Hungary

My planned route

In early September (I don’t feel like posting the exact dates online…) I’ll be off to Hungary for a week and a half of bathing, wine-tasting and cake-eating (with possibly some touristy activities like visiting that big old parliament building on the side).  After spending a couple of days in Budapest getting my toes and fingers wrinkly while playing chess with the locals in the Széchenyi baths, I’ll be taking the train to a city called Eger, known for its ‘bull blood’ wine and its Turkish influences (there’s even a minaret!) for another couple of days.  After a potential detour to do some caving in Aggtelek on the Slovak border and to get the low-down on what communism was like in Miskolc (apparently the further east you head the less the country has modernised), I’ll be taking the train south-west, via Budapest, down to the artists corner of Pécs for two and a half days.  Leaving the painters to their daubing, I’ll then be twiddling my thumbs on a bus for 5 to 6 hours up to Sopron, where I’ll brush shoulders with Austrian aristocrats hopping over the border, before heading back by train for a last couple of days back in Budapest.

All of that naturally assumes I have no mishaps with the public transportation systems to get between the cities – not like what almost happened in the Czech Republic, when the conductor on a train between Prague and Cesky Krumlov mimed some action at the beginning which neither I nor my friends understood, even though we smiled and nodded.  Turns out when the train stopped in the middle of nowhere we were supposed to get off and board the buses lined up just beyond our seated line of sight.  Luckily I looked out of the window just in time to see the last passengers (apart from us) climbing the steps of the last bus, which we managed to catch by doing some serious running.  Honestly, if we hadn’t had all our bags with us I think we could have given that new 100m sprint world record a run for its money.

Anyway, I already have a list of things to do, drinks to taste and food to eat in each place (including lángos and rétes (possibly in Gerbeaud’s cafe in Budapest, supposedly very well known) on the recommendation of a fellow blogger) – but if you happen to have been to any of these cities and have any recommendations, please comment and let me know what you think!