Winter Holiday 2007

Took Ryanair to Lake Balaton right in the middle of Hungary and rented a car for the duration of our 6 day mini-break to eastern Europe. A couple of 'new' countries to see, namely Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia as well as a revist to one of our favourite places, Slovakia and a quick look around Vienna.

The thermal spa at Herviz. The outdoor temperature was 7 degrees but the water remains a constant 26 degrees due to  warm water  coming up from the earths core. The locals only recommend an hour bathing as the water is mildly radioactive. We stayed in for about 40 minutes before we started to 'glow' and decided to get out. It was one of the most bizarre things I have ever done, swimming about in a radioactive pool in the middle of winter, in the middle of Hungary!  The free-for-all, bare-all communal changing room only adding to this weird place. Good fun.

   Outside the radioactive spa in Herviz                  Lenin still looms large behind the iron curtain

The famous 'Chain Bridge' in Budapest. It was the first permanent crossing over the Danube linking Buda with Pest

Statue Park

This place was in one of the suburbs of Budapest and took quite a bit of finding! The signage in Eastern Europe is woeful, we drove past this place several times and just couldn't find it, eventually we saw the signpost which was turned the opposite way and managed to get in the place.  The Hungarian authorities didn't know what to do with all the communist statues after the fall of the wall and the subsequent regime change in 1989-90. Someone had the bright idea that it would be a shame just to destroy all those statues of Lenin, Marx et al, so they decieded to build the Statue Park...a sort of graveyard to communism where they would re-erect all the old commy tyrants so people like me could come and bring their children to show and tell them of the evils of Marx, Stalin, Lenin and Socialism. Well worth the effort to find and the one pound entrance fee.

Comrade Lenin. This is the very same Lenin as the one below at the Csepel Iron Works. In the pic below they are commemorating the October 1917 revolution in 1969. The statue was a present from Moscow.

'Workers of the world'....                                             Nina and Steffan with some Hungarian commy dude

Granite Marx and Engels                     Another commy dude...oh no..sorry, its Steffan.

Hello Croatia...Dobrodosli

Drove westwards towards the small town of Verzdin, originally we planned to go to Zagreb, the capital, but time was against us...as always !

Typical Eastern European town square. What do you notice ?? I'll tell you....there are no hoodie scallys, there is no litter, no chewing gum on pavement,  no deadlegs, no bars on windows, no dog-shit, no punks.....you get the idea.!!!

Goodbye Croatia....it was nice seeing you...........                                           Hello Slovenia, small land....big cakes!!

'Hmm...which one shall I have ?'....Nina having her cake and eating it. Onwards, yet onwards...next stop Austria. Oh, we briefly crossed back into Hungary and stayed the night at a little hotel in a place called Szombathely then drove to Vienna the next morning. It took about 2 hours to drive through the Austrian mountians.

Beautiful buildings and architecture abound in Vienna

Part of the beauty of Central/Eastern Europe, you are never far from a wonderful historic city....Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Zagreb, Bratislava......take your pick. Which way driver?......left to Bratislava. Capital of Slovakia.

The very attractive historical center of Bratislava