StCirq

I don't usually ask questions here, but I'm stymied even after hours of internet time with Seat61 and other sites. Here is our upcoming itinerary:

Leaving Les Eyzies for Paris October 12 by train. Tickets purchased. Hotel in Paris to be arranged, but not concerned about that.

Flying to Budapest on Air France from CDG on October 13. Tickets purchased.

Spending October 13-18 in Budapest. Hotel booked.

October 18 - we want to leave Budapest by train and head to Bratislava, where we have booked a hotel for two nights, the 19th and 20th. Is there somewhere we can get off the train between Budapest and Bratislava and spend one night in a nice town? I cannot find this anywhere. Are they all direct trains? It doesn't matter to us which train station we leave Budapest from, as long as we can make a stop and then continue on the next day easily to Bratislava. Barring a stop on the way, we will buy tickets to Brno in the Czech Republic, book a hotel there for one night, and then backtrack to Bratislava the next day.

October 21 we will be back in Budapest and take a late afternoon flight to Paris, where we will spend two nights before going home to the Dordogne.

I'm finding it very difficult to get information, even with the Man in Seat 61's help, on where we might hop off the train between Budapest and either Bratislava or Brno. It would ideally be a small town, not another city, but at this point I'm not going to be picky.

Any help is appreciated. I'm not so familiar with this part of Europe and I can muddle by a bit with Slovak and Czech, but Hungarian is a mystery (I do realize there is info in English, and German which I can understand, but there don't seem to be any websites that set it all out clearly in any language I can clearly understand).

tonfromleiden

The 8.40 and 9.40 (and possibly others) from Keleti have a stop in Györ, which you might like.

PalenQ

Budapest-Keleti dep 07:25

Vac dep 08:10
Nagymaros-Visegrad dep 08:24
Szob dep 08:36
Sturovo dep 08:49
Nove Zamky dep 09:16
Bratislava hl.st. arr 10:07

The main EC trains take this route- www.bahn.de/en - tells all the stops between any two cities by train so play around on that German Railways schedule site for all or most European trains.

Whathello

oh dear, I'll be in Dresden on 12th evening. Missing an opportunity to meet a gorgeous woman will weigh on my sleep.

Have fun in your trip ! NEver been to any of those places...

Ps : don't use the word 'kunde' in Czech republic, it doesn"t mean client as in German... not at all ;-)

StCirq

Ah, thank you all so much. How did you find this? I am kicking myself for not being able to! I did note Kyör - will look into it tomorrow, and thank you tonfromleiden. Thank you so much, Pal, will check out all those others, as well. I messed up by not checking bahn.de - am not in the habit of doing that, but obviously I should learn to do so if I am going to go gallivanting around strange places on this continent!

Whathello, you are a sweetheart. Any chance you'll be in Paris the nights of the 12th or 21st or 22nd? Would love to see you again.

I'll have to look up "kunde." Not that I have any clients in either Germany or the Czech Republic, LOL. My Czech is very rudimentary, my German quite passable depending upon where in the country I am (we were in a café in Le Bugue today, and there were two Germans at the table next to us, and I don't know where they were from in Germany, but it was somewhere where I'm not good at deciphering the accent - I got about every third word, that's all).

Anyway, thank you all so much for your suggestions. Will report back when we figure out where we're going.

tower

Mellen dear.....good to see you back to posting here. It gets crazier by the day...so we need the few posters like you to tell it like it is! Go get 'em StC!

Thought these pics of Budapes(h)t would help you familiarize yourself with the city...some were take in the 1980's (so my late first wife Judy is visible)..the others with Roz were taken in the 2000's. I found English wide spoken as I did an ample number of interviews for two of my books. My Yiddish was of little help as most of today's Hungarian Jews only speak Hungarian. I live in Ojai about 90 miles from L.A. and pushing 88, I don't travel overseas any longer. Too much of a hassle now. https://goo.gl/photos/sjSSNwGpmnEPvj4t8
I found Bratislava as well as Brno to be dull and underwhelming. However the scenic High Tatras of Slovakia were fun, even in the snow. I'll post below. Drastic differences after the split Czechoslovakia of yesterday.

tower

Republic of Slovakia (just a few months after the split of 1993) https://goo.gl/photos/ANgn9X5ULTo2iJDc6
stu

PalenQ

It takes three steps on www.bahn.de/en to get to the intermediate stops- may not be apparent at first

click on Details for the above

then up comes intermediate stops

Is Wunderbar!

PalenQ

StCirq- how do you come to speak some Czech or Slovakian - are you of Czech or Slovak ancestry - like me half Czech but know only a very few words - like "kravy" for cows and "biele kitke" for white flowers and especially "dirch hoobou" for shut up (spellings only a guess)!

StCirq

Yo, Tower! Thanks for your input. We are looking forward to visiting the synagogues and Jewish quarter of Budapest very much. Not to mention eating well and just wandering around this part of Europe, which is not new to me, but is to my husband, who is Jewish and always interested in that history. The history of Jewish people in Hungary is pretty grabbing - 600,000 of them annilated.

One of the lovely things about living in Europe is being able to country-hop with a certain abandon. It's often cheaper for us to travel around than to stay at home and feed ourselves, buy things for the house, etc. Really, we're on a budget, but it's often a wash between staying at home and traveling. So who wouldn't choose to travel, eh?

I read a lot of reviews of Bratislava that weren't entirely complimentary, but then I read this little interesting book about the culture there (it's upstairs, so I'm too lazy to climb to get it, sorry), and it seemed to me it might be an interesting place to visit, as the last time I was in the area was in 1983, before the Fall of the Wall, and I expect one can digest some really important changes between now and then.

Same with Brno. I was there in 1983. Everything I've read says the Czechs themselves consider it a dull place. Well, it was all a dull place in 1983, but scary and fascinating in its own way.

Anyway, we don't need beautiful places or fancy eats or anything much other than a new view of a new place that's going to teach us something about somewhere new and different. Not every place has to be beautiful or even memorable. We're lucky to be able to see many, many places.

StCirq

Palanq,I have spent my entire life learning other languages. It is my passion. I'm good at it, though one can never be really good at it. One can learn a few languages really fluently and a few others so-so and a bunch of others at a mediocre level, and then others at just the few-words-here-and-there-level, but it's all worth it IME. I see it as a real window onto the culture of a country. Without the language, you are hedged out of the everyday experience, as much as much as you might think otherwise.

I am trying to learn some Hungarian and Slovakian for our next trip. Slovakian isn't so hard, but Hungarian is a bitch, but I'll get it. Language is just sounds - it's not that hard;it just takes practice.

Cowboy1968

Just got back from Bratislava today. Was there two days for a conference, but had some time to explore the Old Town. Very nice.
Have been in Brno earlier this year. Thought it was also nice, but somehow I liked Bratislava a bit better.
Both are not exactly big cities. Well, by inhabitants both are not small, but the (for tourists) relevant Old Town districts are "walkable" AKA not huge. Most people live in the outskirts, though.
Would be a bit unfair to compare either city with Prague, Budapest or Vienna as they are just smaller in size.

tower

Mellen...in Hungary, a 30 minute train ride gets you to Szentendre (St. Andrews). It's touristy I suppose, but we enjoyed a nice lunch and a day of walking the streets and along the Danube embankment (where Roz is sitting). It's a nice break from the hustle and bustle of busy Budapes(h)t.

I would suggest that if you opt To "take the baths" go to the indoor classic at the venerable Gellert Hotel on the Buda side.(see pics). In comparison with the monstrous outdoor baths in Pesht, there is no contest. You will feel you're in a time warp...same for the old Hungaria (New Yorker) art deco restaurant on Erzabet. Passable food and desserts too. (again see the pic).

If you can possibly get in touch with Robert Turan, one of the Jewish Museum curators/guides (attached to the Great Synagogue on Dohany)...of course the synagogue courtyard with the metal weeping willow is a must see... it's a gift from Tony Curtis in the name of his father. I've seen dozens of Holocaust memorials around the world..none can counter this one. One of the most dramatic is Treblinka shown in the pics (75 miles NE of Warsaw)

We never stay in chain hotels, but broke the rule when we stayed at the Budapest (Buda side of town) Hilton. Marvelous with great views of the Danube and Parliament across it. It was a military barracks refurbished..also has a casino. Don't get sucked in by one of the three or four ripoff restos...we found the ubiquitous mom and pops much better without mortgaging your Dordogne house!! Hungarians have always been foodies and it shows in the places we bumped into.

There are now 60,000 Jews still living in Budapesht...antiSemitism is outwardly practiced. So what else is new?

The little man in the pic of me in front of the Sinagoga and in his apartment closeby (with Judy) is the late Gyula Drechsler a famous Jewish hero who escaped as a teenager, certain eventual deportation to the Death Camps, while working in a forced labor gang. He soon gathered other young escapees, one who would someday become his wife (in the pic)and took to the forests, not to come out until they heard that the Russians were coming, breaking through the defenses the Nazi's employed. (I wrote a piece dedicated to him in one of my books (Withered Roots, Isaac Nathan Publishing, 1994)

I'm certain you will find great enjoyment and illumination on your trip!

Stu

Michael

I know that you do not like Austria, but the Vienna airport is almost halfway between Vienna and Bratislava, so you could get there without going into Vienna or spending any significant amount of time in Austria.

Michael

I meant my comments as an alternative to returning to Budapest.

StCirq

Stu, you are such a wealth of information. Thank you for the photographs, many of which seem to me to be not much different from my memories of this part of the world the last time I was there in 1983. I am finding it difficult to plan this trip for so many reasons, not the least of which are that the history is complicated and the languages frustrate me. It's not at all the same as bopping off to Spain or Italy for a few days. It seems to require a lot more of an investment in intellect and planning. Which is fine; it's just different.

I will see if we can possibly make contact with Robert Turan. That would indeed be special. We do plan to visit the Gellert for the baths. We are staying, thanks to ira on this board, at the Residence Baron, which also looks to have some lovely bath facilities. We are great fans of baths and spas and will take advantage of them wherever we can. And we already have Szentendre on our list of things to do for a day trip.

Thanks, Michael, but we have to return to Budapest anyway, as we are flying out of there back to Paris on the 21st. I would rather skip Austria if possible. Small-minded of me, for sure, but if I don't have to stop there I'd just rather not.

Percy

Agree with tower about seeing things in Budapest.

StCirq I am sure you are all planned out for Bratislava

But if I can add a few hints.

1. I would walk up to the Bratislava Castle for great views back down to the town and to Fisherman's Square and the Bridge.

2. While you are up at the Castle looking back down that big white Complex building to your right as you look down is the Parliament.

3. Walking up to the Castle ( or coming down) you have to pass by the narrowest building in Europe, the "House of Good Shepherd".. it has one room on each floor.

4. There are three statues (figures) that one tries to find when walking about in Bratislava,

(a) One is the Sewer Man, coming out of a man-hole.

(b) Napoleon Soldier Statue ( easy he is in the main square). Lean on the bench beside him, like he is doing and have your picture take.)

(c) The Paparazzi photographer hiding at the corner of the Paparazzi Café ..taking your picture.

Here they are:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=papar...P4bnDUe6ezM%3A


You will of course go under and through St. Michael's Gate Arch.

Stop right under the arch and look down on the ground at the golden circle which shows you East, West North and South directions.

Finally try not to miss this:

Walk across the Novy (New) Bridge to the single Pylon Tower.

Go inside and pay 3 euros to go up to the revolving restaurant.... but don't bother going in for a drink when you get to the top....

..instead take the stairway another set of flights up and you are at the very very top ..outside out in the open.

Superb 360 degree views especially back down to the Danube, the Castle, Parliament building and St. Martin's Church.

Here, you can just imagine what the views are like

https://www.google.ca/search?q=New+B...w=1340&bih=690

StCirq

Thank you so much, Percy! What a wealth of information Fodorites have to offer. I am saving every suggestion here and will do my best to take advantage of them all.

I love the paparazzi statues! I guess one has to appreciate the freedom of expression that went wild after Communist suppression ended. I've felt the same thing seeing certain things in Spain that burst forth after Franco.

WoinParis

It is fascinating to discuss with people who spent part of their life under communism and then went to see their country opening and becoming capitalistic.
I've had numerous discussions with Poles or EastGermans, it is an eye opener for people like me who take democracy for granted - or for people ready to throw it away and vote for Trump....

PalenQ

I was in Prague twice before the Velvet Revolution brought down the Soviet puppet government and it was awful - oh the castle area and bridge were there but shabby - there was nothing in stores or restaurants that could be called edible IMO.

The only thing one summer in Prague being sold on streets was watermelon- everywhere.

Yes you look at folks who are middle age and think they must have been brought up under the Soviet influence and propaganda, etc. Sobering how quickly it all fell like a house of cards and how nicely it has turned out after years of hardship after the changeover to be sure.

WW2 had terrible after effects - think how Austria-like Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Poland would or could have been!