[caption id="attachment_3154" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="R. in front of Szimpla "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4920.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-3154" title="R. in front of Szimpla " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4920.jpg?w=200" alt="" width="200" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

Normally I write my blog in the privacy of my own apartment. I open wordpress, check my messages, look at my stats, open a new page to write my post and then I either write or I procrastinate. Sometimes I also drink a cup (or three) of coffee.  This summer it's been different. I've tried to write some updates in the busy common rooms of hostels; I've pounded out a few while making my friend R. wait around before feeding her banitsa; and now I am in Walla Walla writing from my parent's living room.

Yesterday, my dAd kept asking me: when is your blog going to be done? Me: dAd, you can't rush these things. Finally, I finish and he starts reading it. Turns out he was done reading everything else on the internet and was waiting for my blog.  (Um, thanks dAd. I think.)

Well, he reads for a bit, looks at the pictures and then from the computer across the room he asks: What's Szimpla? For the record, there's something totally strange about having him read the blog and then comment out loud about it. I wanted to tell him to leave the question in the comment section. I didn't.  But I thought about it.

So, what <em>is</em> Szimpla? <!--more-->

[caption id="attachment_3153" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Inside Szimpla "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4922.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-3153" title="Inside Szimpla " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4922.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></a>[/caption]

For all of you with the same burning question, Szimpla is a bar in the Jewish Quarter in Budapest.  But to say that it's a bar and leave it at that isn't enough. This is a bar built in and around the ruins of a building damaged during WWII.  It's reclaimed, if you will.

The sign on the street is deceiving. There's a lot of bar behind the simple sign and the average door.  The bar has two floors, multiple bars to walk up to and a garden area.  The bar itself is a wash with color which primarily comes from mismatched tables and chairs that have been painted and repainted.  There are couches, a pommel horse but the highlight in my mind is the East German trabant which has the roof cut off and you can sit in it and drink.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="576" caption="Me and the Trabant"]<img class=" " title="Szimpla Trabant" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs023.snc4/33522_668272948505_1413925_38164612_8019982_n.jpg" alt="" width="576" height="432" />[/caption]

I've heard but in no way shape or form have had this confirmed by anyone other than my American drinking buddies that Szimpla grew out of very humble origins. Basically the "building" was abandoned but probably the better word would be structure seeing as most of the building had been turned into rubble 40+ years earlier during the war. Then it was ignored. Until some college students decided to roll in a few kegs of beer and drink.  I guess that the tables and chairs followed and the bar as we know it today began to take shape.

Now I understand that the bar is totally legit--or as legit as can be. It's gathered a pretty serious following and apparently a Szimpla has even opened in Berlin.

There's something pretty great about using a space like this for a bar. It makes it feel a little dirty, a bit rough around the edges and completely undiscovered. Except for the fact, that I discovered it and I am not <em>that </em>cool.  But what is cool, is that this bar was apparently part of the revitalization of the Jewish Quarter in Budapest.  A neighborhood that today is alive with people, bars, restaurants and hip design shops.  Szimpla fits right into this edgy but unsuspecting neighborhood.