Return to Budapest - Friday 18th August to Sunday 20th August

Having checked in, we returned to the car and John drove us the 15 minutes to the car rental. Sandra had done us proud on our triangular tour of south-central Europe. Checking out was smooth, so we were able to return to the apartment in no time for a shower and refresh.

We had made plans to meet our new friend Môr, whom we met in Luton airport. Luckily, he lived nearby, so we met him at a small bar with outside seats in a small square around the corner from our apartment in the Palace District. We had a good chat about where he lived in Budapest, where was good to visit, and what he was doing in the UK. After a couple of beers over an hour and a half, we parted, and agreed to meet up in London. 

Nearby was an impressive, neo-classical building that housed the national Museum, and onwards we walked to the old Jewish district. Amazingly, here on a main thoroughfare, and despite attempts by the fascist occupation of Hungary during the Second World War, stood one of the oldest synagogues in Budapest, and largest in Europe. It was an impressive expanse, broad along the road and tall with its charcoal and gold capped towers, in typical Moorish style. We didn’t venture in, but could look in from a side street onto the open space that occupied the rear of the main building, which housed a small cemetery. A plaque nearby noted that Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism, was born in a house that stood on the site of the present-day Jewish Museum that was connected to the synagogue.

We walked among the maze of streets in this district, noting that many parts of it were still run down. Only that this seeming neglect actually fostered a dynamic spirit in the area, in that this was the place to come for hedonistic night life and to sample the ruin bars.

It was nearing the time to eat, so we looked around for a restaurant, not sure what we wanted to eat, but given the area we were in, we decided upon a Jewish restaurant. It was housed in a high ceilinged and open plan hall, but we were seated along a broad corridor of seating stretching to the back of the place. I had a lovely cooked chicken with potatoes and salad, as well as some wine.

Following this quick meal, and it now turning dark, we walked out of the maze of streets to the central, Elizabeth Square, which was colourful with a brightly lit Ferris wheel, and lively with gatherings of people around the numerous bars on offer. We walked through and onwards to the river. Here, the Buda side of the city looked stunning, with its glorious palaces and buildings glowing in yellow light, with the foreground sight of low-lying cruise ships chugging along slowly. We walked along the riverside, noting the memorial to the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, visualised by shoes left on the river bank. 

Ahead of us, also glowing in yellow light, was the Parliament building. It certainly rivals the Houses of Parliament for its neo-gothic architecture and grandness. We walked around it, to take it all in, and found out that we could book a tour if we wanted to.

From here, we walked along more ‘organised’ roads to reach the small gay district. We were going to a club called Alter Ego, where we anticipated a more subdued display of it being so, given Orban’s anti-LGBT rhetoric, but was surprised to see rainbow flags flying defiantly. 

We noted the entrance to the basement club, and went straight in, despite it being early, as we didn’t want to linger around outside. We stepped into the dimly lit basement, a limited glow from neon signs here and there, and navigated our way to the cloakroom. Free of our belongings, we noticed a main room with seating and a small stage, presumably for the drag show, a side room which had karaoke on but devoid of patrons at that moment, and a long and wide corridor, into which we originally descended, which had high top tables and stools for quieter conversations.

We settled in the latter area, as we supped on beer and observed new patrons enter. After about 45 minutes the place had a bit more buzz to it. A hen party had evidently found the place, and brought with them familiar props and a party attitude. Suddenly, a movement of people drifted through the corridor to the main room. We followed. The drag show had begun. 

The drag queens, albeit speaking Hungarian, were very visual so that their humour came across very easily. The crowd, especially the group of hens, lapped it up. Following a good 45 minutes of showtime, we dipped into the karaoke room and belted out, in unison with others, a few hits climaxing in the inevitable Believe by Cher.

After a few more beers we called it a night, and wondered the quiet streets of Pest back to our ‘cosy’ apartment to sleep.

The hangover was very present, but having remembered about the tours of Parliament, I went online and booked us onto one in 90 minutes time. We left at 11:30am and got the metro. After we passed security, we visited the coffee shop and then joined the queue for our guided tour.

The building emulated the opulence of the Houses of Parliament. Regal paintwork and gothic statues filled the vast halls. Although the parliamentary system is unicameral, the parliament has two identical chambers, which is useful when the working parliament still wants to welcome visitors. It meant we could get a proper look around the chamber open to us. We also saw on display a replica of the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor, which was a nice touch. At the end of the tour, there was a small museum of political history. Two bits stuck out for me. One was the large, almost Christmas decoration style red star that the communists placed on the top of the parliamentary building. The other were the pointed comments on the territory lost to neighbouring countries earlier on the 20th century.

After the tour, we walked the back streets to the Terror House – the former home of the internal terror police under both the Nazi puppet and communist regimes. This was a very well put together museum, with a novel experience of a slow descending lift taking you to the basement where the cells were located. Well worth a visit.

We then wanted to do a spa, so we went to the nearby City Park, the location of the Szechenyi Thermal Baths. After a seemingly protracted ordering process, we managed to book our two-hour slot for the baths. It was a rather canary yellow coloured building of the 19th century, more fitting as a stately home than a place of leisure, in to whose basement we descended in order to change; and then navigated the different halls that had pools of a varied nature. We also went outside to the warm baths. This evidently was the spa that all the tourists visited, as it was busy and a little unkempt, what with plastic cups lying about, but it was pleasurable. 

After some time, we lazily got changed and returned to the park, walking to a nearby metro to go back to the Jewish quarter. Once there we found a simple Thai place to eat before returning to the apartment to sleep for the last time on our trip.

Once awake, we packed up in seemingly increasing heat. We checkout as instructed and took our belongings to the metro, to a luggage place off Deak Square. Once dropped off, and locating the nearby shuttle bus to the airport, we walked in the hope that we would find the filming location that was used for the opening sequence of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Sadly, the place was a closed for renovation. 

Instead, we crossed the wrought iron bridge so that we could climb the steep hill upon which Liberty Statue and citadella stood. A very steep climb was rewarded with breath-taking views of the city and the Danube. We took it all in for 20 minutes, and grabbed a soft drink from an entrepreneurial vendor, and walked the calmer descent down northward.

Here, we noticed a lot of people gathered, and it turned out it was Independence Day, and so riverside festivities were put on and were in full swing. People were handing out cakes, which we happily took, and we were entertained by street artists and a small stage with a band on it. At the next bridge, we crossed back over and located a bar in the middle of a square. We parked here and devoured a couple of beers in the shade before returning to the luggage store, and then to the nearby bus stop in enough time. And glad we had as the bus was early, and departed earlier than advertised, so we got on and made our way through the city, past the suburbs, and to the airport.

We paid for priority security, so sailed through, and ended up having my first and only KFC that served beer. And these were needed as the flight home was a bit jittery. Arriving to low and dense fog in Luton was nerve-wracking, and the weather was all over the shop when we left arrivals. But John’s mum was there to pick us up and get us home safely.

Sandra the Suzuki - 7th August 2017

I woke up to my alarm with a very foggy head. Lack of sleep and the red wine hangover were not a nice combination. I quietly changed, so as not to disturb John, and then went downstairs for breakfast. It was just after 9:30am, and I had planned to call the car company before the original pick up time. I hovered over the food choices at the buffet, opting for bread and spread with coffee and juice. I connected to the Wi-Fi, looked for the phone number and made the call. They were happy enough for us to arrive later, so I ended the call and proceeded to eat and read the news on my phone. The breakfast room had only the tail end of the breakfast crowd, some mulling over their day ahead sipping their second or third coffee. The staff were a little less diligent in their cleaning as they may have been an hour earlier.

I returned to our room, and slowly woke John up. It was now around 11am, and we needed to travel part way across the city to get to the car hire place. We both showered and changed, still snoozy from the past 16 hours of mayhem, and checked out of the hotel. I was keen on getting that hotel receipt for Wizz Air to refund. The receptionist was chirpy, happily inviting us back again soon.

We then clunked our large suitcase over and around the roadworks outside, and onward to the main boulevard. We approached a tram stop that followed the curved road south, then west, towards the Danube. We scrambled for tickets to get on the approaching tram, but a lack of confidence in what we were buying saw us consult over the options again, and wait for the next tram. We boarded the modern tram that came next - others we had seen being somewhat older – and stood the 5 stops it took us to the foot of the bridge that spanned the Danube to the south of the centre. Grand buildings of Imperial style and faded grandeur lined the route. Many had shops or bars on their ground level, with accommodation or offices rising above them to 6 or 7 storeys. The tramlines ran down the middle, with two or three lanes of traffic either side, complete with pedestrian walkways sliced between them all.

Once off, we took a side street that was less broad but still very much a thoroughfare to the neighbourhood. Trees lined the pavements, adding to the shaded nature of the street; a nice rest from the already rising morning heat. We dropped into a bakery so John could get some breaded items for his breakfast, and then continued for 5 minutes before turning right onto yet another smaller side street. On the ground floor of a newly built apartment block was our car rental place. After waiting for 15 minutes for the client ahead of us to be sorted, we were served. We had a small but sporty Suzuki that we name Sandra for the entirety of the journey. After ‘papping’ John in the driver seat, we entered our directions into the in-built sat nav and departed.

Now, one thing to probably check before you depart in a car with in-built sat nav in a foreign country, is that the language is set to English. We learned that quickly, having to interpret the visual guidance without audio, as we navigated wide boulevards with tramlines intersecting, on our rush out of the city. Despite that, John did a Class A job of getting us out and on to the ease of open motorway. We dared not tamper with the sat nav, lest we lose our way or focus. And so, the rest of the journey to Novi Sad was conducted in Hungarian.

There was no drawn out departure from the city. It was an abrupt transition from urban concentration to rural expanse. The journey was uneventful in itself, no topographical or architectural points to note. The Danube and Tisza rivers helped produce the flat Great Hungarian Plain. Agriculture thrived in this environment, and its richness is one of the reasons why it has been hotly contested in the past. Miles upon miles of fields and farms were what lay either side of us.

Conversations rang of expectations for the days ahead, and more concrete plans for the afternoon and evening before us. John firmly placed beer as one of those priorities. My Spotify playlist made for motivational listening in the background, a mix of indie and pop hits of the 90s and Noughties. We stopped just before the border to top up the car with petrol, stretch our legs, and grab a coffee. Minutes after pulling back out on to the motorway, we were at the border. I had anticipated that it would be rather busy, as it was a major artery between two countries, and the border of the EU. However, only three cars were in front of us on the Hungarian side, which was repeated as we crossed no man’s land to the Serbian checkpoint.

Again, the monotony of the vista resumed. The odd village was passed, but never a city. Szeged and Subotica, on either side of the border, were 20 or so kilometres away from the motorway. In Serbia, though, we had to pay at tolls to use the motorways. To be fair, there were only two occasions that we had to pass through a tollgate, and we could pay the £2.50 fees with card, so the passage was cheap and easy.

As we approached Novi Sad from the north, hills began to emerge out of the horizon. You could imagine this being a part of the Hungarian state, as it once was, if you married geography to state boundaries. Yet, since the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes following World War I, this territory lies firmly in Serbia; albeit in an autonomous province called Vojvodina. A majority Serb population lives alongside a sizeable Hungarian population. This is noted in the bilingual road signs we passed. Smatterings of other groups live here too – Vlachs, Romanians, Croats and so on. Back further, Germans of Saxon descent lived in the area that had periods within both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires – and formed the Military Frontier of the latter. Furthermore, Vojvodina is also comprised of three partial geographic areas in the region. The Backa, which has a corresponding region in Hungary; the Banat, which has a corresponding region in Romania; and the Srijem, a wedge of land south of the Danube but north of the Sava, which extends into Croatia.

I was reeling all these facts off to John along the way, before we slipped off the motorway. We travelled along an approach road into the city, and this was clearly the neighbourhood where the Gypsy community lived. On the outskirts, it lacked any visible state support for better infrastructure or a cleaner environment. It is a similar case across Eastern Europe, and we come up for scrutiny too.

We came to the central part now, and turned towards the works site for the building of the new bridge across the Danube. It did not look like it had moved any further forward from when we were here the previous year. We drove along the riverside for 100 yards, and then turned right into a concrete housing estate. We parked up, faced the heat of the mid-afternoon, and trundled our luggage to the front door.

The mother or neighbour of the owner came to meet us, and gave us our keys. We could see the Danube from the window, at an angle, and the place was basic but clean. Its main value was that it was a 5-minute walk to the centre of the old town. We left immediately after I made a call to my mother, to tell her about our fraught overnight journey, and went straight to a bar on the shopping street. We visited the same place we ate at last year. John got his promised beer.

We mulled food options elsewhere, but settled on where we were. So, after eating, we had a proper walk around the city. The main, open expanse at one end of the shopping street was quiet, as the searing heat kept people in the shade. Parked on a pavement was a water tanker providing free water to passers-by.

We looped around the old city centre, taking in the brutal National Theatre, and the back streets with their cafes and shops. We found a snug bar with a patio area out back and had a couple of beers. Dusk approached before we left, and we were starting to feel tired. So, we walked back via the river to look at the Fortress. We had an early night, so we could be fresh for Belgrade the next day.

A Delayed Start - 6th August 2017

Oh Luton. How you build up such great expectations for a departure, purely by default, and then spectacularly dash them with such élan.

We began our journey, John and I, by taking the Thameslink from central London to Luton Parkway. A standard activity with cans of vodka-mixer added to liven things up. This was the second trip we were taking to south-east Europe, albeit with a shortened length of two weeks. This time we decided to ditch public transport and hire a car for the two weeks. No backpacks and buses for us. This trip would be air-con heavy, and Spotify playlists all the way (‘CEE Drive Time’ on Spotify, for anyone interested). The added freedom allowed us to stop en route between our destinations, to my excitement but John’s chagrin.

We would be starting and ending in Budapest, somewhere John had been to recently, but I had never been. Images in my mind of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy merged with the trappings of being the second Imperial city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Our route would take us to Novi Sad, Belgrade, Zagreb via Vukovar and Jasenovac, Rovinj, and then Ljubljana. We would mostly be touring the southern part of the Lands of the Crown of St Stephen, as they were know towards the end of Austria-Hungary; this area also formed part of the Military Frontier at other times, as a bulwark against the Ottoman Empire.

We arrived at the airport and proceeded to the executive lounge. As it was daytime and we planned to arrive in good time, we thought we would treat ourselves to food and drink before we board. And this we did, whilst charging our phones and finishing off last minute work/personal admin. I sank the best part of a bottle of red wine, soaked up by some pasta and nachos. John was on a similar track. With our gate being called after a short delay, we departed, said our goodbyes to the maître de, and walked to our gate. We queued up, as usual, and watched as a Wizz Air plane arrived at our gate, ending its previous journey, and witness its passengers disembark.

This is when the confusion began. This was clearly our plane. It was in our gate, and the people in our queue should be boarding it. However, after an hour with no updates and no progression on boarding, we had an announcement to say that our flight would be further delayed, and that another gate full of passengers would be boarding our plane, heading to Cluj-Napoca. We were told to go away and listen for further announcements. Incredible! We could not get back in to the lounge, so instead we sat at the bar in the main departure hall.

After another round of drinks and snacks, John went to the gate to find out more information. He was none the wiser. At this juncture, a guy who was sat next to us began chatting to us. He was a young lad currently living in Budapest, but hailed from Debrecen. We chatted about the delay, and what we were doing on our travels. I mentioned to him the EU compensation scheme, which he did not know about, so that lifted spirits somewhat.

After another hour I decided I would go down to the gate. There was a bit of commotion as the Wizz Air staff had begun to handout vouchers for food and drink, as the delay was ongoing. No announcement of this was made, of course. When I approached one person, she bluntly announced that I was drunk and should mind myself. I said it’s a bit of a cheek to hand out a voucher for food and drink to the value of £3.50 when all the restaurants and shops had now closed, apart from one bar and a Starbucks. I grabbed my two vouchers as a consolation prize, and returned to John. We carried on chatting to our new friend, keeping to soft drinks now following my caution. 5 hours after our scheduled departure, we finally had a call to go to our gate. It was just past 11pm, with a scheduled take off of 12:10am. After much huffing and puffing we boarded, and arranged to meet our new friend in Budapest at the end of our trip.

We arrived to a quiet Budapest airport just after 3am. As there was no public transport with any sort of frequency, we decided to get a taxi and claim it back from the airline. I had tried to message the hostel we planned to stay at, to say that we would be extremely delayed. I had received no response, so assumed it would be OK to check in at 4am.

We were dropped off on a main boulevard, which was wet from either a recent rain shower or street cleaners, and approached an apartment block of faded grandeur and tried to get in. We buzzed and phoned the hostel numerous times but could not get in. Tired and frustrated, we began to march down the road, as we saw a couple of international looking hotels to try and get a room at, our luggage dragging through the puddles behind us. The first two were booked up, but the second recommended a hotel around the corner, aptly called Soho Hotel. We entered and thankfully they had space. I felt rather queasy when John paid €99 for basically 6 hours in a hotel. But we both needed a shower and a lie down, and that is exactly what we did. I said that I would wake up a little earlier and call the car hire company to tell them that we would now be picking the car up after 12pm, rather than 10am as planned, so John could get some extra sleep. He was the nominated driver for the first stretch on the road trip. 5am we finally went to sleep. What a way to start!