Budapest's railway stations

Keleti — the eastern terminus

Budapest-Keleti pályaudvar, in District VIII, is the busiest and the one most international arrivals use. Despite the name — *keleti* means eastern — trains to Vienna, Munich, Prague, Zurich and Bucharest run from here, along with domestic services east and north-east.

It opened in 1884 and was, at the time, among the most technically advanced stations in Europe: electric lighting throughout, in a building where that was still a statement. The glazed train shed and the terminal facade are the parts worth looking up at, and there is a statue of James Watt and one of George Stephenson on the front.

It is on the M2 and M4 metro lines, which makes it the best connected of the three. The area immediately around it is busy, a bit rough at the edges, and much improved from a decade ago — but it is a large city station and behaves like one late at night.

Nyugati — the Eiffel one

Budapest-Nyugati pályaudvar, on the Grand Boulevard at the edge of District XIII, is the architectural one.

The train shed was built between 1874 and 1877 by the Eiffel Company of Paris — Gustave Eiffel's firm, a decade before the tower — and it is a cast-iron and glass hall of exactly the kind that made the firm's name. The building faces the boulevard with a glazed screen wall, and the platforms run straight out of it.

*Nyugati* means western, and again the name is only loosely geographic: it serves the north and north-east, including services towards Szob and the Danube Bend, and some international traffic.

It is on the M3 metro and on the tram 4/6 line, which runs around the Grand Boulevard and is among the busiest tram routes in the world.

The station has a McDonald's in the former first-class waiting room, which is routinely described as one of the more ornate fast-food outlets anywhere, and is worth two minutes for the ceiling alone.

Déli — the southern one

Budapest-Déli pályaudvar, on the Buda side below Castle Hill, is the smallest and the least loved. The current building is a 1970s replacement for the nineteenth-century original, and it looks it.

It serves the south and west — including trains to Lake Balaton, which is what most visitors use it for — and it sits on the M2 metro, two stops from the centre.

If you are heading to Balaton in summer, this is your station, and it is worth arriving early on a July weekend because those trains fill.

Kelenföld, which is not a terminus but matters

Kelenföld in south Buda is a through-station rather than a terminus, and a growing share of long-distance services stop there. It is on the M4 metro and is often the faster place to join or leave a train if you are staying in Buda — a detail that saves a lot of people a needless crossing of the river.

Practical

• Buy before you board. Tickets are cheaper online or at a machine than from the conductor, and MÁV's own site handles international bookings too.
• Validate if you have a paper ticket. Not all fares require it, but the fine for an unvalidated one is real.
• Left luggage exists at Keleti and Nyugati, both staffed lockers and automatic ones. Keleti's is the larger.
• All three termini are on the metro, so a transfer to your accommodation is straightforward — see getting around for how the ticket system works.
• Late at night, Keleti and Nyugati are ordinary large-city stations: keep track of your bag, use the official taxi ranks, and do not accept a lift from someone who approaches you inside the concourse.

Day trips by rail

The rail network makes several of the best day trips out of Budapest genuinely easy — Szentendre on the HÉV, the Danube Bend towns from Nyugati, Eger and Pécs on intercity services. Those are covered in the day trips guide.