Sooner or later visitors would find their way to Budapest. The first one's to come were Bert parents towards the end of March. Since Bert and Jean were quite busy, the story of this visit is told by the visitors themselves.
We usually make a trip to Holland in the spring, so decided this year to go there again, but make a short side trip to Hungary first. Our plane took us from Denver to Frankfurt, Germany. There we took the night train to Vienna in Austria and continued on to Budapest. It does not take long to notice when the Hungarian border has been crossed. Customs and immigration people come by and the villages one sees out of the train window do not look very prosperous anymore. A tourist information person came by in the train with a warning for pickpockets in Budapest. Well meant, but pretty well true for any city these days.
Jean welcomed us
at the station in Budapest and took us "home". Later that
afternoon we walked together to the center of Budapest and got our first
glimpse of the area featuring many street vendors. Naturally purchased some souvenirs. The metro, one of the oldest in Europe, brought us home
again.
That same evening we enjoyed a nice dinner in town. Some people from Trend, one
on a visit from Ireland, were there as well.
The next morning we took off exploring the city on our own. It was nice to have a pass for the metro, streetcars and a number of attractions and thus not have to worry about how to buy tickets. Even though we master a few European languages, Hungarian is "Chinese" to us. Also not too many Hungarians speak a foreign language. Many people were nevertheless willing to assist in any way they could.
We walked to the
shore of the Danube, more brown than blue this time of year, and crossed the
river on one of the many bridges. This got us into "Buda". A
steep climb up a hill and we were into an old and interesting section of town.
The mural on the right is part of an old wall at the bottom of the hill.
It was windy and temperatures in March are not that warm yet. We briefly went into a picture gallery, more to warm up than go through, and visited an interesting apothecary museum and the old Matthias Church. The view from the hill over Pest was nice. The old parliament buildings were almost straight across the Danube. Later in the afternoon we walked by those buildings. A line of schoolchildren was waiting to get in. We could not join them and found that only a limited number of tours are conducted in English.
The next day we again went crisscross through town again. Visited a big indoor market first and then took the cog railway up into the hills . Walking around at the end of the station, almost ready to turn around, we stumbled on an interesting attraction: the children's railway. I had read about it, did not quite know where and what it was and rounding a corner . . . there was the train, ready to depart. We hopped on and had a very interesting ride through the hilly and forested countryside.
Except for the
engineer, this narrow-gauge train is run by school-age children as a tourist
attraction. There also must be an educational objective. Young conductors selling tickets
can be seen in the picture at the left. The cars are heated by a wood stove (stove pipe
visible in the back). That added an interesting aroma. It was a joy to see how these kids took their job very
seriously and were saluting the passengers along the line and at the stations..
The round trip took almost three hours, but was definitely worthwhile.
Late in the afternoon we went by one of the hot baths on the outskirts of Budapest. It was too late to get in but through a window we watched some of the bathers play chess in the pool. Chess is very popular in Hungary.
Friday morning
a
visit to "GForm" was scheduled, the plastics
molding business acquired by Trend in Hungary. The current factory
is located in Budapest. The picture on the left shows one of the big presses.
A much bigger factory is under construction in the countryside, to be completed this summer.
Other
tourists had said that Szentendre, a
village North of Budapest should not be missed. So we decided to take a longer
train ride
to look.
Szentendre is a picturesque old village with the usual number of shops to cater to tourists. The picture on the right shows the center square.
This concluded our stay in Budapest. That night we drove with Jean & Bert to Vienna in Austria and stayed overnight in a pension Bert and Jean had been in before. Strange as it may sound, having lived in Holland and Switzerland, we had visited Western Austria a number of times, but never gotten East as far as Vienna.
Vienna. has
quite a history and is known for its architecture, royal families and famous music composers,
to name just a few.
The picture on the left shows a "fiaker" driving tourists around.
On the right is a statue and flower arrangement in honor of one of the music composers.
Except for a Russian war memorial, not much reminds us about the war years.
Many old buildings have been preserved or restored. The center of town and the opera house
are beautiful to walk through. We also took
a stroll through the grounds of Schoenbrunn and the Belvidere park
To round off our visit in Vienna we went to a Japanese Sushi restaurant. It had a very interesting way of serving a buffet-style meal. A picture of the food conveyor belt can be seen in the next story. After some rest at the pension we boarded the night train back to Frankfurt, rented a car and drove to Holland.
All in all we spent a wonderful time in Budapest and Vienna. Both towns, only three hours apart, are very interesting, yet quite different. We are thankful to our hosts to have made this trip possible.
John and Gretha Vermeulen.
This page was last updated on \\\04/25/01.