Boutique Hotel Sopianae Pecs

... of trains. Despite being the low season, the
intercity buses (I'm talking Murrays couches, not your local Action bus
style) are typically packed and for certain legs, there are not enough
seats for everyone. God forbid any of the young people should get up to
let some old person sit down - it seems totally unheard of here.
Anyway, that's enough of me sounding like some old **** myself!



This evening I have ...

We returned to Pecs with the intention of getting an overnight train down to Belgrade. Unfortunately we arrived at the station to late so missed the train. There was an early morning one though so we found somewhere to stay and walked up the road to it. We arrived at the hostel and there were instruction on the door to phone a number if we required a room. While we were waiting for the hostel owner to turn up to give us a room James' camera got stolen. An absolute nightmare as it had some ...

... Now it was nearly deserted with lots of nice log cabins that were all boarded up and abandoned. When we arrived at the camp site the guy looked very surprised to see us. There were probably room for a few hundred caravans and maybe double that again in tents. From what we saw there were 3 groups camping ...

... into the Early Christian Burial Centre. Pecs was the site of a Roman settlement in the 4th Century and was the site of early Christian burial tombs. Over the years the tombs have been raided, destroyed, and build upon (over and over again), but several sites have been excavated and it it possible to see the structure of the tombs, as well as a couple of sarcophagi. One tomb is fairly intact and it is possible to see the original artwork ...

... Hungary. There is a wall of locks where the students place a lock to express their loyalty to the town. Unfortunately the rain set in for the afternoon and after persisting with our sightseeing for a while we retreated to the mall and then to a little pizzeria for an early dinner. When we got back to the farm the rain had cleared so we went for a short walk in Kiskassa.

... in Hungary about 200 metres later across the river. We arrived at the farm/hostel at about 3pm. It is located in Kiskassa, a little village about a 20 minute drive from Pecs. The owner (from Manchester UK) showed us around and we tried his elderberry cordial. Later he gave us the guided tour of the virtually self sufficient little farm and told us some of the history of the farm and the ...

... immediately invited us for dinner (with the missionaries as well for translation.) "Dinner" ended up including laundry and help finding a campsite as well as an invite for lunch the next day when we picked up our drying laundry. So nice! Pecs has definately been the highlight of our Hungary stint.
Pecs is where my family lived for a semester when I was 9 years old (this is Chrissy writing now if ...

... Upon arriving at Kiraly Utca where our hostel was located I began to hear the distinct sound of accordion music floating towards me down the boulevard. Upon reaching the Hungarian National Theatre we stumbled upon a large crowd of Hungarians dancing in a giant circle with a gypsy band playing on the steps of the theatre. Then a gypsy man got into the center of the circle and showed off a dance move, which the crowd of people would then mimic ...

... 30-45 minutes of the journey...thus the ONLY people arriving to Mohacs as the rain came down in the black of night. When we pulled up to the little shack of a train stop, I stuck my head out the door in disbelief and hollered at the exiting conductor "Mohacs?"... hoping maybe this was the stop right before the end of the line. Nope, this was it. You see, we were planning on chilling at the train station for a couple hours..til it was daylight (about 4 AM)....turns out, no ...

... grueling two days of travelling to reach Pecs, Hungary. The first day of travel we spent ten and a half hours on the most disgusting train I have ever laid eyes on. There were flies everywhere, the bathrooms looked like they hadn't been cleaned since 1984, and the train reeked. After that, we arrived in Oradea, and made our way to the train station at the border, since our travel book had warned that we couldn't go from Oradea to Hungary. So we went to the other train ...