Border Crossing: Hungary to Serbia

Leaving Hungary meant leaving the Schengen Agreement countries behind. We were going to step out of the Euro Zone into New Europe, as Michael Palin puts it. This meant we were going to get our passport stamped again (yay!).

We took a train from Budapest, sometime in the morning. Our destination was not Belgrade, the capital. We had decided to stop by the Frushka Gora area, which is just south of the Hungarian border. This northern part of Serbia is, according to the guide book and locals, a bit more of a hilly area compared to the rest of the country. We decided to stop at a small town called Chortanovski, just for the hell of it. So we took a train bound for the Serbian city of Novi Sad.

I have no photos, no diary entries, and no recollection of this border crossing at all, which gives you an idea of how riveting it was. All I recall was that we were in a carriage, a man comes in, takes our passports, stamped them, and we were in. It must have been all very underwhelming. As far as my memory serves, both my partner and I were able to enter Serbia without visas (my partner travels on an Audtralian passport, myself on a Japanese one). Depending on your nationality you may need visas to get in.

The border corssing was pretty basic, but once we arrived at Novi Sad station and were in Serbia proper, my memory starts to jog. So I might leave this post behind and see you in the next post.

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest was gorgeous. There’s no other way to put it. It was the most visually striking city to explore on our European leg of the city. It had a very decorative feel to it (at least the areas we went around), and the architecture found was some of the most memorable on the trip.

Budapest is named so because it is actually a city that was originally two separate town, one called ‘Buda’, and the other called ‘Pest’ (sounds crazy right? I wouldn’t have believed it had it not been for the fact that everything official and aimed at tourists said so). We stayed in the Buda side, which is definitely the bigger and more powerful part of the city. We spent a grand total of two nights in Budapest, which was such a shame. This seems to be a recurring theme for our Europle leg of the trip…

Now I must confess, I went into Budapeset knowing absolutely nothing about its history. My partner likes to travel that way, so the experience of being in a new place can just wash over him, but I love knowing some basic things about a country’s history so I can keep an eye out for things, or understand what I’m interacting with a bit more deeply. But no, the only thing I knew about Hungary when I arrived was the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Terrible, isn’t it. I think I’d also registered that Hungary must have been a reasonable part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (because, you know, it’s only in the name, nothing major.), but that didn’t really mean much to me. So what I’m trying to get at is that this post about Budapest is going to be thin on information about the places I went to. I don’t even know the names of these places. I should actually look them up one day.

First Bridge, and Lookout Over Budapest (WW2 Memorial?)

From memory, we crossed one of the major bridges (by foot, as per our cheapo style!), and approached a hill upon which a very large staute stood. The walk up was very nice, the weather was good (as you can see from the photos!) and once we got up there we discovered that it was a monument to remember World war 2.

This is a photo of the walk up. You can see the statue near the peak. It overlooks Budapest.

Nice view.

I must say that visitng places like these, and seeing how WW2 left such a deep mark on the European population, I find the Anglo world’s strange obsession about things Nazi a bit… trite (specifically referring to two really awful sounding films about Space Nazis. Seriously?). I know that comedy and humour are excellent tools for resisting entities of power, and that it’s a great and effective way of bringing people/institutions/groups/anything down a notch…. to take away the seriousness of it all. Charlie Chaplain’s parody of Hitler is a famous case that comes to mind. But adolescent sci-fi-historico fantasies that fetishise parts of real historical trauma… I’ll have to see the films to actually be fair, but for some reason, I doubt I’ll it, and I doubt I’ll be impressed.

St Stephens

St Stephens is the largest church in Budapest, I think. A Catholic Church! We’d been in Orthodox Land for some time, so it was like ‘Oh yes, these types of  familiar looking structures do exist!’ A few years ago I had been to Italy, so I feel I’ve become reasonably well familiarised to Catholic buildings

Magical Sparkly D!sneyl@nd Must Have Gotten Inspiration Here?

This was another major bridge we crossed, and it took us to a little uphill tram of sorts. Not really knowing what was at the top, we walked up a path trying our best to follow the tram route (I told you we were counting our pennies!).

We eventually made it atop to this… Palace? Old town? There was a sparkly white church of some description which was under construction. It was a really cool place… hard to describe.

We arrived at this place later in the afternoon. We hung around for a bit, it was cloudy, and then we descended the hill. I can’t remember why, but we went up again, after having dinner and there was a short bit of rainfall. When we came up again it was gorgeous weather (as you can see from the photos.)

I think we were in a place that was kind of like the official mark between Buda and Pest. The photo above is of Pest. It looks pretty underwhelming compared to the grandeur of Buda, but I would have liked to actually have a look around Pest. It looks rather quaint, understated, and possibly my kind of place. Possibly not. Who knows. (I still think ‘Buda’ and ‘Pest’ are unfortunate names if one is an English monolingual.)

City of Statues

A think we noticed throughout our trip is that many modern cities like to have displays of public art. Budapest had the most enjoyable selection of statues, and they could be found throughout the city. They varied in theme, but all were more or less the same size, and prepresented human beings in some capacity.

A funny story behind this last photo. My partner and I were sitting down, chillin’, and there was this great statue of the girl and her playful dog. Everyone who walked by would look at it, probably because the joy of the dog is so evident. Along comes a real dog, and goes up to the statue dog, and starts interacting with it; licking, sniffing, the lot. Everyone laughed. Funny that no matter what language or background people speak or have, the situation struck everyone as amusing.

…

Next, we headed off to Serbia. Out of Schengenland, and a proper boder crossing. So next post will be a very short post on our exiting the EU, and into what was to be our final country for the 2010 trip.

Schengen Land: Poland to Hungary

We arrived at the main train station of Warsaw in the evening. My partner and I had established a routine by now that when we arrive in a new city, we first and foremost figure out how we’ll get to our next destination. But because of our evening arrival to Warsaw we hadn’t prepared as well this time. We went to the ticket window, and were mighty releaved when we finally were able to get a sleeper train to Budapest.

And what a disappointment the carraige was. Chinese trains had totally figured out how to maximise people carrying capacity, but Eastern European trains were still working on it. Chinese trains had three story bunks, and even if you were on the top, someone of my short stature could still sit upright. The train to Budapest only had two storys, but it was impossible to do anything but lay flat on your stomach or back. Terribly uncomfortable. We shared the carriage with a young man heading to the Czech Republic.  The train passed through the Czech Republic and Slovakia before entering Hungary. I was asleep for all of it and cannot remember a thing.

My diary entry on this transition is also very sparse. I think I’ll cut the talk here and keep it for the glory that was Budapest.

Warsaw, Poland

The bus ride from Tallinn to Warsaw took one day. We arrived in Poland at night, it was getting dark. We caught a cab with the intention of going to a specific guesthouse, but the taxi driver took us to a totally different place (my diary has it that he drove real fast). It was dark, and we had little idea where we were so we decided to stay the night in a sort-of nice hotel that was undergoing some contruction. Unlike the taxi driver, the lady at the reception spoke English. We got ourselves a nice room. It was nice. The next day we had a nice buffet breakfast, surrounded by the sounds of construction.

After this one night in a hotel, we managed to get to the hostel we were planning on staying at. I have little to no recollection of how this transpired.

Like I said for Tallinn, it felt like Warsaw was empty. Where was everybody?? Walking on the streets, there was nary a person in sight. I know that when I take photographs I tend to wait for people to clear out of the frame before taking a snap, but seriously, it really was as empty as it looks.

Maybe it’s just me, because I’m a bit of a history fan, but there seemed to be all sorts of small reminders of World War 2 scattered around the area we were staying. A memorial plaque here, a wreath of roses there. I think I said this for Russia too, but those of us brought up in Allied nations tend not to know just how hard it was on the Eastern Front (those people who are interested in WW2 will go out and find information, and will probably learn of the devastation in the east, but as far Allied nation history education goes, it seems that the details of the east are not too important. At least when I was back in school that was the case. But that could be because Australia was more involved in te Pacific. Anyway, I digress.). They say that people see what they want to see, so I didn’t want to see Poland just in the context of the mid to late twentieth century… but I must confess, that always stayed at the back of my mind.

And here again is the history fan speaking, but the buildings of Warsaw, maybe on par with Ulanbataar, struck me as quintessentially Soviet. Drab, grey or brown blocks of building with very little decor, being neglected and slowly going down (although one could say the same of 70s architecture in Melbourne too). We had a quirky little backpacker map with us that had a few landmarks, and one of them was the old headquarters of some ministry, but which has since been converted to offices for a photography company or something.

Another odd feature mentioned in the map; a plastic palm tree. All cities are quirky in their own way, but I must say, Warsaw was quirky. Not in a bad way though. I wish we could’ve stayed longer to get a better feel for the place.

Old Town

Like Tallinn, Warsaw has an Old Town area, with the cobble stones, magnificent structures, and loads of tourists. Unlike Tallinn, we both actually had NO IDEA that Warsaw had an Old Town… and we kind of just stumbled across it. How can you NOT KNOW that there’s an entire UNESCO heritage TOWN in a city, right? Well. Yeah. It was a glorious surprise though!

The weather was not on our side this first day in Warsaw. Shortly after taking these photos it began POURING down. We took shelter in a pastry shop and had a sweet bread of some description.

If I come back to Warsaw for whatever reason, I’d like to do the Old Town properly. Know what it was all about. Eat some nice food. Have some nice weather.

City of Art

My very limited experience with the people of Poland tells me that they are a very gifted bunch. I’ve met a few through the internet and various illustration/craft communities, and I must say, there seems to be something in their works that is… Polish. They have a great attention to detail, and are quite romantic and even a little sentimental in their expression. These were the kinds of stereotypes that were trundling along in my mind as we walked around a huge park in Warsaw.

The year 2010 seemed to be the official Chopin year. I’m not sure what it was commemorating, but you could hardly escape from the man’s presence throughout the city. The above photo is an open space in this large garden, with a statue of Chopin. During the summer, free performances of Chopin’s works were performed by various musicians. I’m a little embarassed to say that I know only one Chopin piece (and I don’t know the name of it). But we were able to enjoy the recital. There was also a small gallery we went to earlier that was showcasing entries of a Chopin themed competition. You can see that the man seems to hold a very central position in the identity of the city.

On a more contemporary level, you could also see many pieces of quirky public art across the city too.

These were painted on a wall near the central station. Presumably it is public art. For some reason, I found these pictures disturbing. The images in and of themselves are nothing shocking. A little unusual, but I would’ve just scrolled past these images had I seen them on the net (this might say something more about the internet than about the point I’m trying to make). I’m still not sure what grabbed me so about these pictures.

This one was a few buildings away from the hostel we stayed at. If I’m not mistaken, Mr Chopin is in there somewhere.

Leaving Poland

This is a photograph of what our map called ‘Stalin’s Birthday cake’. Apparently it was a gift from the Soviets to celebrate the joining of Poland with the Soviet Union. Not a particularly pleasing looking building, but standing very tall and visible near the central train station.

Our next destination was to be Budapest in Hungary. This time we were to embark on our first overnight train journey since entering Europe (if you don’t count Russia as Europe). Stay tuned.

Schengen Land: Estonia to Poland

As I’ve mentioned before, many European countries take part in what’s called the Schengen Agreement. This is an agreeent that allows people who have entered a signatory country to cross into other signatory countries without having to go through messy immigration processes. Basically, treats most of Europe as a borderless mass. Very convenient when travelling. So our trip from Estonia to Warsaw, Poland, wasn’t a border crossing.

We arrived at the bus stop in the morning, and found our bus bound for Poland. As per usual, I slept for most of the trip. The bus was nice and comfortable, had a small tv screen, a bathroom, and was well kept. I have it in my diary that we saw two movies: one wa sin Russian and the other starred Penelope Cruz and Selma Hayek. It took us pertty much the whole day, I think, to get to Warsaw. We went through Latvia and Lithuania, but I could not tell from looking out the window where we were.

I honestly can’t remember if we slept overnight in the bus. Looking at these photos you’d think I might have. I’ll have to check with my partner and let you know next post!