I stand in another queue. Alone, in silence. Paperwork in one hand, a heap of clothing in the other, limp yet heavy like the body of a sleeping child. It’s cold outside.

I wait.

I queue.

I hand over my camera.

Number 60 Andrássy Street, The House of Terror

Number 60 Andrássy Street has credentials that would wither estate agents into anthrax-laden dust. And they’re enough to make the rest of us weep and drop to our knees, wondering whether to just give up on this whole thing called the human race.

Number 60 Andrássy Street was once the Hungarian Headquarters for the Nazis. After their defeat at the end of WWII, it became the headquarters for the secret police of the totalitarian communist state. Now, finally, this former mansion on the Champs-Élysées-like boulevard functions as a museum, albeit one that draws criticism for its biased interpretation of crimes on Hungarian soil.

I wait in the queue and hear an old man sobbing, sobbing and sobbing, again and again on a video loop while receptionists chat to each other and horror sound effects filter down from another floor.

It’s a queasy, conflicted feeling I first experienced on a muddy hilltop on the outskirts of Krakow, shoes soaked in melting snow. The site of a former concentration camp (the one shown in Schindler’s List,) this hill was also the viewpoint for a bland international shopping centre, a splodge of simplistic yellows and reds amidst grey and grit-lined car parks.

A few teens used it as a shortcut and an older woman strode past, walking her dog. My presence there seemed absurd and I shivered back to my hotel, numbed in more ways than one.

The following day, I visited Auschwitz, where history hadn’t been cleared away; it hadn’t been reconstructed. It just stood. As it was. As it had been.

Here at 60 Andrássy Street, things are different. A lot of effort has been expended creating a multimedia experience that tries to fill in the gaps: the aching, inexplicable voids that history has left.

And it’s not interested in nuance. Nor self-reflection.

Hungary’s history during the 20^th century does not make for pleasant reading. Part of the Habsburg’s Austro-Hungarian empire at the start of the century, its defeat in World War One stripped it of territory and, by the look of things in this museum, an enormous amount of pride.

When World War Two broke out, a democratic Hungary sided with Hitler and the Axis powers before entering into years of complex diplomacy within the maelstrom of the world’s deadliest conflict. Siding with Hitler yet trying to negotiate peace with the UK and US. Passing anti-semitic laws yet keeping Jews from the concentration camps. Aggression against Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, yet trying to keep the war from its doors.

It’s a fascinating, terrifying, deadly memoir of conflict and survival amid the howling storm of contrasting – and ultimately catastrophic – ideologies on both sides.

It was doomed to fail.

And it was doomed to fail. On learning of Hungary’s negotiations with the West in 1944, Hitler sent in his own troops, transported over 600 000 to the concentration camps and fought to the end against the Soviets in the siege of Budapest.

The whole period raises questions about the fight for freedom, appeasement, coercion, diplomacy, national pride, borders, identity and more…yet the museum itself addresses none of these. In fact, it barely mentions Hungary’s role throughout those years, only its losses.

But those losses, Hungary’s losses, were staggering. Ten percent of the population dead – and occupation by the Soviet Red Army.

Within two years, democracy had gone. So had the leaders of the opposition.

The House of Terror launches a scathing account of the Stalinist years. Reconstructed interrogation rooms. Twisted agricultural policy. Deportation accounts. Old uniforms. The gulag. Bread shortages. Old photographs. Paranoia. Betrayal. The disruption of religious life.

It’s a stifling amount of information that’s difficult to sift through in one go. And it’s certainly the most damning view of life behind the iron curtain I’ve seen so far during my #ironroute journey.

A guard directs me to a lift.

The doors slam, the lights go out, and the machine screeches slowly towards the basement. In the shadows, a prisoner is led along an underground corridor, his final footsteps before his state execution.

The doors open into clawing darkness and a stench of urine. It’s the same corridor, the same cells, the same short walk to the scaffold.

I begin to feel sick.

Later, back in daylight and pacing along the frosted pavement, surrounded by leafy beauty and resplendent buildings, my mind feels uneasy again.

It hovers on the power of place and reality in trying to come to terms with the crimes of the past. It hovers on freedom of speech, capital punishment, genocide and fear. It realises for the first time that a part of me is grateful for our current Prime Minister. And even the tabloid press. And even the ill-informed criticisms about my own work.

Disturbing thoughts indeed.

I’m out of breath by the time I reach the Hungarian Parliament Building.

I stand in the queue, a man turns me back.

I stand in another queue. Alone, in silence. Paperwork in one hand, a heap of clothing in the other, limp yet heavy like the body of a sleeping child. It’s cold outside.

I wait.

I queue.

I hand over my camera.

I get to keep it. They hand it back.

Photos of the Parliament Building to follow.

This post forms part of the #ironroute journey from Istanbul to Berlin by train with InterRail.

The House of Terror in Budapest first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Everyone was cold. I saw it in the hunched shoulders and stooped spines of the commuters who huddled past, bundled beneath thick duffel coats, pressed scarves and peaked hats.

Which was why the drain surprised me.

Whimsical fingers of mist curled through the gaps, growing thinner as they spiralled up towards the sky, the sky which experience told me still loomed overhead but which I avoided looking at in case I inadvertently exposed another sliver of my neck to Budapest’s biting air.

No, these wisps of steam alone could tell me that I was on the right track, that my heavy, hurried feet were carrying me towards the Szechenyi Baths.

Baths in Budapest

Thermal baths are to Budapest what baguettes and boulangeries are to Paris or yellow taxis are to New York. From the Szechenyi, to the Gellert, to the Lukacs, a range of extravagant, resplendent buildings reside on both the Buda and Pest sides of the city, plunging beneath the earth to draw up thermal waters for the benefit of cleansing and healing its citizens, not to mention providing the necessary environment for a game of chess.

That’s right, chess. I’d seen the iconic pictures, now I longed to see the real thing.

Thanks to the lovely people at the Budapest Tourist Office, I’d been granted the right to take photos within the Szechenyi Baths. No thanks to the hideous behaviour of one woman at the admission gate, most of that time was lost. A story for perhaps another day, despite its insight into life before and after the fall of the iron curtain and the interesting debate about clothing, steam and near freezing temperatures.

Eventually, I was in – and the clock was ticking.

Changing Rooms: Cropped to Protect Those Within

I raced through the subterranean changing rooms with their peeling paint and faint sense of psychiatric prisons from films of the 1950s. I strode through the exercise rooms with skull-capped water aerobics classes that reinforced that impression. I threw those ubiquitous swimming hats for shoes across my feet and burst into the fresh air of the central area of the Szechenyi Baths…

That reedy steam I’d seen clawing through the drainpipe outside now billowed and bellowed across the outdoor pools, cloaking and claiming swimmers who soaked in its scorching path, not to mention the stony Venus who twisted her spine around to watch.

Here in the heart of Hungary, I watched thermal water turn to vapour in the home of Budapest’s oldest thermal bath (on the Pest side of the city at least.)

And while cold air turned my rapid breath into clouds, I found a place for playing chess.

This post forms part of Photo Friday on Delicious Baby. Head over there to see some more travel photos.

It also forms part of the #IronRoute project - a journey from Istanbul to Berlin that criss-crosses back and forth across the former Iron Curtain. Read all about it here.

The Water of Winter: Baths in Budapest first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Email Ethics

So, if you remember from last year, people regularly spam me with press releases that they think I should publish over here. They’re usually totally inappropriate and utterly dull, a description that many may think qualifies them perfectly for a slice of cyberspace here on my blog, but that I, delusional as I am in matters of quality and relevance, usually reject. I’d like to call it a discerning eye but I suspect that’s because a mosquito bit me on the eye(lid) last night and hence I now have eyes on the brain (she says, just inviting some neuroscientist smart aleck out there to point out that the optic nerve IS an extension of the brain and thus eyes can’t be on something that they are. To you, I advise you to keep quiet. Say – or worse – publish something like that and everyone will see you for the geek you really are. Oops.)

Moving swiftly on…Ethical travel. It’s the sort of thing that sounds great but that usually means a hotel tries not to wash your towels and attempts instead to sell you a hand-woven bracelet from (supposedly) a village down the street. Judging a single person’s ethics is a sticky, tricky area but bundle a whole load of people together inside the borders of a country with billions of dollars at stake and it gets trickier still.

Well, the guys over at EthicalTraveler.org have put a bit more work into it than most and have come up with a list of the most ethical destinations for 2012 (I know, what are the chances? They’re called EthicalTraveler and they write about ethical travel…)

I walked you through my cynicism this time last year with Can You Score a Country on Ethics? The Top Ten Ethical Destinations for Travellers and I even threw in that sneaky extra L. This, year, though, I’m just going to get on with it.

And get a cold compress for my eye.

Ethical Travel: The Top Ten Destinations for 2012

In alphabetical order

• Argentina *
• The Bahamas
• Chile *
• Costa Rica *
• Dominica *
• Latvia *
• Mauritius
• Palau *
• Serbia
• Uruguay *

Look at this list and what do I discover? I’ve only been to two of them. The message? Clearly I must travel more…(Although fingers crossed, I may be travelling to Costa Rica very soon…)

How about you? How many have you been to? Do you think you can really rate a country on ethics?

You're so ethical I could kiss you

Ethical Travel: Can You Score It? first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

So. Over to Janice Waugh from Solo Traveler.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

How does one balance the importance of living in the present with the need to prepare for the future?

Some people don’t contemplate this issue. They simply do what comes naturally – sometimes suffering the consequences of favoring one over the other.

But, if you are one who does consider how to balance the two, where does the answer lie. And, what is the question?  If you love travel, the question is: should I stay or should I go.

We chose to go.

Late in 2000 my husband and I decided to go.

We could finally see our way clear to living our dream of long-term travel. Having sold our business and with two sons out the door, one entering his last year of high school and the youngest going into grade six, it all seemed possible.

To others, it may have made more sense to wait, at least a year, but we planned and went. We bet on the present over the future and, as you’ll see, we won.

 How does one balance the importance of living in the present with the need to prepare for the future?

This was taken in Arles, France. We just had our youngest with us at the time.

Two of my sons at La Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

Our trip of a Lifetime

My husband had traveled a year through South America when I was just entering high school. (He had seven years on me.) I had taken many short trips since I was 15 – a few weeks here, a month there. Together, as we blended our families, started and built a business – we lived a very busy life – we also planned to travel. In 1995, we managed six weeks with kids in France, Scotland and Ireland. But that wasn’t enough. We had bigger plans in mind.

Then in 2000 it seemed right. Our number three son could do his last year at Neuchatel Junior College, a Canadian school in Switzerland, and I would homeschool our youngest. We could rent our house for income (we made $25,000 in ten months) and rent a VW Pop-up camper for transportation and accommodation. Yes, it could all work. We fit the pieces together and left at the end of August 2001.

Over the next 10 months we covered a lot of ground. My mother joined us for a few weeks. The older sons each came over for a time. It was a free-flowing trip of a lifetime. When we needed to feel settled, we stayed. When we’d had enough of a location, we simply moved on.

Life Without Regrets

We came home in June of 2002 which is a perfect time to return. The summer is slower than most times of the year and gave us two months to prepare for the real new year, September.

However, while the kids and I settled back into our home life, my husband became less settled. Was it the culture shock of re-entry? We couldn’t tell at first but his life, our life, got very complicated. And it became even more so over the next few years.

In 2006, my husband was finally diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a very rare neurological disease that first shows itself in personality changes and later with debilitating physical changes.  He passed away later that year on December 9^th.

While our choice to take an extended trip at that particular time of life may have seemed odd to some, it made sense to us. At least, we made it make sense. We put our present and our future on a scale and chose to live in the present for that year. And, at the time, we had no idea that it was our last chance to do so.

Should you stay or should you go?

Go.

Janice Waugh is the author of the Solo Traveler’s Handbook, publisher of Solo Traveler, the blog for those who travel alone and moderator of the Solo Travel Society on Facebook. The blog offers solo travel stories, tips, safety advice and destination ideas as well as a couple of free ebooks, including Glad You’re Not Here – A Solo Traveler’s Manifesto.

She also spells travelling and traveller a funny way but we won’t hold that against her!

Have you ever wondered whether to stay or whether to go?

Should I Stay or Should I Go? first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Four words, two phrases, several meanings.

When I went to school, a third of the world lived under “communist” rule. Travel was restricted and Europe was divided. By the time I left, everything had changed. Why? How? And what were those places like today?

That was the premise behind my Iron Route project, which I’ve been chronicling here on Inside the Travel Lab. Sponsored by InterRail, it allowed me to travel from Istanbul to Berlin, criss-crossing across the former Iron curtain.

It’s time to talk about those two words at the heart of the journey: the Iron Curtain.

The Iron Curtain Memorial in Budapest

What was the Iron Curtain?

Despite its jagged-sounding name, I’d always thought the Iron Curtain a rather woolly, nebulous, politician’s term, thrown around with carelessness like so many other words and phrases in the press. Costs soaring, shares plummeting, debt spiralling, being rushed into hospital. Just another one of those hyped up phrases that loses its meaning over time.

I’d assumed that “Iron Curtain” was a headline-craving, melodramatic way of describing that there were some countries in the world that didn’t follow the US quite as much as Britain did. I’d heard that they followed this thing called “communism,” whereby instead of only a few people in society having all the money and power but doing virtually none of the work, both work and resources were shared out equally. It sounded like a good idea, to be honest, though even as a child I soon learned not to say that out loud when we went to the US.

Time passed, the curtain fell, I grew up, studied and started travelling.

The Iron Curtain, as it turns out, may as well have been a full, physical barrier – and in many places it was. The Berlin Wall remains the most famous example – but barbed wire and watchtowers, policed by soldiers ready to kill, stretched along most of the borders between the Soviet Union and the rest of Western Europe. Attempting to flee the Soviet Union was an offence punishable by imprisonment or even death.

The House of Terror in Budapest recreates the interrogation rooms and actual execution dungeon in a chillingly effective manner. Thousands, if not millions, died under Stalin’s watch in the forced labour camps, or gulags, but I’m getting ahead of myself in terms of the #ironroute journey, not to mention travelling far too far east.

I was in Ljubljana, in Slovenia, and I was trying to find out more about that period of time.

Evidently, I wasn’t very good at explaining myself.

“We were never behind the iron curtain,” said a woman named Petra, in a manner designed to close all further communication.

“I never thought you were,” I replied, hesitant, apologetic and a tiny bit confused.

Slovenia, at that time formed a part of Yugoslavia, a country under what “the West” would probably call communist control, but what everyone I met within Slovenia firmly described as socialism.

Yugoslavia was not, emphatically not, part of the USSR. (In fact, their leader, General Tito, fell out with Stalin soon after the end of the Second World War and their countries never quite forgave each other.)

“Sure, OK, there were differences,” said Martin Šušteršič, a stunningly well-informed man with a habit of speaking at the rate of rapid machine gun fire. “And Tito was a dictator, yes, but a fairly gentle one. Better than Mussolini (who ruled nearby Italy) and certainly gentler than Gorbachev, whom the West applauded in later years.”

Martin is tall, slim and about my age. A trained scientist who also gives tours around his native Slovenia, albeit not usually about this.

“Socialism was very different to being behind the Iron Curtain. There was freedom of speech, to an extent, freedom of religion, to an extent and freedom of travel, totally.

“Most Slovenians would holiday in Western Europe because the borders to the east were sealed with barbed wire and the guards always looked… Unpleasant. It was not a nice experience to cross those borders.

“We in Yugoslavia, we had… not free trade…but free-er (than in the USSR.)

“Tito was also a proponent of different solutions for different countries. He said that what happened in the Soviet Union would not work in Yugoslavia.

“You need to remember that Tito had grown up in a time when the kingdom was very corrupt, and people were poor. He – and we, Slovenia – saw fascism in Italy on one side and events in Germany on the other and knew we didn’t want that.

“Now, there was a recent poll and the majority of Slovenians feel that Tito was a good leader, given the times in which he lived, and the problems that he inherited at the end of the Second World War.”

We walked past some of the buildings constructed during Tito’s time before I had to race to catch my next train.

In-Between the Iron Curtain

I got in touch with Petra again, to try to clear up the misunderstanding.

“It is a bit touchy with the ex-Yugoslavia thing since there is a lot of misunderstanding from (mostly western) foreigners.”

Ah, yes. The ex-Yugoslavia thing. An even rawer, more recent event, one that deserves another look at another time.

Petra continues. “How could they understand if they haven’t lived it?”

“May I quote you on that?”

“Of course, but please with an addition. There are however more and more conscious and informed journalists such as yourself.”

I’m sure she’s trying to be kind but the more I read and the more I travel, the less that description sounds like me.

But I am trying.

Enormous thanks to the staff at the Ljubljana Tourist Board for their help at such short notice. And huge thanks once again to my sponsors, InterRail, who made this train journey possible.

What do you know or did you know about the Iron Curtain? Has it changed over time?

The Cold War, the Iron Curtain & Somewhere In Between first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Behind me, I know that sapphire lights stud their way across the stone. Right now, though, I’m watching darkness.

Behind me, flames from an occasional car streak across the empty velvet sky, backlit by the brilliance of a long forgotten empire.

Ahead I see nothing. Black, dark, empty, silent. Just the sound of water touching the stone that leads from the Piazza d’Unita d’Italia to the edge of the Adriatic.

I am standing in Trieste, in Italy, and I am thinking about the Iron Curtain, the driving force for my current #ironroute trip.

In 1946, Winston Churchill made this landmark speech:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere…”

He was talking about the political divisions that had appeared in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. At the time, much of Europe lay in ruins, and the rest of the world hardly looked much better. Sixty million people had lost their lives, and two thirds of those lost had been civilians. The defeated “Axis” powers of Germany, Italy and Japan lost 3 million civilians; the “victorious” Allies lost over 35. Ninety percent of Cologne’s buildings were gone. Eighty percent of those in Manila. Widows and orphans grieved in Berlin. In London, Sydney, Namibia, Hiroshima, Nepal, Texas and Arkansas.

The world had changed. The powers of Western Europe, who had set the rules for more than 500 years, were hungry, homeless and looking for help.

And the two giants who held the cards were two late entries into the war: the United States and the Soviet Union.

Given the length and complexity of the Cold war that followed, it’s worth taking a moment to remember that during the struggle against the Nazis, the Russians and Americans had been on the same side. And that by the end, they both wanted the same thing: a peaceful, stable central Europe. One that wouldn’t bring the world to its knees every generation or so.

Trieste Station

It was winter when I arrived in Trieste. The wind carried with it the whisper of sleet and the soft scent of snow. The ground sparkled with the reflections of Christmas lights in the afternoon rain and the central square was surprisingly quiet.

A central square with a name like Piazza d’Unita d’Italia already invites questions. A mention in a landmark Churchill speech becomes an informal visit to help the police with their enquiries. By the time I was translating the Italian word for sauerkraut (crauti) while sitting in the century-old beloved Buffet da Pepi, historical questions had become a caffeine-fuelled double cross-examination in a hyped and highly-televised celebrity trial of the century.

Just who or what was Trieste? What was the former Iron Curtain? And why didn’t I already know about this fascinating, fantastic place?

First things first. Trieste lives in the northeast corner of Italy, a short train ride away from the not-so-well-kept-secret city of Venice. One hundred years ago, it belonged to the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburgs (in case, like me, you never covered any of this in school) were essentially Kings and Queens based in Vienna who ran and oversaw an empire that at various points stretched from Holland to the subsequent USSR and lasted for more than 600 years.

Less than 100 years after their demise, hardly anyone knows who they are. For a modern day parallel, imagine your grandchildren drawing a total blank at the mention of a Britain or the notion of a Queen of England.

Yet in the eyes of the world as it entered the 20^th century, Trieste formed the Habsburgs’ 4^th largest city, right behind the glittering icons of Vienna, Budapest and Prague.

The assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne and his wife (think the gunning down of Wills and Kate) lit the fuse to World War One and the well-catalogued destruction, misery and suffering that followed.

As World War One ended, so did the Habsburgs. A victorious Italy moved into Trieste, Slovene names were switched to Italian and the decades that followed involved ongoing border disputes, forced Italianization, Nazi occupation, the decimation of the Jewish population and the formation of the only concentration camp on Italian soil.

Landing on the losing side once again, at the end of the Second World War, Trieste “belonged” to the Allied Forces. Its territories were split once more and within a few years it settled into the borders it uses today, snug against what used to be western Yugoslavia, and what is now 21^st century Slovenia.

And, according to Churchill’s speech in 1946, at the edge of the Iron Curtain.

My visit to Slovenia, the next stop after Trieste, painted a rather different picture. Talk about the iron curtain with Slovenians ranks right up there in chit-chat terms with discussing slavery with the Yanks or “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. Folk, if you’re old enough to remember, picture Bruce Willis with an “I hate Niggers*” sign walking through New York’s Harlem, and proceed through conversation in Ljubljana with caution.

Yugoslavia (now Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) adds in a striking piece to the Cold War jigsaw. Led by General Tito, Yugoslavia emerged from the Second World War as a communist country, although it quickly fell out with Stalin’s extremist stance in Moscow and established itself as an independent socialist state.

Unlike Stalin, Tito kept travel borders open; his trade routes were more relaxed, his ideas less radical. The land that he governed forms a crucial part of understanding the Cold war, but I’m not ready to go there. Not just yet. Not now.

Now I’m watching the waves of the Adriatic as they approach the shore of Trieste. I’m smelling fresh and salty air and thinking of dinner. I’m looking for Viennese-style coffee shops and lard-soaked pizza; historical sauerkraut and slices of pork; a Garden of Remembrance and the inspiration for James Joyce. I’m looking for Italian and Slovene, Habsburgs and happiness, Cold War and warm peace.

I am, I suppose, looking for Trieste.

Come back soon to read more about modern-day Trieste and more about the Iron Curtain, the Cold war and #IronRoute.

This article forms part of a series for #ironroute, a journey by train from Istanbul to Berlin. This took place thanks to the sponsorship, freedom and encouragement of InterRail.
*And just so there’s absolutely no confusion…This comes from a scene in the movie/film Die Hard With a Vengeance. Since inflammatory and defamatory language comes with a linguistic and cultural context, the line in this article is trying to relate a situation in one place and time with a comparable one in another, only so that people can understand the high tensions and emotions involved, not because I believe or support any kind of discrimination or prejudice. That’s actually the opposite of what this series is trying to achieve…

Trieste: Sadness at the Start of the Iron Curtain first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

#IronRoute – The Video

I’m just back from my #IronRoute project – travelling from Istanbul to Berlin by train in order to zig-zag across the former Iron Curtain. I wanted to find out more about the countries that used to live on either side of the border – about how they used to be and how they are today.

Now I’m back and while I filter through the thousands of photographs, notes, interviews and video clips I made along the way (and rather belatedly turn my thoughts to Christmas shopping) I thought I’d leave you with this video as an introduction to the trip.

Let me know what you think…

I travelled thanks to InterRail but had complete freedom when designing this project.

The Iron Route – From Istanbul to Berlin by Video first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

The Berlin Wall: The End of the #IronRoute

Eighteen days ago I set out on a journey of more than a thousand miles. It took me through nine different countries, six different currencies, two continents and it strayed both in and out of the European Union. It criss-crossed along the iron curtain and took me face to face with some of the most important events in recent European history – if history can include my own lifetime.

It showed me chocolate cake and gluwein, war crimes and reconciliation, rail strikes and lost property and it introduced me to the point of iPhone travel apps.

I caught up with old friends, met new ones and had the privilege to interview some of the most fascinating people I’ve met yet.

I’m exhausted, to be honest, as I type this out and I felt the same way when I reached the East Side Gallery in Berlin earlier today.

At 1.3 kilometres long, this former marker of a divided Europe now serves as the largest open air gallery in the world. And open air it is.

I arrived not long before Christmas to a moving wall of hail and sleet. Tears burned the curves of my cheeks, while my torn and drenched map screamed with the wind. I had to walk backwards, to protect my face and, more importantly, my camera lens. With numbness creeping through the soles of my shoes, this is what I saw:

Looking back at #ironroute

I’ve wondered how to word this, but I’m just going to come out and say it.

This trip really has changed my outlook on the world. When I began planning, it seemed a shame to finish in Berlin, rather than to travel east to the edge of Asia. Now, after reading, visiting, interviewing and thinking so much about each of the countries I’ve visited and how they’ve changed over the last 100 years, there couldn’t be any place to finish other than Berlin.

I hope to share more of that with you in a (hopefully) more coherent manner over the next few weeks, but for now, thank you so much for following along, thank you to InterRail for the freedom and funding that made this trip possible, thank you to every single one of the many people who helped me along the way – and I’ll be back in touch again soon.

Only one question for today: what, in particular, about this trip would you like to hear about?

Hitting the Wall – Reaching Berlin first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Zagreb

The sign on the platform read Budapest. I climbed onto the train, no easy feat at that moment as I clutched my heavy bag of camera gear, my suitcase and the provisions I had just bought for the six hour journey ahead. Stale pizza, artificial looking bread and a big bottle of water. I’d hurt my shoulder in the crowd and didn’t want to travel far for food, so a station meal it had to be.

I left my smaller bag and food on the train, hoping no one would steal it and returned to collect my suitcase. The steps were steep, the door narrow, the bag awkward and the shoulder screaming.
I heard a voice behind me in a language I did not know, but I could not turn until I reached the top and set the suitcase down.

“Do you need any help?” he switched to English as we both realised the moment had passed.
I smiled, grateful anyway.

“Do you have any money for me? For ticket?” he said. My auto-response awakened and I prepared to look down and mumble my apologies and walk past. But then I thought, why not? I’m leaving the country anyway, these coins are no good to me.

I handed them over. He continued talking. I began to feel anxious, perhaps a little regret.

“Where are you going?”

“Budapest.”

“This is not the right train.”

Alarm bells rang. Was this the start of a scam? A detour to a fictional train? Would I have to spend more money? Go down a sidestreet? Get mugged…

The ticket guard arrived, striding past without hesitation.

I asked in English, the man in Croatian. “Is this the train for Budapest?”

We got no answer at first. Then I asked again. I suspect I sounded desperate.

“No, no Budapest.”

My eyes fled to the window where orange pixels still spelled out Budapest in uniform rounded letters.

Confusion.

The man said something to the ticket guard. Then another thing. Then another.

Finally, the guard grunted and gestured along the aisle of the train and I stumbled behind him, bags slipping and sliding and squeezing through the gap. The other man followed.

We reached a blocked door.

“Get off now,” snapped the guard. I hopped down the steps first, placing my water and paper bags on the station floor before returning for the suitcase.

By then the guard had opened the door to the connecting train, sighed at me and hauled my suitcase across the gap into the next carriage. I ducked back down to the platform to gather my things then scurried along after him.

“Budapest,” said the guard.

“Budapest,” said the man.

I thanked them both and took my seat.

“This is first class,” said the woman in front of me.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“Second class is further along,”

We said nothing.

“Although the guard is very nice. He will probably let you sit there anyway.”

“I hope so,” I said. “Since I have a first class ticket.”

She said nothing.

The train slowly rocked away. Carrying with it the notion that I’d walked into a fable.

#Ironroute is an independent journey with transport sponsored by InterRail. Read more about the idea for the project here, follow along on twitter using the #ironroute hashtag and subscribe here for email updates.

A Tale of One City – On The Iron Route first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Istanbul Sunrise - Seen From the Moevenpick Istanbul

Istanbul

A man casts a glance over his shoulder before arching back and casting his line into the water. The street chatter and rush hour traffic drown out the subtle splash but from the look on his face, you’d think he stood alone in the countryside, miles from anyone, miles from anywhere.

Calm

He’s one of many who line the Galata Bridge in Istanbul, searching for sea life in the inlet of the mighty Bosphorus, the waterway known as the Golden Horn.

Despite the size of the city ( 13 million at least at the last count,) the air feels fresh and clean, with soft wisps of salt dancing through the breeze. It’s early morning and it’s also winter, meaning that the sun, like the rest of us, is still warming up to the idea of the day ahead.

I stride across the bridge, my hands curling inside my pockets to grasp any vestige of heat, while my breath joins the mist that veils the view ahead.

And what a view it is.

Minarets in lavender blue, matching domes in resting chrome. A foreground of scarlet wagons selling roast sweetcorn and pretzels and damp yet golden flagstones lit by the rising sun.

Both Europe & Asia

I love the city of Istanbul, perched as it is across the Bosphorus that divides Europe from Asia, with diplomatic parallels to match. When designing my #ironroute tour, a rail journey to look at the “east-west” divides in Europe and the former iron curtain, Istanbul seemed like a natural fit.

Its terminal used to mark the end of the Orient Express, a near-mythical journey that swept up Agatha Christie, Jackie Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway and more from the chic streets of Paris to the chandeliers of the Pera Palace Hotel. And while Turkey’s role in the Cold War was rather low key, Istanbul is certainly a city that knows a thing or two about divisions, from geography to ideology.

Vast Empires

When the vast empire of Rome drew a curtain between its own territories, “western Rome” took Rome as its capital, while “eastern Rome” took Istanbul (or Constantinople as it became at the time.)

While the western Roman Empire crumbled in less than 100 years, the eastern one continued for more than a thousand. This Christian stronghold switched to Islam with the invasion of the Ottomans, who themselves established an empire that spanned more than seven centuries.

It’s hard to miss the greatest symbols of these two former empires as they face one another in the grassy area of Sultanahmet. The Hagia Sofia and the “Blue Mosque” remain two of the most awe-inspiring and magnificent buildings in the world – and at the very least they deserve is a blog post of their own (watch this space.)

Inside the Blue Mosque

Crossing to Asia

This morning, though, while I admire Sultanahmet’s silhouettes on the horizon, that’s not where I’m headed. I’m filing along behind the commuters to reach the Spice Market – a collection of stained glass, leather, perfume, and yes, spice – and the designated meeting point for my guide from Context Travel.

Context employs academics in love with their cities. I took my first tour with them last year in my own city, London, to find to my surprise Roman remains and Victorian markets beneath the glistening brittle glass of the City.

This time, I’m crossing the Bosphorus to reach Asia on a public ferry that costs about two lira (about one euro.) We’ve missed the rush hour and have both the seats and space to stretch out a little, while gulls loom ominously past the railings.

Sultanahmet Slides Away

The foam froths below and Sultanahmet slides away. I try to talk to my guide about the project I’m working on and she misunderstands me straight away.

“So you’re retracing the rail route from Istanbul to Berlin because of its 50th anniversary.”

Well, yes – and no. I will be travelling by rail, I will be travelling to Berlin but my little journalist’s heart flutters a little at this potentially missed detail. “What anniversary?”

Conversation becomes difficult. “The workers who went… In the 1960s… I thought that’s what…You know…”

More awkwardness – and I’m not quite sure whether the reticence comes from the misunderstood purpose of my visit or the event itself five decade ago.

I let a few more metres of Bosphorus glide past before trying again. Turkey, it seems, sided with Germany in World War One, the conflict that set the world stage for all the other global conflicts that followed that century.

“Turkey won all of its battles,” she says. “All of them. But it lost overall because it picked the wrong side. And that’s when the Bosphorus became international waters.”

The Bosphorus

The gulls circle past, squawking and angry.

In less than twenty minutes, we will have passed from Europe to Asia. We will have reached the other side of Istanbul. But we will have travelled through international waters.

Never underestimate the complexity of politics when a valuable resource is at stake.

And the Bosphorus is valuable. Extremely valuable. This narrow channel connects the Black Sea in the north to the Sea of Marmara in the south and from there on towards the Aegean and then the Med. In shorter terms, it provides the only international shipping access for several watchful countries. No wonder both the Christian Romans and the Islamic Ottomans fought over its vital strategic position. And, perhaps no wonder that Turkey is now a secular state.

“They are planning to build their own channel now, though,” my guide continues. “It will be bigger than the Panama Canal, bigger than the Suez. The plans are in the pipeline…It will…happen.”

My mind spins a little as I listen to the plans to carve a route through inland Turkey. It sounds like a plot from a James Bond thriller rather than 21st century politics.

I still haven’t uncovered the real story behind the Turkish workers who travelled to Berlin 50 years ago, other than to read between the lines of economic and educational exclusion and conflicts over repatriation. It’s something for me to investigate on perhaps another day.

For now, though, the foam turns the international water turquoise as we come in dock, translucent jellyfish suspended in fathomless blue.

Through our words, we’ve travelled through centuries. And yet in twenty minutes, we’ve only just reached Asia.

#Ironroute is an independent journey with transport sponsored by InterRail. Read more about the idea for the project here, follow along on twitter using the #ironroute hashtag and subscribe here for email updates.

For other multimedia #ironroute snippets, check out this section on the blog.

Disclosure: Context Travel provided complimentary Istanbul tours although, as always, editorial control remains mine. All mine.

Read More About Istanbul

Photos of Istanbul
A Shooting in Istanbul

About Istanbul: Crossing Between Europe & Asia first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...