From: Nat Hager III
Date: Saturday, 1998 August 29 17.07
Subject: Lake Balaton to Bratislava
Hi Folks,
Xuan and I are in Prague, Czech
Republic, after having driven from Budapest down to Lake Balaton, then north
through the Hungarian countryside to Bratislava, Slovakia, then up to Brno,
Czech Republic, and now over to Prague. Prague is by far the most
beautiful city we've seen, and I'll describe it in the next email. Don't have
a Net connection right now, so I'm writing this in advance and sending it when
I get one
Tuesday morning we left Budapest
and drove down one of the main motorways 100 km southwest to the resort area
of Lake Balaton. We headed for the town of Tihany, on a small
peninsula jutting into the lake. We followed a winding road around the
peninsula, with beaches and hiking trails off the road and tall rows of
Lombardi Poplars (?) lining both sides of the road. At one point we
passed a sailboat marina with 20-30 full-size, though slightly old, sailboats
tied up like a typical marina.
At the far end of the peninsula
was a ferry to the other side, and around that a lot of flea markets, snack
bars, etc. German was the defacto second language, as in most of the
former East Bloc, and we figured this must be a popular resort for the former
East Germans, who kept coming out of nostalgia. All of the merchants and
waiters, whether they like it or not, spoke German and we noticed the German
"Zimmer Frei" (room vacancy) almost universally replacing its
Hungarian equivalent. English was starting to make inroads, but just
barely.
At the top of a long hill was
Tihany itself, which felt very much like a small town in the English Cotswolds.
Lots of stone houses on narrow winding roads leading up and down the hill, all
anchored by a prominent church at the top. Many of the houses had
thatched roofs and one item at the food markets that really added color were
the bright red "paprika" peppers. Paprika seems to be
everywhere, and is apparently a staple in Hungarian cooking.
We drove to the far end of the lake and then
returned, getting some inexpensive rooms across the road from the marina near
Tihany. I had the pleasure of "locking" my parking
space, which involved setting up a small barrier behind the car with a
padlock, to minimize the danger of car theft. This is still a
problem in the East and most hotels provide a locked parking area, with Avis
and the other major rentals adding a $50 surcharge for taking a car into the
east.
Wednesday we headed straight north toward
Slovakia. We took back roads off the motorway, which convinced us the
"up-and-coming" look to Hungary was not just limited to the
principle cities and motorways, but was pretty universal. We
stopped at an electronics shop in Gyor, to replace a lost AC plug adapter for
my laptop, and wound up having breakfast at the "Mozart Cafe".
Everything felt very upscale, from the pastry under the counter, to the new
ceramic tile, to the background music, track lights in the ceiling, etc.
At the cafe I noticed a "no cellular
telephones" symbol on the door, but that seemed to be ignored as this is
one of the principle tools of the new entrepreneurial class. You quickly
notice that everything is being driven by this entrepreneurial class, which
further east I guess degenerates into the Russian gangs. At any
rate, things are certainly reversed from 20 years ago, with the government
being the weaker element.
Heading north from Hungary we crossed into
Slovakia, about 10km south of Bratislava. Here we noticed a bit of a
step down, and wound up just walking around the downtown for a couple hours and
touring the old palace on the hill. Bratislava has a bit of a Soviet-era
appearance, with oceans of high-rise housing on the horizon and a rather
menacing-looking suspension bridge design over the Danube river. It's
heading in the same direction as Czech and Hungary, but not as far along.
Heading north of Slovakia we then crossed into
the Czech Republic, which is now a completely separate from Slovakia.
What was once a straight-through highway in the old Czechoslovakia is now
blocked and abandoned, with full passport control, money conversion, etc.
Czech Republic is clearly the winner, since once we crossed the border things
shot up significantly. The Czech border guards were dressed sharper, the
highway was in great shape, commercial activity was everywhere (adds for
Novell, Sun, IBM, etc) and everyone seemed to have a web/email address.
We stopped Wednesday night Brno, and then headed
into Prague Thursday, where we are now. Prague is really impressive, but
I'll have to make that another email.
Later,
Nat
Thursday 27 Aug 98 23.00 CET
Material Sensing & Instrumentation, Inc.
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