Thinking with TheoDuff: The cities of middle Europe

Our road trip has arrived in an area where many of our ancestors lived – a great melting pot of Huns, Mongols, Slavs, Saxons, Vikings, Turks and lots of others that make us what we are. Touring the Budapest History Museum and learning that the Romans built a town here called Aquincum before all those mentioned above, gives you a real perspective on the scope of history in this great city and Europe as a whole. There was also an excellent exhibition about the relationships between Budapest and Krakow in the middle ages. Shifting alliances and allegiances that mirror most of Europe up until the 18^th century and even later. King-doms passed around a select group of families with sons and marrying daughters of close relations and allies to seal the deals.

Budapest looking towards the Parliament Building

St Martins Church, beautiful coloured tiles on the roof.

Just another lion for my collection! On the bridge over the Danube

Two towns had been built on either side of the mighty Danube River since medieval times - Buda and Pest, now they are one large metropolis, with a wonderful green space in St Margaret’s Island spanning two of the bridges over the River a respite from the traffic and concrete.

Recent history also involves the Hungarians being pushed around by the Nazis and the Soviets; no wonder they seem a bit wary of outsiders. They’re pretty hospitable and helpful but it takes a bit to get a smile sometimes. British diplomats rate Hungarian as the hardest language to learn, harder than Japanese and hearing it spoken it is understandable. Thankfully English is widely used and signage is bi-lingual everywhere.

Public transport is excellent with buses, light rail and metro's running regularly and in sync - as well as electric car hire and the hire bikes that we have seen across Europe for use by tourists and locals alike.

Our stay in Budapest was enhanced with great accommodation at the aptly named Aquincum Hotel, next to the river; cheers Clare. On entering Budapest, Sat Nav got a little confused and took us 20 or more kms out of our way but eventually we found our hotel and saw some of the suburbs as we passed through them - twice!

Aquincum was the roman name for the town along the Danube and we spent a morning at the Roman ruins and museum at Aquincum, just a couple of stops on the train away from the hotel. They have some excellent artefacts and extensive walls and building layouts, some rescued from a highway construction project across the site in the 70’s. Well worth a visit.

Aqincum roman remains

Our last visit just outside Budapest was Memento Park where statues rescued from the soviet era are on display, including an impressive pair of boots on a large plinth, all that was left of a huge statue of Stalin that was pulled down and broken into pieces by the Hungarian protesters. They showed old training movies for spies with techniques for setting up dead letter drops and ‘encouraging’ people to confess and spill the beans on others. Some of it seems like movie tone news and not quite real but it was very real for the Hungarians and others who lived under Soviet Rule not so many years ago.

A heroic worker looking for a place to stay! Memento Park

Stalin's boots! They look a bit small in the photo and are on a giant plinth - all that remains of the original!

Next stop was Bratislava, another country, another currency and a different language/spellings too! All within only a couple of hundred kms from Budapest and even closer to Vienna, our next stop.

Old Bratislava - tourists groups from the river boats that run up and down the major european rivers providing a lifeblood for many towns.

Tile features on the roofs, well kep buildings and even some art deco here and there.

Bratislava is a quiet town with some old areas that we wandered round for an hour or two and then, one of the highlights of our trip so far was finding Danubiana about 15kms out of town along the Danube. It is a modern art gallery set on an island in the Danube which has an amazing collection of paintings and sculptures including Picasso (who has been following us across Europe!), Joan Miro and many others. Very well worth spending two or three hours there. Slovakia is well known for hiking in the mountains and mountain biking too.