Central Eastern Europe 1. Not Braemar at all - Budapest instead

 

Pest from Castle Hill in Buda
(the dot low in the sky isn't a blemish, it's a hot air balloon)

 

It’s a long story but here it is in one sentence.  Van off colour two days before we were due to leave for Scotland to do some long-distance walking so we booked a flight from Bournemouth to Budapest for three weeks instead.  Arrival in Budapest being the entire plan and start point for an exploration, mostly by train of this part of Europe.  Incidentally, although a small regional airport, Bournemouth also sells giant Toblerones.

 

Buda from Pest with the Danube in the way

today's oxymoron

Many of you will know that Budapest straddles the mighty Danube (it definitely is not blue as it runs through here) and is two cities called Buda and Pest, not very imaginative but there it is.  Just like London really with the less mighty Thames (Danube 1,770 miles, Thames 215 miles) separating Norf of the Rivva and Sourf of the Rivva.  Our first impressions are definitely favourable and so are our second impressions.  Transport is simple and cheap with buses, trolleybuses, trams and a metro all taking the same tickets with a trip of any length at a single price.  This is 350 Forints (HUF) or 300 Forints each for a book of ten.  With the Forint at roughly 450 to the pound or 400 to the US$, a ticket is very good value.  Restaurants are also very good value compared to English ones and serve huge portions of food so we’re unlikely to be hungry in Hungary.

 

these are powered by internal combustion engines and
to our amazement are let loose on the roads of Budapest.
An effective way to make sure that not all your stag weekend
friends are able to make it to the wedding 

The first thing that threw me was catching a bus at the airport with a sign that said 350 Ft which I immediately thought meant that the bus was 350 feet away.  But no, Ft also means Forint and was the price of a ticket and no, I had not considered that they were on the metric system and wouldn’t use feet anyway.  However, it wasn't all plain sailing.  We queued up to buy a ticket, then queued to get on the bus, found it was the wrong ticket and met a very grumpy Hungarian chap who obviously was very fed up with so many people getting it wrong.  The woman in front did the same as us, so I have to ask myself if it is so upsetting and unclear then damn well do something about it !  Oh, of course we then had to queue up to buy the right ticket and queue up to get on the bus.  Other than that it was quite straightforward.

Incidentally, Hungarian is considered to be one of the most difficult languages for a foreigner to learn but fortunately Hungarians know that too and English is spoken quite widely.  Phew.

 

outside and inside the wonderful Paresi Udvar building

the tiled roof of St Matthias Church

Probably the most striking thing about the city is the huge number of really interesting old buildings of five or six stories, many appearing to be late nineteeth century builds, with lots of Art Nouveau looking decorations including some very impressive glass panels.  These are mostly in Pest.  Many of the roads are wide and straight.  From what we could see the Hungarians don’t now seem to knock down old buildings and replace but instead either keep the facades and restore behind that or build from scratch and produce a facsimile of what was there before.   This latter technique is what’s happening on Castle Hill where a number of buildings very badly damaged in WWII are being completely rebuilt.   In my view this produces an idealised historical view and for the next century or more they’ll look like something from Disneyland.  I think it would be better to stabilise some very badly damaged buildings and reconstruct either exactly or sympathetically around the damage.  The damage is after all a valid part of their history.  Instead of a facsimile, it would be just as historically accurate to remove all the stonework and rebuild to show what it was like a thousand or two thousand years ago.  A bit of mud wall and thatch would be a lot cheaper.   That said the city is a treasure trove if you like architecture.

 

the funicular up to Castle Hill

a building on Castle Hill which we both really liked

The Parliament building in Pest from Castle Hill

and what looks to me like Disneyland on Castle Hill

I’ve realised that the way we travel is akin to just setting ourselves up to solve a lot of problems or adventures as we prefer to call them.  For instance, we could have just got a taxi or a shuttle bus from the airport directly to our hotel.  However, we went by bus and had to change routes and then find the hotel.   We decided that as much of our travel in Budapest as possible would be on the public network.

 

Keleti Palyaudvar station

if you can get out by yourself
you get your entrance fee back

After a couple of days here and deciding we liked it we wanted to extend our stay in Budapest but our hotel was fully booked.  So, as we had to pack up and leave anyway, we left properly and went to Pecs, a city in the south two and a half hours away by train.  By great good fortune the Budapest station we needed was no more than a hundred yards from our hotel.  It was one of those grand stations that seemed to be the thing in what we call Victorian times although I don’t know what the Hungarians would have called it.  Franz Josephian times or something I suppose.  It had an imposing entrance approached up a flight of steps from a large open area with the main inside section covered with a curved glass and metalwork canopy.  Further along what were probably the original platforms and past the canopy were more platforms either side.  In total about fourteen platforms so certainly a substantial and a busy station.  Again we could (and should) have caught a taxi at the Pecs station but went by bus and ended up with quite a walk uphill in the sun to our hotel.   Perhaps we should reconsider and set ourselves fewer problems to solve, sorry adventures to enjoy. 

 

I knew very little about Hungary before we came although I remember collecting stamps longer ago than I care to remember with Magyar on the Hungarian ones.  The landscape we’ve seen is unimpressive.  Let’s just say that if Noel Coward had been Hungarian he might have said “very flat, Hungary”.  Our hotel in Pecs had views over the town and the few distant hills, which they translate here as ‘mountains’ and it had a very good restaurant with the usual out of control portion control.  The town centre was small and interesting, made doubly pleasant by being mostly pedestrianised but our two nights in Pecs were sufficient for us.

 

It was while on the train to Pecs we found out that all EU citizens over 65 travel free on all buses, trams and trains throughout Hungary.  Thanks for yet another ‘benefit’ of leaving the EU all you Brexit voters.

Any pics of Pecs will be with the next blog.

covers 8 Sept 2022 - 12 September 2022