Accomodations in Budapest
The Ashkenazium has a Student Accommodations Service dedicated to finding quality housing for its students in the environs of the school. In order to make use of this service please contact accommodations@ashkenazium.eu.
Naturally, the students are welcome to arrange accommodations for themselves. The following are websites that are useful in apartment hunting: Budapest Flats and Apartments for Rent on Facebook, United Erasmus Housing, Tower Budapest. Other sites and Facebook pages can be readily googled.
Rent in Budapest is considerably low by comparison with American, Israeli and West European standards. Typically, a first-rate student room in a shared apartment costs between €200-400 per month.
Students who maintain a kosher diet can avail themselves of a number of fine glatt kosher restaurants such as Carmel, Tel Aviv Café, and Meatup. In the 7th district, Kóser Piac is a glatt kosher mini-market. Semes is the local kosher bakery that takes orders and makes deliveries. Depending on the needs and requests of the students, the Ashkenazium office can arrange for regular deliveries of warm lunches, baked goods and catered kosher food to the campus on Vasvári Pál utca 5.
The City
The ninth-largest city in the European Union, straddles the Danube River with one foot in the 13th-century Buda Castle and the other in the colossal neo-Gothic Hungarian Parliament. Rich in every European architectural style from the ancient Roman City of Aquincum in Óbuda to the modern Palace of Arts, abounding in museums and theatres, parks and gardens, coffee houses and pubs and the eighty geothermal springs that made it famous as the City of Spas, Budapest attracts 12 million international tourists per year. In 2019, it was chosen as the best place to visit in Europe in a major poll conducted by European Best Destinations.
The Jewish Quarter
The Jewish quarter of Budapest is without question the most “happenin’” part of town. Still in the process of gentrification, this shabby-chic district is cluttered with funky little designer boutiques, vintage shops, art galleries, street art and giant murals on old fire walls, cozy existentialist’s cafés, and the unique “ruin bars” indigenous to the district.Of international renown is the great Dohány Street Synagogue built in the Moorish Revival style, the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. Two lesser but still highly charismatic synagogues can be found on Rumbach Sebestyén Street, with its neo-orientalist style, and on Kazinczy Street Synagogue, with its Art Nouveau Rural Secession countenance.
Since the collapse of communism in 1989, visible Jewish life has returned to the 7th district with functioning synagogues, schools, mikvaot, Judaica shops, kosher restaurants and food services. The Ashkenazium promises to be a significant addition to this grassroots revival in the Jewish Quarter.