Bustling thru Budapest…

The Hungarian Grand Coat of Arms with Gilded Crown...

The Mary Magdolna Church Tower inside castle grounds... This is all that remains of the original structure...

Hungary has had a troubled history for centuries…

From Tibor’s point of view, it all seemed to come from making the wrong choices at the wrong time… The government had for instance aligned themselves with Germany during World War II, and later with Russia… Both decisions having adversely affected the country…

Hungary used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which included parts, or the whole of countries such as Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Czech-Slovakia, Romania, and of course, Austria… Today, after many wars, and treaties signed, it is but a fraction of the size it used to be, with a population in the region of 10 million, rather than the 50 million it once had…

The day I arrived, thick lip and all, Tibor took me out on a city-wide tour…

I noticed that on many street corners and roadsides, large amounts of rubbish and junk were stacked and wondered why this was…? Perhaps the municipal union was on strike…?

The extensive layout of the Buda Castle, where Emperors and Kings once lived...

Matthias Church with its massive Gothic Tower, is currently being renovated...

Tibor explained that twice a year, the city council allowed people to toss their unwanted junk along the roadside in the city, where it was then collected to be disposed of by huge refuse trucks that compacted it all and sent it to be either burnt or used in a landfill…

In theory this worked out well, but in practice, it had become a huge problem…

Bands of Gypsy’s roamed through the city, scratching through the rubbish, taking what they considered to be valuable, and leaving behind them a mess of epic proportions…!!

Old refrigerators were torn apart to take the metal bits to be sold, leaving the inner insulation to be blown about by the wind… All along the roadside, Gypsies sat guarding their hoards of “rubbish”, waiting for their friends and relatives to come by with a small pick-up to collect what they had found…

If residents stopped taking advantage of this free opportunity to dispose of their unwanted junk, then the problem would be solved…

But disposing of junk costs money, and I guess that the residents would continue to turn a blind eye to the mess the Gypsies created, for the few days it took for the council to collect what remained of their junk…

We drove through both areas of the city, which comprise of Buda, on the western side of the Danube, and Pesht, on the eastern banks of this mighty river that flows through at least ten countries on its way to the Black Sea…

Its headwaters are in Germany, and it splits or flows through four capital cities, more than any other river in the world…

A total of nine bridges span the Danube in and around Budapest, joining the two halves of the city… There is the Liberty Bridge, formerly known as the Franz Josef Bridge after the Emperor who ruled the empire for almost 70 years… There is also the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, named after a former Empress of Hungary…

Liberty Bridge...Emperor Franz Josef drove the final rivet home, completing the bridge in 1896...

The roof of the Mattias Church is tiled in these striking patterns...

My guide and historian, Tibor Molnar, near the ramparts of the Fisherman's Bastion...

Tibor was a veritable mine of information about the city, and the history of Hungary, proving to be a most capable guide… He knew the names of most buildings and churches we passed on our tour, and proudly pointed them out to me, adding snippets of information about each, that eventually had me bewildered by all the information I was trying to absorb…!!

The factory where generators were once made, is now a parking lot...

The city was almost destroyed on no less than two occasions in the last century…

Once during World War II, when the Germans retreated under the Russian onslaught, and again during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising when they revolted against Russian domination…

We parked the car in an old factory which had once produced generators and now stood forlorn and empty, just like many others in the country, which had been bought out by larger Western companies to control the new markets presented to them…

We walked through the grounds of the Buda Castle, seeing the churches and marveling at the architecture of this huge castle, one of the largest I had seen so far…  The views out over the Danube are spectacular, and from the ramparts of the castle at the Fisherman’s Bastion, we looked down on the Houses of Parliament which cover a sizable portion of the opposite bank of the river…

The Hungarian House of Parlament... The 2nd largest in Europe after England's...

Below the castle, in a vast system of caves, is the “Hospital in the Rock”… We took the official tour along with a large group of tourists and saw how casualties were operated on here during the war, and how it was later converted into a shelter against nuclear attack… A vast labyrinth of rooms houses operating theatres and wards, radio control rooms and storage facilities, a mini power station where electricity was generated by means of diesel generators…

Entrance to the Hospital in the Rock, under Buda Castle...

This tourist barge was moored on the Danube...

One of the best known Swinger Clubs in Budapest, overlooking the Danube...

Being underground, the museum has a musty smell about it, and in some places, water dripped from the ceilings…

No photography is allowed down here, and although I was tempted to switch the flash on my camera off, and sneak a few photos, our guide seemed to keep a beady eye on all of us, and I wasn’t sure if he was the only “official” with us… I suspected that one or more of the “tourists” could have been there to ensure that no rules were broken…!!

We visited the old market, where we enjoyed a Hungarian sausage with mustard and bread, while we watched the crowds of tourist pass by… Tibor estimated that only 20% of the people we saw were locals… Traders had seen the potential of this busy spot, and had begun selling every imaginable souvenir of Hungary, there…!!

But tucked between all of the trinket sellers, were little shops where locals brought their fruit and vegetables, and their meat and other perishables…

The Old Market in Budapest with its hundreds of stalls...

There are as many butchers in the Old Market as there are vegetable sellers...

Kolbasz, (Sausage) with mustard on bread for lunch...

Although I have stayed in Budapest for longer than I had originally intended, Tibor and Panni continued to provide assistance whenever I needed it… I was able to post off all the maps and other documents that I no longer required, buy a few pairs of socks to replace the thick woollen ones that I had tossed away because they were too bulky, replace the slip-slops that had broken in North Africa, and give the Big Fella a good wash…

Tibor helped me plan a new route through to Turkey, and we laughed and joked about “my drunken route”…!! He had urged me to go find the road that many bikers deemed to be the most entertaining and technical in Eastern Europe, the infamous “Road 7C” in southern Romania…

Road 7C, Romania... It's a heart stopper, all right...!!!

Tibor and I try and make sense out my route planning... The Whisky helped make things a little clearer...

While he surfed the web looking for info, I plotted a route through to Turkey, which would take me through ten more countries before reaching Istanbul…!! The 5 600 km I would need to cover in the next three weeks meant that I would need to consider buying a set of tyres while I was in Turkey, because I doubted whether the present set would get me all the way to Singapore…!!

Getting the message across to the powers that be...

Riding through the Middle East with a set of tyres strapped to the Big Fella did not fill either of us with  bundles of glee…!! In fact, the Big Fella flatly refuses…!!

I would also have to change my front brake pads in Turkey, because by then they would have almost 64 000 kms behind them…!!

Budapest is known as the Porn Movie Capital of Europe... Now you can see why...!!

I had always planned to spend a few weeks in Turkey, not rushing around the cities looking for tyres and applying for visas, but rather resting up in some isolated seaside village, to prepare for my slog to Singapore…

I am beginning to think that the time I have allotted to this stint might not be nearly enough, and I may have to cut short my planned three month ride around Australia…!! Or push a few “Big Days” and try and ride around the Island in two months rather than three…!!

I cannot mess with the deadline of flying to Alaska by the middle of June 2011… That has to remain set in stone…!!

The road to Prudhoe Bay and Dead Horse is only open for a set length of time, and missing that window could mean an entire year added to my journey…

I would also need to get up there and back down into Canada before the end of July, or face having some of my extremities lost to the freezing weather…!!

One evening, Tibor and I went out to see the city by night, walking across the Chain Bridge and the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, seeing the Castle and many other landmarks lit up by huge floodlights…

While I watched lights twinkling on the waters of the Danube, I felt enormously grateful to Tibor for taking so much time to show me around… I also considered myself to be especially fortunate to be riding through Europe to visit people like the Molnar’s, and see places like Budapest…

The Matthias Church by night...

The Eastern Portal of the Chain Bridge over the Danube...

The Royal Castle stands proudly above the city, its lights twinkling on the Danube...

The Elizabeth Bridge named after wife of Franz Josef, the Kaiser and Konig von Ungarn...

Feny Utcai Piac (Light Street Market) in Buda, where Panni and I went shopping...

Like all cities, Budapest has its areas that are not as neat and tidy as others, places where graffiti artists have run amok with their spray cans… I think you have to draw the line at spraying the walls of a church that has stood for centuries, and the idiots that see no distinction between these and an alleyway, need to dipped in paint and hung out to dry…

Amidst this there are many beautiful buildings and monuments to be found, and for those who need to shop while they are on holiday, there are a few massive malls where corridors of boutiques are waiting to take your money…

Then there is Moscow Square, with its fast food joints, bus and tram stations and through it all runs the traffic of Budapest…

Strolling around in this area will reveal the wall of many buildings that are still pock-marked by the bullets fired during the Uprising in 1956…

Budapest has it all… And then some…!!

©GBWT 2010