Budapest-Vienna-Prague-Budapest

A few notes from our Vienna-Prague trip. The train travel was impressive, on time, clean and reasonably inexpensive. The sights you see from the tracks are a unique view of Eastern European back yards and old industrial parks. The old and probably abandoned railcars from the last century are lined up for miles along the sidings, and paint a picture of the history of European train travel. Some of the cars are ornate and colorful, right out the pages of an Agatha Christie novel; others are drab and socialist looking, their varied paint schemes long faded. The cities look like the cars, drab but with these bright red clay roofs that never fade. Hungary, Slovakia and Czech (yes, they simply call it Czech, not the Czech Republic) (at least the Czechs do) (the maps and the flags say Czech Republic) country sides look alike while the small towns of Austria look more postcardy. Vienna was beautiful, clean, expensive and easy to see most of it in 2 days. The people are stiff but helpful, the food was nothing special. We didn’t venture away from the touristy areas so we had no opportunity to see the back streets. The Metro was as clean as Budapest’s. Prague was visually similar to Vienna, great buildings, big plazas but the atmosphere was completely different. Every night was Saturday night, loud party filled streets and bars, lots of drinking until early morning, maybe even late morning. The streets are clean but by late afternoon the trash cars were overflowing with beer bottles, plastic water bottles and general trash. This would not be allowed in Vienna; some Hapsburg descendent with serious dental problems would rush out from the castle and sweep up. This, by the way, is a historical fact; there was so much inbreeding with in the Hapsburg dynasty that a majority of men with Hapsburg genes have obnoxious under bites.

It is the general opinion among the other travelers we talked to that Austria is better at hospitality than Czech simply because they have been at it longer, the hotels were friendlier, I think the desk clerk at the Zipser Hotel in Vienna clicked his heels together when he greeted us, I think, not sure. The place in Prague was a little more laid back, here’s your key, if you lose it we charge you 50 Euros. There was a big sack of fresh towels and a roll of TP outside our door when we returned each evening, which was nice.

I think Czech is still getting its democracy legs, a little like Hungary. They are enjoying their freedom.

The Jewish Museum in Prague was packed; it’s a rather compact area of several different sites that are all called the Jewish Museum. We were able to see some of the children’s art work from Terezin. They have over 4000 pieces that they are still cataloging and preserving. Hopefully Lisa will continue to work with them as she continues her research. We may return to Prague in August.

Here is a list of some of the towns we passed thru between Budapest, Vienna, Prague and back to Budapest: Probably not in the correct order: Tatabanya, Gyor, Mosonmagyarovar, Hegyeshalom, Breclav, Brno, Pardubice, Pecki, Kolin, Recany, Prelovc, Kostenice, Zamrisk, Cholen, Bezpreva, Smer, Ustl, Svitany, Breszova, Rajec, Blansko, Bratislava and then it got dark and I couldn’t read the station signs.

There was a lot of wheat still in the fields, about ready to harvest. The announcements on the train were in German, English and the language of whatever country you were in. There were a lot of apricot trees all along the tracks, the further North we went the farms got smaller and there were large pine forests. It seemed there was a church or castle on every hill.

Photo Notes

Czech is the true home of Budweiser. Anheuser Busch has been suing this little brewery for years and has not been able to restrict the use of the original name to Czech only, boycott Anheuser Busch products. Anyway, Clayton enjoyed an original Budweiser at the train station in Prague.

The sidewalks in Prague are amazing; they are constructed of 2” X 2” cubes of marble. Beautiful, functional, easy to pull up for under side walk repairs, provides endless design possibilities and are slick as…..when they are wet.

Clayton and I hiked to the Prague Castle, lots of steps. Photo opportunities abounded.

The river is crowded with lunch time tour boats.

They were filming a movie right outside our hotel. When we walked to dinner Wednesday night we had seen a bunch of workers painting a building and working on the inside, there were big baskets of fruits and vegetables as well as a guitar and a cello sitting on the sidewalk at 8 pm. We thought it was a bit odd. It was all explained when we found ourselves walking thru a movie set. You can see the rails for the camera in the lower right.

Tired of typing, Clayton and Lisa are making rabbit stew and we have been enjoying the watermelon with horseradish we discovered in Vienna. Have you tried it yet?? Why not??