Twelve Days in Germany, Two Days in Austria, Three Days in Hungary and Two Books

We decided to break the first part of this year’s railway jaunt, meeting up with friends in London and arriving in Bonn early the following evening after a long day’s travel, including an hour’s delay, hardly unexpected given Deutsche Bahn’s recent lamentable performance. That and the fog shrouding our top-notch Rhine view meant an uncharacteristic late start to Tuesday.

With the season about to change, we spent most of our stay outdoors, wandering over to the botanical gardens after a stroll around the old town in the morning. Much to admire, from a gorgeous display of asters to an impressive banana plant although neither beat the vast water lilies in the tropical house. Appropriate, given the incessantly squabbling parakeets flying around the city.

On Wednesday, we headed for the extravagantly Romantic Drachenfels Castle, built in the hills above Bonn by a nineteenth-century stockbroker who never lived in it, which we reached by train (delayed), ferry and cog railway: transport heaven for H. Set in beautiful grounds with a magnificent view of the Rhine valley, the ersatz castle has been meticulously restored. It boasts an impressive marble staircase which must have cost a fortune perhaps explaining the truly awful art. An enjoyable side trip, which even the 45-minute delay to our 10-minute train trip back to Bonn failed to spoil.

Thursday was spent travelling to Bamberg, including two episodes of standing on chilly station platforms wondering when/if our trains would turn up. The beautifully preserved UNESCO World Heritage listed medieval town is the kind of place tourists amble around, irritating locals by getting in the way which is what we did the next day despite regularly experiencing exactly that in our home town. Not much in the way of culture but who cares when everywhere you look there are jaw-droppingly lovely vistas to ogle and snap. We left on Sunday morning, astonished and delighted that our train arrived on time, disappointed but unsurprised to be forty minutes late into Munich.

With museums and galleries closed, we decided to spend Monday outside enjoying the gorgeous sunshine, wandering around the extensive Englischer Garten where we saw surfers twelve years ago on our stopover in Munich en route to the Dolomites.

By Tuesday, H was struggling with Germany’s autumn cold, so we confined ourselves to just one gallery where we spent the first few hours enjoying coffee and lunch outside in the sun. Lenbachhaus is a beautifully finished space, home to Gabriele Münter‘s collection of paintings by Munich’s The Blue Rider group, formed in the early-twentieth century, of which she was a leading light. It includes works by the likes of Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Paul Klee whose work I love but my favourite was by an artist new to me: Ukrainian Wladimir Burliuk’s ‘Dancer’ which captures the movement and near ecstasy of its subject exquisitely.

Sadly, Wednesday’s culture was a disappointment. We both had high hopes for Pinakothek der Moderne but the architecture section seemed to be given over to an exhibition on food waste, and we couldn’t find the Klee pieces mentioned in our guide. The design section was brilliant, though, despite the lack of signage. My favourites ranged from a potato baking device that perfectly matched its function to a stylish, ice blue vintage Mercedes.

We happily waved goodbye to Deutsche Bahn on Thursday, heading over the border to Linz, not much visited by tourists despite its prettiness and UNESCO City of Media Arts status. After a quick trip to the cathedral on Friday morning, the largest in Austria, more impressive on the outside than the inside, we decided to make the best of the glorious weather heading for the botanical gardens lit up with acers either just on the turn or already brilliantly coloured.

With Linz enfolded in fog on Saturday morning, we visited Lentos, the city’s modern and contemporary art museum whose collection includes an impressive array of women artists not least Erika Rössing whose husband donated fifty of her paintings to the museum after her death. The lower floor was devoted to a retrospective of her work which I loved. My favourite was ‘Study for a Still Life’: a beautiful subtle piece of art.

Our last stop was Budapest where we were joined by my lovely aunt. We’d been twice before, once for a short break in 2017 then on another railway jaunt in 2023, but it was M’s first visit. We had lots of catching up to do but managed to fit in some sightseeing, killing two birds with one stone over coffee at Parisi Passage, whose interior is magnificent.

H and I had enjoyed the Children’s Railway so much on our last visit that we took M on it, winding through the woods in the Buda hills, smiling at the smartly turned-out stationmasters saluting the train, before enjoying lunch outside in chilly October sunshine. A lovely way to end the holiday. Such an interesting city, with so many beautifully maintained green neighbourhood spaces. I’d thought that three trips to Budapest would be enough but we’re already thinking of a fourth, basing ourselves in the city and exploring a bit more of Hungary.

And the books? I read more than the two in my heading, most too disappointing to mention, largely because I was reading from my tablet using Google Books. My first (qualified) success was Andrew Sean Greer’s Villa Coco, the tale of a young American tasked with cataloguing the belongings of an eccentric nonagenarian Italian baroness, far shrewder than she lets on, which becomes a romantic adventure for him. A tad too whimsical for me at times but enjoyable enough holiday reading. No such qualification needed for John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do, a gripping double revenge story which no one comes out of well. It would make a brilliant series adaptation.

Thanks to those patient readers who’ve stuck with me for what’s become a very long post. Back to books on Friday…