Berekfürdő and Budapest, Hungary

Wow! What a contrast. From a rural village of 1000 people to the so called ‘Pearl of the Danube’, I couldn’t have found two more extreme views of Hungary.

Berekfürdő seems to be a popular destination for Hungarian tourists, attracted by the series of thermal pools in the area. Apart from that, it’s a quiet village of modest bungalows along with a small store and a couple of bars. I went for a run one evening and couldn’t help noticing that many of the houses were painted in bright colours. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it looked like these fenced-in, uniform bungalows had been built during the communist era and the only way to cheer up this austere village after ’89 was to paint the houses in varying shades of yellow, peach and lime green.

The other thing I noticed was how quiet the place was. There were no neighbours talking across the fences, no youths on the street corners, nobody cutting the grass. It all seemed very bleak. On reflection, I think it was all a front…actually, everyone was inside drinking absinthe and playing strip poker.

As I suspected, the language barrier was pretty big, although it did give me two nights to play Hungarian menu lottery in the hotel restaurant. It’s amazing what great food can appear from stabbing hopefully at the menu and smiling sweetly. I’m now very much a fan of Hungarian food and I’ve promised Anna that I’ll cook something Hungarian when I get home. The soups are fantastic. Every meal starts with soup and in the six or seven meals I had while I was there, I never had the same soup twice.

I flew to Budapest on Friday evening and went straight out for a five hour wander around the city. Although a few people had told me what a great city it was, I was still unprepared for the sheer number of incredible buildings and the quiet beauty of the Danube and it’s bridges.

I started to look for a place to eat and, working on the theory that you have to be at least fifteen minutes walk from the main drag to get decent local food, I headed away from the centre. Going down some side streets that reminded me of the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, I found a suitable-looking restaurant with an interesting menu. Any place that offers gizzard stew has to be worth a try, right? The soup, again, was a highlight – wild boar soup with myrtle. I’ve no idea what myrtle is but it tasted great.

As I walked off dinner, I stumbled across the stunning St. Stephen’s Basilica (below) and decided to come back the next day to see inside. On Saturday I returned and enjoyed fantastic views of the city from the top of the basilica. Probably the strangest sight I’ve seen on this trip was the mummified hand of Stephen, the first King of Hungary (975-1038), which is kept in a special shrine in the chapel and revered by the Hungarian people. Nice!

There’s so much more to say about Budapest but I’ve rambled on long enough and you probably need to sleep. I will just wrap it up with my favourite moment from Saturday’s daytime meander through the city. I came across a five-piece Hungarian folk band playing in one of the streets and a small group of ladies dancing what I presumed to be a typical folk dance. It was all going swimmingly until an American tourist (bum-bag – dead giveaway!) decided he was up to the task and broke into their circle. Top marks to the guy for effort but he couldn’t have got the steps more wrong. The pained expressions on the other dancers’ faces were priceless!

Ps. Hungarian trivia – the Rubik’s cube, invented by a Hungarian professor, has approximately 43 quintillion permutations. If you put each of them on a cube and lined them up end-to-end they would stretch for 261 light years.

Sibiu, Romania

Walking out onto one of the most beautiful plazas in Europe, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of this place. When I arranged to visit one of our facilities, a little north of Bucharest, I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to see the capital and imagined Sibiu as some small, rural town in the middle of nowhere. How wrong I was.

When I finished work on Monday night, I headed towards the centre of town and I could just feel the history as I walked through the city…cobbled streets, gothic doorways and medieval passageways. It was stunning. My first stop was a good book shop so that I could learn a little more about the place.

Sibiu was founded during the Saxon colonisation of Transylvania in the 12th century and became an important German settlement during the next couple of centuries. Massive fortifications and gates were built in the 13th-16th centuries, much of which can still be seen. Viennese Baroque style was added after Transylvania became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1699. Much of the city was given a facelift when Sibiu was selected as European Capital of Culture in 2007.

I loved walking around the imaginatively-named Large Square (below) with its pastel-coloured buildings, street-side cafes and kids playing in the fountain. From Large Square I continued down into Small Square which is broken up by a curving passageway and has the oldest cast iron bridge in Romania, the Bridge of Lies. Legend has it that it will collapse on the spot if you tell a lie. More beautiful buildings surround this square and it was here that I noticed the ‘eyes of the city’: small eye-like windows in the roofs of the tradesmen’s houses, apparently popular with Saxons.

I didn’t have time to explore the lower part of the city, leading down to the river, or to go inside the cathedral or climb the Town Council Tower. I’d like to get back here one day, hopefully with Anna, and soak up this ancient city for a while longer.

Last night I was taken by a Hungarian (so tempting to just leave that sentence hanging) to a traditional Romanian restaurant for a great meal of soup, grilled pork & polenta, doughnuts and plenty of Romanian red wine. It doesn’t sound that special but it tasted great and the restaurant was situated in an arched basement and filled with locals. It was fab. Lesson learned…always go to dinner with someone who knows the town.

Tonight I find myself in the small Hungarian village of Berekfürdő, two hours west of Budapest. The hotel is near Tisza Lake and has a thermal bath which Csaba, my new Hungarian friend, told me I had to try. It just looked like murky water to me, but I gave it a go in the belief that the minerals will do wonders for my…er…condition.

I haven’t found anyone at the hotel who speaks English and my Hungarian only kicks in after three whiskeys so I think it’s going to be a fun few days.

Zeitoun, Dave Eggers

I first discovered Dave Eggers when I bought ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’ purely on the strength of the great title. At once sad, funny and beautiful, this is a memoir of his life around the age of 21 when both of his parents died of cancer and he had to bring up his 8 year-old brother, Christopher. It was a stunning debut and Anna and I have been hooked on his work ever since.
Zeitoun, his latest work of non-fiction, tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born builder and decorator who chose to stay in his home in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. A big mistake, as it turned out, but not for the reasons you might imagine.
His wife and four children went to stay with friends in Arizona and Zeitoun stayed behind to take care of their home, some rental properties they own, and to try and help out wherever he could. He travelled the city in a secondhand canoe, discovering people trapped in their homes as he silently slipped along, that the troops in powerboats might never have heard. He shared what supplies he had with friends and strangers alike. The reward for his efforts was arrest, without charge, for a crime he didn’t commit and a 3-week stay in a temporary jail without decent food or a bed to sleep on. Probably the greatest injustice was the daily denial of a phone call to his wife to let her know where he was. What starts off as a hero's tale of the good work done in the aftermath of the storm turns into a nightmare at the hands of an incompetent government and some nasty individuals.
It’s one of those books, like ‘The Shock Doctrine’ by Naomi Klein, which makes you feel so angry and so helpless at the same time. It’s a compelling read though and I think you’d rather know about these things than not.

First post

A few people have asked me if I've been keeping a record of the travels I've been doing lately and, lamentably, I haven't. Probably the best way to keep such a journal, with photographs, and be able to share it with friends and family is on a blog. I've wrestled with the idea of a blog for a couple of months...isn't it a little narcissistic? Who wants to hear what I have to say? I got the short answer to that on Facebook when I asked a similar question and only one person replied: not many! However, the friend that did reply said that it should add value to someone's life. So, in the hope that it will add value to Anna and the boys' lives, as they'll be able to see where I am in the world and what I think of the place, I'm going to go for it. It might also add value to my life when my grey matter starts (or continues?) to deteriorate and I can't remember where I've been! And, if others enjoy it too, then fan-tas-tic.
I imagine I'll write mostly about people and places I've visited, but I might also throw in the occasional book review or thought on the state of the world. That sounds deep...I'm sure it won't be.
With that said, here goes...I hope you enjoy it.