Szentendre: A tourist trap with no tourists makes for an excellent day trip in Hungary
SZENTENDRE, Hungary – For savvy travelers, a tourist trap is the 2-wood shanked into the deep rough. You know quickly you’ve made a huge mistake but it’s impossible to get your shot back. You’re stuck with an unplayable lie and you just hope you can survive the hole.
Tourist traps are destinations or sites that are so overwhelmed with tourists that the appeal takes on the appearance of a theme park. Disneyland is such a tourist trap, it’s a theme park of a theme park.
I’m guilty. I’ve seen my share. The worst tourist trap I’ve ever experienced was Cancun’s Hotel Zone where a string of bars charge something like $20 for the right to drink all night and vomit in the ever-flowing gutters outside. In October I went to another. Bran Castle in Transylvania was so overwhelmed with tourists I thought Dracula himself would drink his own blood to flee the place.
But what if you went to a tourist trap with no tourists?
What if you went to a place famous for one thing and it wasn’t spoiled by a mass of humanity in Yankee ball caps? What if you could experience that one glorious spot that attracts the hordes and be alone with it and your thoughts?
In 2021, Marina and I made a beeline for Venice the day after Italy dropped one of its Covid lockdowns. We were nearly alone. We took a gondola ride and saw only one other boat. Our hotel was almost empty. We walked along canals so quiet we could hear the water lapping against the boats. Venice probably hadn’t been that empty since the 6th century.
Why Szentendre?
Last week we visited another tourist trap with no tourists, but on a much, much smaller scale. Szentendre is an artist’s colony 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Budapest. It is famous for being so darn cute, kittens put Szentendre photos on their calendars.
It’s a series of gumball-colored buildings and majestic domed Orthodox churches wrapped around a cozy square along the tranquil Danube River. It is home to 10 art museums, six art galleries and 200 artists, authors, poets, musicians and actors. Restaurants serve authentic Hungarian comfort food.
In summer, Budapest residents tell me it is cheek to jowl tourists on day trips from the capital only 30 minutes away. You’ll hear more German than Hungarian.
What better time to visit than a cool, sunny day on the last day of January?
After two days in Budapest, Marina and I took the subway to the Ujpest-Varoskapu train station on the north end of the capital. We then grabbed one of the hourly buses past decaying buildings that Hungary’s modern capitalism forgot. Boarded up windows. Missing bricks. Concrete apartment blocks.
When communism fell in Eastern Europe around 1990, every capital turned its lights on and spruced up its center with modern touches without destroying its communist past. But many residential and retail areas away from the center, away from the tourists, are still waiting for their first brush of paint.
What never needed a facelift was Szentendre. The bus dropped us off on a busy road hovering over the town center where domes of Orthodox churches stuck up over the Danube beyond.
With the brilliant sun beaming against a turquoise sky, we walked down the hill through narrow, windy cobblestone alleys to the town center. Fo Ter (Main Square in Hungarian) is rimmed with houses of yellow, green, red, beige, gray, turquoise and white. In the middle is a giant cross atop a tall yellow beam.
The square, the heartbeat of Szentendre for three centuries, was nearly empty. A half dozen people wandered through as if headed home. Not a single seat on the cafes’ and restaurants’ outdoor tables was occupied. We heard birds chirping. We heard no other voices except our own discussing how cute this town really is.
At one entrance of the square stood Blagovestenska Serbian Orthodox Church, a towering pearl-white church built in 1754 in baroque and rococo style. Blagovestenska is not a Hungarian name. It’s Serbian. Szentendre has been as much Serbian as Hungarian for most of its existence.
Originally built atop the ruins of abandoned Roman buildings, Szentendre was gutted and emptied during the Ottoman occupation in the 16th century. After the Ottomans finally fell in Hungary in the 17th century, foreigners began to move into town.
Szentendre history
When the Great Turkish War broke out in the Balkans, a mass Serb migration came to Szentendre in 1690. Serbian Orthodox churches were built such as the Belgrade Cathedral, a huge, bright maroon building with a sea-green tower and cross on top.
By 1872, with the Ottomans gone, the calm life along the Danube drew attention. A rail line was built from Budapest in 1888, and artists began leaving the capital for a quieter place to work. The population has skyrocketed from 4,000 in the 1960s to 27,500 today.
Serbia’s influence
Walking around town, I saw streets with Serbian names such as Pozsarevacska and Kucsera, some even in Cyrillic alphabet. A dozen Serbian families still live here.
Marina and I stepped into the Corner Szerb Etterem, a Serbian-Hungarian cafe with a menu in the two languages. The walls were covered with money from around the world. I took a very nice €2 espresso and we sat in a charming, empty cafe with red and white checked tablecloths, finally exhaling after a hectic two days in Budapest.
The Danube is only a short walk away. Restaurants with glass covering their outdoor tables for the winter had only a couple tables occupied. A long promenade lined the river as we walked alone hand in hand.
Finally an Israeli tourist asked where he and his friend could find the main square. Them and an Italian couple we met by the Belgrade Cathedral were the only tourists we saw all day.
The only noise we encountered was screaming schoolchildren scurrying around St. John the Baptist Church with a nice view of Blagovestenska and the Danube beyond.
Taking a long, narrow staircase down to the main square, I wanted to see the artist who put art in Szentendre’s reputation. Born in 1902, Margit Kovacs was Hungary’s greatest ceramic artist in the 20th century. She was half Jewish but was so popular in Hungary that she was not among the hundred Szentendre Jews hauled off to Auschwitz in 1944.
Trained in Vienna and Munich, she even earned the Distinguished Artist Award in 1959 from the Communist government.
While she worked mostly in Budapest, she visited Szentendre often and her works were placed in a modest two-story home here in 1973. Her art is remarkable, such as two brightly colored columns with horses, angels and naked women.
The Silent Feast of Old People is six different pieces, all with ceramic sculptures of elderly in robes raising goblets. Wedding Feast Stove is a large, crafted box emblazoned with birds, gold carriages and elegantly dressed couples.
Food
My Budapest friends said even when Szentendre is packed, you can always eat well. A local woman on the bus into town recommended a place called Rab Raby. Off on a side street, it was dark and decorated in bright tablecloths with musical instruments hanging from the ceiling. It looked like a knock off from the Knights of the Round Table.
It opened in 1982 in a former blacksmith’s shop and named for the hero of the Mor Jokai novel, Rab Raby. He lived in Szentendre and led the fight against the corrupt reign of Joseph II, the ruler of the cruel Habsburg monarchy in the 18th century.
With only two other people inside, I ordered the Hungarian national dish: goulash. I first fell in love with it in a factory cafeteria in 1978 and this country-style restaurant made it even better. It was a big, beefy soup packed with meat, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, spiced with fresh paprika and liberally sprinkled with parsley.
We waddled back to the bus stop and waited with only a couple of people. We took a half empty bus back to the subway station and back at the hotel, hopped into the spa.
Is Szentendre a tourist trap? Maybe. But in one rewarding day trip, we learned why people go there.
If you’re thinking of going …
How to get there: Buses leave hourly from Ujpest-Varoskapu train station. The 40-minute ride is €2. Trains leave Budapest’s Batthyany ter (square) every 10-20 minutes. The 40-minute ride is about €1.50. From May to September, Mahart ferries leave Vagado ter at 10:30 a.m. and return at 3:30 p.m. It’s 90 minutes going and 60 returning. The price is €1 one way and €1.50 round trip.
Where to stay: Danubius Hotel Helia, Karput utca 62-64, Budapest, 36-1–889-5800, https://www.danubiushotels.com/hu/szallodak-budapest/danubius-hotel-helia, helia.reservation@danubiushotels.com. Four-star hotel on bank of Danube about a 30-minute riverside walk to city center. Fantastic free spa on the first floor and a big buffet breakfast. Helpful, English-speaking staff and bar with big screen TV.
Where to eat: Rab Raby, Kucsera Ferenc utca 1/A, 36-20-914.9737, www.rabraby.hu, info@rabraby.hu, noon-7 p.m. Thursday, Sunday; noon-8 p.m. Friday; noon-9 p.m. Saturday. Opened in 1982, the cozy restaurant serves classic Hungarian dishes such as goulash and chicken paprikash. Lunch for two was €21.
For more information: Szentendre es Tersege, Dumtsa Jeno utca 22, 36-26-317-965, https://iranyszentendre.hu, tdm@szentendre.hu, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.