 48 hours of Buda biz
for just over 61,000 HUF,
aka 180 GBP.
To give us the illusion of authenticity,
I've checked us into a hostel.
I've been assured it's probably safe.
Look. In you go. What sort of weekend break have you led me into?
You're more than welcome. Thank you.
Richard, my bag's so heavy.
The Lavender Circus offers alarmingly low-priced accommodation.
Oh, God!
The four flights of stairs allows us time to ponder the extremely
unlikely possibility that there's a catch.
Oh, look!
This looks kind of quirky.
Thank you.
There's a traditional bottle of... Bleach. ..bleach there.
That's important. You'll need that.
En-suite sleeping quarters are available
pre-etched from bespoke scribblings from its proprietor.
OK. This is a tough night-time wee.
Oh, wow!
This doesn't look budget at all.
This is too low.
My room's lovely, actually. What's yours like?
It is highly dangerous. It wouldn't pass UK building regs.
It's like the set of Roman Polanski's The Tenant,
and that's a reference no-one's going to get.
But before we can cop the city's culture,
we must first master Hungarian,
one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn.
Waiting, as if by appointment,
is our poker-faced Fungarian tour guide Miklos.
Aisling. Miklos.
Richard. Rich-ard!
I've been saying it wrong my whole life? No,
but the Hungarian way is that. OK. Yes.
The stress is always on the first syllable. On the first.
So you would go,
SUPER-califragilistic expialidocious!
Exactly. OK.
'With an hour to conquer its ten dialects,
'18 noun cases and 14 vowel sounds...'
Oh-oh. We're like the Teletubbies.
Ee-ee. You could probably lose that vowel, I'd say.
'Miklos starts to get our linguistic shiz tight.'
TRANSLATION:
HE REPEATS THE PHRASE HALTINGLY
All the best.
Never mind, Rich-ard. OK.
Finally, when you drink, you want to say cheers...
RICHARD REPEATS THE PHRASE
That's how everything sounds after you start drinking.
How do I say thank you? Koszonom. Koszonom.
I'm never going to forget that.
Now we've achieved near fluency,
we start lining our eyeballs with landmarks.
Miklos insists that we document these momentous moments
by attaching a smartphone to a stick
and turning the lens on our very selves in a selfie tour.
So now we are approaching the parliament. Mm-hm.
You might ask why such a small country has such a huge parliament.
Corruption.
No! Oh.
Because it was built in 1896,
when Hungary was three times as big as it is now.
Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
So if you'd like to take a selfie...
It just feels like an Ozzy Osbourne album cover.
You should look happier.
I am looking happy.
That's Richard, like, at Christmas.
'And what could almost pass for a montage,
'we clicked through the Museum of Ethnography...'
OK, ready?
'..celebrated socialist poet Attila Jozsef,
'and leading homicide detective Columbo,
'rev'd here because of Peter Falk's Hungarian ancestry,
'and shared surname with the 19th-century politician.'
You come this side. There we go.
Looking straight up...
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
Wow. That's a great selfie.
Get the bridge in?
Within two hours, we've almost wiped the city dry
with out infernal wand...
..leaving one last site to scope,
the Hadik Memorial.
A popular spot for students. Before their exams,
they come here and they touch a sensitive part of the horse
and they think it will bring luck.
If you look up
and you see the shiniest part,
you will see what... Because people have been rubbing it.
Give me a leg-up, Richard.
Oh, great!
You made it.
The last Hungarian word we are going to learn is "tok".
"Tok"? What's "tok"? That sounds cute.
Since it belongs to the horse,
and horse is "lo"... Lo. Lo.
The lo tok...
Away, now, that's "horse balls", is it?
You said that. I don't use such words.
Take the selfie stick. There we go. OK.
Get the lo toks in.
Please, let's not cheat on this.
There's a lot of horse to get in here. OK.
I think my head's in the way of the undercarriage.
Thank you very much.
It was great fun.
Mikloz, as they say in Budapest...
SHE ATTEMPTS TO SPEAK HUNGARIAN
Understandably famished, fatigued and frightened,
our vowels ached for the appeasement of lunch,
located a 20-min taxi trundle towards Buda's oldest part.
Well, look at this.
This looks ruddy rustic.
Kehli Vendeglo have been ladling out authentic Hungarian fare to
locals and Caucasian film actors since 1899.
This is a roll call. Roger Moore looks exhausted.
But why Charles Bronson on a horse?
Who's Charles Bronson?
Deathwish, please.
Man's films. High School Musical?
About men.
Killing other men.
Oh, classic men!
HE SPEAKS HUNGARIAN
Si. Um...
SHE STUTTERS
You can do it. Push through.
SHE SPEAKS HUNGARIAN HALTINGLY
HE REPLIES IN HUNGARIAN
Oh. Koszonom.
Yes, Kszonom. Yes.
With the accent on substantial,
we perused the paprika'd provisions.
I would recommend the fisherman's soup...
I could eat that, because I'm famously a pescatarian, Richard.
Is there any dead animal that you'd like to eat here, Richard?
Yes, please. Don't let me put you off.
Yes. I think I'll just have some...
I'm just going to have some meaty pancakes.
SHE SNIGGERS
What's in them?
Could be anything at this stage of the day.
Can you...
THEY PLAY A TRADITIONAL TUNE
Wow.
This is good.
Ohh!
Hey, guys!
The guy with the bass has got a harder job, though.
This is good.
All these faces.
It is a montage sequence in a Sherlock Holmes...
Puts you into a bit of a frenzy, like I want to eat like...
Yeah.
TEMPO INCREASES
What are you meant to do?
Are we meant to continue as if we're talking?
Or are we just meant to listen? Oh, yeah, which is respectful?
OK. Uh...
That was great. Whoo!
Thank you very much. Thank you so much.
Koszonom...
Koszonom. You're welcome. Very good.
Koszonom.
Where the heck are these meaty pancakes?
To tide us over,
we spoon through Hungary's national dish,
goulash and fish soup.
Oh, yeah, it's nice. It's good.
Then we thunder on with marrowbone in gingham napkins,
cabbage noodles,
bread mounted with garlic,
and, at long last, my meaty pancakes.
Hmm.
Well?
I can see why they don't specify the meat.
A funny dish, where they cover it in a bucket of sauce
and you're like, "Something's amiss here." Yeah.
It's like when you go into someone's house
and there's a smell of bleach, you're like, "Who was killed here?"
You've just described my house.
OK, here we go.
OK. BOTH: One, two, three...
Thank you very much. He had it anyway.
In his hands. Thank you very much.
I'm actually just now not feeling like much of a feminist.
Could you get this? It's fine. Although that is steep(!)
Fuller than is wise,
we waddle on in search of steep gradients.
Established 1870.
1.5 metres a second. Pff!
I love it when you drop a fact on me, Richard.
I have absolutely filled the fat bucket to overflow.
I'm drinking every little bit of dribble that comes out.
Please. Don't drink direct from the fat bucket.
SHE LAUGHS
180 steps later,
we've arrived in the Buda Castle district,
a World Heritage Site riddled with historic squares,
palaces and vantage points.
Aisling, if you had to make a sweeping generalisation
about this city based on the view, what would it be?
They're hiding something.
Wow.
That is like a Jeremy Kyle assessment.
As evening cloaks our crumbling flesh,
we see what goes down in Pest post-pm.
Since the magical noughties,
ruin pubs started to self-perpetuate in the
long-abandoned buildings of the Jewish Quarter.
We've descended on the original, Szimpla Kert.
Hello. Hello.
THEY SPEAK HUNGARIAN
Two? It's brutal when they answer in English.
Unicum, the local libation,
is made from over 40 herbs and spices,
originally brewed as an indigestion tonic for Emperor Joseph II in 1790
by his physician Dr Zwack. It, for some reason, still exists.
We'll be back for more in a bit.
We're absolute legends. We're going to...
INDISTINCT
Everyone's having a laugh.
I do not like going out.
This is terrific.
These are very unfortunately named shots,
Unicum, which I would have thought could have done with a rebranding.
It is a shame.
You ready? Sip in... One, two, three.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all of his carpenter friends!
Come on.
As well as its smooth aftertaste,
Unicum also contains the dormant spirit of Danny Dyer.
IMITATING DANNY: "Danny won! Danny won!
"Lads, lads, lads.
"Barmy army."
Knock it down. No, I'm not knocking it down.
What am I, on your hen do? Yeah!
It's the nearest I'll get to a hen do any time soon.
Come on. Please. There's still hope. There's not much. Please...
That is not a drink for fun.
I've done all I need to do here.
If you leave me here with one shot glass and one empty,
it'll look from afar like an Adele video.
You've just sold me.
But before the strings swell and we fade to black and white,
the day calls it a night.
In the park that may well be called two,
at least three things will happen.
This thing... # Do-do-do-do-do! #
This thing...
And this thing.
I feel my suffering has only just begun.
In the previous half of our now iconic barrel through Budapest,
we mastered its tongue...
HE SPEAKS HUNGARIAN HALTINGLY
All the best.
..captured our own image...
It just feels like an Ozzy Osbourne album cover.
..and necked this nip.
SHE COUGHS
Day two starts with my customary quest
for healing waters and board games.
One mil per annum schlep to the Szechenyi baths.
Its high mineral content supposedly aids degenerative joint illnesses,
so I suggest we make a pre-emptive strike.
LAUGHTER
Ignoring the crowd's crass calls for me to unstrap my bangers,
we plunge in.
This is the most visited attraction in Budapest.
You can tell that because of all the people. I don't like this.
There's a lot of flesh on display.
You've managed to keep a bit of dignity there.
I've given people so much, why should I give them my naked body?
Don't give them any more.
Since the Romans,
bathing in hot springs has become unquestioned,
and in order to make the practice even more baffling,
locals have started to combine it with chess.
You're white, so you've got the advantage.
I don't want this to be....
Oh! Sorry.
Don't go there.
This is the queen, the most powerful piece on the board.
It can move this way, that way... OK. ..that way.
So, this is Beyonce. Sure.
This is Jay Z. This is Jay Z.
Jay Z can only move one at a time. Less powerful. Yeah. OK.
OK, I'll go one... OK. Now your move.
By the way, do you feel any better?
I don't really, despite the high incidence of magnesium in the water.
Do you feel like you're suffering less? No.
I feel my suffering has only just begun.
Before my Breton top shrinks ever tighter round my bosom,
we split this zone to cop some chimney cake, a local speciality.
Hello. Hello.
My young colleague knows how to order.
SHE SPEAKS HUNGARIAN HALTINGLY
You don't have to sound old.
Cone-shaped dough is basted in butter and roasted on a spit.
Traditionally served sweet,
there's a controversial new savoury slant
to the chimney cake scene.
We decide to order a brace of options.
Aisling, I'm bang out of huf. Got any?
Have I got huf? Yes, I do.
Lay some huf down. I've got some huf.
Don't flash your huf in my face. 2,770.
Whoa, that's a lot of huf. That's a lot of huf.
Koszonom. Koszonom. Koszonom.
Koszonom. Thank you.
Ohh!
Mm-mm-mmm!
We're lucky to have got this spot.
I do feel like a bit of a chump without the ice cream bit.
I'm going to start with ham, and I'll feed back.
If you did it the other way round, I'd think you were a psychopath.
That's a bit like a Subway. Mm-hm. This...
..like a standard 99. Could I...? Yeah, of course. Could I?
My funnel's good, but I do get worried I might...
It's also known as a funnel cake. ..go into it and get a bit...
That's the only trouble with getting in.
It's hard to eat. You're making elegant work of it.
I think sometimes you either have class or you don't. You know?
Before our digestive tracts take us to task,
we head for the frankly ethereal Children's Railway,
where all jobs apart from the driver -
because what child wants to be an engine driver? -
are discharged by kids.
Here we go.
Look at this stone-faced killer. Order.
Hello, young man.
SHE SPEAKS HUNGARIAN
I have no doubt in my mind that all of these children are ghosts.
Oh!
Oh! Oh, hello. Hello.
I'm going to try not to be patronising. OK.
You work on the train? Very good!
Originally set up for the youth wing of the Communist Party
to promote teamwork,
this piece of juve-nalia has been chuffing through Buda since 1948.
Oooh!
Ehh-ehh!
The ticket? Oh, yes. Thank you.
I don't know if I agree with child labour. Thank you.
No, I don't think they're paid, so is it labour?
Do you get money to work here?
Er, no. What have women fought for,
only to have our daughters working on trains for free?
This is your daughter? Yeah.
Well, this is an embarrassing way to meet up again. Mm.
HE SPEAKS HUNGARIAN
I think he might be talking to us.
Yes, I think that means the buffet car is closed.
So we should leave.
Bye. Bye. Thank you, children friends.
Let's just step across these tracks.
Yeah, that's normally worked out well for people, hasn't it(?)
They grow up so fast, Richard.
To fully leverage our position
at the drizzle-doused apex of Janos Hill,
the highest peak in Budapest,
we head for the adult-operated Zugliget chairlift.
OK, straight in. Down. OK, down. Sit.
Oh, God!
Ow! Ow! That's my shin.
Ohh!
Look at that view.
There's some great gobbing opportunities from up here,
if we were punks. Yeah.
Were you ever one of those kids, one of those teenagers,
who used to spit?
Well, I did come from Ipswich, but no.
You do not want to have an argument at the top of this. No.
Because it's 1km. 15 mins.
That's a long sulk. I've done it.
You've sat in a sulk for that long? I've gone days.
"No, no, it's fine. Fine, I'm fine." Is something wrong?
Seems like you're putting that on me.
Do you...? Sorry, I was just trying to read. It's just...
Do you want to talk about something?
It just feels like your silence is very loud.
Ohh! Why don't you just say what's on your mind,
rather than telling me how I feel?
Oh, you're good at it! You're so clever at that. Thank you.
Ohh! You must be a nightmare to be married to. Oh, it's tough.
After a further 15 minutes of unmotivated personal attacks,
I feel the reassuring sensation of foliage underfoot.
SHE HUMS
Are we about to sweep into someone's garden?
1970 was a bad year for whoever bought this property.
They must have gone, "Oh, come on!"
I've actually really enjoyed this little trip. I loved it.
The only thing that could have made this more connective
to inner peace would be if we were colouring in a little book,
maybe an ironic picture book of Tom Hiddleston.
Land looms below,
and our protracted dangle comes to a merciful end.
Off we get.
Thank you.
Hey, high-five.
Nailed it.
With our remaining time in Budapest slipping through our clammy mitts,
we decide to swivel the lens on our sorry selves
for a final soul-sapping snap.
Richard, where the hell are we? St Stephen's Basilica.
Finished in 1905. Took 50 years cos the central dome kept collapsing.
It's also got a 9.5-tonne bell. Document it.
Move on. We're out of here.
After a trim trawl to the tune of ?4.70,
we have little left to do
but recount our vast accomplishments in this most Buda of pests.
Koszonom, Richard.
Well...
let's see if Hungarian champagne is as good as everyone says. Mm!
Cos the word on the street is that it's average.
I'm sure it's good. I can't drink champagne.
It's too associated with fun and revelry.
Let us commence our assessment.
First of all,
I feel like Budapest brought its 'A' game architecturally.
I've enjoyed the diffidence of the people.
If I knew what "diffidence" was, I'd absolutely high-five you.
Thank you. The Children's Railway. Yes.
Why are they not at school? Why are they not getting paid?
Why are they all ghosts?
Why did they turn their heads round 360?
Why did they open their mouths and they had black tongues?
Why were their backs all stitched?
I got a chill just there, Richard, even thinking about those children.
No, they were good lads. Would you like to "cheers"?
This is my one Hungarian phrase I remembered.
Egeszsegere. To better times. To better times.
Next time, a Canarian caper round Tenerife with Lena Dunham.
There! Yes! Yes. Yes.
Subtitles by Ericsson