Germany - Day 4, Across the border into France

This was the last morning of the visit to Baden-Baden and the Black Forest and a big German continental breakfast was a good start to the day and shortly afterwards we cleared the bathroom of all of the complimentary shampoos and shower gels and packed ready to leave. Now, I know that it is sad but even though I have quite enough money to buy my own toiletries I still get excited by collecting up all of the colourful little bottles of free goo and taking them back home. I never use them of course and its all the same low quality stuff anyway but I find them simply irresistible even though all they do is clutter up the bathroom as travel souvenirs

We left Baden-Baden on the 500 road, which went back to the Black Forest and some of the places that had been missed on the first visit. What was rather startling was that the snow that had covered the trees and was piled up by the side of the road then had thawed rather rapidly and it was necessary to go much higher into the mountains before there was any today and although it had looked rather permanent on Saturday what was absolutely certain was that it wasn’t going to be around for very much longer. At about a thousand metres there was a ski slope at Hundesect and so we parked the car and went off to the slopes to watch the people enjoying their winter sport.

Because recent years have seen the warmest winters on record every year the number of days of snow cover in central and southern Europe is steadily reducing and the snow line is retreating and climate projections predict even higher temperatures in the future. Scientists say that this is due to global warming and some warn that within twenty years skiing will not be possible below two thousand metres. It was interesting that there was quite so much snow here but the answer was that there were artificial snow machines on the ski slope because most ski resorts these days tend to rely on snow cannons to create simulated snow. They achieve this by pumping thousands of gallons of water into the cold air that turn into ice crystals to provide an artificial skiing surface. Unfortunately, these machines use so much energy and consume so much water that they are also contributing to environmental damage and this solution to the no-snow problem may in the long run be self defeating.

Today was bitterly cold with a raw wind that cut right through to the bone and the view over the Rhine valley was in total contrast to two days ago. It was bleak and grey and the clouds looked decidedly threatening and angry. For a short while it started to snow but it was blowing about in the wind sort of snow and not the thick settling type. If on Saturday this had been the White Forest today it really lived up to its name and the sides of the mountains looked dark and mysterious under a dense cloak of conifers.

We were heading now for Strasbourg and followed the road to the border town of Kehl where shortly afterwards the road crossed the Rhine and passed into France through an immigration control without any sign of activity. The Rhine is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe, it begins in the Swiss Alps and flows for one thousand three hundred kilometres to the North Sea. That’s only about half as long as the Danube and it certainly doesn’t make the top one hundred longest rivers in the world, coming in at only one hundred and eleventh but is still very impressive. From the very earliest times it has been an important trade route and today it remains a vitally important transport link that serves the industrial cities of the Rhine through France, Germany and the Low Countries and today, just like every other day, it was busy with huge freight barges transporting raw materials to the factories along its banks.

All of a sudden there was absolutely no mistaking the fact that we were in France. The river is about three hundred metres wide and in that short distance there was a total and unmistakable transformation from one country to another. The architecture, the language, the dog crap and the French grunge was in total contrast to the clinically clean German towns and villages that had been left behind on the other side of the river. Strasbourg is the seventh largest city in France in the region of Alsace and is regarded as the cultural cross roads between Germanic and Latin culture. In the recent past Strasbourg has been passed between Germany and France like pcae the parcel at a childrens birthday party. Before the French Revolution it was a free city but the fanatical Jacobins siezed it for the Republic. In 1870 after the Franco-Prussian war culminated in the creation of modern Germany and it was ceded to Berlin but after the First-World-War it returned to France. In 1940 the Nazis siezed the city and it was liberated again in 1944 and has remained French thereafter.

I have often wondered about national boundaries and how people stop being one nationality and become another and speak another language just because there is a line on a map but here it was easy to understand because the River Rhine creates a very discernable boundary between two very different cultures. Because of this I expected to be a mixed up sort of a place but actually not a bit of it, Strasbourg is definitely French.

There was a very typical French bistro next to the car park where we enjoyed a very gallic lunch that was in total contrast to the teutonic hospitality that we had become used to over the last few days and it felt strange to be trying to communicate in basic French rather than the basic German that I had been finding so difficult, vin rouge and bier grande seemed much more natural than rot wein and bier vom fass.

There wasn’t a lot of time available to explore Strasbourg which was a bit of a relief really because it was really, really cold and if one thing was absolutely certain then there was going to be no blue sky and sun today. The historic centre, the Grande Île was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, and this was the first time such an honour was placed on an entire city centre. There were some grand buildings here with lots of medievial half timbered houses that once again had avoided destruction during the two world wars but the best building of all was the mighty sandstone cathedral which dominates the whole of the city. At one hundred and forty two metres, it was the world's tallest building from 1625 to 1874 and it remained the tallest church in the world until 1880, when it was surpassed firstly by Cologne Cathedral and then Ulm Münster. Today it remains the sixth tallest church in the world and was described by Victor Hugo as a "gigantic and delicate marvel”.

We liked Strasbourg very much and would like to see it again with better weather. One thing that did let it down was quite a lot of dog shit because the French don’t seem to have a problem with, or a conscience about, letting their animals take a dump on the pavement thereby causing maximum inconvenience for other pedestrians, and it pays to keep a watchful eye on where you are walking in France! The French authorities are trying to tackle the problem but are making little progress and even heavy fines (€440 for a first offence) has had little impact. In Paris they remove sixteen tonnes of dog excrement every day, which causes four thousand five hundred accidents a week. Removing it costs €15m a year!

Leaving Strasbourg was a lot more straightforward than I had imagined and back in Germany there was an easy drive back to Baden-Baden along what has to be said was a featureless road that followed the east bank of the Rhine along a straight and easily navigable route back to the town. After a final glass of beer at the traditional bar and an excellent meal at the German restaurant it was time to go back to the airport, return the little Fiat Panda and to settle back for the short flight back to the UK.

Germany - Day 3, Speyer

I was interested in visiting Speyer because this is the twin town of Spalding and I had heard people talk fondly of it but had no idea of what it was like. And what a surprise it turned out to be, a real gem of a place with a huge Cathedral and a wide main street with gaily coloured buildings and a very pleasant vibrant atmosphere. And, thankfully, a very big car park, clearly sign posted (even though I did miss it the first time around, which was entirely my own fault) with plenty of available spaces.

Speyer has been Spalding’s twin town since 1956 and I have often wondered what the process was for getting a twin town. Perhaps it was like the draw for the third round of the FA cup when all the names go into a hat to be drawn out with each other, you know, number 36, Rugby, will be twinned with number 87, Russelheim, and so on; or perhaps it was like the UCAS University clearing house system where towns made their preferred selections and waited for performance results to see if they were successful; or perhaps it was a sort of dating service and introductory agency. Who knows? Anyway, the English city of Coventry started it all off and was the first ever to twin with another when it made links with Stalingrad in the Soviet Union in 1944 and is now so addicted to twinning that it has easily the most of any English town or city with a massive twenty-six twins (Honolulu in the United States however beats this by one, registering twenty seven twins). That is a lot of civic receptions and a lot of travelling expenses for the Mayor of Coventry and seems to me to be a bit greedy and unnecessary. Perhaps even more surprising is that Sherborne in Dorset, a town of only ten thousand residents has fifteen twin towns, which is even more excessive.

Speyer has a compact centre which is dominated by the Cathedral, a number of churches that would be impressive in their own right if they were not overshadowed by the cathedral and a well restored and maintained old town gate. In the cathedral, beneath the high altar, are the tombs of eight German emperors and kings. This is a seriously important cathedral and the laying of the foundation stone was the decisive impetus for the development of the town in the early medieval age. The Cathedral was consecrated in 1061 but not completed until 1111. It was the largest church of its time and, in its monumentality and significance symbolised Imperial power and Christianity and it is one of the most important Romanesque monuments from the time of the Holy Roman Empire.

What I didn’t know was that Speyer has been so important in the development of modern Christianity in Europe because in 1529 the Imperial Diet met in Speyer and agreed to reconfirm the Edict of Worms of 1521 imposing the Imperial ban on the trouble maker Martin Luther and his followers, who were causing the church all sorts of difficulties by challenging the traditions of the Catholicism,. This resolution caused great descension and the outraged imperial towns drew up a letter of protest which was delivered to the Emperor Charles V. This Protestation at Speyer caused the separation of the Christian church and is considered to be the birth of Protestantism and from this time on the adherents of the reformation movement were called Protestants.

I thought Speyer was really very nice with big open spaces, cobbled streets and I have to say a bit like being in France which as it is only a few kilometres from the border was not really all that surprising and I had to keep reminding myself that I really was in Germany. The weather was improving rapidly now and blue patches of sky were opening up the clouds and letting the sunshine through and as it was about midday it was time for a spot of lunch and a gasthaus next to the cathedral provided the perfect place for a sit down and a rest. After soup and beer it was back to the town to enjoy the improving weather but sadly it didn’t last long and the clouds began to muscle their way back in and soon the town was short of blue sky and sunshine once again.

Leaving the town for the return journey was a bit of a leap of faith because the road map was missing the first thirty kilometres or so of the journey and trusting to luck I followed the signs for Karlsrhue and hoped for the best. We passed signs for Hockenheim, the home of the German grand-prix and then seemed to go an awful long way before finally reaching the Autobahn again for the final few kilometres back to Baden-Baden.

Safely back there was time for a beer in a little bar close to the hotel overlooking the main buildings of the town and later a very good day was finished off with a revisit to the French restaurant where this time I sensibly had the house chicken and made sure that I avoided the cassoulet on account of its unfortunate and anti-social explosive properties.

Germany - Day 3, Heidelberg

After the excellent weather yesterday, today looked much less promising and a quick glance out of the hotel window showed lots of people with umbrellas which sort of confirmed that it was raining. Where had all the blue sky gone I wanted to know? After breakfast it started to clear up however and by the time we had the car on the road the weather was starting to brighten up. Today the plan was to go to Heidelberg an ancient and traditional German city about sixty kilometres further north up the Rhine valley and recommended for a visit in all of the travel guide books. Because Gernsbach had been so spectacular I chose this route to get there, even though it was not the most direct, but the town didn’t look quite so good under a canopy of grey cloud and the road out of Gernsbach to Rastatt provided nothing of real interest, so it was a bad decision.

At Rastatt the road joined the Autobahn number 5 and headed north. This was my first drive on a German Autobahn but I have to say that it was really quite enjoyable. Although there was fierce competition for road space with BMWs and Mercedes, with considerably more power than I was packing, the little Fiat Panda exceeded my expectations and did very well indeed. It only had an 1100cc engine but it accelerated well, picked up the pace quickly and was soon holding its own at a steady one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour and the thing really could go. It was nothing like the original Fiat Panda that was introduced in 1980 and which I seem to remember was a bit of an ugly duckling prone to premature rusting and desperately under powered. It was also notoriously unreliable and because of the amount of time it spent in the repair shop became affectionately nicknamed ‘Fix It Again Tommy’. Although it was fast and furious the Autobahn felt strangely safe, much more so than our UK motorways, and I put this down to the fact that the lanes seemed wider, it was not so cluttered with barriers and bridges, the entry slip roads are more generous and it felt more altogether more spacious and for these reasons the lorries and the big trucks felt somehow less intimidating. I really quite enjoyed it!

From the pictures in the guide books I had imagined Heidelberg to be a sleepy little medieval university sort of town so it was disappointing to find that it is really quite large on account of it being part of a densely populated region called the Rhein, Neckar Triangle. Heidelberg lies on the river Neckar, twenty kilometres below the point where it joins the Rhine at Mannheim and turns out to be an important industrial centre and this was a bit of a surprise. To get to the tourist old town required a drive through the busy commercial centre before arriving on the western bank of the river. For a moment or two this looked quite promising but I have to say that in my experience Heidelberg has to be the least visitor friendly place that I have ever visited, especially if you are a motorist. There was simply nowhere to park the car and although there were vacant parking spaces these were all reserved for residents and permit holders. After at least three circuits of both sides of the river we eventually gave up, parked the car in a restricted zone, and keeping one eye out for the traffic warden while we walked only a short distance to look across the river to the historic old town and its famous castle.

Heidelberg has an iconic status as a centre of Germanic history and culture. In 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia formed the ‘Holy Alliance’ in Heidelberg and later in 1848, the year of revolutions, a German National Assembly was established there. During the Nazi era the authorities built a massive stadium on the edge of the city where the SS would parade and have massive rallies. Luckily the city avoided destruction during the war, it is said because the United States army rather liked the look of it and fancied setting up shop there, but in fact, as Heidelberg was neither an industrial centre nor a transport hub, there was nothing much worth bombing there and Allied air raids focused on the more important nearby industrial cities of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.

It has to be said that all in all Heidelberg was a bit of a disappointment and on account of the parking difficulties and the desperately dreary weather the stay here was restricted to only fifteen minutes or so, long enough to take a few photographs, and then move on and head for the town of Speyer. I am sure that this is being very unfair to Heidelberg because everyone seems to rave about the place, I think we were disorientated by the dramatic change in the weather and didn’t really give it a proper chance.

Stinging Nettles

It was a lovely day in Lincolnshire on Saturday, almost Spring like, the washing dried on the line, the home made fat balls melted in the midday sun and I thought I might start to tidy the garden up a little bit ready for later in the year. I was ripping, hacking and tearing away at dead foliage like a man possessed and then I tackled some of last year’s nettles and was most surprised to find that they were still active and I took a cruel sting to the hand. Two days later my fingers are still covered in itchy red lumps that are most uncomfortable.

The stinging nettle is a member of the Urticaceae family and Urtica is from the Latin urere, which means 'to burn'. Across the World there are about five hundred species of nettle and some in the Far East can produce a sting, which burns for days. Urtica urentissima, for example, is found in Java, and can cause a rash for a whole year and may, in extreme cases, cause death. And so, I have to tell you, can those in my back garden.

This is the technical stuff. Stinging nettles are a dioecious herbaceous perennial, growing up to two metres tall in the summer and dying down to the ground in winter (in case you are wondering, a dioecious species cannot self-fertilize. In most of the dioecious species the male plant is of heterogametic sex XY and the female plant is of homogametic sex XX). It has very distinctively yellow, widely spreading roots, rhizomes and stolons. The soft green leaves are are borne oppositely on an erect wiry green stem and have a strongly serrated margin, a cordate base and an acuminate tip with a terminal leaf tooth longer than adjacent laterals (did you know that already?).

The leaf is where all of the stinging damage comes from because on the surface of the nettle leaf there are a lot of tiny hair-like structures, which are in fact hollow tubes, and they bear many stinging hairs, called trichomes, that contain a nasty cocktail of chemicals and whose brittle tips break off when touched, transforming the hair into a needle that will inject acetylcholine, histamine, 5-HT, serotonin, and formic acid. You would pay a fortune for a cocktail of drugs like that on the High Street on a Saturday night and you can get it for nothing in the back garden! This mixture of chemical compounds causes a sting (or paresthesia) from which the species derives its common name, as well as the alternative colloquial names such as burn nettle, burn weed and burn hazel.

After being stung it is apparently important not to scratch the rash as this can smear the chemicals around and generally only make things a lot worse. The best thing to do is to apply a soothing lotion to it, and have a nice hot cup of tea, or alternatively I find that a gin and tonic works equally as well. Many, often ineffective, folk remedies exist for treating the itching, including horsetail, dock leaves, Jewelweed, mud, saliva, baking soda, calamine lotion or soap and water but it is probably best to use soothing lotions, usually in the form of creams containing antihistaminics or hydrocortisone. I do have some dock weeds in the garden and I do use them in the summer but the relief this provides is probably just down to the placebo effect.

This is bizarre fact but in Dorset, every year, competitors come from all over the world to the World Nettle Eating Championships. I’ll say that again – the World Nettle eating championships! This is one hour of eating as many stinging nettles as possible and is held as part of a charity beer festival at the Bottle Inn in the village of Marshwood near Crewkerne. Not surprisingly, the rules are tight for this level of competitive nettle eating and only nettles provided by the organisers can be eaten, competitors are not allowed to bring their own and no mouth numbing substances are permitted - although a swig of beer in between mouthfuls is always encouraged.

This is almost as mad as the four hundred year old Belgian sport of vinkenzetting which pits male chaffinches against one another in a contest for the most bird calls in an hour. The sport was first recorded in 1596 and currently it is estimated that there are over thirteen thousand vinkeniers breeding ten thousand birds every year. This is a sport more pointless than fishing and this is how the contest works - a row of cages, each housing a single male finch, are lined up approximately two metres apart along a street; the close proximity is important because it increases the number of calls, as the birds sing for mates and to establish its territory, and every time the bird sings this is recorded as a score by making a chalk mark on a pole. The bird singing its song the most times in one hour wins the contest. Unbelievable!

When I was a boy I had a friend called Tony Gibbard and in his garden were two trees, one large and one small, which with a bit of imagination doubled up as a Lancaster bomber and a spitfire fighter. One day Tony was shot down in a surprise attack by a German Meschersmidt and he fell out of the spitfire (the Ash tree) and tumbled into a patch of nettles underneath. He didn’t half yelp and ran to the house for medical assistance. He didn’t come out again that day and when I caught up with him later he was covered in patches of pink calamine lotion all over his face and hands. He was too young for gin and tonic in 1963.

This is a picture of me and Tony at about that time when he came with us on a visit to London and we went to see the dinosaur sculptures at Crystal Palace. He was a lot taller than me and probably still is. The other two in the picture are Richard, my brother and Lindsay, my sister.

Germany - Day 2, Weiberfastnacht and the Allerheiligen Wasserfälle

Another tourist road led to the small town of Oppenau where there was a carnival in full flow and it seemed appropriate to stop at a community centre where there was a party to investigate. The children were all in fancy dress, the men were dressed like Noddy and Big Ears with elaborate wooden masks and the women wore colourful medieval style dresses. It all looked a bit pagan to me, which I suppose it is really, and reminded me of the film ‘The Whicker Man’ when villagers in fancy dress sacrificed a stranger. With that thought rattling around my head I remained alert to any threatening behaviour.

There was none of course, this was all a lot of good fun and it did explain the carnival bunting in Gernsbach and I discovered later that this is the festival of Fastnacht which is a carnival in Alemannic folklore that takes place in the few days before Lent in Southern Germany, Switzerland and Alsace. The Alemanni were German tribes who lived in this part of Europe nearly two thousand years ago and this area remains characterised by a form of German with a distinct dialogue called Alemannic. The celebration literally means ‘Fasting Eve’ as it originally referred to the day before the fasting season of Lent. The schools are all closed for this festival and all over the Black Forest there are six days of parties and making merry. At the community centre everyone was shoving down platefuls of food and consuming lots of drink. A sort of doughnut seemed to be popular and these I learnt were called fasnachts and are a traditional fatty treat that are produced as a way to empty the pantry of lard, sugar, fat and butter, which are forbidden during Lent. This is a catholic tradition but in protestant England we call this Shrove Tuesday and serve pancakes instead of doughnuts, it is much the same thing. This festival is also called ‘Weiberfastnacht’ or Women's Carnival on account of the fact that tradition says that on this day women take control of local affairs. I might be mistaken of course but I was under the impression that this was every day not just once a year.

Out of Oppenau the road climbed again and provided stunning views over the Rhine valley, flat and contrasting sharply with the Black Forest mountains, looking deep into neighbouring France. The road finally arrived at the Allerheiligen Wasserfälle, which is a five hundred-metre waterfall on the river Lierbach as it tumbles quickly through a narrow gorge full of boulders and fallen trees. It was especially dramatic today because of the melting snow that was adding to the volume of water that was contributing to the rapid flow of the river. The sides of the mountain were covered in little icicles that had attached themselves to and entombed little blades of grass. On the ground the compacted snow was easy to walk on and made the climb to the top of the gorge easy except that is for the parts when the steps were covered in treacherous ice and it was necessary to cling on to the railings for fear of slipping over. After the falls and back in the car the road continued to an unusually numbered road, the 500, that would have led directly back to Baden-Baden if I hadn’t tried to be clever and find another tourist route which because of the inadequacy of the road signs only led to the uninteresting towns of Bühl and Sinzheim and then back to Baden-Baden through the St Michaels tunnel.

Back at the hotel there was more rugby football, this time France versus Scotland and although I have never associated Germany with rugby football I was interested to discover that they are in fact ranked 26th in the world out of a total of ninety five countries affiliated to the International Rugby Board which, let’s be honest, is really quite respectable.

After a rest and a beer from the mini bar (because the discount mini market was closed) it was a return to the town centre for a restaurant and tonight a traditional German establishment where we enjoyed food from an authentic German menu and red wine by the half litre jug. I had a wiener schnitzel which I probably wouldn’t order at home because my daughter, Sally, would strongly disapprove but I have to say that it was really, really good.

It was the end of a long day and after a final walk along the Stiftskirche to walk off the meal it was back to the hotel in anticipation of another good day tomorrow and a drive to the famous university town of Heidelberg.

Germany - Day 2, a walk in the Black Forest

When I was a boy my parents had an LP record by Bert Kaempfert. He was a German band leader who was quite popular in the 1960s. They liked it anyway! One particular tune that I can remember distinctly was a jaunty little melody called ‘A walk in the Black Forest’ and today that was exactly what was on the planned itinerary.

It was a fine morning with a perfectly clear blue sky, just the way I like it, so after a substantial breakfast at the Merkur it was out of Baden-Baden in an easterly direction heading for the town of Gernsbach about ten kilometres away. It was early and the town was quiet with just a few people on the way to church and what was interesting was that the streets were all decorated with home made bunting all made from old rags and scraps of clothing but with no real clue to what it was all about. I have to say that the really nice thing about German towns is the cleanliness and with the sun shining so considerately the town centre, adjacent to the fast flowing river Murg was especially picturesque this morning.

The road out of town followed the river and wasn’t especially fascinating but after a few kilometres a left hand turn took us into the mountains and towards Schwarzenbach-Stausee, a sort of reservoir lake in an especially picturesque location. The car climbed steeply and negotiated a succession of hair pin bends first through deciduous trees surrounded by the remains of autumn leaf fall and then into dense conifer forest and as it did so we quite unexpectedly found ourselves above the snow line. Suddenly the Black Forest was completely transformed into the White Forest. There had been a substantial fall of snow a day or so before and the conifer trees were heavily laden with crisp white snow fixed in place by a hard frost and it was as though we had been transported into a traditional christmas card world of snow and ice, frozen lakes and winter pastimes.

What was especially impressive was that the roads were all perfectly clear and had obviously been subject to an efficient snow clearing plan that had kept them open to traffic. This wouldn’t happen in the UK of course because half a millimetre or so of snow in England brings everything to a complete standstill. The steady climb continued until what seemed like the top of the world and the forest looked like a freshly made bed with a pristine white sheet of pure Egyptian cotton spread across it. At this point the forest is about one thousand one hundred metres high which is just about the same elevation as Mount Snowdon. At its highest point the Black Forest mountains reach one thousand five hundred metres which is just a bit higher than Ben Nevis. And at this height it was just about possible to appreciate the vast scale of the forest. It covers an area of about twelve thousand square kilometres which is roughly the equivilent of Yorkshire which is the largest county in England.

I don’t know what I was really expecting from the Black Forest but one thing for sure it was much more impressive that Sherwood Forest or the New Forest where I have always thought there is a disappointing shortage of trees, for forests. I think the reason for that is that since the sixteenth century or thereabouts, Britain has always had a navy that used up all of the forest oaks in England to build wooden battleships but Germany didn’t become a naval power until the late nineteenth century by which time ships were made of steel. That probably saved the Black Forest from losing it’s trees and thank goodness for that.

From the top the road descended again back to the main road and on to the town of Freudenstadt. On the way navigation proved something of a difficulty because I have found that one of the things that could be improved in Germany is the standard of road signs and directions; and road numbers would be quite handy as well. It is hard enough grappling with places that were named by a tourettes syndrome sufferer like Badshitz and Klostermeebag but it is even more difficult when the road signs give confusing and conflicting information that continually test a drivers skill at performing three point turns. It is also disconcerting when the navigator is completely lacking in map reading skills and I always kew that I was in trouble when Kim kept turning the map round to face the way we were going in that female sort of way. This invariably means one of two things, either we are lost or we have just missed an important turning. I always know that this is the time to start making preparations for a u-turn.

The town of Freudenstadt was still clearing away the snow from the footpaths and the pedestrian areas and the there was a sense of community involvement as everyone seemed to be making their contribution to the work in hand. Passing quickly through town the scenic tourist road zigzagged wildly from left to right and always upwards towards Bad Rippoldsau and then dropped down again to Kneibis where it was time for a simple lunch and a glass of pils in an authentic German Gasthaus. I knew that the snow had only recently fallen and was probably the first fall of the winter because it was completely undisturbed and there was a lot of frantic activity as local people had obviously rushed to the countryside with their children for tobogganing and skiing and I suspect that just as in England snow isn’t as common in many parts of Europe as it used to be.

Germany - Day 1, Baden-Baden

The Ryanair website is like quicksand; once you are in there it sucks you in deeper and deeper looking for bargain flight offers and it is difficult to get out. It is cleverly designed to work that way so that you visit more and more pages in a frenzied search for the best deals. I like the 1p deals with reduced Government taxes best so was delighted to find some all-inclusive flights for £23.00 to Baden-Baden. I imagine that Ryanair web surfing is not unlike being hooked on class A drugs and although I really had no idea where Baden-Baden is, except that I knew that it is in Germany, I really didn’t care. I was determined to have the flights so booked without giving the transaction a second thought.

After it had been confirmed I set out to discover where it was exactly and to learn something about the destination. I had made the assumption that it must be worth visiting because, as in the Frank Sinatra song, like New York they named it twice. I was delighted to discover that Baden-Baden is a town in Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany and located on the banks of the River Oos, a tributory of the mighty Rhine, at the northern foothills of the Black Forest. It is also only fifty kilometres away from the French border and close to the city of Strasbourg and only roughly the same distance from Speyer which is the twin town of Spalding. So planning an itinery was very straight forward indeed.

The airport was about fifteen kilometres away and with a cheap hire car and a good map purchased from a garage next to the airpark the journey into the town was relatively easy until that is it came to pinpointing the exact location of the hotel Merkur and this required a couple of circuits of the town and several requests for assistance. It was much too early for check-in so a visit to a local hostelry seemed appropriate to get a better understanding of the layout of the town. After refreshment in a typical German bar next to a statue of the German Chancellor who created Germany, Otto Von Bismarck and complete with Tyrolean music and waitresses in traditional black forest costumes a walk around the town revealed some wonderful buildings and adjacent parks with elevated walks that gave good views over the town and the surrounding countryside.

Baden-Baden is a spa town not unlike Harrogate in Yorkshire but with a distinctly mediterranean flair. Anyone who has visited Harrogate will know that this is probably the only town in England north of the M25 where the residents consider themselves posher than those in Surrey and I got the impression that it might be the same here in Baden-Baden. There was a smell of money about the place and the people, the buildings, the parks and the shops were all well turned out. There was even a cake shop that was a dead ringer for Betty’s tea Room!

The springs of Baden-Baden were known to the Romans, and the foundation of the town is attributed to the Emperor Hadrian but the town’s heyday was in the nineteenth century when the town became a favourite with the aristocracy of Europe and featured prominently on their annual itinerary of places to visit and in the centre of the town and outside the Kurhaus spa, is an impressive bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I who also rather liked this place. At that time it was called simply Baden as it always had been since the middle ages and it was only in 1931 that the town was officially given its double name which literally means Baden in the State of Baden, I suppose that would be a bit like Warwick-Warwick or Derby-Derby if the same principle was adopted in the UK. In both World Wars, the town was fortunate to escape damage or destruction which must have been a huge stroke of luck considering what happened to most of the Rhine towns and cities and after World-War-Two it became the headquarters of the French forces in occupied Germany who rather found the place to their liking.

It was time for lunch and a welcoming little restaurant was the perfect place. A glance at the menu confirmed my excellent judgement in earlier purchasing a German phrase book because the menu interpretation looked especially tricky with very few words that meant anything at all to me. I have become familiar with French and Spanish and even Italian menus and can order food with some certainty but there was room for serious gastro mistakes to be made here. My only real knowledge of the German language is what I learnt as a boy from the Victor, which was a jingoistic publication for boys that featured stories about British gallantry in the two world wars of the twentieth century, and as these were stories about British heroes the comics were restricted to a handful of often repeated German phrases; ‘Achtung’, ‘Luftwaffe’, “Hände Hoch!’ and my personal favourite ‘donnerwetter!’ that translates strictly as ‘thunder weather’. I am not at all sure if that is a real German word at all and I can’t find it in the dictionary but I suppose it was meant to be a curse and realistically this was a kids comic so I don’t suppose they could use the more appropriate ‘fücken hölle’ without getting a postbag full of complaints from angry parents.

Even this early in the visit I found that I was being forced into a reassessment of the German people. They were friendly and good mannered and even though there was a lot of mud in the moules marniere, which was the special of the day, and made me worry about an upset stomach, lunch was excellent. Here in their own country the people were so obliging and polite and not at all like the loud pushy archetypes that we had encountered before on holiday in Spain or Portugal where in the style of Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland they notoriously blitzkrieg the hotels and commandeer the best pool side sun loungers. I have to say that it was a real pleasure to be here and not really what I was expecting at all, it felt relaxed, refined and cultured and I was glad of that and to have my national prejudices so quickly readjusted. In fact the overwhelming experience of hospitality made me think about just what is it that sets people against people and how was it that only sixty years or so ago we had such hatred for each other that resulted in a bloody and terrible war. I hope that we are all Europeans now and that it will forever remain that way.

Later that evening there was a second walk into the town to find somewhere for an evening meal and the choice and variety of restaurants was most surprising. There were the expensive ones of course in the vicinity of the casino but we were looking for was something more in our style, a simple place with an authentic menu and average prices and for this it meant going into the town centre. Here there was a French restaurant with a traditional menu but with a full house this meant another visit to the lively German bar opposite to wait for an available table. And it was worth it because the food was first class but my choice of cassoulet had a rather overly generous portion of beans that I feared, combined with the mud moules might have an unfortunate effect on my digestive system later on.

It was a fine evening and the walk back to the Merkur was down the Stiftskirche, a main street through the heart of the town where the finest buildings are situated. First the Kurhaus, which is Baden-Baden's most famous landmark, and is one of the most beautiful buildings in town. Originally it was a Promenade House and was the place to see and be seen, and even today is the hub of the town's social scene and contains beautiful spa gardens filled with shops, bars and reading rooms. Next the oldest casino in Germany that has been a favourite amongst people from all over Europe for two hundred years or so. The casino is built in the style of an elegant French chateau, and jackets and ties for men, as well as evening wear for women are mandatory. As we was travelling light we definitely did not have the appropriate dress and not nearly enough money either so entrance was not an option.

Interestingly the Russian writer Dostoevsky wrote ‘The Gambler’ in Baden-Baden while compulsively gambling at this famous Casino. Finally The Friedrichsbad, or Old Baths, which was built between 1869 and1877 under the order of Grand Duke Friedrich von Baden. They follow the Roman-Irish method, which takes around two hours to complete the whole program, which includes a shower; two saunas 55°c and 70°c; a brush massage, soaping, thermal steam baths and three freshwater baths.

It was late and it had been a long day so lacking the will for reading, the money for gambling or the energy for bathing the only thing left to do was to return to the hotel and look forward to a day in the Black Forest tomorrow.

Budapest - Day 3 (continued) Blue Skies & a Greek Restaurant

Seven years after Budapest was united from the three cities in 1873 the National Assembly resolved to establish a new representative Parliament Building that appropriately expressed the sovereignty of the nation. A competition was announced, which was won by the architect Imre Steindl and construction from the winning plan was started in 1885 and the building was inaugurated on the 1000th anniversary of the country in 1896 (no surprises there) and completed in 1904. During construction the project was a major employer in the city and there were about one thousand people working on its construction in which forty million bricks, half a million precious stones and forty kilograms of gold were used. It is the third largest Parliament building in the World after those in Roumania and Argentina. Although it has an eastern appearance it is similar to the Palace of Westminster and was built in the same Gothic Revival style and has a symmetrical facade and a central dome. It is two hundred and sixty-eight metres long and one hundred and twenty-three metres wide. Its interior includes ten courtyards and six hundred and ninety-one rooms.

It is set in the spacious Louis Kossuth Square and there is plenty of room to wander around and admire the magnificence of the building. Louis Kossuth led the 1848 revolution that attempted to overthrow the Hapsburgs and there is a large monument to his memory at one end of the square. At the other end is a statue of Imry Nagy, another Hungarian martyr and hero, who was Prime Minister during the post war occupation years and led the ill-fated 1956 anti-soviet government after the revolution of the same year attempted to break free from Soviet control. Nagy’s government formally declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October this had seemed to be successful but on 4th November, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and during a few days of resistance an estimated two thousand five hundred Hungarians died, and an estimated two hundred thousand more fled as refugees. Mass arrests and imprisonments continued and a new Soviet installed government was installed and this action strengthened Soviet control over Central Europe. Nagy was executed for treason in 1958.

I have to confess that Budapest was an absolute revelation, I had not been expecting anything so grand, it was easily as good as Vienna and in my opinion much better than Prague, the scale of the city eclipses Bratislava and Ljubljana and I liked it as wll as any other city I have visited. An interesting fact is that after London in 1863 it has the second oldest metro system in the world which was opened in the famously important year of 1896.

We would have liked to have stayed longer on this side of the river and spend more time in the great city squares that surrounded the Parliament building but because the sun was shining we wanted to return to Buda to see this at its best as well. We crossed the Chain Bridge for a final time and in Adam Clark Terrace took a ride on a funicular back to the Royal Place. At the top we were approached by a charming man who tried to persuade me to join a two hour sight seeing tour with his specially prepared English narrative and commentary. He was very polite and quite amusing and if we had had the time we would have willingly have joined him. His tour cost three thousand Forints which sounded quite a lot but was actually only the equivilent of about £8.50. I had struggled with the currency for the whole time in Budapest because I was not used to spending money in denominations of thousands which seemed to make everything sound expensive, especially when I was forever watching out for scams, when in actual fact it was all rather reasonable.

It was lunch time and although there was no time for food we did find time for a quick beer and then moved swiftly on because there was still a lot to do. First it was back to the Matthias Church and this time spend more time at the Fisherman’s Bastion which is a viewing terrace with seven towers that represent the seven Magyar tribes that settled in the Carpathian Basin in 896 and has magnificent views over the Danube looking in both directions but with an especially fine view of the Parliament building on the other side of the river. From the Casle Hill our route took us once more past the statue of St Gellért who was allegedly murdered on this spot in the eleventh century because of his Christian beliefs. The story goes that they put him into a barrel and rolled him down the hill and into the Danube. It could be true, but on the other hand… Last stop was the Liberty monument again where the camera battery gave out and with no more pictures to take it was back to the bottom of the hill and across Liberty Bridge to find a restaurant.

Normally when we are away we like to use the local bars and restaurants and enjoy ethnic cuisine but it was early and without a lot of choice we decided upon a Greek taverna that looked friendly and welcoming and was decorated in a Cycladic style that reminded us of Naxos. It was a good meal too and the owner was keen to talk about the Greek islands and his plans for the restaurant which were about creating an authentic Greek atmosphere. We assured him that he was well on the way to succeeding and before leaving he provided a complimentary drink in that hospitable Greek way that I like.

Sadly there was now no more time left and after leaving the restaurant it was time to collect luggage and arrange for a taxi back to the airport where Ryanair organisation was at its comical worst. After total chaos at the check-in desk it was even worse at the departure gate where we pulled our ‘go through last but get on the airoplane first routine’ which worked like clockwork. We met the businessman that we had travelled out with and he seemed to find this especially amusing especially has he had paid for priority boarding and we was settled down in a good seat before he even made the aircraft steps. We were pleased that he had a good sense of humour.

Budapest was fantastic, the hotel was really special and the spa baths were just as good as Palin said that they would be, the sights of the city were as good as anything we have ever seen, the weather was great and we didn’t get scammed even once, well not so that we noticed anyway.

Shopping Moll

Molly came to stay at Spalding this weekend for the second time. The first time she was only eight weeks old and didn’t know (and probably didn’t care) where she was but now she is four months old and so much more aware and responsive to her environment and she took an hour or two to familiarise herself with a surroundings that she couldn’t remember from her previous visit.

For the first evening she wasn’t her usual self but she eventually settled down in the new travel cot that I had bought earlier this week from Argos and she mostly slept through with only a couple of little wakeups. Some time during the night she did manage to scratch herself quite badly and in the morning she had a Richard Sharpe duelling type injury all the way down her left cheek, which didn’t suit her especially well.

Sally wanted to spend the morning at Springfields outlet shopping centre and so once we had all got ready we went shopping which isn’t something I do that often. Actually, to be honest, I do most of my shopping at Springfields but this is man shopping, I know what I want, I go straight there, buy what I want and get back to the car within half an hour before I have to pay a fee for parking. But shopping with Sally is different and I knew that this was going to take a while longer and so I took the precaution of taking a pound coin to pay for up to a two hour shop and that is a real marathon for me I can tell you.

Springfields turned out to be absolutely brilliant and it must because of the recession of course but they were practically giving stuff away. Sally started in the bra shop and I waited outside because I always feel a bit of a pervert looking around women’s lingerie shops but she snapped up a five for £10 bargain. M&S had nothing we wanted today but at Baby Gap we purchased some nice summer dresses for Molly ready for our holiday in France in August. I picked up a jacket for £5 and thought that this was such a bargain bought one for Jonathan as well, and at £5 if he doesn’t like it he can clean the car with it instead of wearing it. Sally bought some children’s books and luckily for me there were some Valentine cards because in all of the excitement of Molly’s visit I had forgotten all about that.

After nearly two hours I am certain that Sally could have carried on but I had had enough and Molly was chatting away all the way around the shops so weighed down with bags we left the shopping centre and went for a nice lunch at the Chequers pub in Weston that wasn’t very busy but was obviously expecting a lot of amorous customers later that evening.

Molly is lovely, she is so alert and aware, she always wants to join in and likes to sit with the big people all the time. She is no trouble at all and just as long as she is included in what is going on she is totally content.

Back at the house she was so much more comfortable now that she had got used to the place again. She wants to be part of everything and she is desperate to communicate. All around Springfields she had been telling me a long and rambling story in a loud voice that demanded attention and back at home she just carried on for the rest of the afternoon. She is really beautiful, she smiles all of the time and I think she is really desperate to talk. She slept right through the second night and this morning, when she woke up and came downstairs, her face dissolved into the most wonderful smile that I have ever seen and she made two sounds ‘HEY LOW’, which I am convinced was an early morning greeting.

She has gone home now and the house seems strangely empty and quiet so I look forward to her next visit and another bit of retail therapy for Sally at Springfields.

Budapest - Day 3, Return to the Spa & Winter Sunshine

First thing this morning I was anxious to see if the weather was as good as I had anticipated and I was delighted when I opened the shutters on the window to be confronted with a crisp clear morning and a breathtaking sunrise creeping deliciously over the Danube and introducing a perfectly clear blue sky to the day. Things looked very, very promising indeed.

I was sceptical but just in case the waters in the Gellért baths were going to grant me eternal life or any other range of health benefits worth having we made the journey down in the creaking hotel lift for a second visit to the spa and the swimming pool. It was only seven o’clock but I was surprised just how busy it was already and it seemed that this was a place where people meet socially before going off to work suitably invigorated and fully charged for a day at the office. One thing that struck me as odd was the number of staff that were on duty, I don’t know if this was a legacy of the communist era but staffing levels seemed exceedingly generous and there were more people on duty than I would have thought were really required. To illustrate this, one mans only job was to sit by the entrance barrier and to take the admission card that we had been given in the lift and enter it into a machine that operates the turnstile which was a simple enough procedure that is something that most people ought to be able to manage well enough for themselves. I think on balance I enjoyed the thermal baths in Budapest just as much as those at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland but what was better here was that the pool was tiled and more hygienic and I wasn’t walking around in sticky mud that was full of other peoples dead skin cells and pubic hair.

Because the sun was shining we left the hotel early this morning to take full advantage of the unexpectedly good weather. On the other side of the Liberty Bridge was the Market Square and the covered central market building. As with other cities that we have visited the market was filled with excellent produce, meat, fish vegetables and, this we hadn’t seen before, several stalls devoted to selling different paprika and herb combinations to be used to flavour the Hungarian national dish of goulash.

The weather now was unbelievably good, the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the temperature was several degrees above average for this time of the year. Today we were going to concentrate on Pest but with an eye on the blue skies had a mind to return to Buda for photo opportunities that had alluded us yesterday. This meant that time was an issue so there was no time to dawdle about. From the market we walked through the streets of the city, past the Hungarian National Museum and down a long road that went past some very fine buildings and came out in a Elizabeth Square which was big and spacious and was surrounded by impressive buildings and wide boulevards. In the nineteenth century Budapest earned the tag of Paris of the East and looking around it was easy to see why.

After the creation of Budapest as one great city, there was a rush of construction and Pest was extensively remodeled in the image of Vienna, acquiring the main arterial street Nagykörút or Great Boulevard and another, Andrássy Avenue, which led out to Hero’s Square and a great park with magnificent fountains and lakes, and all of this frantic reconstruction reached a fanatical peak to coincide with Budapest's millennium anniversary celebrations of the settlement of the Magyars in the region of 1896. Today Budapest is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in the world and is considered an important Central European hub for business, culture and tourism. We weren’t expecting this and it certainly took us by surprise and like most other places we were beginning to realise that two days was hopelessly inadequate to appreciate this really fine City.

Moving swiftly on we were in full speed sightseeing mode now and next it was St Stephen's Basilica which at ninety-six metres high is the tallest building in Budapest. Actually the Hungarian Parliament building is also ninety-six metres high which might sound a bit of a coincidence but in fact this is no accident and is quite deliberate because the number ninety-six refers to the nation's millennium, 1896, and the conquest of the later Kingdom of Hungary in 896. The Basilica is named in honour of Stephen, who was the first King of Hungary from 1000 to 1038 and whose mummified fist is kept in a shrine at the back of the church. There is also a copy of his crown which is quite important to Hungary because it represents the legitimate authority to govern the country and it was first used in the coronation of Stephen which is an event that marks the beginning of Hungarian statehood. The Holy Crown was removed from the country in 1945 for safekeeping, and entrusted to the United States government. It was kept in a vault at Fort Knox until 1978, when it was returned to the nation by order of U.S. President Jimmy Carter and it is now kept at the Hungarian Parliament building where it belongs. It is a pity that Jimmy Carter doesn’t run the British Museum because then the Elgin marbles might get returned to Athens.

Budapest - Day 2 (continued) the Gellért Baths

One of the main attractions of the Hotel was that attached to it are the famous Gellért baths, which although originally built as part of the hotel are now owned and run by the local council, but with free admission to hotel guests. In the TV series ‘New Europe’ Michael Palin stayed at the hotel and used the baths and made it all seem a bit confusing and a lot of trouble but I can confirm that there was no truth in that at all, the instructions were clear and all of his theatrical pacing of corridors looking for the lift was all contrived for effect.

He was right about the lift though, it is an old fashioned cage structure with doors that slide closed with a penitentiary like rattle and metallic thud and there is an old lady attendant who provides an admission card to the baths on the way down. seventy million litres of warm thermal water spring forth daily from Budapest’s one hundred and eighteen natural thermal springs and once inside the entrance hall we realised very quickly that this was not like your average council swimming baths. After changing we used the thermal baths that were a very incrementably agreeable 36˚ and 38˚ centigrade and housed in a room of marble pillars, colourful mosaic floors and pools of crystal blue water with alleged magical healing powers.

Budapest is famous for its thermal baths and in 1934 was awarded the supreme title "Spa City" and three years later, the first International Balneological Congress was organised, and the seat of the International Balneological Association was established at the Gellért Thermal Bath in Budapest. (Balneology, by the way, is the science of baths or bathing, especially the study of the therapeutic use of mineral water) The Congress reasoned with the following words: "...no city can put forward a stronger claim to this than Budapest. Endowed by nature with a wonderful generosity of excellent thermal waters and unrivalled natural beauty; additionally, its high medical professionalism, the excellent equipment of its healing institutions, the high level of scientific research, makes Budapest the optimum choice for international affairs of balneology to be handled from here..."

There was an anorexic looking man with a pale pallour jogging limply around the room and I wondered for a moment or two if I was going to feel ten years younger just like all those old timers did in the film Cocoon. I did feel good afterwards but not that good. The eucalyptus steam room was totally relaxing but the plunge pool knocked the breath from me and necissitated a quick return to 38˚. Next door was the swimming pool with cream mosaic floor and sky blue tiled walls and a high glazed ceiling proving soft natural light. The baths were busy with local people relaxing in the water after a day at work and we enjoyed the experience with them after five hours of walking up and down those hills around the city.

That evening we crossed the river again using the Liberty Bridge opposite the hotel. This is an iron bridge, three hundred and thirty three metres long and the top of it’s four masts are decorated with large bronze statues of the Turul, which in mythology gave rise to origin myth of the Magyars. Hungarians, or Magyars, are an ethnic group primarily associated with Hungary and were the main inhabitants of the early Kingdom and the word Magyar in the Hungarian language refers both to the ethnicity of the people and their language and that explains why the word appears prominently on Hungarian postage stamps and bank notes.

So far I had only found the Magyars of Budapest to be friendly and helpful but unfortunately before I had left I had read that this is the scamming capital of Europe and the people so distrustful that they would decieve and con you without a second thought. This was most unfortunate because we couldn’t shake the thought from our heads and found ourselves being distrustful of people in the street, restaurant bills and pretty much anything else that involved a cash transaction, which was unfair because at no time in Budapest did we feel threatened or in any sort of danger and I am left with the thought that the only thing that deceived me was all of that unreliable advice. It’s a horrible feeling to be so distrustful of everyone.

Down a small side street we discovered a small Hungarian restaurant and we enjoyed a reasonably priced meal and a bottle of red wine and after carefully checking our change (oh, the shame!) we wandered back to the hotel and as we crossed back over the bridge we were delighted to see that there was a clear sky full of bright stars and we hoped that this would mean a clear day tomorrow. It was much colder too with a north wind sweeping town from the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia and blowing sharply down the river as though someone had left the back door open. We weren’t dressed for this so we quickened our pace and was grateful of the warmth of the Gellért when we returned to the room.

Budapest - Day 2, castles and churches

The weather for January was unseasonably warm but an inspection from the hotel bedroom balcony revealed an overcast day with chalky white clouds that hung low over the city and bleached the colour from the buildings on the opposite side of the river. After a quick breakfast with the mobile telephone brigade all having unnecessary and intrusive conversations that spoilt the atmosphere that the hotel had worked hard to achieve in the grand breakfast room we left the Gellért with the intention of exploring the Buda side of the river.

Opposite the hotel the there was an unusual church carved out of the bedrock stone of the Gellért Hill. It was certainly unusual even if it wasn’t especially spectacular containing nothing of any special interest except for its unusual construction and the visit didn’t detain us much longer than just a few minutes.

Leaving the church there was choice of paths that meandered aimlessly through the terraced park and climbed steeply to towards the top of the hill. Every hundred metres or so there were seats and viewing platforms that provided uninterrupted and panoramic view of the city and the river below. As we climbed we were accompanied by more great tits than I have ever seen in one place at the same time and there were some squabbling blackbirds and a green woodpecker busy doing what woodpeckers do, an impersonation of a pneumatic drill as he carved a hole in the bark of a tree looking for insects. The only thing that spoilt the Gellért Hill was all of the litter that was strewn around the viewing points because this is clearly the place where the youth of the city congregate in the evening with their four-packs and their take-aways and having consumed the contents neglect to dispose of their waste responsibly. The steep hillsides were covered in debris that in the summer the undergrowth will disguise but today looked ugly and unpleasant. There was a council street sweeper who was doing a good job of tidying the paths and emptying the litter bins but she had no realistic chance of clearing the litter from the steep sides of the hill.

At the top of the two hundred and thirty five metre high hill is the Liberty Statue which was first erected in 1947 in remembrance of the Soviet occupation of Hungary after World-War-Two, because at the time of the monument's construction, the repulsion of Nazi forces by the Soviets was considered to be a liberation. The original inscription on the memorial was "Erected by the grateful Hungarian Nation in memory of the liberating Russian heroes." I suspect the Russians themselves were responsible for this and this gratitude didn’t last very long. After the country liberated itself from the Soviet Union in 1991 the inscription was changed to read "To the memory of all of those who sacrificed their lives for the independence, freedom, and success of Hungary."

This was the best viewing point of all and from here it was possible to see both sides of the river, the Parliament building in Pest and the castle district in Buda. Budapest did not become a single city until the official amalgamation on 17th November 1873 of right-bank Buda and Óbuda together with Pest on the left bank. This was seen as a supremely symbolic event that marked a union between Western Europe, Buda and Eastern Europe, Pest and the city became the second capital of Austria-Hungary. I have speculated on why it became Budapest and not Pestbuda? But I am yet to find a convincing explanation, I expect it was probably because the Buda side was where the military muscle was. This is demonstrated perfectly by the Citadella on top of Gellért Hill, which was built following the revolution of 1848 that attempted, but failed, to overthrow the Hapsburg rule in Hungary, and the purpose of which was to intimidate the citizens with its cannons and large garrison of soldiers overlooking the entire city.

A quick look inside confirmed our suspicion that there wasn’t a great deal to see so we followed the path down the hill, past the statue of St Gellért that was less impressive in daylight than it had been the previous evening with its dramatic illumination and then a climb again into the castle district of the city.

There has been a castle and a palace in this strategically important position since early times but when the previous building was destroyed in the civil war of 1849 the palace was rebuilt between 1850 and 1856 and when in 1867 Franz Joseph was crowned the king of Hungary when Austria and Hungary became the Dual Monarchy the palace became an important royal residence and the autonomous Hungarian government set out to create a royal palace that matched any other in Europe. The process of rebuilding lasted about forty years between and was completed in 1912 just as the Hapsburg Empire was about to topple over into the abyss of history.

It is indeed a very impressive building with magnificent architecture, impressive sculptures, magnificent landscaped gardens and a view to die for. Prior to 1867, under Habsburg rule, Buda and Pest were subordinate in status to Vienna and Bratislava but after the agreement of Compromise which created the Dual Monarchy, the twin cities underwent rapid growth and expansion to become a major European city in 1873.

The entire castle district was destroyed in the last year of the Second-World-War but the city has done a first class job on putting it back together again and there is now hardly a trace of the damaging legacy of the war. An exception was the Matthias Church which dates from 1015, was destroyed in 1945 and was currently undergoing extensive renovation. It was hastily reconstructed after the war but the communist authorities only made available sub-standard material for the project and the whole thing now has to be done again properly. Even under scaffolding it looked impressive with a multi coloured tiled roof and it is going to be simply stunning when it is completed.

There was a modest entrance fee to visit the church which I didn’t mind paying because it was contributing to the cost of the renovation work and this included a commentary on the history of the church in English by an official tour guide. We didn’t have a lot of time and when he asked how long we planned to spend at the church we did indicate to him that our schedule was tight and we weren’t planning to stop all afternoon. He seemed to interpret this as though we only had only two minutes or so to spare and he launched into a narrative about the church at breakneck speed that left us gasping for breath. We caught bits of it and the rest we had to fill in later from the guide book. What was clear was that this was a really nice church with an interesting history and one that deserved more time to appreciate than we had available to us.

Leaving the Castle District we crossed the Chain Bridge again and crossed to Roosevelt Square on the Pest side of the Danube and walked about a kilometre to the Parliament building which dominates the river and stands proudly facing the castle on the opposite bank. We didn’t hang about for long because it was late afternoon by now and we wanted to return to the hotel for the health and wellbeing experience.

Molly turns over

I wasn't there to see it but Molly turned over today. Two weeks ago she was shuffling about and moving about the room in a circular direction so I suppose it had to happen soon. Apparently there is a huge variation in the age at which a baby will start to roll over, some babies begin to roll from back to side during the third month, and most can roll over by the sixth month so at four months old that is just about bang on schedule.

I love this picture, she looks so pleased with herself!

The Ryanair Conundrum

If I was compiling a list of the most complex puzzles in the world I suppose I would have to start with Fermat’s last theorem, which according to the Guinness Book of Records was the most complicated mathematical equation ever and took over three hundred years to solve (not by the same man, obviously), then I would include the rules of Cricket (especially if I was French), successfully completing a Rubik’s cube, and then understanding the mind of a woman. But I have now discovered something far more complicated than any of these and it is the Ryanair lowest fare price guarantee. This is an offer with a labyrinth of conditions that make cracking the enigma code seem like a simple afternoon’s work.

This is how it is explained on their website:

This offer is valid only for return flight bookings made on www.ryanair.com between Wednesday 26th March 2008 and Saturday 28th March 2009 inclusive.

Should a passenger find a cheaper return fare on a qualifying route with another airline than the quoted Ryanair fare for that itinerary, then Ryanair will pay "double the difference*" between the air fare paid to Ryanair and the lower fare quoted on another carrier.

The return fare quoted will include all mandatory taxes, fees and charges, but will exclude credit/debit card fees, baggage fees, web check-in/priority boarding fees or any other optional fees.

In order to qualify for the "double the difference*" guarantee, a passenger must book a return flight on www.ryanair.com and then submit the claim using the attached form (English only) to priceguarantee@ryanair.com within 1 hour of making the booking.

Should a claimant for any reason fail to submit the claim form within 1 hour of making the booking on www.ryanair.com, then that claim will be deemed as late and will be disregarded for the purposes of this promotion.

Claims will only be accepted where both the departure times of the competitor airline flights are within 1 hour of the original booked Ryanair flight departure times.

A screen print of the competitor's offered fare (including all mandatory taxes, fees and charges) must be emailed with the claim form. Ryanair will then verify the "competitor fare" within 1 hour of receipt (only during office hours: 9am-5pm Monday to Friday). If the 'competitor fare' cannot be verified on the internet then the claim will be invalid.

Claims can only be made for flights where there this is a direct city pair comparison. This includes only airports that have the same city designation as defined by IATA (International Air Transport Association). For example, claims will be accepted from competitor flights operating to/from the five IATA designated London Airports (Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and City) and the designated airports in Glasgow, which are Glasgow International and Glasgow Prestwick. Claims will not be accepted where flights are departing to/from city airports that are not IATA designated e.g. Girona and Barcelona's El Prat Airport.

Where Ryanair have more than two flights between a city pair (e.g. Dublin to London Stansted; Dublin to London Gatwick) and price guarantee claim will need to be made versus the cheapest available Ryanair fare on offer on the applicable routes.

Once the claim has been verified by Ryanair staff, the claimant will be notified by email within 24 hours (Monday to Friday) of the acceptance or rejection of their claim. In the case of successful claims, the relevant "double the difference*" sum will be processed within 5 working days to the credit/debit card account provided at the time of booking. Airline employees and their families are excluded from claiming under Ryanair's lowest fare guarantee.
Ryanair's decision in relation to all claims will be final.

Ryanair reserves the right to amend or discontinue this promotion at any time by giving 24 hour notice to that effect, at its sole discretion.

*In the case of successful claims, Ryanair will pay the passenger double the difference between any competitor's lower return fare and Ryanair's quoted return fare for the same itinerary (see above). Each claim will be subject to a maximum cap of €100 (GBP 70) or local currency equivalent per return passenger journey. Therefore where the difference between Ryanair's return fare and the cheaper competitor fare exceeds €50 (GBP 35) or local currency equivalent, the maximum amount payable by Ryanair in such cases will be capped at €100 (GBP 70) or local currency equivalent.

I especially like the teasing reference to a ‘successful claim’ because negotiating thiis maze of rules would be like eating a bowl of spaghetti in a blindfold and I would be intrigued to know if anyone has ever managed to get through and cut Michael O'leary's Gordion Knot?

Budapest - Day 1, Gellért Hotel

It was a late afternoon flight to Budapest and as the plane was only about two thirds full we considered ourselves rather unfortunate not to get a row of seats entirely to ourselves. This disappointment actually turned out to be a stroke of luck however because our temporary travelling companion was flying out on business and as he was staying at the same hotel as us he generously offered to share a ride in his taxi paid for on company expenses. I plan to look out for that sort of money saving opportunity again in the future. Some of this financial benefit was unfortunately eroded away by the poor exchange rate at the airport where swapping pounds for hufs was about ten percent more expensive than at the banks in the city as I found out later. If you are going to Hungary you should watch out for that.

Budapest is the capital city of Hungary and the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial and transportation centre and is one of a number of European destinations that have been on my to-visit list for some time not least because the country is in the top fifteen visitor destinations in the world, which by my logic means that there must be something there worth seeing.

I knew this already but what I didn’t know was that the valuable list of Hungarian contributions to the world and human advancement include most importantly the ballpoint pen that was invented by László Bíró, the Rubik Cube, invented by Ernő Rubik, the theory of the hydrogen bomb and the BASIC computer programming language. A Hungarian chemist János Irinyi also developed the noiseless match, which is essentially one that doesn’t detonate with a bang when ignited. This may not sound especially important but before this invention striking a match could be disconcertingly violent, a bit like firing a musket, and due to a dangerous composition of chemicals the thing was liable to go off with a loud explosion and a shower of sparks with the potentially unfortunate side effect of setting light to your trousers or your beard.

One of the finest ever footballers in the world was the Hungarian Ferenc Puskás who in the 1950s scored eighty-four goals in eighty-five international appearances for Hungary, which is a very impressive strike rate indeed especially when you consider that England’s top goal scorer, Bobby Charlton, only scored forty-nine goals in one hundred and six games and even Pelé, who is generally reckoned to be the greatest footballer ever, couldn’t match this level of performance with seventy-seven goals in ninety-two games for Brazil. A bit of a shame that he didn’t get one more goal for a 100% record and at 98.8% I suppose that is very similar to Don Bradman, the Australian cricketer who retired with an international batting average of 99.94%. Now that, it seems to me, is just about as close to perfection as it is possible to get.

The taxi dropped us off at the hotel and it was everything that I had been expecting. We had been tempted to stay at the famous spa hotel the Gellért after watching Michael Palin’s ‘New Europe’ when he featured the hotel on his programme. This is a four star hotel and ordinarily a bit beyond my budget (actually quite a lot beyond my budget) but with a bargain flight at only £11.34 return I considered the additional cost of a superior room with a view over the Danube to be justified. The hotel was conceived at the height of Austro-Hungarian Imperial power at the beginning of the twentieth century but by the time it was completed in 1918 Hungary was on the losing side in the First-World-War and was about to be severely punished by the victors by a ritual humiliation at the peace conference with huge confiscation of territory and a massive reduction in European status.

The hotel is a reminder of those powerful days of Empire with a towering façade, in need of a bit of restoration, and an entrance lobby of huge dimensions and acres of wasted space. After check in a bell hop tried to wrestle my bag from me but I held on to it and explained that I thought we would be able to find the room unaccompanied. I don’t mind someone carrying my bag for me it’s just that I am never sure how much to tip for the service. They haven’t done a great deal of work so I am not minded to tip generously but a couple of old coins also seems embarrassingly mean to me.

The second floor room was excellent, well decorated with substantial furniture, a mini bar with only slightly above prices (a big bonus) and a balcony with a view of the Liberty Bridge crossing the Danube with Pest sprawling away on the other side of the river.

It was quite late by now so there was only time for a short walk, first across the Elizabeth Bridge further upstream and then along the Pest side of the River Danube before crossing back over the river using the Chain Bridge, which is an impressive structure that was designed by the English engineer William Tierney-Clark, and constructed by Scottish engineer Adam Clark and is a larger scale version of Tierney-Clark's earlier Bridge, across the River Thames in Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. It was opened in 1849 and was the first permanent bridge between the two separate cities of Buda and Pest, which had previously relied on pontoon bridges or barges and ferries for getting from one side to the other. Actually it wasn’t the original bridge I walked across because the Nazis blew that up in 1945 when they retreated from the city just before the Russians arrived but it was replaced along with all of the other bridges that were destroyed at the same time in the 1950s.

Along the Pest side of the river, which is rather flat, there were some good views of the Buda on the west which is much more hilly and juts out into the river forcing it to flow in an sweeping arc through the city and on the hills the Liberation Monument and the Imperial Castle were impressively illuminated against the ink black sky. There were some modern western hotels overlooking the river and outside the call girls promenaded looking for customers. Judging by their looks they were going to be hanging around for some time yet, or at least until someone became too intoxicated to notice just how unattractive they were. Further down the road we looked out for a man selling brown paper bags!

Trams ran adjacent to the river and every so often one would rattle by and ring a bell to warn pedestrians to move aside out of the way. I like to see trams as they are one of the distinctive and romantic images of eastern European cities and seem to me to be a symbolic reminder of the pre-war and the soviet eras.

Back at the hotel the restaurant staff were a bit reluctant to serve dinner on account of the lateness of the hour but we persuaded them to provide a bowl of soup and a beer, which they did but it was obvious service was over and that they were impatient to close so we finished it as quickly as we could and then retired to bed.