Hungary dorm room

Location: Budapest, Hungary

We decided to go to Budapest. We bought train tickets and used Hostelworld to book a room. The hostel we picked had a nice listing but no reviews, which was a cause for concern.

On the train, about half an hour before we got to Budapest, a man entered our car and sat down next to us. He had brochures for college dorm rooms that we could rent. He explained that, because it was summer break, everybody had moved out of the dorm rooms and the university was trying to make some money by renting the empty rooms to backpackers.

It seemed plausible, the pictures in the brochures looked nice, and the price was less than half of what the hostel was asking. The man assured us that the dorms were in a central location. He wasn't asking us for money directly. He said that if we gave them his card when we checked in, we would get a discount and he would get a referral fee.

Mike, Jacob, and I went back and forth about this for a few minutes. It felt like a scam, but we couldn't see the downside in going to take a look. We didn't feel 100% about the hostel we had booked anyway.

The train arrived in Budapest and we started walking. We followed the directions on the brochure. It was a longer walk than we expected, and we seemed to be walking away from the city. After about 20 minutes, we found ourselves in a neighborhood that felt deserted. There were drab, low-rise concrete buildings in every direction. It looked very Eastern Bloc. We debated turning back, but decided that we had already walked far enough that we might as well keep going.

The dorm had a large, dark, run-down lobby. There were streaks of spray paint on the walls and elevators. Near the elevators, there was a poster for the university's bodybuilding club. It was a bright blue poster with a cartoon drawing of a bodybuilder, flexing and holding a syringe above his head. I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not.

There were two young people behind the front desk. They may have been the only people in the building. They told us that a room was available, but we would have to pay up front, and it was against policy for us to see the room beforehand. Of course. At that point, we just wanted a place to put our backpacks down and relax, so we agreed to pay the $8 per person that they were asking for and went up to our room.

It was a dump. The construction, paint, and furniture had started out shoddy and had been falling apart since then. There was dirt and grime on every surface. There was mold in every corner of the bathroom. The trash cans were half-full when we walked in.

Somehow, the sheets were clean.

That night, we followed some people to an outdoor heavy-metal concert at a nearby park. The crowd was mostly college-age and dressed like they were from the 80s, even though it was 2007. We saw a lot of Levis.

The next day, we left the dorm and went to the hostel where we still had a reservation. It was beautiful. The owner was a software developer who wanted to make extra money, so he had completely renovated the top two floors of the apartment building where he lived and turned them into a small hostel. It was spacious, comfortable, well-decorated, and had every amenity. He had obviously put a tremendous amount of money and effort into it, and the reason it didn't have any reviews online is because it had only been open for a week and we were the second group of people to stay there.

He wanted to know why we missed the first night of our reservation. We felt terrible. The best we could do was tell him that our plans had changed unexpectedly.