Wouter's Blog

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.

Tanya has discovered Mario Kinderjoys.

One gets used to the Situation being Fluid.

The original plan was that Pieter would meet us in Budapest, we would then take the train to Keszthely and get someone from Slovenia to fetch us there.

But then a friend of Pieter’s decided to join him, so he (1) rented a car and (2) decided to stay in Budapest a few days and (3) had already paid for the place in Keszthely so (a) he could collect some of our luggage and make the train trip easier and (b) we had the whole place in Keszthely to ourselves and (c) we had to find stuff to do in Keszthely because it wouldn’t have been my first choice.

Keszthely is… very nice. It’s on Ballaton. There are swans.

Yea, the sun was wrong. We wanted to go back later but that never happened. Went for kind-of-breakfast (options were limited, it was off-season).

This was 09:30 in the morning.

Not a whole lot to do in Keszthely then.

Breakfast was tasty and well-presented. Did I have beer? No, no, I didn’t have beer. Dunno what was wrong with me.

Wandered around Helikon Park, Tanya discovered Kinder Mario, looked for the Fire Station…

Next day Pieter and Gavin came around and we tested the carrying capability of the little car.

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.

Being a Saturday. And the 31st. Therefore, the last Saturday of the month.

And there’s a large flea market on the last Saturday of the month.

This was Namesti Miru at 08:59 on Saturday 2025-05-31. Flea market, remarkably absent.

So we trammed down into Old Town and browsed some more souvenirs.

David Cerny’s Spitfire Butterflies (May 2024) and Hanging Man (1997). Read more about his many artworks in Prague.

Tanya wanted to have a drink next to the river so that’s where we went.

No, I did not have a R280 flat white (if you compare the price of the flat white to say the Americano or the Latte it’s clear there’s tourist targetting going on).

I had a beer. Of course I had a beer. It was after 10 already! And it was only CzK200 (R160) a litre! Bargain!

Tanya had a R150 lemonade. And we shared a nice toastie.

And then we went to the zoo. Excellent zoo. I might blog about that separately sometime. Getting there was a pain, they’re working on the lines so the tram that’s supposed to work didn’t (it’s all documented, in Czech…) Taking the Metro would have been better.

Anywayz. My notes read:

Bus to zoo. Excellent. Feet are fscked. Bus back. Metro home. Stopped at Tesco for wine. And beer. And spread. Now home, fscked. Done.

Friday, Saturday.