Hungary

Hi blog readers

Here I am back after the first beautiful days in Hungary.

Today we heard for the first time in our world trip about Belgium in the radio and television. But our hearts were broken after the sad news that 28 people lost their lives in a tunnel in Switzerland. So our thoughts were in Belgium and especially by the families the last days. After hearing such a news, we’re happy to be together with 3 friends and hopefully making the trip of our lives.

But now something more about the first days in Hungary. The flight from Slovakia was wonderful because we flew over the high mountains who were covered under a blanket of mist. Only the mountain peaks were visible. It really looked like a scene from a wonderful film. Also the plane was very special for us because the first planes to the first countries were commercial planes and now we started from a very small airfield in Slovakia to the Fertőszentmiklós Airport (also a domestic airport) in Hungary.

First of all, we were not very happy with our choice to take a plane for such a short flight because Fertőszentmiklós is located just on the border of Slovakia because it was also possible to take a bus from Slovakia to that place in Hungary, but now we know that small planes as cheap as a bus trip in Hungary, but they are faster. So these small planes we will use 3 times this week.

So now we’re in the North-West of Hungary on the border with Austria and Slovakia. In the small city of Fertőszentmiklós.  The name of the town came from the fusion of two smaller villages called Szentmiklós and Szerdahely. Here we enjoyed  the beautiful nature of this part of the country, so we did some walks in this untouched piece of nature and also some adventure such like an adventure park, kayaking and a nice mountain bike trip in this sloping nature.

Tomorrow, we will start with another small plane to the second domestic airport this week. So our second landing spot will be Nyíregyháza and this small city of 118000 inhabitants is located North-east of Hungary. So completely the other side of the country. This small city is quite close to Debrecen which is the second largest city in Hungary.

Tomorrow, we hope to see the real life in Hungary because today in Fertőszentmiklós we only saw the wonder world of Hungary with the beautiful nature. Of course we already came in contact with the poverty of this country and with some Roma Gypsies, but tomorrow we’re prepared to see the real Hungarian world.

To complete this blog, I’ll give some further information about the Hungarian economy when we are waiting in Slovakia for our next plane to Hungary. Hungary has 9.905.596 inhabitants; 92% of them are Hungarian, 2 % are Roma Gypsies and the other 6 % are unknown, so they no real nationality. This population is decreasing very fast with -1,9% a year.  I also wrote about the poverty, well the annual income per capita in Hungary is 9300 euro. In our regions this income per capita is about 35000 euro. But here, they’re not paid in euro’s, but in Forint. One Forint is about 0,33 Eurocent and this currency is very fluctuating the last years.

So now we will immediately go to bed because the first day was a very active day in nature and we’re all three exhausted!

 Good night everybody and I promise that one of us will write another blog this week about this beautiful country.

Stijn De Wulf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fert%C5%91szentmikl%C3%B3s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Hungary
http://hungary.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary

Slovakia 16/03/2012

Hello everybody.

Here we are again with a new blog post. It’s a bit earlier than expected but at this moment I have some spear time to explain where we are.

We travelled from Bratislava to Košice, one of the biggest cities of Slovakia. For the people who don’t know where Košice is located, I will give you a short description. So Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is located on the river Hornàd at the eastern reaches of the Slovak ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary.  

We rented a car to go to our new hostel. We took a longer, but easier and more comfortable route through Hungary. The journey took about 5 hours and 400 km. We heard wonderful things about this city and we really wanted to see it. We are truly overwhelmed. It’s such a beautiful city!

We certainly couldn’t visit everything on the same day. So I’m just going to talk about the most beautiful sites we have seen.

The city has a well preserved historical centre. There are many heritage buildings in Renaissances, Art Nouveau, Baroque and Gothic styles. Slovakia’s largest church, the St. Elisabeth Cathedral is located in this city. It’s an amazing church with such a beautiful completion. The guide told us that the construction of the biggest cathedral in the Kingdom of Hungary was supported by the Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg and by the apostolic see itself. We have visited the church yesterday for about 3 hours. We didn’t miss a single detail and it was amazing.

The city is well known as the first settlement in Europe to be granted its own coat-of-arms. That made us very curious. The coat of arms used today features symbols of historical countries. Košice is unique in that it was the first city in Europe to gain a royal warrant for a coat of arms.

The most historical monuments are located in or around the Main Street. The town has the largest number of protected historical monuments in Slovakia. In addition to St. Elisabeth, there is the St. Michael Chapel, the St. Urban Tower, and the Neo-baroque State Theatre in the centre of town. Several other monuments and buildings of cultural and historical interest are as well as a number of galleries, museums and parks.

We have visited a few of them. Such as Municipal Park, that is located between the historical city centre and the main railway station. It’s a beautiful park in the city to offer recreation and green space. We didn’t know that nature could be so impressive. It was wonderful!

We ate something after we visited all those wonderful sites and then we went to our hostel to pack our suitcases. We still have a few hours before our plane leaves. This was the end of our trip in Slovakia. I’ll be back soon with a new blog about our trip around the world.

Regards

Jolien Masscheleyn

Sources:

http://www.bratislavahotels.com/bratislava-kosice-travel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Ko%C5%A1ice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_park

Slovakia 11/03/2012

Hello everybody ! Here I’m again !

At this moment I’m still recovering from last week in Poland. That country has really impressed me with its beautiful cities and sculptures.  A country I’ll never forget. But enough about Poland, now it’s time for our next destination…. Slovakia.

For the people who don’t know much about Slovakia, I’ll give some general information about the country. The Slovak Republic is located in Central Europe with an area of almost 50,000 square kilometres. Slovakia is a member state of the European Union and joined the Eurozone in 2004. The Republic is bounded by Poland , the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and Ukraine.

After an 8 hour bus ride 2 days ago we arrived in Bratislava, capital of Slowakia. We didn’t have to put our clocks forward because there's no time difference between Poland and Slovakia which was handy.
During our bus travel we were reading books to learn the basic conversation words and phrases in Slovak language. In the big cities, such as Bratislava, the most people know the English language but in the smaller cities the most people speak only Slovak, a member of the Slavic language family, and use German or Russian as their second language. At this moment there is just one word I can remember: “Dakujem” which means “Thank you”.

While looking at the outside we were all very impressed by the beautiful landscape with its mountainous nature. We could see a part of the Carpathian Mountains, which is the second-longest mountain range in the Europe. At this moment it’s still winter so all mountains are covered in snow. We already have made plans to climb the High Tatras. I’m really looking forward to it !

On our way to the youth hostel we were driving through the slum in the East. We hadn’t expected this poverty so we asked the bus driver for an explanation. He said that there is under employment because of the bad railway-connection and the bad road facilities. This under employment is one of the biggest problems of Slowakia. Actually, it’s mainly a regional problem, because in contrast with the East, the unemployment rate in Bratislava is much lower.

We’ve got a very warm welcome when we finally arrived at our youth hostel. In the hostel we met another bunch of friends who were also travelling around the world. They were almost 5 days in Slowakia so they could gave us some tips and interesting information about the country. First of all they warned us of the large number of gypsies, because they are experts in stealing stuff. They mentioned that we may never take their pictures, because they’ll harass you until you give them money. Good to know !

They also gave us a list of places they had visited the last 5 days. They advised us to visit the city Košice, the economic and cultural centre of Slovakia. This city has a well preserved historical centre, with many protected buildings in Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Art Nouveau styles. They said it's very nice to walk through the little streets with its beautiful boutiques and charming cafés. They made us very curious so we decided to visit this city tomorrow. I hope it’s as nice as they said !

There is still more to come with our busy schedule. I’m sure it will be fantastic !
Until next week with another story !

Dobrý večer (which means “good evening”)

Elke

Sources:

http://www.slovak-republic.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovakia
http://www.slovensko.com/
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/slovakia
http://www.landenweb.net/slowakije/wiki/bratislava-en-hoge-tatra-mh-a769.htm