What better way to chase away the gloom of grey midwinter, than by reminiscing about, and perhaps planning, a summer holiday. The seed of this holiday was in fact sown in winter. A few years ago I had watched the New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, parts of which are always illustrated with short…
Tag: Danube
The Joy of Simple Things- Visiting Lupa Island
While I was definitely aware of their existence, neither the much advertised Lupa Beach nor the neighbouring Omszk lake ever seemed like particularly attractive propositions to me. No matter how I look at it, the idea of a lakeside premium beach, in which the premium basically stands for faking a seaside experience so you can…
Slow Train to Mosquito Kingdom: Daytrip to Rácalmás
Coronavirus times notwithstanding, Déli station was aflutter with activity on the morning of a bank holiday Friday which promised undisturbed summer sun. Many in the crowd were setting off on university freshmen camps, broken down into the mandated, colour coded, smaller groups, yet still converging into a rather sizeable gathering that clogged access to the…
Suburban Waterworlds-A Walk by the Danube on Csepel Island
About a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon an article describing the wild charms of the Kolonics György walkway, nestled away in lush solitude on the eastern shore of Csepel Island. What a lovely proposition, I cried out. Alright, I didn’t, everything happened at a mental level only, but I felt like dramatizing this…
Never Too Early for Some Morning Mist
Should you decide that having woken up with the sun on a Sunday morning (or what you assume to be the sun, hidden by a thick veil of golden-yellow mist) you might as well go out for a walk, and some pictures while you’re at it, you will learn some important facts about Budapest mornings,…
(Un)godly Lights over Gellért Hill
There is a category of ideas which look excellent both before the event itself, like a hopeful promise yet to be fulfilled that will surely feel just right when it finally comes to pass and in retrospect, when all the wrinkles and annoyances are smoothed over by the candyfloss hues of remembrance. This category of…
Sunday Bender in Visegrád
I’ve never met a medieval fortress I liked, or, to be more precise, one I was genuinely impressed with. The problem obviously lies with the fact that novels and history books, paired with an active imagination, raised the bar of what I expected to a level no grouping of ruins, no matter how well maintained,…
A Most (Un)Orthodox Daytrip to Vác
I’ve occasionally flirted with the idea of setting out on a voyage and ending up somewhere totally different, which of course has its mild dangers if you arrive with your meant for Greece bathing suit in the heart of the Taklamakan desert, so I decided to approach things on a smaller scale and see how…
January Fog along the Danube
Yesterday, while strolling by the Danube, and seeing, in a first phase frankly nothing, and then an odd shape here and there, it dawned on me that I haven’t written a weather complaint based piece for a long time, and since I consider myself pretty good at this exercise, such failings must be promptly corrected,…
A Limes Ran Through It- Aquincum and Római-part
Our recent visit to the Kiscelli Museum came with the extra bonus of a free ticket to either the Castle or the Aquincum museums, which can be used for up to 30 days from the purchase of the first ticket. Emboldened by this prospective, we decided to go for the Aquincum museum, which proved to…
Pocket Diary Budapest 