I went bar-hopping a few nights ago for the first time in I don’t know how long. Met up with some fellow solo-traveling friends at the original (or so they say) ruins pub, Szimpla Kert. A ruins pub is basically a bar established in the ruins of an old building that hasn’t been rebuilt. In the case of Szimpla Kert, there’s no roof over much of it, the walls separating the various rooms of the building are mostly gone so you just have these niches cut out of the main space where the bars are and this sense of little hidden nooks and crannies everywhere, and only parts of the external side walls of the original building remain.
After a few drinks and some food, we headed to Instant, whose status as a ruins pub is questionable given its well-defined separate rooms and structural integrity. Nevertheless, Instant has all the characteristics of a ruins pub, with its many separate rooms and open-air courtyard in the middle.
“Absurd” is the only way to describe Instant. Whereas Szimpla feels very random and haphazard in its decoration – old-style lamp shades, chairs hanging from cables stretched across the sky above the courtyard, an old car-cum-dining booth, Frankenchairs, doll heads here and there – Instant is intentionally absurd in it’s design. Owl heads are everywhere and on everything, and rabbits are a popular addition as well. It’s common to see images spliced together to create weird new images. The walls were papered with huge, wall-sized pictures of circus-freak families and people with owl heads and other absurdities.
Instant has three floors and we got there just as a live rap performance was wrapping up in the basement. I don’t know who the artist was, I never heard a name, but he was clearly American. After the performance, it was open mic night. That’s right – I got to see a bunch of Hungarians rapping in Hungarian. It was wildly entertaining and I LOVED it. If you’re curious what Hungarian rapping is like, check out my crappy videos here.
After we grew weary of Instant, we decided to scope out the scene back at Szimpla Kert. It was about 2:30am, and the two bars are almost 3/4 of a mile away from each other. Along the way, we came across a couple Brits who asked for a lighter. We got to talking and it turned out they were on their way from Szimpla over to Instant. After chatting on the street for about 10 minutes, they convinced us to come back to Instant with them. They were lovely – two guys from Warwickshire, where Shakespeare is from, with accents that I don’t know how to describe – definitely not from London. We drank and we danced and somehow an hour and half had passed before I knew where it had gone. They were off to Bratislava on a 9:30am train, and we finally parted ways around 4:15am.
I hated my 3-hours-of-sleep zombie-self the next (or maybe “later that”?) morning, but I still wouldn’t have traded the experience for a few more Zs.
TL;DR: “Watching live Hungarian rap” retroactively awarded to my bucket list, checked off with great flourish.
It was so much fun! The rapping was really something else. I just kind of sat there in awe. I think there’s something about music that dictates certain movements as part of the “dance.” In dance classes, they teach that the lead leads the follow, but the music leads the lead first. You can’t Swing dance to rap music, for example (or vice versa) 🙂
What fun! It’s interesting how, regardless of language, the Rap Artist’s gestures and movements are universal.