Budapest

Budapest is a huge city that takes a lot of effort to navigate the public transportation, especially with the Hungarian language.  But once figured out we could jump on and off the tram or bus to save a lot of walking.

we had a 72 hr pass for all the public transportation but no one ever checked tickets!

Anyone who has been to Budapest will rave about the magnificent architecture and nighttime lighting along the Danube River.
 

locals love to gather on the bridges for social times.  The bring picnics and sit on the flat railings 

The Parliment at night is the highlight

The Parliament was built from 1885 to 1902 - 1896 was the millennium year for Hungary and it's huge!!!  When it was built Hungary was part of  the Austro-Hungarian empire which was triple the size of today and they needed to make a statement of how powerful they were.  Today they only use about one-eight of all the space for their legislature.  The spire on the dome, and also the St. Istvan's Basilica spire, are 96 meters high and there are 96 steps on the magnificent main staircase.  

the 96 steps

Why?  Because the year 996 is significant in the history of the country when the Magyars, who were a nomadic Central Asian barbaris tribe, started to settle the area.  Many of the greatest monuments and buildings in Budapest were actually built to celebrate the 1896 date.  Even the national anthem takes 96 seconds to sing!  

Parliament interior is decorated with 84 pounds of gold & it's where the jeweled Hungarian crown is displayed

Museum of Ethnography - this beautiful building was the "runner up" in the design for the Parliament and is across the square

Ministry of Agriculture building was the 2nd runner-up in the design and sight of the 1956 Uprising against Soviet rule where some 200,000 protestors gathered calling for the demands against the communist regime. There are little "pegs" in the columns depicting the machine gun fire that erupted and killed more than 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviets. 

  

During the 1956 Uprising, protestors cut out the Soviet-style insignia out of the Hungarian flag

The Castle that really isn't a castle

We have gone to several of the Thermal Baths that are so popular in Hungary.  

Lukacs Thermal Bath-a historic 12th century indoor/outdoor heated naturally by hotsprings that was transformed in the 19th century into what today's spa . Mid-day it's mostly retired people enjoying "taking the waters" and enjoying the underwater effervescence, geyers, neck shower and other medically prescribed treatments

Lap swimming pools are separate from the "leisure" pools

Hot pools and ice pools-I don't know how you use this ice but there was a lot of it

 There was a little ice water foot pool to walk through that had pebbles on the bottom.  I guess it was a foot massage-type pool.  There were many rooms with signage that we didn't understand but people could stay for several hours in and out of the various pools.

You are given a water-proof "watch" that is used to lock the lockers and cabins (dressing rooms) - great system!

           

The famous Chain Bridge connects the Buda and Pest sides of the city over the Danube River.  We walked and biked over several of the bridges

Not sure what our AirBnB room would look like when this was the main door to enter off the street

fortunately it had a lift (elevator) because we were on the third floor-rather old and small

We had 4 locked doors (each with a different key or code) to enter our room.  Is the city that dangerous?? Don't think so...

                                       
We took a 2 hour bus to a nearby town of Eger for a few days



We walked all over the town and enjoyed the Market Hall some of the largest tomatoes and peppers!

Paprika!!  The quintessential ingredient in Hungarian dishes.  I bought some here at the Open Market

The many kinds of fresh mushrooms

fresh milk poured into your own bottle 

We stayed in the Hotel Senator-Haz, a unique small hotel in a 300 year old building (the hotel is "newer"-35 years after the fall of the Soviet Union)

Eger Castle is revered by Hungarians as the site of the great defeat of the Ottoman Turks by Istvan Dobo in 1552.  

Eger is a one of the best wine regions in Hungary and is known for the Bull's Blood (Egri Bikaver) a hearty red wine.  We went on a tour of the Bishop's cellars which is a huge 4 km long network of undergrown tunnels and caves that was used to store the wine that the Hungarian farmers were required to provide as a tithe or tax to the church.

cellars that were under the Bishop's Palace

Now back to Budapest to start our 8 day River Cruise on the Danube

Bosnia and Herzegovina-one country with two names

The Old Bridge in Mostar

We had an 88 mile bus trip from Dubrovnik to Mostar that took over 3 hours!  Some of the slow travel was due to coastal roads but most delays were from going back and forth across the Croatian and Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH) borders three times which meant 6 passport checkpoints. The last one to enter BiH took 45 minutes! If they had computers they must have been pretty slow!  

Don't blink or you'll miss the coast of Bosnia & Herzegovina at only 12 miles-Neun is their only city on the Adriatic Sea

The lengthly check point upon entering Bosnia & Herzegovina.  The bus attendant collected all the passports and gave them to the border officer through the little window

We spent 3 days in Mostar which is a small city in the Herzegovina part with a wonderful old town straddling two banks of the Neretva River.  BiH, or sometimes just called Bosnia, has some of the most complex and fascinating history. 

A fairly new hotel but the decor was traditional Ottoman red woven carpets & old copper utensils

We took a private walking tour given by local resident Alma Elezović who is a highly educated, licensed tour guide with international relationships. She give us a condensed history of Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia and current BiH. Her family was intimately involved with the war and subsequent recovery and redevelopment. 

"Old Bridge" in Mostar dates back to 1459 and "connected" the Roman Catholic Croats on one side to the Bosniak Muslims on the other.  For four centuries, Croats, Bosniaks along with Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Sephardic Jews existed side-by-side.  But the 1990 conflict destroyed much of the Old Town and virtually all of the bridges.  Workers who rebuilt this bridge researched and learned the traditional methods and used the same tools and stone from the old quarries

The old Turkish Bazaar streets where copper smiths, leather and other trades worked.  There are still a few coppersmiths but mostly souveniers.  Alma remembers as a child going to some of the same artists that are there today.


Alma's son, Jaz, operates a successful coffee house roasting and grinding coffee for the best Bosnian coffee we have had. Interestingly, his coffee roaster was used by his parents prior to the war and survived to again offer Bosnian coffee to the world. Jaz gave us a personal "lesson" in how to savor the Bosnian coffee.

40 year old coffee roaster

Very similar to Turkish coffee but Bosnians will tell you it is very different!

Destroyed buildings from the 1990 war are abandoned

There was scaffolding but we never saw anyone working

The hundeds of people buried in this Bosniak cemetary all have the same dates of 1993 or 1994 of their deaths

Before coming here we knew virtually nothing about these countries. Our knowledge about Yugoslavia and its leader Tito was limited to what we learned from within the US. There are always more sides to a story and we’ve discovered that Tito was praised, honored and loved as he successfully unified these national groups into a modern Yugoslavia and people felt they had a good life.

In a nutshell, this small country was ruled by and influenced by four empires: Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian, two kingdoms: Bosnian and Yugoslav, three world monotheistic religions: Christianity (Orthodoxy and Catholicism), Islam and Judaism, and different architectural styles.

The old Mostar train station still looked from the communist-era and clearly didn't get a lot of post-war funds to upgrade 

The train station still had these old "stand-up or/ squat-down" toilets and I even had to pay to use them.  I hate these!  If anyone knows how to use them successfully please let me know!

We next took a two-hour train following the river, through some beautiful mountains, and  into Sarajevo, the capital of BiH. 

"Pigeon Square" Main Marketsplace.  This is the last remaining Sebilj, a fountain available to all

Three times during the 20th century Sarajevo was the center of the world. 

1st-in the year 1914 when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand took place in Sarajevo (leading to the start of WWI).

2nd-the Bosnian capital reached the world’s headlines in the year 1984 by hosting the 14th Winter Olympic Games, and

3rd-just eight years later Sarajevo became a city under the longest siege in the modern history of Europe, and for the third time was the center of the whole world. The aggressors used force and weapons to destroy everything in the city, even the Olympic sites.

Sarajevo is a city the blends and merges buildings, cultures and religions. In a two mile stretch,  historic Ottoman-era Old Town smashes right into the grand Austro-Hungarian 19th century palaces and buildings and in another mile becomes high-rise glass urban centers.

Here are some random pictures of Sarajevo.

the Old Bazaar still selling their wares

The traditional "fast food" called Cevapcici-cheap, spicey, minced meat "sausage" & pita

the "bell" or lid that the burek is baked in

delicious Burek a Bosnian pie made from flaky filo dough with meat, cheese or potato filling.  This restaurant baked them in the old way under a metal lid over hot coals.

18th-19th century Hapsburg quarter when the Austro-Hungarian Empire brought Sarajevo into the modern world

outside cafes line this pedestrian street

Game Day for the Sarajevo Football (Soccer) team-they won 4-0 in the Premier League game

this was called "Sniper Alley" during the 1990s war where much of the relentless shelling and grenades occured

 

Most of these high rise buildings were already there before the Siege but were badly damaged-now repaired and beautiful

One of several large multi-level shopping malls we saw

Although Sarajevo is an upbeat, active city that promotes tolerance and diversity, there is rememberance of the terrible, unconventional medieval-style seige that cut off the city from food, water, electricity, telephone, medicine and other critical supplies.  This was in 1992-1995 and was the longest siege in modern European history.  There are many museums, memorials, evidence of motor and bullets and still many damaged and destroyed buildings.

As a reminder: "Sarajevo Rose" the impact of a grenade or blast that has been filled in with red resin and often framed.  These are all over the area and lots of smaller impacts too.

this one is in front of a church

bombed out skeletons of buildings and damaged exteriors with scattered blasts still there

Memorial on the bridge where the first victims of the Siege died- 2 young women-Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sucic
 

Memorial to the Children of Sarajevo-silver pillars than can be spun to see the names of the nearly 1,600 young victims of the fighting

Today people are hopeful about peace and trust that the younger generations will understand each other and learn to live together again.

Eastern Orthodox Cathedral

We had an extra day in Sarajevo after our flight to Budapest was cancelled and rescheduled 2 days later. We ended our stay in BiH staying in another historical hotel. The bright yellow Holiday Hotel was originally built for the ‘84 Olympics and later was the “ground zero” hotel housing journalists covering the 3-1/2 year long 1990’s Bosnian war. Today it’s a beautiful, modern hotel once again hosting tourists and business meetings-and it’s still bright yellow.