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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Central
Europe break Blame George Bush, our guide told us. It was 4 June 2007, the day before the President’s visit and Prague castle was closed: there could be no sightseeing. This was perhaps a blessing in disguise; there is so much to see in Prague our guided tour took several hours even without the castle. The Waldstejn Gardens with their baroque layout and bizarre artificial rock face, the Loretta church, the peaceful backwaters of the Campa peninsula, the tourist infested Charles Bridge, the old Jewish district of Josefov, Wenceslas Square, the Powder Tower, the gothic exuberance of the Tyn church and, of course tourist central, the astronomical clock on the old town square. The city is steeped in history: capital of a substantial medieval kingdom, a major city of the Holy Roman Empire and Hapsburg Empire, capital of Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, of Riechsprotektorat Bohmen & Mohren under the Nazis and of communist Czechoslovakia afterwards, Prague has seen a lot and has the buildings to prove it. Gothic buildings rub shoulders with renaissance, baroque and neo-classical. There are charming streets of art nouveau apartment buildings and even a few experimental cubist buildings. And on the outskirts, a tram ride away from the tourists there are estates of egalitarian, functional communist era flats. These are not as bad as they sound, they are reasonably comfortable, in much better shape than many of the UK’s tower blocks and the ones built in the 50s and early 60s are only three or four storeys high, quite a human scale. But pretty they are not. Next day we left our luggage at Prague’s main railway station, a once imposing turn of the century edifice now run to seed and in the process of being restored and took the train to Karlstejn, a historic castle about 40 minutes away. We got out at a village called Srbsko and had a pleasant walk to Karlstejn through the woodlands of the Berounka valley. After a guided tour of Karlstejn we took the train back to Prague and I discovered a delightful café called Ebel in Tyn Square. The previous day, I had tried the famous café Slavia opposite the National Theatre, one time haunt of Prague’s literary set, but found it had turned into a tourist trap where even the cakes were numbered for ease of ordering (try the #9, a tasty chocolate cake). The Ebel has real atmosphere and cheese cake to die for. That evening we returned to Prague station for our luggage. Prague station at night is a scary place where gangs of shifty looking people roam and loiter, looking for unwary travellers to rob. Having been warned, we were on our guard and caught the night train to Budapest without incident. The sleeping compartment was cramped with a triple-decker bunk and limited luggage space, and our sleep was not improved by two passport checks in the wee hours of the morning, but dawn saw us trundling across the Hungarian plains and we arrived in Budapest at 7am. Our hotel was on Kiraly Street just off Deak square and thus in the centre of Pest. I was amused by the dozens of dental clinics on Kiraly Street; if you want cheap dental work, implants etc, that seems to be the place to go and their signs made useful landmarks for the hotel. After a swift breakfast, we went to the Dohany Synagogue, the second biggest synagogue in the world (the biggest is apparently in New York) which had survived the war, decades of neglect by the communists and had been restored over the last few years. In the afternoon we met our city guide, a very engaging young lady who took us on a guided tour. We saw St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the parliament building which is built in the same gothic style as the British parliament but goes one better in that it has a dome and streets of ornate 19th century buildings. At this point, the heavens opened and we had to dive for shelter into a café: Hungary is a hot country in summer and sudden downpours are common. We crossed the chain bridge across the Danube and climbed up to the old castle on the Buda side of the river, which afforded excellent views of Pest and visited the Matyas church and the Fisherman’s bastion. The original Hungarians were a warlike Asiatic race who settled the Pannonian plain in 896 AD and a thousand years later their descendants were determined to celebrate. Many of the city’s public buildings were built to commemorate the millennium and a typical ‘national’ style was developed with colourful, majolica roof tiles and extravagant fascias. Then there was the Heroes monument, a column commemorating Arpad and his chieftains flanked by the great kings of Hungary and famous Hungarians who had fought for their country’s freedom. They even built the first line of the Budapest underground to mark the event and are proud that it was the first underground line in continental Europe. The Hungarians are a proud people and they are still fiercely nostalgic for the glory days of their history which were ended by the treaty of Trianon in 1920 when Hungary lost two thirds of its territory. The next day I visited one of Budapest’s famous thermal baths at the Gellert Hotel. Getting in is something of a performance: buying a ticket, renting a safe for your valuables, renting a towel for which you pay a hefty deposit most of which is returned and being assigned a locker in the changing room but once in, the place is worth a long stay. There is an outdoor pool, an indoor pool and a couple of hot pools, all in ornate art nouveau style. Afterwards I went for lunch at the market, Budapest’s answer to Les Halles, where hundreds of stalls sell all sort of foodstuffs including the famous Hungarian salami and where there are snack bars offering cheap local fare on the first floor. A boat trip up the Danube and a visit to the green, park like Margaret’s Island were rounded off with a dinner of stuffed goose’s neck (which tastes much better than it sounds). The next day we took a coach to Holloko, a picturesque village and a UNESCO world heritage site in the Cserhat hills. The local people are descended from the Paloc, an Asian group that were driven into Hungary by the Mongol invasion in the 13th century and who helped the Hungarians fight the Mongols (not very successfully, Hungary lost 80% of its population to the Mongol horde and afterwards took in immigrants from the rest of Europe to restore numbers). After a short drive we walked up Mt. Kekes, Hungary’s highest point, though at 1014m it’s hardly a mountain. In the shower that evening, I had to twist off a tick I had picked up on the walk. We had been warned about ticks and they were also a risk in the Low Tatras of Slovakia, though not the High Tatras. That evening we reached Eger, a pretty town with a well preserved fortress and an attractive baroque church and the home of Egeri Bikaver, the famous ‘Bull’s Blood’ wine. Some members of our group found a pleasant outdoor restaurant for dinner, and I was enjoying a plate of ‘Meggi Leves’ a refreshing cold sour cherry soup when shouting across the road attracted our attention. The situation quickly became clear: a local pimp was giving one of his girls a hard time and at one point, hit her. What to do? Some of our group, especially the women, were upset and angry, yet we dared not intervene. At worst some of us might be injured, at best we would have to spend heaven knows how long in a Hungarian police station waiting for an interpreter and giving statements, thus endangering the tour. In the end, we took our cue from the other diners and the restaurant owners and studiously ignored the event. And before you rush to judgement, when was the last time you challenged a violent criminal in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language? A magical incident the next day completely restored our spirits. We were walking through some rolling, partly wooded hills when we came across a paddock full of Lipizzaner horses. I am not a horsey type at all but I was enchanted by their grace and friendliness. They ambled across and let us pet them over the fence, the youngsters with their dark grey coats while the older horses were nearly white. Then some of their grooms rode up and opened the gate of the paddock and there was a stampede of happy horses trotting out into the open fields. It was playtime and they knew it: kicking their hind legs in the air, play fighting and rolling around on the ground in pure joy while their minders rode herd on them like cowboys. For many of us, this was the highlight of the holiday. The next day we crossed into Slovakia and drove to Banska Bystrica, an attractive town in the Low Tatras and stayed at an old hotel which oozed character and atmosphere but which unnerved several members of our group: apparently in Slovakia historic buildings are exempt from modern fire safety standards… Our walk the next day was very pleasant and ended in a village where we paid the equivalent of 26p for a small beer. We left Banska Bystrica for Stary Smokovec in the High Tatras, stopping off at the Dobsinska ice cave en route. The High Tatras are a hiker’s paradise but quite tough; much of the walking is either on bare granite or on rocks and boulders which become treacherous underfoot with even the slightest rain: good boots are essential. We had two good, albeit shower-prone days there and then, at the very end, I took a bad fall. Crunch! Two hours and an x-ray later the doctor at Poprad hospital told me I had a fractured radius and put my arm in plaster. The hospital dealt with me very quickly and I was able to rejoin the rest of the group half way through dinner, a totally surreal experience: from mountainside to hospital to shivering with shock in a dim, romantic restaurant complete with a gypsy band playing Monty’s czardas all in the space of a few hours. Fortunately the next day was fairly sedentary: a bus ride to the Pieniny National Park on the Polish border and a river raft trip along the scenic limestone gorge of the Dunajec River. The night train from Poprad was another matter altogether and was for me the low point of the holiday; purgatory on wheels. Injured arm apart, the compartment was a triple-decker bunk even smaller than on the way out and it was so hot and airless we had to take turns in sticking our heads out of the window whenever the train was stationary. At last the cool of dawn brought some relief and we reached Prague around 6am. After an early breakfast at our hotel we attended to unfinished business and at last hit Prague castle. The castle was now Bush free, though a large banner praising his plan to base anti-missile radar on Czech soil filled my heart with melancholy. 20 years ago the propaganda was Russian, now it’s American… The castle was teeming with tourists of all shapes, sizes and nationalities, including Japanese and a few Chinese and had turned into a slick machine to milk them of their money. Every church and chapel charged an entrance fee, as did every museum and exhibition. Even the famous Zlata Ulicka, home of renaissance alchemists and occultists during the reign of Emperor Rudolf was blocked by turnstiles. At least the wonderful views across the river and the rest of Prague were free, as was an army band, playing for the benefit of the public. After a high cholesterol lunch of bread with dripping and small bits of crackling (very important for flavour those bits of crackling!) washed down with Pilsner Urquell beer, I took the tram back to my hotel for the exquisite frustration of repacking my over-full luggage with just one hand. Soon my holiday, a two week Explore tour called Trails of Central Europe would be over. PS The day after I returned home, I presented myself at my local A&E department. The doctors there were shocked at my treatment in Slovakia: the sling I had been given was a joke and, inexcusably, no effort had been made to reduce the fracture. After x-rays and a thoroughly unpleasant pain killing-injection into my wrist, this was rapidly remedied. A nurse took my elbow, a doctor took my wrist and they tugged and pulled while I lay back, happily out of it on gas and air. Unfortunately the wrist was too badly damaged and, much to my surprise, they booked me in for surgery… I am writing this article in plaster and am now the proud owner of a plate and nine screws: unwelcome souvenirs of my break in Central Europe. First published in VISA issue 75 (Oct 2007) |