My entire insides seem to 'well-up' with that GO THERE desire as András from RetroRetek describes his home city of Budapest...
"I'm traveling a lot especially within Europe, so I am able to compare Budapest with other European capitals. But I still think that Budapest is a fantastic city and a must to visit for everyone! Budapest has a more or less long history and therefore rich culture with exceptional atmosphere - very old, nice buildings, with mixed styles.
Hungary was under Turkish influence for 150 years which you can still notice in everyday life: the bath and spa culture is very rich, you can find a dozen of very nice spas all over Budapest. The night life is exceptional, there are a lot of "ruin pubs" in the city center, which are usually in abandoned old buildings - this is a unique style of pubs which you can not really find anywhere else.
Last but not least the price level of Budapest is quite friendly and we have a gastronomical "boom" which started 5-6 years ago: the number of high quality restaurants and "street food" places are growing day by day!
And the history of the country is another set of intrigue that we've got to delve into just a little bit:
"Hungarian culture is very unique within Europe. Our roots are still not clarified yet and nobody still knows exactly our origin. There are more opened than answered questions regarding our past. Our nation moved to our current location in the 9th century from Asia through Eastern Europe. Our language is unique which can not be related to any other languages and it is one of the hardest to learn in the world! On the other hand we are the most mixed nation within Europe: we are an "island" surrounded by the "Slavic sea" and in the past 1100 years a lot of nations influenced Hungarians (Slavs, Germans, Turks and other Asian nations, tribes, etc.). You can still notice the footprints of these cultures in our everyday life: mainly in Hungarian cuisine and language. Thank's to our unique and "thick" history we also have a very special national consciousness."
You simply can't go past the eclectic range at RetroRetek of Soviet/West German period collection of goodies that András and his team have selectively hunted out from Hungarian "bolhapiac" fleemarkets.