Budapest, Hungary: Alcohol Capital of the World

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Budapest, Hungary: Alcohol Capital of the World

Words by: Bence X. Szechenyi

According to the World Health Organization’s most recent data, Hungary has the world’s highest rate of alcohol use disorders at 21.2%. of its population aged fifteen or older. Alcohol use disorders are defined by the WHO as harmful alcohol use or alcohol dependence. The European average is just 8.8%.

I have primarily lived in Budapest since September 2021, and am of Hungarian ancestry. My initial reaction when I saw this data was disappointment. I was sent into a reflective head spin, flipping through my catalog of Hungarian memories, trying to understand how this pervasive problem had been right under my nose and avoided my conscious acknowledgement.

With this data in mind, a lot of my experiences with Hungarian drinking culture felt different in retrospect. My beloved kocsmas, a type of typical Budapest bar, had lost some of their romance. Kocsmas are often dingy little basements, like the one featured in this issue’s cover photo, in which you can hide from the world. I loved them for that reason, they are antithetical to the bells and whistles, glitz, glamour, and glitter that often oversaturates nightlife. Kocsmas project that they are not so much a place to enjoy yourself as they are a place to fall into and vanish.

Many kocsmas, are drinker’s bars. They don’t try to create ambiance, they are noisy and cramped, but they have every type and variety of liquor you can name. The customers largely come to sit at a table, drink, talk, and then stumble home. Somehow this feels a bit more sinister with the WHO’s statistics in mind.

Hungarian drinking culture can also be elegant. There’s a strong tradition of winemaking in the country. In Tokaj, where they make the world famous Ászu, or in Szekszárd, or places around the Balaton, the art of winemaking is nearly synonymous with local history and culture. I have loved sitting in wine cellars in each of these places, hearing stories about the artisanal process and how the winemakers’ families had passed down the tradition of winemaking for generations. When you are experiencing a tradition, learning about the process of grape selection, it feels traditional, noble, and academic. It’s not drinking to get drunk, like in a basement kocsma, rather, it is to experience the nuance of flavor and participate in a cultural history. With the WHO’s statistics in mind, I am reminded that it is still drinking. Is it disorder if it’s tradition?

Drinking is engrained in Hungarian culture for health reasons too. The irony of that sentence is not obvious to many. I’ve been told stories about pálinka, a Hungarian liquor similar to fruit brandy, being used to wake up in the morning or promote digestion before meals. Hungarians have also told me stories of using rum for relief from menstrual cramps, red wine to recover from sickness, and more.

Unicum, a Hungarian spiced liquor, is the best example of this correlation between health and alcohol. Its rotund bottle is adorned with a cross logo, similar to that of the Red Cross. Unicum is classified as an apéritif or digestif, a liquor meant to be drank before or after a meal to help with digestion. This is a category of liquor, common in many cultures, that raises my eyebrows to begin with because any alcohol is actually bad for your stomach. Many Hungarians have spoken to me about Unicum’s supposed medicinal qualities, describing it as something close to stomach medicine. Sometimes this is clearly a joke, however, said with an awareness that what they are saying is not actually true. It’s just an excuse to drink more. A sarcastic, self-effacing rationalization.

Regardless of the style with which it is conducted, or the excuses provided, drinking is engrained into Hungarian culture. Sometimes in the US or elsewhere in Europe, I have heard people refer to Budapest as a “party city.” I’ve always been annoyed by these characterizations because it’s so reductive. This is a city in which millions of people spend their lives, it’s absurd for someone to sweepingly define it by how they chose to spend their time here. It’s like going to New York for the US Open and calling it a “tennis city.”

However, it’s true that tourists flock to Budapest to go out. Many of the young tourists I’ve spoken to over the years were not here for museums, classical music, or the nice architecture. They came to have lots of cheap drinks in interesting bars and clubs, then go to the thermal baths in the morning to ward off their hangovers. While many Budapest residents don’t like it, it’s hardly a mystery how this “party city” reputation has spread. Reputations come from something, and I wonder how Hungarian drinking culture contributed to it. Tourists coming to party makes the city money, for sure, but the hot spots in the seventh district of Budapest are not really tourist traps. Plenty of Hungarians can be found amongst the crowds. It’s difficult to say whether tourists created the substantial nightlife, or if the tourists were attracted to the nightlife born out of Hungary’s culture of heavy drinking.

For this piece, I thought the best way to conduct field research was to go out with a group of Hungarians close to my age, in their early twenties, and just follow their lead. I’ve done this before, of course, but this time it was research.

We went to a classically horrid kocsma in the seventh district, around where most of the tourists flock. I describe the kocsma as classic because it is a basement, has limited seating, horrendous acoustics, and a cash-only bar. No one was there for the setting, to enjoy pleasant conversation, to dance, or do anything other than make themselves less sober.

One young woman in the group, when we were on the street waiting for the others to have a cigarette, took long sips from a flask. It was aluminum, utilitarian, an object that had a purpose which was honored. It stood out from most flasks I have seen, usually branded with some tourist destination, cutesy design, or corny slogan about drinking. She offered me some, and I asked what it was. It was palinka, she said, she always brought it with her so she didn’t have to buy as many drinks. A full flask of palinka, probably enough to kill me. Over the course of the night, she would step out with the smokers, even though she didn’t smoke, to take a drink from her flask. All the while she more-or-less kept pace with the rest of us in terms of drinks ordered from the bar. Each time she returned she would boast that she couldn’t even feel it yet.

I spoke to the people I was with about the WHO statistics, asking whether they thought it was realistic that Hungary had the highest percentage of people with alcohol use disorders. They all said that they believed it and joked that they were happy about being first in the world at something. Some waved it off saying “it’s an Eastern European thing.” One young man elaborated, saying it’s the reality of “life in the east.” I asked what he meant by “east” and he said, “anyplace where people want to move west.”

When I asked the girl with the flask about the statistics, she started telling me about how it helps Hungarians to cope with historic hardships. Someone else in the group told me it was the repercussions of “trauma from communism.” A study conducted in 2020 that found that elderly people contribute significantly to the prevalence of alcoholism in the country. The elderly are the ones who lived through the brunt of communism, so there may be some truth to that comment.

One young man I asked simply said alcohol “makes us forget problems.” He spoke to me in Hungarian. A person in the group, underestimating my Hungarian comprehension, interjected in English to say, “because life is suck.”

The young woman with the flask told me that the palinka was from home, her family made it from the fruit they grow in their backyard. “My grandmother drank too much, my parents drink too much, I drink too much, my grandchildren will drink too much.” The impromptu translator piped up again, “it’s, like, heritage.”