Regio Jet – Train Misadventures and Hungarian Apartments

G’day folks. Continuing on from my time in Vienna as I was previously writing about (as part of last year’s trip around the world) I moved on to the capital of Hungary, Budapest, by train. It’s not a long distance between the two capitals which both were central to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s only 212 kilometres and journeys by train tend to take around two and a half hours.

There were a number of options, and booked in advance reluctantly through Trainline (.com) whom I used in 2023 with some cancellations that took 6 months to refund. There were a bunch of options, I went with RegioJet, a train company servicing this route (there were others). The price was pretty good – around $60AUD each ($40USD) – I was travelling with my wife on this part of the trip.

And this was for the Business Class option, which included a spacious seat in a cabin for four and access to a lounge at the Wien Hop Bahnhof. We arrived an hour early for our 10:27am train. Finding the Regiojet lounge was a bit of a challenge, we ended up in one on the first floor, but we were at the wrong lounge.

When we did find the lounge, well, it small and full. No free seats anywhere. So we were in and out and ended up at Starbucks where at least there was a table and better looking food. Once it was time to head the platform, we did. Only to find our train was late.

So it hadn’t been a great start. When the train pulled in we had a short distance to find our carriage. Lots of stations in the world have worked out how to line carriages up to certain spots on the platform so people aren’t madly rushing to get to their carriage. Not on this platform. As usual people all in the wrong spots and rushing in the opposite direction to others.

However, once one the train our cabin, which we shared with two others, was very roomy and comfortable which was nice and at 60 Aussie dollars, well worth the price. There was even a complimentary drink thrown in and staff that checked regularly and offered more drinks and food (that we had to pay for).

The journey moved quickly on and we were soon in Hungary. Green fields, blue skies, it was a pleasant if unremarkable view out the window. We had chosen to get off at Budapest’s Deli station, which was the end of the line. To be more accurate, we made that choice after we bought the ticket because when we booked the Air BnB it was an easy walking distance from the station. We had to stay on an extra station (from Budapest Kelenfold) but that didn’t seem to be an issue no one was checking at that point as it was only another 5 minutes.

Deli Station was… a bit rundown. Concrete, uninspiring it wasn’t really the a great first impression of a city. I visited Budapest back in 2004 but specific memories were few of this city. We organised some travel cards for Budapest public transport at the station, found an ATM and got out some Forint before walking for about 15 minutes to our Air BnB. Which is pretty handy, but just uphill pretty much the whole way.

This was probably the nicest Air BnB I have ever stayed at. It was in a building of about seven or eight stories, and we were on the fifth floor. The balcony over the courtyard was how the apartments were all accessed, and this did feel a bit dodgy, but once through the door we were blown away at all the space, and the design was very much of another time (yet the WiFi was fast!).

The kitchen was modern and it was one of only a handful of places I stayed last year that had a bathtub. The photos no doubt give a better impression of the place than my words could. This would be our base for six nights, we went out to a number of restaurants and the opera whilst in Budapest, and see plenty of the city although I also got pretty sick by the second day and so I had a day and a half of rest – not nearly enough and this led later to getting MUCH sicker.

But Budapest was indeed a rewarding place to visit, even if for some reason I never really warmed to the place. What will following over the next week or two will be my run down of all the places I/we visited whilst there over two blog posts. Budapest is famously two old cities merged into one, separated by the Danube. One side being Buda, the other side being Pest. We were on the Buda side of the river, interestingly Pest is the side with more sights. The famous Castle Hill was basically behind us, you might say we were down near the bottom of the hill. On top sits Buda Castle with great views of Pest.

Down our street five minutes walk away was a road that goes through a tunnel under Castle Hill to the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, a famous bridge over the Danube connecting Buda and Pest with lion statues at each end. There was a bus stop there too to take us across to Pest which we took daily, and a SPAR supermarket where we shopped, pretty much every day too. When we weren’t ‘fine dining’ in Budapest, we cooked at the Air BnB which actually made for a welcome change.