Medzev

I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel visiting the place where my grandad was born. In a sense it is a place I have no connection with, my grandad left shortly after the Second World War and only went back in the 1980s (I'm not even sure if he went back to Medzev itself). I've never met any of that side of the family and the impression we all had was that it was an unlucky place to be during the previous centuries' conflicts and so didn't want to push my grandparents into discussing it. What we do know is that one of my grandad's brothers, Michael, was marched off by the Russians, along with many others from the town, when they 'liberated' the area and that for part of the war my grandad was in Munich working in the BMW factory. Quite why remains a bit of a mystery, he was only 13 at the outbreak of war.

An online site had been able to provide detatls of my great grandfather Johann (1880-1952), Charlotte, my great aunt (1911-1990), Natalia (1922-1986), another great aunt and Jan, a great uncle (1921-1989). I was hoping to find their graves and if possible see if I could speak to someone in the records office who might know more about the transports to labour camps in Russia, but I knew that this was probably a bit of a shot in the dark.

When we arrived I was struck by how beautiful it was, surrounded by mountains and remebered my grandad telling me how horrified he was when he arrived at Hull harbour and saw the industrial north of England for the first time. Seeing this place I could well imagine having the same reaction. In some ways Slovakia feels very rural still, even though years of communsim sought to industrialise everything. There is a little square in the centre of the town, with the Mary Queen of Angels Catholic Church; a beautiful and traditional church and a monument to some sort of resistance in 1945. There is not much sign here of pre war buildings, except for the church and I would love to know why. The same is true of graves; I couldn't find any pre 1880.

We headed up to the graveyard hidden up at the back of the town, built into a steep hill which is presumably overflow from the more central one. Graveyards are telling about the makeup of the town, and the first thing we noticed was the number of graves which shared the same name, the second is that they were almost entirely German names: Gedeon, Gaspar, Antl, Schmiedt, Tischler, Eiben, Muller, Schuster, Tomasch, Pimzner, Friedl (Friedel), with only a few clearly Slovakian or perhaps Hungarian names. Until 1919, this was part of the Austro-Hunagarian empire. After a lot of searching, and in fact nearly missing it, I found the grave of my great grandparents, Johann and Sarlote (1988-1968). Her maiden name was Gedeon, but interestingly her first name is not spelt in the German way. Next to it was the grave of my great aunt Natalia and her husband Karol. Unfortunately my great grandparents grave was not in a particularly good state, but we couldn't find a flower shop. But I was really moved to be able to find them and see them for myself.

We tried to get into the local records office, but it was closed, although I'm hoping they'll help if I write them a very nice letter. The main graveyard at first looked too huge to be able to find anything, but Lucy found Jan's grave and that of Charlotte and their spouses and also one for a Katarina Ruzbarska (1912-1966) whose maiden name was Nohavickova (unmaried women take that ending so technically I suppose I should too.) This I think is another great aunt as there were definitely two daughters born before Johann went away to fight in WWI. The most interesting find in the graveyard however was a monument to a group of soldiers who all died 21.6.1919 in which there was a Jan Nohavica. The monument commemorates something to do with Slovakian nationalism and the Czech Legion, we checked the guidebook when we got back and it said that in 1919 the Hungarian Red Army tried to reoccupy this area and were forced out by this Czech Legion, so we think it might be related.

There were no other Nohavickas that we could find in Medzev, which leads me to suspect that it was only my family which lived here. The man who let us into the appartment in Bratislava said that Nohavicka is a Slovakian word meaning small/ children's trousers, but that it is quite an unusual surname in Slovakia. This also suggests that my grandad's side of the family weren't part of the German settlers who moved here, but were in fact Slovakian which makes sense because although my features are very German - blonde hair, blue eyes etc, my grandad and his siblings had dark hair and eyes. Much of this needs to be confirmed, but it is a very encouraging start to finding out more about this side of my family.

Interestingly, there is no mention anywhere that I could see of the citizens taken to Russian Labour Camps, although that it happened is well documented. I'd really like to find out what happened to Michael as it is something which grandad was always anxious to know about and hoped he survived. Everything else that I discovered while we were there he probably already knew about, but it would be nice to answer this question one way or the other.

We finished a lovely visit in the main square eating lunch of sardines, apples and bread before heading back to Kosice and a typical Slovakian dinner of dumplings, goulash and cabbage rolls. A very moving day for me.

(For anyone interested, I've attached a couple of websites about Medzev or Metzenseifen as it is in German.)

http://www.oldmetzenseifen.de/

http://thoey.tripod.com/hoey/stories/laborlist.html

Introducing East Slovakia...

We arrived in Kosice at 10 pm on Thursday night, a 3 1/2 hr trip from Budapest. Deciding it was too late to go wandering through an unfamiliar city, we grabbed a taxi to hostel K2, our home for the next few days. The hostel's location wasn't what you would call obvious as it was through an unmarked door in a quiet courtyard, but at last we were able to dump the bags and hit the sack.

The following morning gave us the opportunity to explore Kosice after a bizarre breakfast of strudel and cappucino. It is the so-called second city of Slovakia, right at the eastern end of the country, 21 km from the Hungarian border. The outskirts are very Soviet - lots of high rise flats and signs of poverty, but the main square is beautiful. It's very like Sibiu; pedestrianised with beautiful pastel coloured buildings and of course the obligatory Tescos. It is dominated by the Cathedral of St Elizabeth, a beautiful gothic church started in 1378 with a gorgeous tiled roof and cupola, which make it the most striking landmark in the city. Inside is an eclectic mix of old and new which both of us really liked. There is a really modern, smooth stone lecturn and altar with a traditional gold panel behind, a gothic twisty staircase up to a huge statue of Mary and a crucifix, really old frescoes of the Last Judgement the Mount of Olives and modern stained glass. It reminded both Lucy and I of Durham in its feel.

The cathedral is surrounded by a little beautifully kept garden where there is a little chapel in a similar style. All across this pedestrianised area are the excavations of tunnels from the Middle Ages, which are quite cool and there is a town tower with an apparently interesting waxworks museum, although we didn't feel the need to explore... There are more gardens, complete with an apparently singing fountain (this was 'under renovation' so sadly tuneless, although this might have been a blessing in diguise) before one comes to the small and elegant Opera House. It is all very lovely, although you can't help but feel that it is a lot more provincial than its second city status would lead you to suggest.

We headed into the tourist office to find out about how to get to Medzev the following day. This is the main reason for visiting this side of Slovakia, as it is the village where my grandfather came from and I wanted to see what I could discover there. It is very close to Kosice and so far I had been unable to stop myself imagining my relatives in what then must have been there county town. In any case, having sorted out transport, Lucy and I went for a posh cup of tea at the Art Nouveau Slavia which the guidebook describes as 'too snooty to be relaxing'. It is, but we had a good time mocking its pretentions.

Our afternoon was spent in the East Slovak Museum, which we thought would be a good grounding for understanding Medzev. It was a hilarious failure. First we tried to pay and the woman had no change, so we bought a packet of crisps with a 50 euro note (I don't think the lady at the til was overly impressed...) Finally managing to buy our ticket, we were lead into a room with a solar system model in it. Sharing slightly bemused looks, Lucy and I dutifully admired the model and appreciated the information displayed about the universe, all the while wondering how especially this related to East Slovakia. The second room shed no further light - it was full of rocks from around the world, which, whilst fascinating wasn't quite what we were expecting. By the third room, all became clear; the two previous rooms were setting the scene for the natural history of East Slovakia and the following rooms were full of stuffed animals native to this part of the world.

Well, we enjoyed wandering, but it can't be said that either of us are particularly interested in natural history. At the end of the section, we tried to go to a different area of the museum, only to be told in Slovakian that our ticket didn't cover this. By this stage it was 4.30 and we decided that we would leave the rest for another day. Dinner was in a lovely pizza restaurant, popular with locals called Kleopatra and we headed in for an early night.

Goodbye Budapest!

Wednesday morning saw us heading off to Keleti railway station to buy tickets to Kosice in Slovakia for the following day, as we thought that we needed to book international tickets 24 hours in advance. This turned out not to be the case, but we were still glad we had got it sorted in advance, as the process was unbelievably tortuous. The rather grumpy lady behind the counter wrote everything out by hand in triplicate with not a computer in sight. We then wasted a lot of time talking at cross purposes before realising that the reason she had sold us return tickets rather than singles was because returns are cheaper. Not sure what the logic in that is, but there you go.

From here we went back to revisit the area of Pest we had explored on our first day, and spent a lovely afternoon pottering up and down the beautiful streets visiting a number of lovely bookshops, reading Hungarian poetry, and drinking coffee surrounded by dishevelled students and intellectual looking old men reading. We also popped into the Liszt Academy of Music to see if there were any concerts on that day (there weren't) and again mingled with lots of arty looking music students. We really got the sense of Budapest as a university town for the first time.

Rather than going out for supper as we had initially planned (Budapest has been quite expensive enough already!), we decided to cook our own version of Hungarian paprika chicken, supervised by the lovely girl working in the hostel. We bunged in chicken thighs, root vegetables, herbs and tonnes of paprika....and it was gorgeous. Later in the evening we went out for mojitos at an arty little place called Cafe Kafka just down from the basilica, which was a fantastic way to end our week in Budapest. We walked back along the Danube, looking at the stunning view of the river and bridges all lit up at night, finally getting back to the hostel around midnight.

Today it's on to Slovakia. We're finding it hard to tear ourselves away from Budapest: it's such a beautiful city with so many different layers of history and culture to explore. But it'll be good to be back on the road, and with something of a research project to work on (watch this space....). And of course it's less than a week now until we see a crowd of Chadsians in Bratislava....can't wait!

The Holocaust Memorial Centre

Having seen much of the beauty in this fabulous city, we decided that we ought to learn more about the Holocaust here. With this in mind, on Tuesday we headed not to the Jewish Quarter, but to the very ordinary district of Ferencvaros where a centre was opened in 2004 to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in Hungary. It was positioned here rather than in the Jewish Quarter to emphasise the fact that it was not just Jewish Hungarians who were victims, but gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents and those with disabilities.

The building itself is modern, although in a really fitting way: it doesn't look out of place surrounded by these much older buildings. Most of the museum takes place underground and takes you chronologically from the initial stages of rights deprivation right through to the death camps. It is an excellent museum, very thought provoking as it follows the fates of various families throughout the various stages. Harrowing to go and see, but was much more meaningful to me than my visit to Auschwitz had been, I guess because it was able to be personal whereas at Auschwitz, there just isn't the time or space to do so. What is amazing is the so-called Auschwitz album. Although there were never any pictures taken past the selection process, SS photographers did take photos of everything up until this point, that it survived is equally incredible.

The museum was also fascinating because it gave an interesting impression of Hugary as a country which still has difficulties with its Roma population. There is still I think quite a lot of tension between this community and the rest of the country which was reflected by the exhibition, as although it tried to be unbiased it wasn't quite as detailed as perhaps it might have been. This could be down to the fact that there aren't as many detailed records, but it still left both of us with the view that this is a group which is always at risk of being persecuted.

The exhibition finishes in a stunning 1924 Leopold Baumhorn synagogue, which is my favourite. It is gloriously painted in white, turquoise and gold and is a perfect location for the experience to draw to a close. The most moving thing was a set of perspex seats which formed half the seating in the synagogue on which there were photographs of various victims of the Holocaust.

After a reflective cup of tea, we headed back to the hostel for a quiet night in. Both of us were very glad we went.

An evening with Bluebeard and three tramps

Monday morning saw the fulfilment of a month-long ambition: a proper fry-up English breakfast. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and once we felt able to move again, we decided to go on a day trip to Szentendre: a little town to the north of Budapest. We took the rackety commuter train from the other side of the river and 45 minutes later were exploring the old streets. It has always been a favourite haunt of artists and craftsmen, and there are a number of galleries and workshops selling lace, wood carvings, paintings and beautiful children's clothes. I toyed with the idea of buying a miniature Hungarian national costume for my niece, but decided it might be slightly too random for a little half English, half Maltese girl.....

We explored the cutsie cobbled streets and squares and looked at a beautiful Serbian Orthodox cathedral (the town has been regarded as the heart of the Hungarian Serb community since the 1500s). The town is situated on a lovely peaceful part of the Danube bend and we ate apples siting by the river in the sun, resisting the temptation to take pot shots at neighbouring ducks with the cores. Our exploration ended with the inevitable cup of tea in a local cafe and then it was back on the train. We just had time for a quick rest and freshen up at the hostel before it was time to head out again to the Opera House for an evening of Bartok with the Philharmonic Orchestra.

We didn't have any idea what to expect, as neither of us know very much about Bartok, and the programme was entirely in Hungarian. So we just sat back in our incredibly high seats and immersed ourselves in the music. The first half was a very disturbing and sinister piece of music with lots of percussion which built up amazing tension towards the end. Sarah's internet research later proved that this was a one-act ballet called The Miraculous Mandarin, which apparently involves three tramps, a prostitute and a hapless Chinese chap who is beaten up by the tramps and hung on a tree, and finally dies of his wounds. All good clean fun. The second half took us rather by surprise as a large man in a very regrettable shiny shirt started chanting poetry in an amazingly deep voice. He was later joined by a wonderful soprano and a slightly reduced orchestra. It was all very exciting and emotional, although we didn't have a clue what was going on. There was one great moment when a group of brass players appeared in the top gallery and blew a great blast at the same time as all the lights suddenly went on in the theatre, including the magnificent chandelier. We later found out that it was a one-act opera about Bluebeard: perhaps the big scary moment was when she opened the door and found the murdered wives.... Any Bartok experts out there feel free to elucidate. Anyway, the orchestra and singers were just superb and we had a wonderful evening. Back at the hostel, we had late night pasta and pesto and tumbled into bed.

Ladies who coffee, Hungarian style

Sunday morning was a slightly less obscene start to the day than Saturday had been, but it still felt far too early to be wandering down to the Basilica for mass. However, the service was beautiful, complete with the first proper choral music of the trip: Mozart's Missa Brevis and motets. Suddenly it all looked much more beautiful than it had during the cursory glance we gave it on Thursday and it was lovely to be able to appreciate it as a member of the congregation, rather than as a tourist.

After mass, we had decided to climb Gellért Hill and have a picnic. However, we decided that we would try and find a place for coffee first. All the guidebooks recommend at least having a look at Gresham Palace, a fantastic Art Nouveau Palace built in 1907. It was taken over by the Four Seasons and surprisingly lovingly renovated so that it looks like it did originally. It is supposed to be a fantastic place for a coffee, however, Lucy and I were thwarted in our attempts, we couldn't even find the door to get in. This actually turned out to be a good thing as we ended up in the market square we had found a few days earlier outside the posh coffee house Gerbeaud. As part of the Spring Fesival, there were lots of folk artists playing, so we sat in the sun and rang our mothers for Mothering Sunday whilst sipping tea in the sunshine.

We climbed Gellért Hill in the afternoon. At only 235m high, it isn't enormous, but everything else is so flat that it does look quite striking. At the top is the Independance Monument, a giant woman holding a palm leaf, which almost acts as the city's mascot. There is also a modern looking citadell, but we didn't have an explore. Instead we had a lovely picnic of sausage sandwiches, Pom Bears, salad and fruit overlooking the city - beautiful.

Once back at the bottom of the hill, we walked along the river on the Buda side, seeing lots of quite grand houses before walking back over the suspension bridge to Pest. We tried to find the Orthodox Cathedral, but all the directions seemed to point in opposite directions and in the end, we arrived at the Inner City Parish Church, which from the outside looks like it is falling apart, but inside is beautiful and it is very obvious that it is well loved by its congregation.

We decided that we would treat ourselves to coffee and cake at Gerbeaud, the most famous cafe in Budapest. From its beginning in 1858, it has been the place where the rich and fabulous come to people watch and drink coffee. It is very beautiful inside, lots of thick drapes and patterned wallpaper, but is very touristy now and the staff are quite grumpy. Nevertheless, they certainly know how to make a fantastic cappucino and yummy cakes. We shared the Gerbeaud cake (chocolate and alcohol) and the Esterhazy cake (nuttly and creamy) which were delicious. Well worth a visit.

As we left, the outdoor concert had taken a turn towards 'world music', which seemed to consist of a woman screaming down the microphone. Lucy and I shared puzzled expressions and decided we wouldn't stay to hear the rest. However, in the market we did find absolutely fantastic 1930s hats and we had decided to turn up in Bratislava looking effortlessly fashionable in them. Unfortunately, this looking stylish will have to wait as the 55 euro price tag was just a little over our budget...

Instead we headed to the local cinema to see if there were any films in English. We ended up seeing Doubt, which was brillant and thought provoking. It stars Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffmann who are fantastic. It gave us a lot of food for thought, and we spent most of the night, whilst cooking veggie stirfry discussing it.

Sulphur, sulphur, glorious sulphur...

In the heat of conversation on Friday night we (oh, alright then, I) had rashly agreed to go to the thermal baths at 6am with Susan, who was leaving Budapest mid-morning so needed to have an early start. Sarah wasn't hugely impressed by this, but nonetheless Saturday morning saw us up bright and early (well, early at least) to go to the Szenchenyi Baths in the north of the city, a short metro ride away. We bought tickets for about 8 pounds and were told if we left before 3 hours were up, we would get a partial refund. Scoffing at the idea of spending more than 2 hours in a swimming pool, let alone 3, we went in to change. Three and a half hours later we emerged very happy and relaxed, and smelling strongly of rotten eggs.

The baths are housed in fabulous 19th century baroque building, constructed for the purpose, and consist of a series of pools of thermal sulphurous baths at different temperatures, a number of dry and steam saunas, loads of showers and, best of all, three heated outdoor pools. These cannot be compared to outdoor pools in England - they are actually warm for a start: it is like swimming and sitting in a very large bath that is full of fountains, whirlpools and bubbles and statuary: paddling around hundred year old classical statues is so much fun! It was a glorious day - a clear blue sky and sunshine but very cold at that early hour. It is bizarre to be able to see your breath while you sit in steaming waters with the sun warming your back. The great thing about going so early was that no other tourists were up and the baths were full of lots of local elderly people chatting, relaxing and generally having a good time. Lots of people sit around in the outdoor baths smoking, reading and even playing chess on the floating chessboards. If you have to get up at 6am, this is the way to do it.

After the baths we said goodbye to Susan, had an ice cream (first of the year - yay!) and strolled through the park in which the baths are, ending up at the impressive Heroes Square, which stands at the head of the main street in Pest, Andrassay Utcar. The square was full of demonstrators waving the Hungarian flag and lots of police. When we returned to the hostel later, we found out that it was a protest against the resignation of the Hungarian PM - it was a hot topic of conversation among staff at the hostel who had much to say, mostly critical, of him and his actions especially relating to the EU. From Heroes Square, we went to the Fine Arts Gallery as we'd spotted there was a special exhibition there on Mucha, the Czech pioneer of Art Nouveau who, amongst other things, designed theatre posters for Sarah Bernhardt. It was an absolutely beautiful exhibition and we crippled our bank account at the gift shop buying gorgeous postcards and momentoes.

Then it was back to the hostel via the Opera House to buy tickets for a Bartok concert later in the week by the Hungarian National Philharmonic for the princely sum of 1 pound 50. The cheapness of the theatre here is wonderful: we are seriously considering relocation...... The rest of the day was spent in boring but necessary domesticity: washing clothes, food shopping and trying to get rid of the smell of sulphur from our hair. The evening ended with eating slightly odd Hungarian crisps with two other hostellers: a lovely quirky illustrator from the Netherlands called Petra, and Brendan from Kentucky. We had lots of interesting chat on the subject of jobs, the future, life, the universe and everything.

Buda and Ballet - Oh What A Night

We had an early start on Friday, as we wanted to make the most of the day and headed out to the metro to get travel passes and jump on the tram. Given that this was our first real experience of using foreign public transport on the trip, we were feeling suitably smug when we got off the tram at the right stop only to realise that we had no idea how to get on to the hill itself. Cue the entrance of an imaculately turned out old lady who pointed us in the right direction. (The older generation have so far been unfailingly generous, helpful and perhaps most contrastingly to England, visible, even really late at night.)

Castle Hill itself is very beautiful and feels like a little village, although it feels very touristy, with lots of coach trips, much more so than Pest. However, there were brilliant views over the Danube, aided by the fact that it was an absolutely gorgeous spring day. Lucy and I both laughed (much to Susan's bewilderment) when we reached the Mátyás Church, one of the iconic landmarks of the city, which was covered in scafolding - under renovation could be the subtitle of this trip. Nevertheless it is beautiful if overwhelming inside: neo-gothic, late 19th centry although destroyed in WWII, with every square inch painted and minutely detailed stained glass windows. The decoration has elements both of Art Nouveau and geometric (turkish) designs, which is very fitting given Hungary's history. However, it was quite difficult to feel that it was a living, breathing place of worship, with so many tours going on. What saved it for me was a display at the back of the church about the modern church community and the Stations of the cross which were very evocative prints of original acrylics. Apparently it is hugely important to Hungarian history, but I will need to do a bit more reading...

After the church, we headed out to the Fisherman's Bastion, a fairy tale series of turrets and cloisters, apparently designed by Schuhet as a foil to the church. It doesn't serve any other purpose and it provides absolutely stunning views and was a lovely spot for some biscuits. A short wander and we were at the Royal Palace, which is actually quite ugly (I think again it was destroyed during the war) but houses the lovely National Gallery. The gallery covered a huge period, but had some particularly lovely 19th stuff, particularly Hungarian home scenes. I can't say that the really modern stuff caught my imagination, but we could well have been a bit pictured out.

Having had a restoring coffee, we headed back over the Danube to the Central Market. It is housed in a building which looks like a train station with two levels. Fresh produce is on the ground floor, canteens and tourist stalls on the first. There were lots of locals around which was lovely as it made it feel far more genuine. This also gave us the opportunity to try our first Hungarian goulash, although trying to find something veggie for Lucy was a bit of a challenge.

We returned to the hostel to put on what constitutes our glad rags ready for the ballet at the State Opera House. The ballet was called Balanchine: 'the soul of the woman in dance', which sounded rather bizarre but it was absolutely awesome. The State Opera House is just glorious inside, lots of murals and gold leaf everywhere, although if you have cheap tickets, you don't go up the sweeping staircase, you go through a little side door. Being right up in the gods gives you a stunning view of the whole thing which is just great, although the staff are quite rude to you. The ballet was actually three one act ballets: Serenade by Tchaikovsky, Concerto Barocco by Bach and Who Cares by Gerschwin. They were obviously very different but beautiful, especially the Gerschwin, which saw Lucy and I humming along and wishing we'd shown some talent in ballet lessons. Absolutely fabulous.

History lessons in Pest

The Art Hostel, which is where we're staying, is located on the Pest side of the river, like most of the accommodation in Budapest, so we decided to base our initial exploration on Thursday in the vicinity. First stop was the Hungarian Parliament ten minutes down the road which is a spectacular great Gothic building modelled on the Palace of Westminster but with more spires. It's set in a large square which was the site of various demonstrations during the Soviet era. There's a really striking memorial to Hungarian independence now on the site where hundreds of people were mowed down by machine gun fire. It has a symbolic grave and a Hungarian flag with a hole torn in the middle: a reminder of how Hungarians tore the Soviet emblem out of their flag during demonstrations.

From here we walked along the banks of the Danube looking over at the stunning view of Buda and at the chain bridge plunged into the main part of Pest. The streets are very handsome, clean and packed with prosperous looking shops, churches and theatres. It's very hard to believe that these streets have been almost totally rebuilt since being flattened in World War Two. The city bears very few scars of its at times horrific past. The communist era seems to have pretty much passed Budapest by in terms of architecture, in the centre at any rate. It's definitely the most beautiful city we've been to so far: like what Bucharest must have been once, and not even comparable to poor old Sofia.

We wandered around Pest for some time, finding amongst other things a very pretentious square of modern art (we thought the main exhibit was a paddling pool but it turned out to be "a meditation on the art of co-operative creativity") and a little gem of a church down a side street where all-day adoration was going on. We ended up at the synagogue, the biggest in Europe and the 2nd biggest in the world after the one in New York. It was built in the 1850s when the Jewish population in Budapest was at its peak and was finally being accepted in Hungarian society: this was when laws were passed giving Jews the same rights as Christians in terms of jobs and taxes. As a mark of co-operation, the Jewish authorities commissioned a Catholic architect to design the synagogue, with the result that it looks surprisingly like a basilica. For the first time on this trip, we opted for the guided tour, and were really glad we did, as it enabled us to see the stunning interior close up and also hear some really amazing facts about the history of the Jews in Hungary. Hungary was a relatively safe place for Jews for most of WWII, as while the Nazis puppet government in Budapest had persecuted the Jewish community heavily by aking away their jobs and property, they had at least stopped short of actually sending them to death camps. However in 1944, the government tried to negotiate a secret peace treaty with the Allies, and as a result, the Nazi army moved in. Then, with horrible efficiency, they proceeded to exterminate the Hungarian Jewish population within months, first putting them into a ghetto and then sending them to Auschwitz to die in the gas chambers, or of typhoid in the camp. From April 1944 to the end of the war, 600,000 Hungarian Jews had been killed. To give some idea of scale, that means every third person who died in Auschwitz was a Hungarian Jew, and every tenth victim of the Holocaust overall was a Hungarian Jew. Before the war, there were 800,000 Jews in Hungary, now the population is just under 100,000.

The tour took us through the graveyard, which contains a mass grave of 3000 Jews, all of whom were killed in a massacre in the ghetto in 1945, just before the end of the war. Only 24 were able to be identified later, so there are just 24 headstones, all with the same date. Around the back of the synagogue is the memorial garden with a beautiful sculpture of a weeping willow in beaten steel, paid for by donations from surviving family members. There is also a memorial to all those non-Jewish Hungarians, all of whom risked, and many of whom gave their lives to save their Jewish neighbours. The chief among these is actually a Swedish diplomat called Raoul Wallenberg who was working in Budapest at the time and saved thousands of lives by issuing fake passports and hiding Jews in properties owned by the Swedish embassy. He was later taken by the Russians after World War Two for unspecified reasons and was never seen again.

After leaving the synagogue, we walked through the former Jewish ghetto, which is now full of Jewish cultural centres and memorials, as well as ordinary houses and shops. It's a very surreal feeling to be walking through scenes of so much former suffering which within our grandparents time was surrounded with barbed wire and had signs up saying, "No Christians may enter." Somehow the suffering beneath the surface of this city is all the more poignant because the surface is so much more beautiful than somewhere like Bucharest, where the scars are far more obvious.

This post seems to be turning into a history lesson, and a rather depressing one at that, but it is such a huge part of the trip - we're immersed in a whole new story every time we step off the train. Sarah and I are both feeling increasingly embarassed by how little we know about countries which are really so close to us and are trying to soak up as much information as possible. I could go on and on about the uprising in 1956, the subsequent Terror in reprisals, the heroic Imre Nagy, the rat Janos Kadar who changed sides to join the Soviets when he saw the coup was going to fail and was later hailed as the human face of communism......don't worry I'll restrain myself. We certainly haven't finished learning since leaving Durham.

After leaving the Jewish quarter, it was on to a totally different part of history as we passed the birth place of Liszt, which is now a music academy with a very large and stern statue of him outside. Then we walked down Andrassy Utcar, the main (and very splendid) street in Pest which contains, amongst other things, lots of diamond shops, the former headquarters of the Nazi, and then Soviet, secret service, and the Opera House which is a magnificent building. We popped into here and managed to get wonderfully cheap tickets for the ballet on Friday night - they cost the equivalent of 3 pounds! More on this later.

From here it was on to St Stephen's Basilica, the biggest church in Budapest. It's a stunning building, and the inside is still very reverent, as most of it is roped off from tourists. We didn't manage to see the right arm of St Stephen, Hungary's most prized relic, as the chapel was, wait for it, undergoing renovation (a continuing theme for the trip). Perhaps another time.... The basilica overlooks a square filled with bars and coffee shops, which looked beautiful in the twilight and we walked back to the hostel through the streets which were just beginning to fill up with people going out for the evening.

Back in the hostel we cooked a slightly unsuccessful chilli with our new German friend and planned what we were going to do the next day. Susan was only able to stay two nights so wanted to be sure she saw as much as possible - this is proving very good for us as otherwise we have a slight tendency not to wake up until shamefully late. Having done quite a lot in Pest today, we decided tomorrow would be Buda.

Of trains, trams and frozen peas

Our journey from Sighisoara to Budapest on Wednesday lasted an epic 9 and a half hours, at first through Romanian countryside where you could easily be watching the farmers of 100 years ago, and then through the incredibly flat Hungarian Great Plain ( I suppose the name is a bit of a give away). Despite lots of chocolate and much dozing, we were pretty sick of 20 Questions by the time we eventually arrived in Buapest. We got to the Art Hostel around 9pm after a crazy tram ride during which I think we defrauded the Hungarian public transport system (the slightly drunk driver said we could have it as a souvenir....). After a nutritious and satisfying meal of cuppasoups and biscuits, and much chatting with other travellers, we turned in for the night.

As we're staying here a week, we took the opportunity the next morning to do a lot of washing and stock up on food to cook for ourselves in the well equipped little kitchen. We really noticed the difference in stock at the local supermarket compared to the ones we've been using in Romania - there is so much more choice here, especially of fruit and veg. In Romania, broccoli was classed as an exotic product. We managed to buy frozen peas for the first time, which made Sarah very happy. All practical considerations having been dealt with, we teamed up with a lovely German medic called Susan, who was also staying at the hostel, to explore Budapest.

Well we've not met Dracula, but we have met underpants guy...

After a delightful morning at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant and lunch at the hostel, we headed out to Gara de Nord to catch the train to Brasov, a Saxon town 3 hours away. All seemed to be going well, tickets complete with seat reservations were purchased and we were feeling quite proud of ourselves. This wasn't to last. Having located the platform and the correct train, we dutifully tried to find the correct carriage and, being unable to see an obvious no.1 (our reservation), we just jumped on and hoped for the best. We got ourselves into what we thought was our carriage and dutifully loaded the bags on to the rack and sat down, ready for a chilled journey north. We were sat down about 5 minutes when the lady next to me told me that she couldn't help noticing that we were in the wrong carriage and that we needed to go to the other end of the train. Back on went the bags, and with only a few minutes to spare, we tried to walk through the train to get to our seats. We soon realised that there was absolutely no hope of this as the train was getting progressively fuller and it looked like we were going to pummel some old dears with our rucksacks. Off we jumped and ran towards the front of the train, where a conductor pointed to the carriage marked 2. You could forgive us for being a little confused, given that our tickets clearly said 1. Anyway, at last we found our seats and were ready to go on our way.

It was a very interesting journey. People actually walk along the lines to get home in what look like little shanty towns. Rubbish seems to be everywhere here, although it maintains a kind of beauty and I'm not really sure why. Very soon we were out in the countryside and witnessing a different kind of poverty to that which we witnessed in the city itself - no tower blocks, but houses that look like they are falling apart. We had a lovely little girl accompanying us on the journey, who loved hearing us talk in English. This is the lovely side to the Romania we have seen, everyone is very child friendly and it is quite usual for children to just start chatting to any adult they come across in the carriage.

We arrived in Brasov about 8.30 and were quite tired. Unlike Gara de Nord, here we were troubled by men offerring us taxis and lifts to the hostel and we suddenly felt very conspicious with our huge bags. Luckily, the hostel had given us directions about buses, plus a warning about the dodgy men at the station, so we jumped on the bus and with the help of Lonely Planet, managed to direct ourselves to The Rolling Stone. Upon arrival, we were greeted by whole load of Spanish boys who were staying in the dorm rooms, and the lady who ran the hostel suggested that we might want to take the private room instead, which we gratefully did. This room even had jacuzzi bath, although you had to pay 10 euros for the plug, which we decided was bit of a rip off.

We spent the next day exploring Brasov in the snow which had fallen the night before. It is a beautiful town, with muticoloured buildings and beautiful churches and a giant BRASOV Hollywood sign on the top of the local mountain Mt Tampa. The most famous building is the Black Church, a Lutheran church with a 4000 pipe organ. Bizarrely it is full of Turkish carpets which were gifts from merchants and has really beautiful paintings on all the pews, which seemed a bit ornate for the Lutherans... The church did have a really interesting display on the Reformation in this area, strange to think of it reaching this area, which is predominantly Orthodox and has a notable Hungarian Catholic minority, but they were nothing if not persistent. Lucy spent the rest of the day having a bit more of an explore, but I wasn't feeling great so headed back to the hostel. However, she took some lovely pictures of the woods surrounding the town and the two watch towers. Brasov also has a really interesting cemetry with the graves of all those who died fighting the Communists, including a six year old girl which was well worth a look.

We decided to go out for our first Romanian meal at the locally recommended Casca Romanesca which was absoltuely lovely. Full of locals holding a celebration meal for a christening and with live music, we had a lovely evening, eating locally made sausages and in Lucy's case, even trying the tripe soup! I don't know whether it is an experience she is willing to repeat...

Sunday morning saw us up early for the first time all trip for mass. The service was in either Romanian or Hungarian, it was hard to tell, but that gave an opportunity to fully appreciate the surroundings. It was a large Cathedral which was quite full, with people popping in all through the service and was really rather pretty. We spent the afternoon going up the cable car to the top of Mt Tampa which was just astonishingly beautiful. Fresh snow and pine forests made it look like Narnia and we could see the town below, which was all very charming. We tried the restaurant for something to eat and met the owner, a lovely German man who brought us the coffees we asked for and then realising that we were hungry, brought us sausages and bread free of charge.

Headed off to Sibiu late afternoon and shared pretzels and dried apricots with the woman we were sat with. We arrived about 9 and headed up to the Old Town where the hostel was, which is absolutely beautiful, very clean and again has these lovely candybox coloured buildings. The hostel itself looked out onto the square which was beautiful, but the whole town was very quiet, which is such a change to everywhere else we've been. There were only us and two other guys staying, so we got the beds next to the heater (an old fashioned, ceiling high gas stove) which was great as it was absolutely freezing. We spent the following day just wandering round Sibiu and found another Lutheran church claiming to have the largest pipe organ in Romania, but looked to be heavily under construction so we gave it a miss. The real find of the day was the Orthodox Cathedral which had the most glorious murals we've seen on the entire trip, deep colours and fantastic detail, particularly regarding expressions, which are not often shown in Orthodox art.

Returning to the hostel to cook a stirfry, we discovered that the two guys who were also at the hostel were even odder than previously thought. The older of the two spent the whole time rubbing two candlesticks and the younger seemed to think it entirely appropriate to wander round in his all too revealing underpants all evening. We were not impressed, but did have an almighty fit of the giggles which we tried very hard to link to something other than what he was wearing, without success.

Today we left Sibiu for Sighisoara, another Saxon town, from which we will catch the trin to Budapest tomorrow. We ended up using the slow train to get there which have a universal bad press in Romania for being the worst way to travel, but actually we found it fine. It's basically like the local bus route and the tiny stations you stop at every five minutes look exactly like bus stops, with people just hopping off and walking to their villages from there. It gave us really good oportunity to see what village life is like here. We arrived in Sighisoara with enough time to wander round the medieval fortifications and although all the buildings were closed, we still managed to get a good feel for the place. We also bought some Romanian wine to have with the chicken stew we cooked, and have spent the evening chatting to the other guy who is staying here, who is from Florida, about the civil rights marches he was on and our experiences of traveling so far. A lovely end to our time in Romania.

Parisian Bucharest.....no, really!

We crossed the Bulgarian-Romanian border on Tuesday afternoon at the decidedly un-blue Danube and arrived at the Gara de Nord station in Bucharest in the pouring rain. After walking for about a mile, we arrived at the mysteriously named Butterfly Villa completely drenched and ready for some supper. The hostel was a good one, with a lovely big kitchen and some interesting people staying, including Slightly Odd French Guy, Man Who Snored and Arty British Students Making a Film (learning ten new names a day is getting too difficult).

We had been prepared for the worst with Bucharest - the guide books admit that many tourists get straight back on the train, and the best thing they can say of it is "lively and developing" - always a bad sign. People in Bulgaria too had looked on us with horror as we said we were going to Bucharest and told all sorts of horror stories about scams. But we were very pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure whether it was because we came from Sofia (which is a very sad city), or simply because we explored it on a beautiful sunny day, but we found it a fascinating, and in places, quite beautiful city.

Our exploration started at Piata Revolutiei, the heart of the city where the old palace stands and where the former Communist HQ (now the Senate) is. We stood and looked at the low balcony where Ceausescu made his infamous last speech to the booing crowds, and found it very hard to imagine what it must have looked like amid the roaring, crazy traffic and the hordes of young glamorous Roumanians hurrying to work. Then we strolled up the Calea Victoria (the main shopping and restaurant street) to the Old Quarter: lots of cobbled streets and old baroque style buildings, elegant, although crumbling. In this area of town you really get a sense of how beautiful it must have been in its golden age. Apparently Bucharest used to be known as the Paris of the East, and you can actually feel the French influence in the buildings, as well as in the language which has loads of links: for example, "thank you" is "mersi". We're still a bit mystified as to why there is such a French influence - any comments explaining this would be most welcome! We took the opportunity to have a drink at one of the many French style cafes, purely for cultural reasons of course, - hot chocolate with chilli is highly recommended.

The south of the city is very different in feel, as this is the area that Ceausescu completely remodelled as a monument to communism. The most obvious result of this is the monstrous Parliamentary Palace (originally called the Palace of the People) which is on the top of a slight rise of land and so totally dominates the southern area. The only thing you can say about it is that it's very very big (2nd biggest building in the world in terms of ground covered). It really is a complete monstrosity, although the design is in itself not terrible - it's attempting to create a baroque impression. It's just ludicrously big; it makes you feel as if you'd lost your sense of perspective as you approach it. It overlooks the Boulevard Uniri (formerly the Boulevard of the Triumph of Socialism) which is just a little bit wider and longer than the Champs d'Elysess, deliberately. It has a kind of arrogant splendour about it, so long as you don't think about the hundreds of beautiful old houses, churches and monuments that were bulldozed to create it. Behind the Parliamentary Palace is the Centru Civic - Ceausescu's pet architectural project. It's basically a network of very straight wide roads carving through a sea of concrete tower blocks interspersed with areas of scrubby wasteland where just one or two old houses stand forlornly looking like guilty survivors. The thought of everything that was razed to the ground is just heartbreaking. It's incredible to think what one man can do to a city.

On a happier note, back in the centre and north of the city, there are some lovely parks which provide some much needed green space and peace. We wandered through the biggest, Parcu Cismigu, which was full of young and old couples and lots of cooing pigeons. Our exploration of the city ended at Piata Universitiei, which was the site of various protests by the students of Bucharest University, including the City of Peace which was destroyed by the military, and of course where the infamous footage of tanks rolling over students was shot by foreign journalists in the towering Intercontinental Hotel which overlooks the square. Again, it was hard to imagine the scene, as the square was full of students happily browsing book stalls, which can only be a good thing!

Overall our impression was of a genuinely vibrant city which, unlike Sofia, has had a golden age and is determined to have another one. The locals seem defiantly proud of their city and there is plenty of building and redevelopment going on. The cultural scene looks great - there are several large theatres and concert halls which all look prosperous and busy. There is a sense of triumphant survival in the city: they were never quite conquered by the Ottoman empire, resisted Austrian Hapsburg domination, gained independence of the Soviet empire through great suffering and on top of all that, lived through a series of earthquakes! This city has really dealt with everything that can be thrown at it, and has more than survived.

On Friday morning we rounded off our stay in Bucharest with a visit to the irresistibly named Museum of the Romanian Peasant. This turned out to be a fantastic and completely batty place with loads of great and slightly random displays (including a room dedicated to grandmothers!) and wonderfully dodgy English translations of the information sheets. These included great lines such as "Anything which is touched secretly, dies." And to explain a room which was just full of wooden chairs: "When you put many chairs together, things start to happen..." We never worked that one out.

Now we have just arrived in Brasov in the Carpathian mountains, which is where we begin our tour of Trannsylvania. It's snowing heavily outside and we're going to snuggle down with cups of tea. Bliss.

Expotition to Veliko Tarnovo

After a chilled out morning in Sofia, celebrating Rob´s birthday, we decided to don our rucksacks and head out on an expotition (as Pooh would have it) to Veliko. The hotel staff looked rather bewildered at our ´turtle chic´, as this look has come to be known, but nevertheless organised us a taxi to the Bus Station for the next leg of the trip.

We decided to break the trip to Bucharest in Veliko, a fortress town en route which was once the medieval capital of Bulgaria. The first thing we discovered is that no one pronouces it as one might think. The second is that in some cases all you can do is hope you got on the right bus and jump off it again at approximately the time the guidebook suggests. This was the method we employed, based on the fact that we had no idea what was going on. After 3 hours of travelling through beautiful Bulgarian countryside (and less beautiful suburbs), everyone got off the bus so we did too and thankfully realised we´d made it to Veliko. Again, like Plovdiv, Veliko does not immediately appeal, particularly when a strange man comes up to you and says that he has a hostel and transport if you need it... Thankfully, the woman from Hostel Mostel came to pick us up and we have spent the last couple of nights in a lovely hostel right near the fortress.

Hostel Mostel works on the basis that you pay 20 leva per person (about 10 pounds) and get dinner and a beer thrown in to the price of your bed. Lovely warm showers, laundry etc have all made this a great stopping off point. This is not to mention the actual town itself. Like Plovdiv, the Old Town is beautiful, all cobbled streets and ladies with goats. We spent this morning in the sunshine climbing around the fortress which has a patriarch´s complex at the top. The inside of the complex has the most amazing modern murals which use the same content as other Orthodox churches, but the images are slightly cubist in style and painted in grey rather than the bright colours we´ve been used to which was very cool. We both thought execution rock (where criminals were thrown down the gorge) was a little bit anti climactic as there are more impressive places in this area to fling people who upset you to their deaths.

We spent the afternoon wandering through the back streets to the ticket office to buy the tickets to Bucharest (7 hours tomorrow morning) and sitting in the garden reading and playing draughts before tucking into homemade pizza. We are becoming more and more concerned about how we will find Bucharest tomorrow as none of the guidebooks have been enormously positive. But as luck would have it, two people we met in Plovdiv, Jason and Kylie turned up tonight, so we´ve had a lovely time catching up.

I will lift mine eyes unto the hills

Ever since coming to Bulgaria, we´ve been looking forward to a trip to Rila monastery, a UNESCO world heritage site, which is supposed to be one of the highlights of the country. So Saturday was the day to catch a slightly obscure bus and head out into the Rila mountains outside Sofia. The bus journey was a 3 hour trek through very poverty stricken rural countryside: hundreds of crumbling and unoccupied buildings, rubbish everywhere, donkeys pulling carts along the motorway, women washing clothes at a single outdoor tap. Poverty is obviously not confined to the city slums but is the way of life for the majority of the country. Apparently the average Bulgarian survives on 100 pounds per week total living expenses.

The last leg of the journey, from Rila village to the monastery in the mountains was just spectacular: stunning views of snow capped craggy mountains and rushing streams, with some ominous rock falls at the side of the road. The monastery really is incredibly remote, which I suppose makes sense as it was founded by a hermit who wanted complete solitude. It certainly makes you realise why the Ottomans didn´t bother trying to conquer it. The monastery is built like a fortress with high walls, cloisters round the inside and the church in the middle. There´s been a monastery on the site since 900, though the present building dates from the 19th century as there was a fire which destroyed all the original wooden structures. In a wonderful burst of confidence however, they just rebuilt it exactly the same. And actually the relative newness of it means that you can see all the colourful murals in the church; in all of the other older Orthodox churches we´ve been in, the ceiling and walls are too blackened with soot from the beeswax candles and incense to be able to see the murals properly. It made me realise what a strong emphasis there is on story in the Orthodox tradition: every inch of the church is covered with depictions of moments in the Old and New Testaments and if you tried to identify every one, you´d be there all day. Favourite saints seem to include Sts Cyril and Methodius, obviously, as they´re the creators of standard Cyrillic, St Demetrius (?) and St George who appears everywhere enthusiastically killing his dragon.

There was quite a lot of snow on the ground while we were there, and this enhanced the secluded, peaceful atmosphere, which survives the smattering of tourists and the inevitable tacky souvenir stalls. This is really the spiritual heart of Bulgaria, and a great symbol of national and religious pride, as it was a working monastery all the way through the occupation by the Ottomans, and indeed still is. We saw quite a few monks around in their black robes, hats and long beards, and there are large parts of the monastery which are closed to visitors. Unfortunately, we were rather pushed for time, as there is only one bus back to Sofia in the afternoon, but we had a quick look around the museum and saw correspondence and gifts from all round Eastern Europe to the monastery, which was obviously a real hub of intellectual and cultural life all through the late middle ages and the Renaissance. Although they didn´t get printing until incredibly late: the first Bulgarian printing press was in Rila monastery in the 1890s! One exhibit in the museum was particularly interesting: a beautiful wooden cross carved with over 600 tiny exquisite figures portraying biblical stories, which took one monk 12 years to complete. He then lost his eyesight, presumably because of so long staring down a magnifying glass, so never got to appreciate the final product, which is a very sad story.

I think we were all sorry to leave the monastery so soon, as it is a deeply moving and very beautiful place. Bulgarians don´t have very much to boast about, and don´t boast at all about what they do have, but Rila seems to be the place that embodies something of their national pride, religious devotion and spirit of quiet fortitude.

Psycho and Sofia, a match made in heaven...

On Wednesday, we left Plovdiv feeling much more attached to it than when we arrived on Monday morning. We decided to take the bus to Sofia, the capital where we had a guesthouse booked for when Rob came out. Sofia is a hard capital to fall in love with at first sight. The outskirts certainly are an example of what years of foreign rule and communist regime can do to a capital. It's all tower blocks and deprivation and I think it looks worse partly because Sofia is on a huge plain, so there is nothing to break up the view. I was shocked to see children, who can't have been older than seven, smoking on the street. Up until this point we hadn't really seen children begging far away from their parents, so it was an early indication that it is a much bigger problem here.

We were led to believe that the guesthouse was a purple and gold building which we discovered was a bit of an overstatement. The rooms themselves looked like they were out Psycho and we realised that we were the only people staying. None of this made us feel enormously comfortable, and looking at the prices (this guesthouse is the most expensive place we are staying on the whole trip) we decided we weren't going to stay there for the whole time. Instead, we went looking for the hostel some people we'd met in Plovdiv where we had heard that they did private rooms. Unfortunately no private rooms, so instead we ended up staying in a very nice hotel. I think they were a bit bemused by the two of us wandering in like little turtles all dishevelled and travellery while the rest of their glamorous clientele wandered round the lobby. But we are nothing if not unique. It was lovely to have a little bit of luxury for a few days, particularly in a city where there is such a mix of riches and poverty. It is not a city to be poor in.

My birthday was lovely, Lucy and I spend the morning getting our bearings a bit more and discovered that Sofia does have some beautiful buildings in its centre. We then ensconced ourselves in a coffee shop for until we met Rob at 3. Having settled into the hotel, we went for a proper look around, catching the changing of the guard and the arrival of the President of Macedonia at the Parliament buildings, before realising that all Orthadox churches have a service at 5 every day. We heard some beautiful chanting in the St Nikolai Russian Church, before heading over to see the main church of Aleksander Nevski, which was built to commemorate those who liberated Bulagria from the Ottomans. I found it startling to see how large a part faith plays in peoples´ lives here, partiularly since the years of communist rule. It is quite moving to see little old ladies in headscarves wander in to churches alongside well dressed businessmen to light a candle and kiss an icon. The only disappointing thing is that very often you can´t see the murals inside the churches because years of incense has blackened them, although it is encouraging to realise that this is because they are living, breathing places of worship as opposed to the museums as we experienced in Istanbul. We ended my birthday with a lovely meal (although Lucy ate rabbit which was most upsetting) and were staring to feel a bit more positive about Sofia...

Saturday morning saw the three of us head off towards Sofia´s synagogue, which is apparently the largest Sephardic synagogue in Europe. Despite the fairly serious renovations which were going on, you could tell that it is a really beautiful building and it is a shame that the Jewish population has been so reduced here that they now only use a little side room for their services. Bulgaria has a lot to be proud of concerning its Jewish population, Tsar Boris refused to send the country´s Jews to the death camps and as a result saved thousands of lives. This is the only coutry we are visiting that can say that.

After the synagogue, we went for a proper look round the Churches we saw yesterday as well as the Byzantine one of Saint Sofia, after which the city was named. The crypt of Aleksander Nevski church houses their national collection of icons, which are beautiful, although it is a shame they are not in the monestries where they were originally designed to be. We then decided to travel up to Mount Vitosha, Sofia´s mountain, to get a view of the city from the top. This was not an overwhelmingly successful trip. The taxi driver drove us all the way to the chairlift, allowing absolutely everything to go ahead of us, before announcing as we arrived that it was closed. So we saw the foot of the mountain, but not much more. Putting this down to experience, we headed back for a G & T and a lovely Greek meal, ready for Rila the following day.

Pottering in Plovdiv

After our day of rest and washing yesterday, this morning we were sufficiently re-energised to get out and explore the town. Despite our less than positive first impressions (we were after all extremely spaced out and sleep deprived) we have both rather fallen for Plovdiv. It's a very quaint, shabby, laid back town where life seems to move at a leisurely pace - as unlike Istanbul as you can imagine. The Old Quarter is perfect for pottering: a picturesque maze of little cobbled streets, ornately decorated Orthodox churches, colourful wooden mansions and Roman ruins. We had a peek at the amphitheatre - Plovdiv's main tourist attraction - which you can see perfectly well from behind the gates without paying to get in. The town has some lovable quirks such as random comic statues and lots of elongated wall murals, and is full of cats. While we were out we noticed that absolutely everyone was wearing little red and white wristbands and asked the uber-friendly guy in the hostel what they were for. Apparently they symbolise happiness and health and you're supposed to wear them until you see the first blossom of spring, or a stork....at which point you then tie the band on to a blossoming tree for fertility. We saw them tied on to lots of trees, shops and even church doors. When in Bulgaria, do as the Bulgarians...we have duly bought one each and are now watching out for storks.

It was a good day to be in Bulgaria, as today is their National Day of Independence (the day they split from the Ottoman Empire in 1878) and there was a holiday atmosphere in town with a brass band playing folk tunes, interspersed with Abba hits for some reason, Bulgarian flags everywhere (red, white and green in horizontal stripes, since you ask) and lots of families treating themselves to coffee and sticky cakes in the town's big central cafe. Sarah and I enjoyed incredibly rich hot chocolate there and soaked up the atmosphere. In the afternoon we decided to climb one of the hills of Plovdiv to get a view of the whole town - Plovdiv was built on seven hills but now there are only six thanks to the communist regime tearing one down (how do you even do that?) to get rubble for building. We ended up climbing the hill of the "Liberators" (apostrophes intended) which has a massive statue of a Soviet soldier on top looking noble on a plinth carved with happy looking communists. The so-called liberation was highly dubious on two fronts, firstly because Bulgaria had freely chosen to side with the Germans and hadn't been occupied by them to any significant extent, and secondly because it began a period of oppression and stagnation for 40 years, which began with thousands of dissidents being sent to death camps. Bulgarian history is actually really interesting and very very complicated - first the Greeks, then the Romans, then their own empire (biggest in Europe at one point!) followed by constant tribal wars interspersed with repeated attempts to become independent of whichever large empire was on the up at the time. This trip is making us both realise how little history we actually know and we have all sorts of plans for self improvement when we get back. Next to the Soviet statue was a much humbler war memorial to all Bulgarians killed in conflict which was heaped with fresh flowers. We noticed flower sellers at the top of the hill and a lot of elderly people dressed in their Sunday best climbing the hill (much faster than we were to our shame) to lay flowers at the memorial - this is evidently something you do on the national day. It was all rather touching.

Everything in Plovdiv seems to shut down at about 7pm, even on their national day, so we spent this evening eating pasta cooked by a very nice Australian couple staying in the hostel, playing cards and watching bizarre Bulgarian television (national armwrestling anyone?). On to Sofia tomorrow with clean clothes and good impressions of Bulgaria so far.

How to queue barge, Bulgarian style...

At 3.30 this morning, Lucy and I could have been on a film set. A burly guard came to our three-person cabin and told us we had to get out for a passport check. We dutifully followed the other weary-looking travellers and went out on to the platform. Then we had to cross several tracks and climb back on to another platform into a little soviet-style booth and queue to get our passport checked. Or at least we thought you had to queue. However, this didn't seem to be everyone's principle as several little old ladies just wandered up the queue, found a space they liked (generally near the front), and stood there, not even looking slightly embarrassed. Needless to say Lucy and I did not adopt this tactic and duly waited our turn.

After being checked, we trundled back to our cabin, and apart from another check on the Bulgarian side, there were no other stops. We arrived in Plovdiv at 8.30 this morning and walked the mile or so up to the hostel. The Hiker's Hostel is lovely and we are the only people staying in the dorm so it is nice to be able to completely relax. We are going to chill out today, do some washing, have a much needed shower and drink lots of mint tea. This is the life...