Budapest, Bratislava & Vienna

We left Subotica (Serbia) early to hopefully beat the crowd at the border crossing.
Passing a LONG line of trucks we arrived wuth just one car in front of us at the Serbian checkpoint. Passports cleared but then had to pull aside for an in-depth inspection of the car contents. We proceeded to the Hungarian checkpoint and handed our passports and car rego papers to a Rebel Wilson lookalike. A check of the car, photos of us taken then asked to move the car to a second area where we emptied the entire contents of the van onto tables for individual inspection. (The van did need a bit of a tidy up anyway, so that’s done now at least) They realised we were as boring as we told them we were and we were allowed to leave. Phew. Hopefully that’s the last major checkpoint before Madrid Airport!
So we drove through the Hungarian countryside, vineyards and farmland, farmers finalising their harvests on both sides.

We arrived at a town called Siófok which is located on Lake Balaton, the largest lake in eastern Europe – 600km2!
We had a bite to eat, with leftovers taken for dinner tonight and wandered around the foreshore area.

The lake is really pretty. Apparently it’s a really popular summer destination.

There are nice gardens and a water fountain that follows the tune of a song – we heard Aerosmith’s “I don’t want to miss a thing”.

We headed back to the car and drove to Budapest. Traffic wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately the niggly car noise we haven’t heard for a few weeks recurred. Obviously not heat related then. 😒
We reached Budapest and crossed Erzsébet híd (Elisabeth Bridge) and excitment rose as Budapest was Budapesting. Another few blocks and we have parked our car for a few days. Now out to explore.

We walked from our accommodation towards the river,

stopping at a church on the way

and wandering through a touristy street on the way back.

It’s certainly noisier here than it was in the Balkans!

This morning we joined a food tour. We were the only people on it so it was essentially a private tour. It started in the Central Market, which was designed and built by Gustav Eiffel’s company in 1896.

Our guide talked us through Hungarian meats where no part of an animal is wasted, and Hungarian paprika!
Our first dish was 5 different types of salami (horse, cow venison, winter and hungarian pig – we actually saw and fed this type of pig at a farm near inverness in April) and pork crackling.

Then it was Lángos, a fried bread with sour cream and cheese. This was so yum.

Then it was on to pickles of all kinds – cauliflower, baby watermelon, capsicum, chilli, gherkin, sauerkraut, plum and garlic.
We also then had a taste of Hungarian Truffle.

We left the market and took a tram along the river. From the tram we saw the Citadel, Buda Castle, some cathedrals, bridges, Parliament House, and the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial to Hungarian Jewish people killed in WW2.
Our first stop in this neighbourhood was a cake shop for a Hungarian scone made with goats’ cottage cheese in the dough and another with poppy seed paste. Poppy seed fillings are very popular here.

A little further down the street we stopped at a chocolate shop for a popular treat made with dark chocolate, a sour cherry and cognac liqueur.

A little further down the street we purchased some Rétes, a type of strudel, but with less pastry. The flavours we had were mango & cottage cheese, apple and poppy seed & sour cherry.

We ate these after we had a bowl of Gulyásleves (Hungarian Goulash) soup at a restaurant across the road.

We then thankfully walked a distance to our next stop, another indoor market where we were served three types of sausages – liver, blood and Paprika,

and a traditional layered potato dish. By this time we could only have a single bite of each due to stomach spacing issues!

We washed these down with an elderflower drink followed by Unicum, a digestif that a doctor created for the Emperor in 1790. It’s secret recipe contains 40 herbs and is 40% alcohol! It tasted a bit like cough syrup. Apparently it’s the most popular spirit in Hungary.

We then walked to the train station and took the metro back into central Budapest for some wine tasting with paired cheeses. Hungary produces lots of different types of wines, but none in export quantities, so you can only buy them in Hungary. The three we had were delicious, a white, a red and a dessert wine.

It was then on to our final stop at a well known pastry shop called Auguszt, run by the same family for over 150 years. Here we tasted a Sacher torte (better than the Viennese version apparently), the ‘cake of the year’ and an apricot and dark chocolate cake.

We were finally finished, walked back to our apartment and had a lie down to digest some of that food!

This morning we headed out on a planned walk, to visit some of the sights we want to see. No doubt we will see other things along the way.
Our first stop was the Hungarian State Opera, a beautiful building ornately decorated inside. Tours are only in the afternoon, so we didn’t see much of the interior.

We then walked to St.Stephen’s Cathedral. It was first completed about 150 years ago and restored after sustaining a lot of damage in WW2. It is beautiful inside, lots of gold and marble.

The most interesting feature of this church is the hand of St.Stephen – first King of Hungary- who died in 1038!! It is in the ornate box

We then walked to the Parliament building, the second largest Parliament building in Europe, the largest is in Romania. We happened to arrive right on 12 noon and saw the changing of the guard.

From there we walked along the river stopping at the Shoes On The Danube memorial for the approx 20,000 Jewish people who were murdered on this river bank during WW2.

We then decided to take a cruise on the Danube to see the city from a different point of view. That was a relaxing hour.

Back on land we walked again to the Central Market, then to the Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library before heading to Szimpla Kert for a drink and a traditional chimney cake.

This morning we left Budapest and drove north-west to Bratislava in Slovakia. On this visit we are only staying here one night, so we made sure to arrive early to maximise our time.

The road here had roadworks almost the entire way, the opposite direction had one lane (of two) of, essentially, parked trucks. We probably passed >1000 of them, no exaggeration, we did count for a while.

Arrival into Bratislava. Castle to the left, UFO tower to the right.

We parked at the hotel, and on their advice headed straight to the “Slovak Pub”. This really cool, traditional pub used to be the meeting place for intellectuals that were the force behind a Slovak language the Slovakian revival in 19th century. We drank their home-made beer that was awarded second best craft beer in 2024. Our snack was Perohi, some with bacon and dill, the others with potato and feta cheese. YUM.

After lunch we wandered around the old town looking at the architecture and popping into souvenir shops.

Then we saw a sign for wine tasting, so wandering and souvenirs got abandoned. We arrived just in time for a session of tasting in the dark, so thought ‘why not?’. This was a really cool unique experience. We were in an old brick cellar, lights were off and via an audio guide we were led through 4 tastings. One of each colour; you’re probably thinking ‘but there are only three: red, white & rosé’ but we also had orange wine!

After this we wandered around the old town looking at the architecture and popping into souvenir shops.
Then we saw a sign for beer tasting, so wandering and souvenirs got abandoned. We shared 20 different beers. Some were easy to drink, others were easy to leave.

After that we just wandered around the old town looking at the architecture and popping into souvenir shops.

Our wandering kept us away from anymore tastings, thankfully. We strolled along the river, there were 6 river cruise boats tied up. We went by the Blue Church that certainly lives up to it’s name

and then on to dinner at a restaurant recommended by the hotel staff. It was a restaurant in an old theatre that was a monastery before that!
We feel as though we made great use of our limited time here. It’s a beautiful city.

We drove to Vienna this morning and checked in to our hotel.

When we were organised we walked into the city and went to MozartHaus.

We toured the museum and bought tickets for a concert on Sunday night.

From there we walked to St.Stephen’s Church and did the audio tour of the church and the tour of the catacombs.

Apparently there are three main churches in Vienna and when the Emperor died they couldn’t decide which one should have the honour of him being buried there.

So one church has his body, one has his heart and St.Stephen’s has his other internal organs, in a brass container, preserved in schnapps! This tradition continued and there is one room just of brass boxes of intestines!

We were hungry by this point to found an Austrian restaurant and went to have a meal, wiener schnitzel of course!

Today we jumped on a train and headed to Schloss Schönbrunn, former summer home of the Habsburgs. If you’re familiar with Versailles, this was a little smaller in scale, less grandiose and considerably quieter, all of which made it far more enjoyable.

It started with a very clever computer generated display that summarised the history of the palace.

We then toured the state rooms and the rest of the palace.

Our favourite rooms were the banquet hall that doubled as a ballroom and the blue bedroom, which was the imperial couple’s (Franz & Sisi) bedroom.

Sarah had watched the series “The Empress” last year, so had good context for all of the ‘Sisi hysteria’! Must watch it again when we get home!

Lunch was a hotdog, not in a roll but in a baguette that has a hole drilled into it.
Then it was back on the train to the centre of Vienna and St Stephens Church to finish what we didn’t get to do yesterday: 2 towers and some more of the interior. As it turned out it was lucky we came to the church yesterday as it is closed for tourists today, though we were still able to go up both towers because we already had the tickets.

From the towers we could see the ceramic tiled roof up close-there are over 250,000 of them, each weighs 2kg!
The South Tower used to serve as the fire watchman’s tower, looking for and notifying of fires in Vienna. Watchmen and fire-fighters manned the tower day and night from the 15th century to 1956.

They seem to be putting up barricades around the centre of Vienna right now, closing down the area around the church, we Googled it, there is an ordination ceremony taking place this afternoon.. We will keep walking. Headed back to our hotel for a few hours off before this evening’s planned activity.

After a break and a nap we headed back across the river around 8pm and had the most delicious Vietnamese meal. Sooo good. We then walked the shirt distance to the Hofburg Palace to join a Ghosts and Legends nighttime walking tour.

The tour took us from Hofburg Palace to Augustinian Church, Blutgasse (Blood Street), Neuer Markt and St.Stephen’s Cathedral. Our guide told stories of the Hapsburgs, Mozart, Witches, Dracula, Knights and the Elizabeth Báthory the Bloody Countess.

When the tour finshed at midnight we walked back to our hotel.

And in less than 9 hours we were back starting another walking tour. This one called “Vienna: World War II, Hitler and Nazi History”.

This tour took us around some area of Vienna that are not on the usual tourist route and included sights such as a hotel that became the Gestapo headquarters for the Third Reich where many people were tortured and killed,

buildings named for people who stood up to the Nazis, many of whom were killed because of that; the Vienna fire station that was left with one working fire truck (of >40) when the Germans retreated;

plaques on the ground that record details of people who were detained and transported to concentration camps;

places where Hitler gave speeches after the Anschluss in 1938.

We also saw the first Parliament House

and stopped in Jewish Square, where the first Jewish community lived before being slaughtered in the 1400s.

Juden House has a very controversial anti-semitic plaque on it. Removing it is apparently often discussed, but has not been because of those who believe that history must be remembered, so as to not be repeated.

Our guide also talked about what was happening in Austria between WW1 and WW2 that made many people want Austria to reunite with Germany, how Austria responded after the war and how it has been acknowledging it’s role in the past 30 or so years.
It was an interesting tour, that answered some questions we had about that time in Austria.

Leaving Hofburg Palace we saw some Roman ruins!

We finished our day with a small concert in the basement of the Mozarthaus.

Today was food tour day, it was leisurely and tasty.
First up was an open sandwich from a restaurant that has been serving these sandwiches for over 100 years. As the restaurant name is tricky to pronounce, their advertising is “an unspeakably good sandwich”.

Our sandwich was served on rye bread, a topping of beef, pickle and egg.

We were also served 150ml of beer, at 1030am in the cutest little beer steins.

The sandwich was so tasty that we went back and bought some after the tour for tonight’s dinner, if needed, and breakfast tomorrow.
Then we stopped at a restaurant that has been operating since 1681, here we had a Punschkrspfen (rum cake) that was very sweet so you didn’t get an overwhelming rum flavour.

From here we walked to a newer restaurant, this one operating since 1683. We had schnitzel with potato salad, and goulash with Nockeri, fluffy little dumplings. Here we were also given a wine cocktail called a “white spritzer”. On a hot day I’m sure it’s refreshing, today wasn’t hot.

Our next stop was a street stall where we had Käsekrainer, a beef and pork sausage served with bread, tarragon mustard and freshly grated horseradish. It was really juicy and flavoursome.