Budapest and Tarcal, Hungary

Hungary, or in my mind the country of pain! Originally settled by seven related tribes from the Ural Mountains and from the depiction of the leaders in statues and painting may have been from the Kazakhstan region. Known to themselves as Magyars, thought to be in connection to the ancient tribes, the country has been over run by the Mongols, the Germanic tribes, was conquered and ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire for a century, conquered by the Habsburg empire of Austria, and since 1900, lost with Austria during WWI, was occupied by the Nazis and then under Soviet rule until 1990. The Hungarian people, who are proud and resilient, are trying to become a nation that is productive and can take its place in the modern world as it did in the past. Switching from Soviet domination to free enterprise has not been easy and, especially in the larger centres one sees a lot of areas where no reconstruction or upgrading has started. Beyond that the country side is beautiful, the people mostly friendly and accommodating, and is a really nice place to travel.

Budapest straddles the Danube and was once two separate cities of Buda and Pest. Now joined ,about 70% of the population and the main shopping and industrial area is on the Pest side while Buda has more higher end residential and a hilltop castle where several Hungarian Monarchs were crowned.

We toured the castle and had a good view of the Hungarian Parliament Buildings across the river.

  

Same buildings at night.

In the center of the Pest side we visited a large square that is dedicated to the founding of the Hungarian country and peoples. The dominate feature here is a statue depicting the leaders of the seven tribes from the Urals that established themselves here.

On the Buda side stands Hungary's Statue of Liberty.

Our big thrill was to visit the market place, the largest indoor market in Hungary, and is packed with vegetables, fruit, meat, souvenirs, baking and many other types of shops. The place is huge.

Outside of the larger cities, English is not widely spoken. We managed to get train tickets bought for our train ride from Budapest to Tokaj, then wondered around looking for the train track that our train would come in on, which was really difficult as the Hungarian language is not based on any language format that either of us can kind of work our way through. Finally two workers decided to help us, and even over Loreen's objections, I followed them around, trustful me. Yep found the right train, checked with the conductor, yep right train, reserved seats on car 21, so these guys grabbed our bags, threw them up on the racks above our seats and held out their hands. I had a couple of Euros in my pocket so I gave them that, but no, they did not want euros, they wanted Hungarian florets or dollars and wanted more. So after a few seconds of them shaking their heads and me saying I wasn't giving more, off they went. This seems to happen to me quite regular in foreign countries. Loreen gets pretty wound up about things like this, she gets just about as excited as I do when she wanders off to examine the cemeteries in foreign countries. 

It had been raining but we walked into the little town of Tarcal, where the town emblem is this lovely wine bottle!

We went to the Coop store and bought some paprika flavoured chips and some Hungarian chocolate.  Chips not bad, chocolate good.

We then wondered around through some back streets trying to find the path up the hill behind town where there is a huge statue of Jesus. We finally scrambled up through the cemetery, which Loreen was exploring, then through a vineyard and out onto the paved road at the bottom of the summit.

There was an elderly gentleman coming down and he started talking to us in Hungarian, but when he found out we only spoke English, he switched and we had a good chat. He was a retired pastor, and had vowed to walk up to the statue to give thanks if Trump won the election. He had watched all the debates and had followed the election process for the past several months. His belief is that the establishment in all governments needs to be removed or sent a message. We discussed the removal of the Jewish community in Tarcal by the Nazi, all were sent to Auschwitz, and religion under the Soviets. Religion was initially suppressed but later allowed under a strict doctrine of what could be presented. We have run into a lot of people from around the world that have great concerns, one way or the other, about the US election.

We stayed at the Grof Degenfeld castle hotel that was originally built in 1857 by a Duke and Duchess as a palace or castle home. At that time they also made their own wines. As elsewhere in  parts of Central Europe during the soviet rule, all lands were confiscated by the state. After Hungary got independence it started to work through the process of returning land to the past owners. The family that owned this previously, regained the castle, the wine cellars and ten hectares of vineyard. They bought up a number of adjacent vineyards, refurbished the castle into a hotel and started up the winery again. There are 21 guest rooms, which at one time were for family and guests, and the one we were in 600 to 700 square feet. These old aristocrats liked their space. They also built a small chapel on the highest part of their land and hold small weddings as well as all the other things that fancy resort hotels do. Funny thing, the place is not expensive.

Tarcal is in The Tocaj region known for its white wines. The area makes some dry whites but is most famous for its sweet whites which are cherished in Hungary. We took a wine tour and tasting at a neighbouring winery, that is still quite young as their first vintages were in 2012. The vineyards and wineries were nationalized under the soviets and all the grapes sent to a central location where the wine was made mostly for Russia. According to our sommelier these wines were not very good and had added ingredients all the way from colouring to vodka. 

The wines here are exceptionally sweet, similar to the ice wines from home, but unlike Canadian ice wine they do not use the frost to increase the sugars. The types of grapes used are attacked late season by a fungus which shrinks the grapes and concentrates the sugars. When we walked the vineyards these grapes are almost shrivelled to the size of a raisin. All the harvest here is done by hand picking, and while some grapes are picked by the bunch, for the very highest class of the sweet wine, the grapes are selected and picked individually.

Czech Republic

Prague

We landed in Prague late afternoon, October 29 and checked into our hotel room. We lucked out at the hotel, it was over booked, so we were upgraded to a business suite. 

We had our orientation and met the cruise director. We will have a full boat of 158 passengers. People from 12 countries - mostly Canadians, Americans, and Brits, a few from Singapore, Malaysia, India, Thailand, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Thailand, Phillipines and one Aussie. After the orientation we went to a Czech restaurant/beer hall close to the hotel. It was good - I had Beef Svickova, it is a beef sirloin in cream sauce thickened with veggies and bread dumplings and Loreen had a Bohemian potato mushroom soup - it was better than the Svickova, and a pint each of Pilsner Urquell lager which about was $2.00.  Pilsner beer was first brewed in the Plzen region of the Czech Republic, up until then most of the beer in the Eastern Europe area was a heavy unfiltered lager. 

Our first excursion in Prague was a visit to Prague Castle and then a walk around part of the old city of Prague, by old I mean areas where the buildings are from the 1100 to 1300s. The buildings have been modernized, but the structures themselves are the original stone and brick from that period. Old Prague is a gothic city, that is the Cathedrals, etc, all use gothic architecture style of towering spires, animal statues and intricate carvings, not my style, but interesting to see. The castle was the home of the rulers of the republic for centuries and now, as well as a tourist attraction, houses some of the cities administration and a large military base.  

The old city consists of narrow cobble streets, three and four story buildings with common walls and a multitude of large open squares where all the markets and celebrations were held. Today these squares still function the same way, only the shops sell souvenirs, jewelry and other touristy items rather than meat and bread shops. There are still a number of eating and drinking establishments around the squares and down both sides of the connecting streets.

We went to the Nazi concentration camp and prison at Terezin. This is not a place that I had heard of before. I had heard a lot about Auschwitz and Dachau, but not Terezin. Terezin was a community of about 5,000 civilians and had a massive military fort built in the  eighteenth century to protect against the Prussian army. During WWII as the Nazi army was eradicating the European Jewish population the community was turned into a Jewish ghetto, concentration camp and prison.

Approximately 150,000 mostly Jewish men, women and children where processed through Terezin on their way to the death camps. They had been told that they were being sent to a "country community" where they could have better protection and be relieved of the stress of living in war torn cities. Little did they know! There were others, mostly dissidents or other minorities also processed through. These people came to Terezin from all countries that had been invaded by the Nazi armies. Some 35,000 died while confined at Terezin and of the 150,000 or so that were processed through, only about 4,000 survived, the rest were exterminated in places like Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau. Terezin was later used by the Soviet Government as an internment camp for the expulsion of the Sudetenland Germans from Czechoslovakia. It is a sad place where now some descendants of the people imprisioned there are trying to rebuild it and their families. The Czechs we visited with, mostly people employed in the tourist industry, see Terezin, both Nazi and Soviet occupation and the expulsion of the Sudetens as black spots in their history.

Then we were off to an evening of culture, music, food and drink, at a family owned restaurant/hall. The band consisted of two fiddles, a cello and a xylophone. The matriarch played the xylophone and sang and made sure everything ran smoothly, she apparently is the owner and was very animated. One of the fiddle players and the cello player are both professional concert musicians and very talented. They played mostly Czech folk songs as well as some classical solos by the two professionals. They were accompanied by two dancers and a singer, very entertaining and covered from the classic to the funny. The meal, which we had thought would be authentic Czech, was unfortunately altered to cater to the tourist crowd, and as such was a Czech/western meal of a pork and chicken shish-kabob and scalloped potato. I would have preferred schnitzel or roasted pork knuckle with spätzle. The beer was, at least, Czech pilsner and very tasty. All in all it was a good evening, we enjoyed the traditional music and dance, which is very similar in style to the Ukrainian dancing we see at home.

The next day we toured through the Bohemian countryside to visit a castle and take a wine tour. The countryside is quite attractive with lots of farm fields and country villages. The farms here do not have farm homes as in Canada, but everyone seems to live in the villages. This is partly as a result of the Soviet era where all private land was taken from the owners and given to the state, farms then became run as a collective and the people moved into the villages so that everyone was the same. The Czech government is still attempting to get the original land owning families back on the land. This has been somewhat successful, but some families no longer know how or want to farm and have sold their holdings to corporate type farms where the farming is all completed by workers. Main crops are cereal grains, with malt barley the most prominent.

The castle was originally the home of the Bohemian Royalty and is now owned by some of the heirs of that family. The Castle is pre 1500 construction and has had the interior renovated over the years as architecture and amenities have changed. Now it is partly a home to the family and mostly a tourist attraction to help the family maintain it and their lifestyle. 

The family is one of the larger wine producers in the region and have the wine tasting room and wine cellar area in what used to be the dungeons. The cellar was interesting, the wine not so much. Part of the cellar was built in the 1200's and another part in 1400. 

This ends our time in the Czech Republic, glad we came, Prague is a beautiful city, the country side is awesome and the pilsner very good. Now off to the German state of Bavaria where we will board our river cruise. 

Bavaria

Tuesday, November 1, we took a bus from Prague to Regensburg, Germany. We travelled through the Czech and German countryside of mostly farmlands. We passed through Plzen where pilsner beer originated. We arrived in Regensburg late afternoon and boarded our cruise ship, the Avalon Expression, which will be our hotel and restaurant for the next seven days. Regensburg is in the German State of Bavaria and we will spend the next couple of days visiting cities and towns along the Danube River in Bavaria. First up will be Nuremberg. 

Although Nuremberg is known for being the base of the Third Reich and the subsequent Nuremberg trials after WWII, it has a far longer and more glorious history. As the Roman Empire established a series of forts along the Danube to keep the "Barbaric Germanic tribes" out of the empire, Nuremberg was chosen as one of the sites for an Imperial Castle. Built sometime in the early 1300s the castle remained in use through successive administrations until 1806.

Nuremberg was heavily bombed during WWII by the Allied armies and mostly destroyed, including parts of the Castle. The city has been rebuilt and modernized, but the castle has been restored as much as possible to the same as it was prior to the bombing. The castle is now a tourist attraction and the housing of city hall and other administrative offices. 

Nuremberg housed a substantial amount of Hitler's army, including the Gestapo, at various times in the 1930s and 1940s. All this infrastructure, with the exception of the indoctrination centre, has been destroyed. Although there is a tour offered through the indoctrination centre to learn about the rallies and propaganda of the Nazi party, we passed on it. We seen enough and heard enough about what the Nazi's had done in the Czech Republic and from both Czech and German tour guides.

Regensburg is a lovely city of about 125,000 that, unlike other cities on the Danube, has never been destroyed. The Romans built a 6000 man Fort and garrison here to contain the tribes on the other side of the Danube. As the Romans pulled out, the locals moved inside the fort's walls for protection and built their homes and shops along the streets and alleys. A big part of old town, inside the Roman fort walls, is pedestrian traffic only with a multitude of shops, bakeries and restaurants. This is a place I could definitely return to. 

As with Nuremberg, Regensburg is known for Bavarian finger sausage and both cities claim they made the sausage first and that theirs taste the best, just a friendly competition. All the shops in Regensburg, however sell Nuremberg style lebkuchen, a type of cookie that is somewhere between a gingerbread cookie and a fruitcake. Yum, yum.

Passau is located on the junction of three rivers, the Danube, the Inn from the Swiss Alps and the smaller Ilz out of the Czech Republic. It was first known as a Roman town in 739, Passau continued to grow and followed architectural trends. Unlike Prague and other cities in Europe, the Gothic style seems to have passed Passau by as the cathedrals are in a Baroque style of the Italian builders and then into the Renaissance period.

This is just a fantastic little place, beautiful buildings, warm people, good beer and nice shops. 

Austria

Linz, as many other places on the Danube was established as a Roman garrison in the second century. We arrived in the late afternoon and so did not visit any historical sites. We strolled the main square and street which is lined with trendy shops, name brand stores and lots of restaurants, just like the shopping areas in most large cities. The difference between most of the European cities we visited and North America is that there are still many family run businesses, bakeries, butchers, fabric shops, etc, and you can buy a lot of products that are still made in Europe. 

Our big excitement in Linz was a protest march of some kind on the main street. There were lots of police in front, down both sides and following the march. We disappeared down a side street until it passed. 

The Benedictine Abbey in Melk rises over the village and the Danube valley as a huge yellow structure that has visions of a royal palace. Once the home of Benedictine monks, with large wings reserved for the royal Habsburg family, it is now home to primary and secondary schools, open to students of all religions. There are seven courtyards of various sizes surrounded by interconnected royal quarters, cathedrals and the required supporting structures needed. Built around a centre building with two wings that are some 900 feet in length the Abbey occupies the total hill it was built on. 

Throughout the trip, when visiting the old parts of town I wondered if the two and three story housing was of recent construction or from the past. One painting hanging in the Abbey, era 1500, showed that the housing of Melk looked exactly as it did out of the adjacent window. So those homes were built years ago, have had the outsides upgraded from stone and brick to plaster and stucco, but otherwise the original structures, amazing!

The village itself, is warm, charming and a place one could definitely spend more time.

A future trip trip here that consisted of a few days each in Regensburg, Passau and Melk would be awesome. We then sailed down the Danube through the Wachau Valley to Vienna. The valley varies in scenery from natural forest land to vineyards and orchards to quaint villages and farm sites.

What can one say about Vienna, home of Strauss, Mozart and other classical musicians, it is one of the greatest cultural and historic cities in the world. While we had intended to go and watch the Lipizzaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School we arrived too late in the morning and had to settle for a stroll past the arena and stables where the horses are kept. One stallion did bless us by coming to the paddock door and gave us the once over. It rained hard while we were in Vienna and after our walking tour past the castles of the Habsburg and other places of interest we ended up in the tourist and local shopping area, which being Sunday everything was closed.

Vienna was not destroyed during WWII and was not really occupied by either the Nazi or Allied armies. Austria and Vienna were quartered up and governed by the USA, France, England and Russia and they all gave control of the country back to the Austrian elected government in the mid 1950s and allowed her to govern on their own.

Our plan to wonder the streets of Vienna on our own where dampened by the rain and that on Sunday all the shops, businesses and most cafes and restaurants are closed. So we went back to the boat and on down the river to Budapest and Hungary.

Pompeii and Rome

Pompeii may be one of the most amazing places I have ever been, not for its beauty or magnificence but for preservation of a city wiped out by a volcanic eruption in the first century AD. The ruins of Pompeii are connected to the modern city of Naples and the whole region still lies under the threat of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that erupted and buried Pompeii. The area has a great climate, is incredibly fertile and although the volcano is still considered active the people that live around the mountain consider the rewards far out weigh the risk.

Pompeii, a city of about 20,000 people was situated in an area where many wealthy Romans owned holiday villas and was known as a vacation city. Buried under up to 20 meters of volcanic ash, the entire city was lost for 1700 years. When discovered great sections of the city had been totally preserved in that ash. Store fronts on streets retained enough structure and design to allow academics to know what they were.

Street side eating place, with the cooking pots in place!
 

Some buildings when dug out of the ash still contained the products that were made there, such as loaves of bread with the bakers mark on the bottom.

Bake shop ovens


The Roman society was governed by laws that encompassed everything in everyday life. Streets had to be a certain width, wagons had to be a certain dimension. All was very set out. These cities with no underground sewer systems used the street to move sewer from the homes. As such there were stepping stones situated at strategic locations to allow citizens to cross streets without wading through the water in the street.

Stepping stones with groove worn by wagon wheels

Mosaics on the street and in front of stores advised people of the products that were offered there. Some of these street mosaics are still visible today. Different sections of the city were known for different services and symbols on walls and carved into the paving stones on the streets gave first time visitors to the city directions as to where certain services were found.

Phallic symbols were especially prominent giving direction to the red light district.

Bordello, turn left next street!

Outdoor theaters, gladiator rings (complete with small six by eight cells for living quarters), intact fountains, ceramics and much more was found as the place was dug out. Drilled holes through the Roman paving stones indicate that the area was settled long before this disaster and had been buried under ash at least twice before.

One of 27 street fountains of Pompeii

These fountains were all fed from an aqueduct and provided drinking water for the residents.

Citizens, once thought to have choked on ash, are now believed to have perished from extreme heat. Temperatures as high as 250 degrees Celsius spread for miles from the epicenter and people died as they were. As with the buildings, the vast layer of ash preserved some of the citizens of Pompeii.

Body found in the ash

After Pompeii a drive along the Amalfi coast, a popular tourist and vacation area of the Italian Mediterranean. Some 30 mile long, the road is hung and I mean hung on the side of the cliffs and contains around 1200 curves.

Amalfi coast road!

It is really exciting and scary when taking pictures and you look down out the bus window to four hundred feet of space to the rocks and no guard rail. The drivers are amazing, often having to stop and back up to allow oncoming traffic to get through the tight corners.

Now a UNESCO world heritage site the Amalfi Coast has thirteen towns or villages. These towns are, as the road, mostly hung on the cliffs and both homes and lemon farms are terraced on the steep slopes.

Town on the slopes

As with the Cinque Terre the villages along the Amalfi Coast are pretty and welcoming to all.

Christmas in Amalfi

Rome, what can I say about Rome, it has to one of the greatest cities of the world. Amazing history, great food and way too much to take in one day. But we tried, taking a hop on hop off bus around the city twice. We stopped at the Fountain of Trevi, of movie fame, built in the 1700's.



Trevi Fountain

Rome's history and artifacts spans the height of the Roman Empire as seen in the Coliseum, built between 72 and 80 AD, this four story free standing structure could seat 50,000 spectators.

The Coliseum

There are the many structures built by various Popes during the dominate periods of the Catholic religion and the renaissance years. Some such as St Peters Basilica are very representative of the design and art of this period.

Renaissance Sculpture

Then there are the more modern structures of administrative and municipal buildings built in the 1800's.

Victor Emmanuel Monument, started in 1885, completed in 1910

There is a lot to see in Rome and in Italy. Very few places that I have travelled have left me with the feeling that I would choose to go back there before some place I have not been. I will have to put Italy up in that category with New Zealand, the Cook Islands, and Japan.















The Acropolis and Sicily

Athens, while located in a beautiful climate was a bit of a mess when we were there. The municipal sanitary workers were on strike protesting austerity measures. Our lady tour guide was disgusted and had many insights into the monetary wreckage that Greece is facing, one that floored me was a law that did not allow the dismissal of government or municipal employees.

After a city tour past all the new stadiums and facilities that were constructed for the 2004 Olympics, our guides opinion was that the costs of these Olympics contributed largely to Greece's monetary issues.  The costs of these games was about 11 billion dollars, not including construction costs of new transit systems that were installed to accommodate the amount of people coming. Most of this cost, according to the guide, was paid for by borrowed money at high interest rates.

The Acropolis, situated on a high rocky hill, is one of the highlights of Athens. It consists of many buildings including the Parthenon. Now a European Cultural site the total area is one large heritage site.



One of the many temples at the Acropolis

Constructed in the 5th century BC the Acropolis was a palace and had several temples added to worship the various gods of the Ancient Greeks, the main one being Athena. As with other cities and other ancient structures the Acropolis has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. Mostly in wars between the Persians and Greece, the structures were repaired during the time of Alexander and during the Roman periods.

The Parthenon

The Parthenon, originally constructed as a temple to the goddess Athena through the years was used as a treasury, a church, a mosque and a munitions storage site. A explosion of munitions stored inside the Parthenon during the Ottoman rule did severe damage to the structure.

Base of a column

The stones used to construct the Parthenon, large enough for the columns, were transported about 10 miles from a quarry on an adjacent hill. The construction took 300 men 9 years and another 5 years to complete the artistic decorations. They have being working on restoration since 1937 and this work continues today.

Temple dedicated to the Greek hero Erichthonius

Built into the mountain side between the Acropolis and the flats were at least two out door theaters. These were used for plays and political gatherings.

Theater of the Acropolis
 

After the Acropolis we went back to the main city and stopped at the stadium built in Athens for the original Olympics. Seating around 50,000 people this stadium is now only used sporadically.

The first Olympic Stadium

Now over to Sicily, I was looking forward to see all those Mafioso type guys running around, but no such luck, every one was pretty much just like me! No guided tours here as we took a long walk to a bus station and took the public bus to the little town of Taormina.

Perched on high cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean, Taormina, although having a Greek and Roman past is more of a medieval atmosphere.

Taormina Beaches, accessible by tram.

The road to the town is as steep and curvy as anything in South America, difference is this one is paved. Most corners so sharp that oncoming vehicles had to stop and back up to let the bus around the corner. The town itself is surrounded by walls and entry is through rock gates.

Taormina Gate

Inside are many restaurants and unique little shops selling all sorts of olive oil, wine, ceramics and other Italian souvenirs.

Taormina Street!

Lunch in the rain, a nice glass of wine and just a relaxing day in a very pleasant little town. This is a place to revisit some day.

Taormina scenery

Next stop Napoli and Pompeii.