Help to all.
Well I got to Budapest safely after a great flight in the back row of quite a small plane.
It looked flat and green from the air then quite Communisticalky grim coming into the city,
But the city was beautiful with many very old buildings. Many have been restored since the war . Others still
have shelling holes in them.
I looked around the central area the first night , then the next day walked all over town seeing the Opera house,museums , monuments to heroes,Parliament building which is based on the.English one, then I crossed the river to Buda and climbed to the Citadel fortress for a great view then climbed up to the Castle area.
So I had a busy day. Then I met most of our tour group and went for dinner with them.
The next day 3 of us saw the Cathedral and the wizened precious ancient hand of a local saint, then spent 3-4 hrs at the Museum of Terror which documented the years of Communism and the usual force and intimidation and deportations etc used to subdue the locals. Very nasty stuff, but most of the baddies themselves ended up being tortured and killed there too by incoming baddies as policies changed.
Finally in 1990 it was over tho the last prisoners didn't get back from work camps in Russia until 2000.
We also went to the worlds 2nd biggest synagogue , but it had been designed by 2 Christians do I am none the wiser what a typical synagogue looks like.
The Jews there were in a Jetton also thru WW11 but because Hungary sided with Germany they were not deported until the last 5 months of the war and then 600,000 of their 713,000 population was killed!
Terrible stuff.
So that was a grim day of museums but very educational.
Yesterday we had a 5 hr train ride thru to Croatia, unspectacular flat green scenery. We had our passports investigated leaving Hungary then several kms down the track by Croatia, quite different to the usual.EU lack of interest.
We are in the 4th biggest city but it is very small and also empty as everyone has gone on holiday to the coast!!!
There are damaged buildings left from the '90's civil war, and a great many empty ones where the owners have not returned to claim them. The state has to wait 40 yrs before repossessing them and its only 21 yrs so far.
I read a bit about the conflict yesterday, it is very complex and hard to understand and not just between Muslims and Christians but more between Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Croats. The Croats are still very resentful that their leaders got up to 24 yrs in prison for war crimes but no Serb leader has been tried or imprisoned! In Croatia this is not other countries where there are actually trials going on even now.
We were supposed to have an optional day trip into the country side to Nat Park and see Vienese horses but we all opted out( expensive and no water in the scenic reserve) so it will be a quiet day seeing the few local sights!
There's 2 museums , Big church , a market then I may just have to sit and be socialable in a cafe !!! Damn.
Could come back to guesthouse and read I guess or sleep as have had 4 bad nights sleep, no reason , tho there were 1/4 hrly church bells all night last night.
Tonight we are going into the country for an authentic farmers dinner !!!!
Yeh right. ! Hope we don't have to sing or dress up and dance!!!!
Tomorrow we are going to the town that was bombed the most in the civil war .
Hope all is well.
Keep up texts and emails please.
Carol