So the theory was that Tanya would work-from-home from Globoka for two weeks, with one of those days being a (South African) public holiday which we could then use to go out, enjoy the place a bit.
Guess which day is the public holiday. Just guess.
And yes, it _is_ pissing down.
We had a cat when we bought the house. Gimmy, a rescue, he was never quite right in the head.
And then we got two more.
Phoebe and Misty. Misty was taken away from his mother too early, drove Phoebe crazy sucking and licking.
Couple of years later, after Gimmy died, we got two more — Toothless and Smudge.
Toothless (the black one) died young, but not before giving Phoebe such a hard time that she basically moved out and only came in to eat. When Toothless was gone, Phoebe came back and lived with Jessica for a while. But the outdoor life had been hard on her. She passed away in 2021.
Which brings us to today — Misty’s been eating less and vomiting more and in the last couple of weeks he’s lost what little weight he had left, so :-/
RIP Misty 2010-2025.
Which leaves Smudge, who seems to be in the prime of his life.
Time for more Kolodko, of course.
Frigyes Karinthy (1887–1938) was an author who also translated some H.G. Wells and A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh into Hungarian.
Garfield looking smug on the fence of the University of Veterinary Medicine.All the fence posts used to have animal faces on them, but many have disappeared. This one is of course new.
A bit later (we went back to Tanya’s favourite Budapest shop) we were on the tram and I spotted something on the wall (the same wall that has the tank and the worm and the Russian soldier we saw last time.
This one is new. It’s also not a Kolodko, it’s by Gergő Ámmer, and commemorates Ádám Török, a flutist-singer-songwriter who passed away in 2023. After a few weeks, it was stolen, and then recovered on the other side of the river. 
Got back on the tram, went to look for the Kolodko we searched for in vain last time.
In Vino Veritas. Once I realised that the Aquincum civil amphitheatre and the Aquincum military amphitheatre are two different places a few kilometers apart, it was easy (he is at the military amphitheatre).
Prince Árpád led the Magyar tribes when they settled in what is now Hungary, and is regarded by many as the founder of the country.
We found some cherries on a tree, giving us hope that we would have cherries at Globoka (last time we were there it had been a bad year for cherries).
And then we took the Metro to the other side of town to see the meerkat in front of the Children’s Clinic in District VIII.
Not a mini-statue. Budapest has the most diverse statues…
Chicken Thief “Csirkefogó”
That pretty much wraps up Budapest. There was a Wine & Champagne Festival the evening but by now out get up and go had most thoroughly got up and went, so that didn’t happen.
Tuesday morning we woke up to rain. Ah well, pack up, go to the station, catch the first train to Budapest.
It was running an hour late.
But there’s a very nice coffee-and-cake shop at the station, and it has wifi.
Got to Budapest close to two, the train docks at the Nyugati station. I knew there was a mini statue here somewhere, but figured, let’s get the bags home first. Bought a 72-hour public transport ticket. They work. Blue to Kálvin tér, green to II. János Pál pápa tér, and from there we could catch the 99 bus for one stop but it’s quicker to walk.
Nice modern room on the fourth floor of a nice modern building, on the Mátyás tér.
And then we were off again. We were just one stop from the Keleti station, so I took Tanya there to show her the Trabant I saw last time but… it was gone. Stolen, I guess.
So we got back on the Metro to Batthyány tér and from there took the tram to Tanya’s favourite-in-Budapest stationery / craft / bookstore.
And from there Szent Gellért is only two stops and I’d heard that there was a new mini statue so there we went.
Found him, we did, hmmm?
And then we found Tanya some food at an Asian place, bought wine, went home.
The next morning, I took Tanya to see some of the mini statues I’d found in her absence, last time.
The ark lives close to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine on Bethlen Gábor tér. Maybe ark->animals->veterinary medicine? I don’t know. There’s another Kolodko on the other side of the faculty but we only found that later.
On the other hand, this Kolodko of Hanna Szenes — a British SOE-trained Jewish Hungarian poet-turned-parachutess who was executed in 1944 (she was 23) for trying to helping Jews flee Nazi occupation — is on the side of Szenes Hanna park.
And then we meandered down (well, walked to the closest tram stop and took a tram to Herzl Tivadar tér (where there is a Kolodko of the gentleman himself, we saw that last time)) to Erszebét tér where there is a “free” walking tour (you are expected to tip around 10 Euros per person).
Szent István (St Stephen’s) Basilica from Szent István tér. They have bits of dead people in there. We did not investigate.
We saw things we had seen before and other things we had not seen. And our guide (Balazs) told us things that we had not known about the things that we had seen before. So all in all, recommended.
We saw this Kolodko last time as well, it’s the Russian hat that was thrown in the river but grew legs and crawled back out again.
From here we wandered downriver, Tanya was feeling hungry so we stopped for Goulash soup and (of course) beer, eventually ended up at the castle in Városliget.
The tower on the left is straight, the cellphone wide angle lens, not so much. Clever devices, but they cheat.
We came here specifically for this new Kolodko.
It was already after five, so we had a quick beer and caught the Metro to Nyugati station.
This is Kópé, the mascot of the Skála stores which opened in the eighties and were not directly state-owned.
OK, that’s probably enough for one blog post. Stay tuned, as they say.
The RegioJet leaves a bit earlier than the České dráhy train I had originally planned to take, so we got up at 0530, packed, and took the Metro to the station. Very nice modern carriages, last leg by bus (they’re working on the rails). Got to Bratislava, immediately bought tickets for Budapest.
We were way early for check-in, it was barely 12. But the keys were in the lockbox, so we sneaked in, left our suitcases, put the keys back in the lockbox for the cleaners, let the landlady know, and went looking for beer.
Fabrika is kind-of high-end (it’s attached to the Loft Hotel) but the beer is good and they’re not ridiculously expensive by Euro standards. I had the Bryndzové Halušky / Traditional Slovak Dumplings, Tanya had tomato soup and Pečený Ananás / Caribbean rum-baked pineapple with salted caramel ice cream.
We were feeling kind of tired so we popped into a small supermarket we’d passed earlier, bought expensive wine, went home, and passed out.
Monday we walked down into the Old Town via Michalský most and the St Michael gate. Lots and lots of souvenir shops.
This fellow “Napoleon’s Soldier” by Juraj Meliš lives on the Hlavné Námestie (which sounds exotic but translates to “Main Square”), while the hard working “Man At Work” Čumil by Viktor Hulík is just down the road.
Mondieu is a chain — there are seven branches in Bratislava alone, five of them in a 500m stretch in Old Town) — but they serve good coffee (with water on the side As One Should) and good “Homemade” lemonade.
And the Avo Toast looks just like the picture in the menu and was damn good too.
I struggled to figure out the Bratislava public transport system. No joy. I mean, I have a map to the bus/tram/rail system, with all the stops clearly indicated. And I have Google Earth /Maps / Mapy. And I can even find some of the stops on both the transport map and the “real” map. But I cannot map the one to the other. Not even now, sitting at a PC with multiple screens open. On a smartphone? Not a chance.
So we walked to the Church of St. Elisabeth / “Blue Church”.
In front of the church there’s a monument to the unborn “Pomník nenarodeným” but it sure looks like a turd on a stone.
Figured maybe it’s time for a drink, so we walked (again) to 100 pív. They were not open yet, so we waited.
Had a beer… had another beer… went to a stationery shop Tanya had googled across, bought some food and wine at the Lidl, and bloody walked home again because I still can’t figure out the public transport.
Bratislava… yea… not a whole lot to recommend. One day is enough.
