We set out to conquer the Budapest rail system and really it was an easy battle. The public transport system in this moderately sized city is user friendly, fast, punctual and mostly uncrowded.
Buying a ticket, working out where you needed to be and getting on the right train were all hassle free. The only hickup was the young ticket inspector punching my wrong ticket…Vac to Budapest instead of Budapest to Vac. He was very nice about the whole mistake and fixed things easily for me.
It is easy to have a whole conversation with a Hungarian without understanding a word they are saying. Hungarian sounds familiar to the Aussie accent and I have found if I nod away and make a few affirming sounds no-one is any the wiser that I speak no Hungarian. In Vac it is interesting because it seems the older people are more likely to have reasonable English then the younger.
Vac proves to be a nice village on the Danube Bend. Smallish town, friendly people, a nice market and a lovely town square for a picnic and a beer.
Then a visit to the mummy museum. During the renovation of the dominicon church in 1994, the 200 year old remains of 265 people were found in the underground tombs. The mummification process of the bodies was not intentional – they got preserved naturally due to the specific microclimate in the crypt. We couldn’t take photos so these are courtesy of Google.
On the way back to Vac we got the arrivals board confused with the departures and had to wait half an hour on the train before it left. And we got a stopping all stops train rather than the express train we took here.
It meant, though, that we were on the train with the high school kids going home after school to the little villages surrounding Vac. They were like teenagers anyway, all on their phones, talking to each other at the same time, laughing, having a good time. Then dispersing at various stations to go home to chores, parents, dinner and homework.
The houses in the villages are a bit run down looking. Exactly what I would imagine eastern European houses to look like. Coming out of winter the gardens are barren but there is evidence of gardens, grape vines and ramshackle garden sheds which possible house animals…chooks…a pig?
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