Ok, ok. I haven't been too good keeping this up to date have I?! I know I'm more than a week behind but I'll do what I can to provide a reasonably comprehensive update minus the boring details...
I'm currently in a town in southern Hungary called Pecs. The pronounciation of this town is something like "Paech" with a Kiwi accent. After several attempts at making ourselves understood by the locals we still can't seem to get it right. Fortunately it is easy for us to write it down so we managed to get here ok. This is just a one night stopover before we get the train to Sarajevo - a 8 1/2 hour train journey with four lots of passport control!
To backtrack... We ended up travelling to Krakow on the planned day. It was on an overnight train which was ok although I did struggle to sleep due to the noise of the train (and that was with earplugs). Krakow is a really lovely town with architecture dating back to the 13th century although there is evidence of settlements going back hundreds of years earlier than that. The first day there we did the free walking tour of the city. To explain what the free walking tours are they are all the rage in a number of European cities at the moment. After a 2-3 hour tour all you need to do is tip the guide the amount you felt the tour was worth. If you aren't happy with the tour you don't tip at all. They are a great intro to the city you are visiting and the guides often not only give you valuable hisorical information but also great tips on where to get a cheap feed, where the good bars are, what museums/galleries/churches/mosques/ synagogues/etc are worth visiting, and so on. I don't have any complaints about any of the tours we have done yet.
Anyhow, we did the tour of the old town in constant drizzle/rain & the cold but it was still a great intro to the town. We also learnt some handy Polish words/phases for "good morning/afternoon", "thank you, "cheers!" and "you have shapely buttocks". Will provide you all with lessons when I get home... The next day we visited Auschwitz & Birkenau - not exactly a cheery day but it is a valuable and eye opening experience to visit the camps. Something everyone should do in their lifetime. The exhibits are very powerful and help give you some idea of the numbers that were murdered there (more than 1 million). A very harrowing place...
Our third and final day in Krakow was spent doing some shopping and then going on the free tour of the Jewish part of Krakow including the area that formed the Krakow Ghetto during WW2.
In addition to the above, there is one other thing you should do when in Krakow. Get a kebab. They are the size of houses & absolutely delicious! And all for approx. AUD3!
From Krakow we got the overnight train to Budapest. Whilst waiting to check in to our apartment we went on a boat cruise on the Danube which is the best way to see the best bulidings in the city and one of my favourite buildings in all of Europe - the Hungarian parliament. It had been 15 years since I was last in Budapest and I couldn't get over the changes to the city. They have done a lot of work repairing a lot of the buildings and it is absolutely beautiful in the city centre. It has a great cafe/bar lifestyle and combined with an amazing history/culture makes it a great place to visit. Saying that it has been hit hard by the financial crisis and a lot of Hungarians are struggling. Government workers get approx. $500 per month salary which isn't much for the cost of living there.
We met up with Sarah that first night (last Sunday) and caught up on the stories of her travels in the UK, Brussels and Munich...
On Monday we joined the free walking tour for Budapest and I spent the afternoon on the Buda side of the river following a Hungarian lunch. For those not in the know the Hungarian diet is not exactly the most healthy diet out there. They love sour cream, bread, lots of meat, deep fried food and cooking everything in lard. Yes, that's right lard. One of their favourite snacks is the good old lard sandwich... And their servings of food are huge. Tonight I was fascinated by this guy in a restaurant who had what looked like 3 or 4 schnitzels on his plate. And that is a normal size serving here. And they have side servings of pototoes or cabbage or noodles. Thank goodness I've been walking alot otherwise I would be the size of a house by now!
We also visited the Terror House which is where the Nazis then the communist Hungarian secret police interrogated and executed Hungarians during the Stalin era. A depressing place but very well put together and quite mind boggling what was done by some Hungarians to their own people. I strongly recommend a visit to this museum should you ever get to Budapest...
Reluctantly we pulled ourselves away from Budapest earlier today and arrived in the historical town of Pecs in the early afternoon. The weather has been pretty good over the past few days but turned bad a few hours ago so I've had no excuse to not update this journal! ;) Tomorrow night we'll be in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Another country, another city! Looking foward to a few quiet days on one of the Croatian islands!
