Interrailing - Day 10: The Children's Railway

In the morning, we went for brunch at a really cute cafe called SALT Bakery. It had really beautiful interior decoration, great service, and was very reasonably priced. I had the shakshuka and a cold brew, others had cold soup, sandwiches, and pastries. I cannot recommend

We then walked around a little, and went back home briefly to pack up for our day trip. We hopped on ~30 minute tram ride to Hűvösvölgy, a hilly forested area a few miles outside the city which had some cool viewpoints, and something called a "Children's Railway"

The Children's Railway

This is, as the name suggests, a real railway staffed almost entirely by children (with some adult supervision). Apparently this was a Soviet-era invention designed to teach children more about rail work, and so most of the surviving ones are in this part of the world. Budapest's in particular is around 7 miles long with about 8 stops overall. It also has a very small museum with a short history. A single ticket was about 800 HUF or ~£2, with the services being roughly hourly.

We did a short walk through the forest going mostly parallel to the railway, walking up the hill to the first viewpoint. This was a tower with a strange double-helix type spiral staircase made of wood, leading above the treeline so you could see all around, and was really cool! The views were great, you could see the whole city and the rest of the hills around.

We then took a short walk to the nearest station and took a 7 minute ride to the next stop where there was another viewpoint. The ride was scenic and novel, and interestingly the stations were far more built up than you might expect, having ticket offices, toilets, and in some cases cafes, despite being mostly in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, the 10 year old ticket inspector didn't end up punching our tickets, which meant we could use them again later (we had no more cash). I love exploiting children!

The second viewpoint was substantially bigger and at the top of an even bigger hill. It was called Erzsébet-kilátó, or Elizabeth Lookout, named after a 20th Century Queen of Hungary. While it was unfortunately closed for maintenance when we arrived, it was a really pretty building and had some nice views – although there were many more trees in the way this time around.

We then walked back down and took the last train service going all the way to the end, where our tickets did get stamped this time. It took just under half an hour and went mostly through the forest at golden hour, occasionally cutting through small suburbs – there was even a level crossing where a bus and some cars had to wait for us!

After taking a short tram ride, and a longer bus which crashed into a lamppost and broke its wing mirror, so we had to take another bus, we went to Marumba for dinner, a modern restaurant serving vegetarian/vegan modern fusions on traditional Hungarian food. We shared a stuffed zucchini, bean goulash, and buckwheat and walnut pancake, and I also got a sour cherry cocktail. We also had a charred peach and rice pudding dessert to share. It was all delicious! And while on the pricier side, still quite affordable overall.

Finally, a couple of us split off for a second dinner – trying an authentic matzo ball soup, which originated in the Jewish Quarter of Budapest where we were staying! The waiter seemed slightly perplexed by us ordering a single starter to share between two people, but we ignored this and shared a tasty soup. This one was goose-based, with a single large matzo ball to share and some goose meat in the broth. It was all tasty, but I think we hyped it up too much in our head, as it mostly just tasted like a standard (but very nice) chicken soup.

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