Fun and entertainment Budapest

Timetable

Concerts, plays or operas start around 7-7:30pm or 8pm, bar concerts at 9pm and disco nights around 10-11pm. It is important to note that Hungarians go out mostly on Friday and Saturday nights (and to a lesser extent on Thursday nights). The rest of the week - except in summer - most bars and clubs close at 2am at the most and on Sundays there is not a single cat, although with tourists there are always people around. Happy hours are quite rare in Hungary, except in Irish pubs/international bars.

Budget & Tips

Club tickets may be free (especially for women), but if they're not, they'll cost you around 1,500 Ft (€4). The same applies to art-house movies. Concerts, plays, operas and other shows are far from costing a fortune in Hungary. A concert costs €10-30. Discounts are systematically available for pensioners (on presentation of their card) and students. In the MUPA's Bartók Béla Hall, tickets are 500 Ft for students who purchase them 1 hour before the concert. The Budapest night owl's guide. Handy, although you'll need a dictionary to decipher them! Napi bontás recommends the best nights out day by day, Klubadatok A-tól Z-ig presents an alphabetical classification of hot spots, zene is devoted to concerts, színház to theater and mozi to cinema. There's also the free monthly English-language magazine Funzine (www.funzine.hu).

Ruined bars and kert often offer decent food at reasonable prices.

To be booked

It is advisable to take your tickets in advance for the most popular shows and concerts, especially operas.

Night transport

Getting around Budapest at night is easy and inexpensive. Metro services end at around 11:10 p.m. (and resume at 4:30 a.m.), except for line 4, which ends at 11:40 p.m. on weekdays and midnight 40 on Friday and Saturday nights. Streetcar line 6, which criss-crosses the main boulevards between Pest and Buda, runs all night long. In addition, there are dozens of night buses (every 30 minutes), departing from Blaha Lujza, Astoria and other traffic junctions, all with a number starting with 9. Otherwise, there are buses and city bicycles (among others).

Age restrictions

Nightclubs are not open to anyone under 18. We regularly ask for your ID card to verify.

What's very local

Try your hand at táncház! Concert halls and bars regularly offer the public the chance to put on their shoes for an evening of folk dancing (Hungarian, Greek...) accompanied by musicians. These sessions are often preceded by dance classes. The vast majority of cultural establishments - with the exception of most cinemas - close in summer (and move outdoors for festivals, notably the Summer Festival - see "Festivities"). Some bars screen summer films on their terraces.

In nightclubs, you may not be allowed in with even a small backpack, and face control is de rigueur in trendy clubs (rare otherwise), although Hungarians generally don't care about dress codes (with the exception of those prohibiting the wearing of jeans, for example). It's worth noting that, although Budapest is a party town, after-parties are quite rare.

Children will enjoy the puppet theater (although they may not understand much, as the shows are in Hungarian). Major concert halls often have special concerts for young children and their parents (a kind of musical awakening).

Budapest is also one of the great capitals of escape games, these themed courses where you have to solve mental/logical riddles before getting out of the rooms you're locked in: the city's basements boast a good hundred of them.

Smokers

Smoking is no longer allowed in Budapest and Hungary, except on outdoor terraces.

Tourist traps

A top destination for stag parties, Budapest is home to a number of striptease bars... with unmistakable storefronts. Activities are regulated, and if the establishment is open and busy, you won't be robbed.