Agreed with the comments above out tourists. Outside of Castle Hill it wasn't too noticeable which I really liked. I did Castle Hill my first day and other stuff the next two days and the difference was noticeable. Definitely fewer tourists than Prague as was also said.

That's exactly what I meant with my previous comment. For sure Prague is overall much more touristy. And while there are tour groups with flag-carrying guides and hop-on-hop-off buses, luckily in both cities annoying touts are largely absent and prices still affordable.

But while for me Prague (if you visit outside of summer) has become a bit better, it's Budapest which is clearly going downhill in losing a lot of its charms. I remember visiting thirteen years ago for the first time, hardly any tourist in sight. A great local atmosphere everywhere, a lot of places still in a delightful little bit of charming disrepair. And then the old rackety metros with their sound system straight from an old tape announcing the next stops in the beautiful but yet impossible to get Hungarian language.

For sure with their new metros (and new metro line with lovely modern architecture) things have become clearly much better for the citizens. But for me, this, and the influx of thousands of tourists from all sorts (be it backpackers or the high-end traveller) slowly turn the city in the next overcrowded European capital.

See it as Cuba - opening up that country to investment, finally get rid of the communist junta - and without doubt the country will be much more prosperous, free and better off. But a lot of people - which I can completely relate to - write that because of this, visit Cuba now before it turns into your average Caribbean island when it comes to tourism. Same goes for Budapest ;-)

First it was Prague getting overrun by the tourist hordes, now places like Budapest or Krakow, next up will be the last few remaining relatively undiscovered Eastern European gems like Lviv.

Thanks, all, for the thoughts. Sounds like it is about where I would expect it - touristy in places but not completely overdone. When I go to visit a new city I usually spend one day seeing the things I "have to see" to check the tourist boxes, then spend the rest of the time wandering around back alleys looking for the best food. Sounds like there is plenty of opportunity to do both.

*Warning: Soapbox rant*

Romanianflyer, you offer a more regional perspective, I would guess given your name, but what you describe is really just the state of the whole world. The golden age of "discovering" places is OVER. It was 10-20 years ago. I always joke that I was born a decade too late (I am about 30 now), and this is one of the reasons why I say that. It doesn't matter whether you are talking Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Central America, wherever. I can only imagine what it must have been like being able to choose from places like Belize/Costa Rica/Thailand/Vietnam/Czech Republic/East Germany/etc. when they were all open to being "discovered". It must have been incredible

But those days are just gone and there will never be anything like it again. Why? 1) Easier and easier air travel with more choices, 2) growing disposable income and new middle classes coming online worldwide, and 3) fast information flow. It's the 3rd one that really does it. There are no places that can be secret any more. You mention Lviv as one of the few remaining gems? I'd never heard of it. But in 30 seconds I now know that Turkish flies there, and I could be there tomorrow on a connecting flight out of IAD. 20 years ago I would have been walking down to the Ukrainian embassy or thumbing through some crusty guidebook with poor translations before trying to call and get a paper ticket. The point being that information just flows so fast, nothing is inaccessible anymore. Look at the latest place to blow up, Myanmar/Burma. 2 years ago everyone just thinks it's a scary military dictatorship, then Bourdain goes there, a year later it's on the front of T&L, and now every developer, tout, package tourist, and their sister is there taking selfies. There just is no longer going to be an undiscovered frontier.

Personally, I think that we need to get away from this concept of having to be "discovering" new things all the time. It is getting to be too much. I laugh because people are now going to places that have no intrinsic attraction just so they can be the "first" in some very remote place. Look, the popular places got popular for a reason. I hate crowds as much as the next person, but the growth of global tourism just isn't going to be something that's going to stop.

I think that the next wave of "discovery" is not going to be in places but in experiences. More and more curated, immersive, local experiences that get deeper into places that people think they already know, but which have sides that they never knew existed. It is all relative - I live in DC, one of the world's touristiest cities - and I'm discovering new things each day. It is all what you make of it.

I really must say, that Romanianflyer is off by 20 years or so. That "post communist charm" with half the city in various state of disrepair was still there in the mid 90's. It's been long gone. Hardly any tourists in 2002? C'mon, get serious. In mid-January probably few, but otherwise it's been a rather "touristy" place for decades. (I have the data from 2004 - 1,9 million foreign tourists http://www.ksh.hu/docs/eng/xstadat/x.../i_oga012.html)

Luckily it's a relatively large city, so the locals still outnumber the tourists. And yeah, Prague gets much more tourists.

And to compare to Cuba is (sorry) just ridiculous.

Granted, my last post was a bit overdone, I'm the first to admit it is mostly based on a bit of sentimental stories, hence maybe the comparisons are a bit overdone :D . Still your link does says the story, a 1 million person increase between 2004 and 2012, from 2 to 3. That's quite a lot -- and most of it in the last 2-3 years!

I don't know the situation from the mid 90s being 30 years old myself, but my story was based on my own personal observations from very extensive travels over the last 12 years through the region. And yes, of course arlflyer is spot-on with his excellent observation this has to do with the world situation in general (budget flights, the influence of social media etc. etc.). But that nonetheless still gives us the right at times to be a bit nostalgic ;-)

??? Nostalgic at 30? :D

Surprising as it may sound, I can sympathize with OP. No other generation has seen as much, and as rapid, of change as ours has. And while it may seem like change would be harder for older generations to deal with, it's actually very disruptive for ours, because it's all we have ever known. We've never really had time to get comfortable with anything; it just changes again.

With the risk off getting completely off the trail, I disagree. Yeah, for Eastern Europe that might be true for the 30-something generation (though think back to those born 70 years earlier in the 1910's - same thing. Two world wars, revolutions, counter-revolutions, new countries, new currencies, new borders, new social orders - rinse and repeat 3-4 times in a 25-30 years period between say 1915-1945)

You seem to be located in DC - even there, just think back (or ask your Mom/Dad) about the changes in the 60's and 70's over there.

You are thinking in terms of government/public policy/civil rights. And that is fair. But I am talking about the actual way in which we live our lives every minute, and most importantly how we capture and transmit information. Everything that was done in the times that you describe was done with print media and radio. The sorts of changes that took years back then would take orders of magnitude less time with today's information technologies. What our parents read about in the newspaper the next morning or watched Cronkite talk about in the evening, we now see on our online feeds within seconds. Multiply that through orders and orders of complexity and speed up the rate of changes by factors of 1000's from what could happen 20-30 years ago, and that is the rate at which we will see social change and evolution moving forward.