Poor soundproofing in Budapest apartments

Well, it entirely depends on the construction of the walls. If there is an air space, you can have it filled with expanding polyurethane foam (with landlord approval). But that is very expensive. And that will only decrease the sound a little. And sounds may still come from the ceilings and floors.

Basically, if you want acoustic peace, you may need to rent a modern insulated apartment or a detached house.

Sumarokov wrote:

Over my time in Budapest I have rented three apartments, one in Jugendstil and two in slightly earlier historic/eclectic style. What I cannot get over is how bad the soundproofing is, even in stolid 1900 houses?? I know Hungarians like to listen to the television LOUD, but I can even follow whole conversations through the wall... drowns out any sounds coming through your walls from the neighbours!

Our rented apartment has a shared ventilation system running vertically to the roof and all the bathrooms of the apartments on our side are linked to the same common pipe via air vents.  And the bathroom all have hard tiled (reflective) surfaces. If you want to keep a secret here, don't do what Hollywood spies are supposed to do and go into the bathroom and turn on the taps and talk quietly.  Somehow the designers have pulled off a marvel in acoustic engineering that focuses everything into the pipe and straight into other people's bathrooms.

klsallee wrote:

Basically, if you want acoustic peace, you may need to rent a modern insulated apartment or a detached house.

Detached is the only way especially if you have little kids.

I "hear" what your referring to.
Over my many moves everywhere from NY, HI, Cal. NJ, CO,MA , NM, NV.
we have had our share of "good" and "bad" neighbors in apts.
In HI we lived in a nice at the time condo that was so solid we couldn't hear anything from the neighbors.
Had good neighbors, they would either move in a down and out relation or bring in a roommate after we lived in the place awhile. Usually the new tenants were horrible.
In our Budapest flat, we at first had good luck now not so good with new owners moving in next door and above us.
The newbies upstairs are too much, everyone in the house hates them.They tore the flat bare and it took literally 6 months of drilling, pounding, hammering,dust, dirt, looking at trash at the front door, workers coming and going etc.
This went on 6 to 7 days a week from 6:45 am to after 6 pm to nearly 8  pm.
I almost went up and murdered them myself, good for everyone that I don't speak HU because I would of given them an hear full.
Even people 2 floors up and over hate them. They drilled a hole though the wall into their neighbors flat, broke a pipe which flooded another neighbors kitchen.
They tore up the old floorboards and cheapos that they seem to be, didn't use very good flooring. Now we can hear them at times walking, never heard any noise before they moved in.
On the bright side it is a young man with his lady and his middle aged uncle. Sounds like a strange mix and sooner or later one of them is going to have issues in such a small flat. NOt sure how or why they would spend so much fixing a 50sq meter flat turning it into a 2 bedroom and living room, must be ugly small rooms like cages.
On the one side we can hear our neighbor blowing his nose every morning at 7 am. Takes him a good 5 mins to finish too.
Heard the other neighbor getting "cozy" one morning, not sure if she was alone or with her BF, she was having a really good time too, hard though for me to swallow my breakfast with out chocking from laughter.
The good thing with our flat is once we leave our kitchen it is pretty quiet with the door shut in the other rooms. Upstairs is a issue though. When you know your neighbors habits then you know something is wrong. If we are talking about any sensitive issue we speak very, very low. afraid we could also be spied upon.
Time to move to a house.
During the cold war years, many of these flat had been large apts.The gov. took them over and put up walls etc. to make more flats for more people.
They did this quickly and cheap, that also makes for so many odd sized flats with strange rooms.
Yes, Budapest is cheap compaired to say renting in NY or LA but sometimes you do get what you pay for.
This is one major reason we have decided to not remodel our flat but just sell it as is and hopefully just rent in the future.
Easier to move once your lease is up if the flat turns out to have odd neighbors.
I know our friends on the top floor in our house have a deaf man living next door who had his tv set on all the time very loud.
They mentioned it to the man's son and he bought the old guy some headphones.
He now has the flat up for sale and there is a risk the next newbies could be worst, or better, toss of the dice.
Maybe you can "gift" your neighbor a set to watch tv with.
I must say a few years ago even though I was Underage to move in, my husband just made the age limit, we lived in a senior citizen apt. complex in Las Vegas.
Not the biggest flat or the newest but the quiet and peace was the best ever in any apt.
Just a matter of luck, I always said they should screen people and put all the jerks in one building and let peaceful people live at the other end.
Husband said back in the day, the house had rules and a manager on site. People would be reported and fined for breaking noise rules.
When they built these buildings there was no tv set, not radios and no surround sound.
I wish they would enforce some noise rules.
I live across from both a hospital and school. You would not believe the horns and noise at times, in the US they have noise zones near schools and hospitals.
Get yourself a pair of good ear plugs and sometimes you must fight fire with fire, turn it up and drowned them out if they don't behave.
There is suppose to be a law that people have to quiet down after 11 pm in Hungary but in our house it is hardly ever enforced.
Check out earplugs on line.com   Around $6. a set but well worth it, about the only ear plugs to block out most of the HU noise.

I have to admit most of my neighbours are pretty inconsiderate -- the types who let their dog out to piss on your door or specially go to smoke under your window... because they cannot let the smoke into their own precious house, it must go in someone else's (with added interest of their delightful smoker's hacking cough).

You should know that in HU if someone is creating a din after 10 pm, you can call the police and if they are called out to the same address (offender) three times, that person is fined 100K HUF.

I have never heard of earplugs that actually work! Do you mean the silicon types that are supposed to mould to fit the size of your ears?

Here is the site for the best earplugs I have ever tried. Sort of pricey but well worth it.
Think they have free shipping even to HU.
www.earplugsonline.com

I used to work night shift so swear by these. of course you may have neighbors that like to break the sound barrier.

Yes, we have a few rude people in our house, most are ok and mind their own business and are normal.
A family of Gypsies live to the side and overhead of us, right on top of my loud nose blowing neighbor. That Gypsy family is mostly ok but God help anyone within earshot if they have a party. Goes on until 2 am most times.
Upstairs is a new bunch of fools, after the 6 months of remodeling they still kept at it every couple of days or so with the odd time and place for pounding. We are not in HU right now and hope to God they kill each other while we are gone so we can enjoy our flat again when we return to HU in the spring.
Next door was a old lady who lived by herself, she died and her nephew took the place, fixed it up and moved in his GF. Just nerdy kids really sometimes you can her her shrill laughter in the middle of the night or their music at 8 am till they leave the house.Wouldn't mind so much but their taste in music is horrible club sounds, no good ol' rock and roll or blues.
The good thing with them is once in awhile for months they are gone working in the US. Peace and quiet and they are not missed at all.
The other neighbor who's MIL used to own the place and is now living there at their mercy, ( small monthly income now and getting on in years)This guy has to be a LT. in the mob, seriously, won't go into it but we are glad he likes us even though he has done us over more then once in a business deal.Not a good idea to become too friendly too fast in a new flat. He had us fooled for awhile, thought he was an ok straight guy... No way.
He is the heavy hand in the house, works for the manager who does not live on site. Our neighbor and his MIl know everyone's business, hold all the keys for the house for the cellar, all new people in the house must get their front door keys from them. Think they get a cut from the common costs for their helping the manager.
I have personally seen this guy put his hands on one of our guests neck and squeeze him, guess that was not their first time meeting each other, yummmm.
He had all his front teeth knocked out but has since fixed them, heavy hand strong arm guy like I said.
The police came more then once when he attacked other neighbors teaching them the house rules. He was written up in the paper and fined for beating the crap out of a young women and her BF in our house. I missed the attack but the police knocked late night at our door thinking it was his place. We did n't answer the door but could heard when he came out and argued with the police. They didn't even take him away, just gave him a court date and a fine for attacking 2 people in the house.
Like I said, time to move on.
Of course not every house comes with free entertainment.

It's down to respectfulness and being lucky to have proper thick walls and not flimsy partitioning. I am in a traditional block in 9. It is ruled by a fierce caretaker who makes sure every one behaves. He contacts owners and agents if they rent to anyone remotely noisy and gets people evicted.
Totally fascist but I love the quiet.

Many of the flats were built around 1900 and had double brick walls between flats. When many of them were taken over by the gov. after WW11 and turned into smaller flats they did it quickly and only used one brick between flats.
In the old days people mostly stayed in the flats that had been privately  renting or had owned pre take over time.
If one was lucky enough to be living in a good house then they usually got to stay there. If the flat was too large for one family or one person, they were moved to a smaller place and the larger flats given to big families.
Sometimes they just took over half a flat, you could stay in half of what you used to own , a wall was put in and some slight remodeling by the gov. and they moved in a tenant. Rents were controlled by the gov.
I know when my in-laws got married they rented a studio flat in the 5th district.
My MIL got pregnant and her husband sent off to war.
They never had a chance to move to a large flat and 2 more kids came along after the war.
5 people in a studio flat!!
They could of been placed in a larger flat with 3 kids but there were waiting lists and too many questions to answer.
Probably another reason for their divorce.

She later remarried but her new husband didn't want to deal with gov. paperwork and so they all lived and slept in shifts.
Good thing everyone worked long hours and most people worked so hard they had no time to make noise.
No wonder there was a huge divorce rate in Hungary and many people staying out long hours away from home hanging out in pubs.

I agree.
My neighbors in Japan were so noisy upstairs. Vacuum every morning at 6am. Learned their noisy times and cranked music to drown this out.
This stopped them 80% of the time and now they know if they make noise I will too.  Sucks but this is the reality when you can't move so easily.

Yes, maybe it's time to invest in a good sound system.
I swear by those online ear plugs but then again who wants to plug their ears up 24/7?
Really not allot one can do, might move in and have good neighbors who later move out and the next bunch is rude and loud.
Extra hard to confront people if you don't plan on moving away soon or don't speak their language well enough.
Hungarians really do tend to have a chip on their shoulder's and never want to understand anyone else's side to an issue.
Hate to admit they were wrong, always have an excuse.
Right now in the US we have neighbors, or rather our son does who have 3 nice new but super large cars. They have hogged up most of the parking spaces in front of our house and the house next to us. Just too lazy to park in their own garage.
Wasn't an issue until we bought a second car for our holiday here.
I asked them nicely to please not block the front of the driveways because it was very hard to back out of our garage without clipping the front of their nice new Challenger.
They have moved the car without any issues.
I think in HU if you asked you may find a dent in your car of worst.
Just different attitudes about freedom and respecting other people rights as well as your own.

Or it could be they know we are 2 old Hippies who are not pinned down and they may think we will skip town after we clip their car, either way it as worked out.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Hungarians really do tend to have a chip on their shoulder's and never want to understand anyone else's side to an issue.

To take the time to "walk in the other's shoes" requires a certain degree of social maturity. I do find Hungary society and individuals more commonly "me", ego, oriented.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Hate to admit they were wrong, always have an excuse.

If I was forced to name just one negative stereotype, that would be it.

klsallee wrote:

....If I was forced to name just one negative stereotype, that would be it.

I dunno, I can think of one oddity and that's speaking in a monotone when reading the news on the radio.

Hello everyone,

As some posts were off-topic on this thread, a new thread has been created on the Hungary forum from those posts here : https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=560135

Let us share only about the topic on this present thread : Poor soundproofing in Budapest apartments

All the best
Bhavna