During our three days in Prague, I mostly bored Pete with anecdotes about the two times I had been there before, over ten years ago, before it became the stag capital of Europe. In fact the stags weren’t too much in evidence, but that might be because it was the beginning of the week, and it rained quite a lot. My main conclusion is that, contrary to what I have been believing for years, Budapest is much more beautiful.
At heart, they are very similar looking cities; they each have the big wide streets lined with hefty grey old buildings; the wide river bangled with bridges; the castle district rising on the far side. They both have a smattering of english; cheap, stodgy meat dishes; better beer than the UK. They both have efficient public transport and a lot of shoe shops.
The differences are in the superficial bits, the tourist honeypot at the centre. Prague has more sugar coating concentrated in the heart of town, whereas Budapest is less obviously pretty, but opens into tree-lined squares and views of the river just when you least expect it.
Prague also has the Jewish quarter, preserved despite the holocaust as a “museum of an extinct race.” A few threads of low-rise cobbled streets clustered within the elbow of the Vlatva river, which should be so pretty and so accessible; but in fact are subject to high entry fees, and impossible to get near because of the crowds of third-generation americans rediscovering their european roots at the tops of their voices.
Budapest has the advantage that I know my way around, I know where to eat, I know how to say thank you in the right language. It has the allure of the place I nearly lived once, and the mystique of not yet being everyone’s favourite european capital. So don’t tell anyone that it’s better than Prague.
