Bratislava, Slovakia
A short distance from Vienna's airport, and about halfway between Prague and Budapest is the capital of Slovakia. Bratislava is a perfect example of how a country (Czechoslovakia) can split in two, and go in very different directions. Slovakia wanted to stay with the more conservative communist style system, and the Czech Republic went to a more liberal capitalist system.
We board the train at a modern train station, with retail outlets, a platform, and humming with tourists and commuters. We board a very sleek modern train, and before crossing the border we have to change trains in Braclav. The "new" train is not sleek, it is an old rickety train from the turn of the century. The people are locals, the train is hot, and the smell is not sweet, it's sweat. We knew things were different when we crossed the border and the train stops involved just climbing down onto the gravel or grass beside the tracks. You felt like you were traveling back in time. I would not have been surprised if someone got on the train with live chickens.
An old couple sits beside us, shopping bags piled high. She nattered at him the whole time, in a different language, I still knew she wanted him to close the windows so she wouldn't get a draft. The open window was the only reprieve from the 40 degree heat (that's 105 for you americans) and the odors. He was too embarrassed to even think about reaching past me to close the train window
Originally we had planned to take the boat down the Danube to Budapest, but after learning the boat wouldn't leave until the morning, I knew that Bratislava was where the movie "Hostel" took place, we decided to take the train out of the city later that day. We arranged to meet an old friend who is now living in Bratislava. When he walked up to us at the train station, Pete says "Welcome to hell!", he was joking, but the station was unlike any we had seen before, the signs of a crumbling communism were apparent... Pete told us it would only take a few hours to tour the city, so we headed off with our Whirl-Wind Tour guide to see the sights of the Slovakian capital.
We ride their modern/historic streetcar into the city center. The Slovakian National Theater is a beautiful building in the heart of the old city, and we all walk through their pedestrian shopping street. It's a mix of bars, restaurants, larger stores and small booth setups, selling almost anything you can think of.
We walk through their pedestrian shopping street, and are dumbstruck by their modern art. 3 Lada's in a triangle, a Tank turret swing, I am sure it is a statement about something.
You can't help but scoff at the US embassy. They are smack dab in the historic center, but refused to move and erected a huge 10 foot fence all around their compound to stop terrorists.
When you check out the Danube river, you can't help but notice the massive bridge. Apparently as part of showing the great capabilities of Communism they built this 'Modern' bridge, mowing down half of the old Jewish town to do it. A lot of Bratislava history was lost at that time.
There is a large castle on the hill, but according to our guide, there is not much worth seeing inside. Dom Saint Martina is an old church in the Stare Mesto, we decide to check it out and accidentally wander into a church service, complete with hymns and a fiery sermon... we think.
The old town is unique mix of very old buildings and more modern restaurants and shops, what appear to be modern restaurants turn out to be historic restaurants located in old underground cellars. Pete pretends to help himself to the beer, luckily we weren't spotted.
Lost in Translation is a part of this world too. The Parliament building is where the Prime Minister works, the sign in front refer's to it as the "Primate's house"... Actually, maybe they have it right.
After meeting up with Pete's wife Kira and baby Hugo, we decide to sample some traditional slovak foods. We started with a drink called Kofola, it was created to fill the gap of Coca-Cola that wasn't available yet. It's created with 12 different spices and is much like a Dr. Pepper, Norine thinks it's more like Buckley's cough syrup.
My next local flavour was Bryndzove Halusky, Sheep Cheese atop Spatzl style noodles with small pieces of bacon, kind of a Slovakian Macaroni and Cheese. I quite enjoyed my new found nourishment, but Norine stuck with Chicken and plain Halusky to be safe. After our traditional Slovakian meal, we said goodbye to Kira and Hugo, and Pete drove us back to the station for our train ride to Budapest. Bratislava Whirl Wind Tours, Inc. completed their first City tour.
Budapest, Hungary
We arrived in Budapest at 10:30pm, and found that the tourist info closed at 10:00. We were just about to head off and call some hotels, when a guy from the tourist office came over and told us about some available hotels, and that they have a free shuttle. 90 Euros in the center of town, only hitch was we had to wait for the last train to come in, just in case some other tourists needed a hotel. While we are waiting a crazy gypsy guy comes by and starts hassling our tourist info guy, luckily some other people our TI guy knew came over and took the gypsy guy for a walk. We had to wait almost an hour, a few more tourists and we were on our way. As we are walking to the shuttle bus, the gypsy guy comes back, he apologizes for his behavior, apologizes to the TI guy, and tells us how great he is, and how much we can trust him, makes you wonder what was said to him on his little walk with the TI guys friends.
We were a little nervous when we arrived at our hotel, the entryway looked really run down, dirty and old, but you pop out into a nice reception and lobby. Then back through the weird entryway, through a coded door, and up into another section, it seems the hotel shares space with other apartments. Certain floors are hotel, certain ones are residents. We wind our way into some surreal hallways where sensor lights turn on as you go, and end up at our door, which opens to a very nice room, AC, and quiet even though it looks out onto a busy road and bridge. The only problem is the bathroom fluorescent light blinks on and off like you see in those bad motels in movies. The TI guy steered us right, I hope the other tourists didn't end up at "The Hostel".
We slept in until 9:30, and missed our free breakfast since it finished at 10:00. So we took our time, got some laundry ready, let someone else do it while we are touring around... that's vacation! Someone will fix our bathroom light while we are out. We have to go with pants and rain jackets today as it is windy and raining, a nice reprieve from the heat. We head to the Danube river across the street from our hotel, and make our way to the Public Market (very impressive), where we grab some cheese buns and pastry for breakfast. Then we sit under a covered outdoor patio and share our breakfast with the pigeons.
We walk along the Vaci Utca (pedestrian street) in the rain. Without the crowds we can enjoy the unique mix of historic buildings, and strange details, such as statues that seem to point at the McDonalds, and golden manhole covers
Our first stop is the Church of St. Ivan, an impressive structure in the middle of Pest. It is visible from most areas of the city, and stands out when looking across the river from the Castle hill on the Buda side of the river.
As we wander through Pest and come across a couple of very nice squares and statues. We make a brief stop to check out the Opera house, unfortunately it's closed to tours because of 'technical difficulties'... oh well, no tour today.
We head into the Metro to catch the subway to the large park area, seems like there is a museum, a zoo, castle, and baths, maybe we can do some indoor tours and avoid tech rain. There is no-one in the ticket booth to help, that's no problem as we figure out the vending machine has english and buy 2 tickets, then jump on the next train to Szechenyi (City Park). We get off the Metro and were asked to show our tickets, no problem, we show them the tickets, and apparently we violated the rules. We didn't stamp our ticket when we boarded the train, I tried to explain to the guy how we just bought the tickets from the machine, "doesn't matter, you could use this ticket any time, you should have asked at the ticket counter". Even though we explained the ticket counter was closed, he just points at a huge sign with 4 languages and small text, to the one line at the end that says "Stamp your ticket". There was no budging on the rules in his little kingdom, and we were being fined $5000 forints, about $20 Euro. It was a cash grab, as they were stationed where tourists are the only ones getting off, nice first impressions of Budapest.
A little grumpy, and thinking I should have taken his picture to show everyone who robbed us in Budapest, we head into the park. Turns out museums are closed on Mondays, and we weren't really in the mood for a zoo, so we poked our heads into the bathhouse. It's quite a scene, the pools are packed, and filled with large speedo wearing men, but it was quite a nice bath-house.
Wandering through the park, a gypsy kid asks me the time, I show him my watch, and then he asks for money, I say no, he asks Norine, she says no, when he goes to pass me, he acts like he is going to hit me and Norine yells at him. He took off quick, but his mom doesn't even flinch and they wander away. Little bastard! We entered the Vajdahunyad castle, a historic museum castle in the style of Dracula's, but the inside (museum) was closed. so we explored the outside of the unique buildings, it's church and the surrounding park. A unique monument sits in the shade of the trees, a shadowy figure labeled as 'Anonymus'.
After wandering around the castle we made our way to the massive heroes square. a collection of Impressive statues and monuments with museums on either side of the large square... the museums are closed of course.
We get back on to the Metro, making sure we stamp our tickets this time, but we get off at a non-tourist stop, so no ticket checkers. From the Metro we check out the very impressive parliament buildings and a couple more squares before grabbing a gourmet meal... at Burger King! Burger King was the only place we stopped that didn't have Hungarian Goulash on the menu. By the time we come out of Burger King, the rain has stopped.
Budapest is actually two cities in one, on one side of the river is Buda, on the other side is Pest... Well we had pretty much covered Pest, and it was now time to head to Buda.
We cross the river from Pest to Buda over the famous for some reason 'Chain Bridge', and head up the funicular to Castle Hill.
Making up for the Metro incident, the guy at the Castle museum just let's us in free of charge. So we check out some of Budapest's history, and then wander the grounds inside and out of the massive castle.
Before we explore the Matyas templom, we detour to what is highlighted as a "should see", the Castle's underground Labyrinth (Labirintus). You climb down down down under the streets, and are given a gas lamp to wander through a maze of dark tunnels. Hidden throughout is historic doorways, statues and exhibits that you have to view by candlelight. A couple of interesting things, such as a fountain that pours wine (smelled like rotten grapes), and some interesting statues, but overall it was a cheesy "Tourist trap".
From the tunnels to the temple, apparently we entered Mattias Church right after a service, as the smell of incense was very strong. It was a beautiful church inside with amazing colors and imagery.
Right next door to the church is the Fisherman's Bastion (Halaszbastya), an impressive structure made of white marble, with turrets, walkways and columns. No-one seemed to pay the small fee to go up onto the walkways, but we do, so Norine and I are by ourselves as we spend some quality time up there and watch the beautiful sunset over Budapest.
I may have taken a few pictures from and of the Bastion, then as the lights are coming on in the city, we walk down castle hill and back across the bridge and search out the tourist info to find out when the boat tours up the Danube run.
We head back to the hotel looking for a late night meal, and end up in the restaurant in our hotel, traditional hungarian fare, complete with costumed waiters and a wandering gypsy band.
Somehow we offended them when I didn't want them to play a song for Norine (she hates to be the center of attention in a public place). So they wandered off to another table, and started pestering them to buy their CD's and tip them after a couple songs... whew, dodged that bullet. After a meal of Hungarian Goulash for me, and fried cheese on salad for Norine, we head back to our room for a quick cooling shower before going to sleep by 12:30am.
We get up early to have our free breakfast and catch our boat at 9am. It's a nice warm day, as we board our boat and head up the Danube to Visegrad. The boat cruises up the river, making a few stops along the way on our 3 hour cruise, a 3 hour cruise! We sit on the upper deck with hard bench seats, but at least the wind is in our hair.
Visegrad is a cute old town, centered around a hilltop castle. We have a bit of a hike up to Solomon's tower, interesting ruins, very old
After checking out the tower we walk through the upper archway and see the trail marked to the Citadel, 35 minutes it says, what it doesn't say is 35 minutes straight up. We think about turning around and the trail levels out, so we continue on. Then it gets steeper! and the sign says 20 minutes to go, what the hell, we've come this far. When we made it to the top, the feeling of accomplishment was amazing, almost as amazing as the desire to purchase large bottles of cold water, luckily, right there at the castle is tourist shops selling water. After thinking about it, we noticed that we were the only ones coming up the hill, and there were lots of people at the castle, lots of people getting off the public bus, the public bus that takes you from the boat dock up the hill to the castle! Oh well, we earned it!
We purchased tickets and went into the historic castle, lots of the buildings are intact or have been restored, a lot of the areas have been setup to show what it was like in the castle back in the day. A contrast between a wax museum and historic ruins.
As we have to catch the boat back we hike back down the hill, no buses for us! No slips along the dirt trail until Norine tells me to be careful of slipping, luckily I recovered from the slide quickly, good for a laugh. We are starving and head into town looking for food, but we didn't find any restaurants or cafes, and find the Royal Palace instead.
All the restaurants are right back where we started, so after a short wander and some photos, we head back to the boat launch and have a leisurely lunch in a restaurant overlooking the river.
We were really starving now, and order a couple turkey sandwiches, they bring out a plate with a loaf of bread stuffed with turkey... we weren't starving anymore. We grab a couple cold drinks for the road (river). The boat arrives promptly at 4:20, this time we get the comfy seats on the lower level, it's easier on the hemmoroids I got from the trip there.
We have a nice relaxing float back to Budapest, and past the Parlament buildings to the dock.
After arriving in Budapest we wander the shopping streets of Pest, and check out an old church and a beautiful Jewish temple, before having a typical Hungarian meal at an Irish pub. We use the famous internet cafe, it's called McDonalds, and head back for an early night as we have a train to Croatia in the morning.
August came in with a bang, we got up early, had our free breakfast, and took a taxi over to the train station, plenty of time.
We look for the ticket window and find it downstairs, standing in what appears to be the slowest line ever. We finally get to the window,
and are told we have to go upstairs to the International ticket window... great!
We find the Int'l windows, and what we thought were the slowest lines ever, didn't even compare to this one. Norine and I each took a line, unfortunately she got to Igor's window first.
He was dummer than a bag of hammers, we tell him where we are going, and when we want to go, and after 2 minutes of handwriting info, he asks us, "what time did you want to catch the train?" 8:05!!!
That's in 5 minutes now! He not only handwrites the ticket, but uses a ruler to add any lines needed on the ticket.
At 8:02 he is ready to process our credit card, telling us "just a minute". At 8:05 we finally get our tickets and run for the train.
Just in time to see it pulling away, we missed it by 30 seconds.
Stupid %$#@%@$%#@ ticket guy...IGOR!!!!!!
We Miss the train to Zagreb, and the next one isn't until 15:00, plus we lost the money we had to pay for the reservation. We buy a phonecard and pre-book a hotel in Zagreb as we will be arriving really late. We check our bags, leave this damn train station, and head back into Budapest.
We take a long walk to check out a park that appears to be full of statues on the map. Turns out it's just some old running track with old soviet era statues.
We go back to Heroes square and the Castle area of Szechenyi (City park), a chance to see the park, castle and statues with the sun shining.
We spend some time in Pizza Hut having lunch before getting back to the train station early so we don't miss our train. After collecting our bags, we see that our train is waiting, so we ask a conductor which car is our reserved seats in, he shrugs and points, "maybe up there?". This is the guy that checks your tickets... it will be nice to leave Hungary. Except, unlike this morning, the train doesn't leave on time, if it was 1-2 minutes late in the morning we would already be in Zagreb. Bastards! We leave 20 minutes late, and stop at 'every-town, Hungary'. At least we had the entire 6 person cabin to ourselves.
Another long delay at the border due to some brake problem, it was uncovered by the guy that wanders up and down banging on the train wheels with a big hammer. We watch out the window as one guy fixes the brakes and 4-5 others stand around and watch. The Croatian border guard isn't even interested in looking at our Canadian passports, and heads back out for a smoke. Finally a guy shows up with a really big wrench, and after a half an hour wait, we are on our way to Zagreb, Croatia. It probably would have been quicker if some of the other staff actually did something.