I wasn’t kidding when I said that my camera contains an inordinate number of food pictures. Food, beer, and some communist statues. That seems to be the crux of my photographic evidence of visiting Budapest.

You know what I didn’t realize Hungarians were so good at? Pizza. I ate a lot of pizza, and it was all delicious.

Since I have taken to dedicating a staggering portion of this blog to all the eating I do in Europe, and since London’s My Old Dutch Pancake House got its own post, this is going to be…more of that.

I picked Budapest for fall break because it was on my Must-Return short list from my 2008 backpacking trip. I am not-so-secretly obsessed with all of the quirky charm to be found in Paris, but I stretch that word a bit when I apply it to Paris. Paris is, generally speaking, far too well put together to merit that word. She’s the pretty girl who is too fucking cool to care that you think she’s pretty. She’s also intelligent and artistic and all sorts of other fantastic things, but I mean, whatever, she doesn’t have time to explain all of this to you.

Budapest, on the other hand, is… well… more legitimately quirky. It oozes its history in an un-self-conscious way and has some absolutely stunning architecture. It was a particularly good choice for a Paris break because everyone I met was so unfailingly friendly that I was taken aback by it. I was having trouble comprehending the idea that I was not being berated and people were smiling at me while they spoke. “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? WHAT IS YOUR HIDDEN AGENDA?”

Anyway, other than my established appreciation for the city, I also picked it because I am doing a research project on the Memento Park for one of my classes, so I could pretend that this was an academic, responsible trip. Or something like that.

But we didn’t really have a lot of plans going in. I knew one day would be set aside for my research, but that was about it. Fortunately, the magic of crowdsourcing your travel struck again. Slightly by accident.

On Monday we realized that the Memento Park trip would have to be pushed back to Tuesday, because the Memento Park is reliably difficult to get to (I had problems with it last time too). So on Monday afternoon, our other plan having been abandoned, we decided to take my friend at his word, and head over to Marxim. We’d swap our communist statues for… communist-themed pizza?

We got super confused when we got off the metro at Moszkva ter, because we weren’t quite sure which way to go. The area itself was a little more run down than what we had seen of the city so far, but we finally found the place.

Admittedly we both had a, “This seems vaguely sketchy,” feeling at this point.

The place was fairly empty — I learned later that it’s more of a night-time crowd. Good. Fewer people to watch me take four million pictures of everything.

No, that’s not creepy at all..

Once we looked at the menu, however, we decided that this place had promise.

You can’t see the top of the menu, where ‘Snow White and the Seven Small Proletariats’ and ‘Pussy Pussy Monica and Bill’ are listed, but they’re there…

But then! Then we actually got the pizza and I have no words. This isn’t really a food blog so I should probably stop talking so much about food because I never know how to describe it beyond “This was good” and “This was bad” but this was.. you know, really fucking good.

That’s probably why I don’t have a food blog.

Unfortunately, I lost a quarter of my pizza to the floor when I was cutting it, because I am a child who can’t handle basic tasks like cutting my food.

The upshot was that my friend left a day ahead of me, so when I was on my own on Wednesday night, I knew where I had to go. Because it was that good.

If you ever find yourself in Budapest, GO TO THIS PLACE. I recommend going at night — there were tons of people and it had a fun pub feel. It was a little more random and awkward in the middle of the day. Take the M2 (red) metro to Moszkva ter (in Buda). It’s about a five minute walk from the Metro.

Marxim Pizzeria & Pub
+36/1 31–602–31
1024 Budapest, Kis Rókus utca 23, Hungary