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.