Retro Rail Ride – From Budapest to Eisenstadt & Bratislava (The Lost Cities #2)

The borders changed, the bureaucrats changed, the demographics changed, the economies changed, the politics changed, the names changed, the official languages changed, the centuries changed and still Budapest remains, as it did at the turn of the 20th century, the hub for anyone looking to reach the lost cities just beyond the borders of Hungary. In the last half of the 19^th century, Hungarian National Railway’s network of lines was developed with Budapest as the epicenter. That remains largely true today for the cities which were once part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The old cliché “the more things change, the more they stay the same” still applies in this case. Those traveling to the lost cities are likely to find themselves starting in Budapest. That is where my own journey to the lost cities now begins.

Ready to roll – Dawn at Budapest Nyugati (Western Railway Station)

Border Complications – National Insecurities
The shortest distance between two points is said to be a straight line. The shortest distance between the early 20^th century and the lost cities of Oradea (Nagyvarad), Timisoara (Temesvar), Subotica (Szabadka), Pozsony (Bratislava), Kosice (Kaschau), Eisenstadt (Kismarton), and Ungvar (Uzhhorod) is at the three railway stations (Nyugati – western/Keleti – eastern/Deli – southern) in Budapest. Many things have changed, and some stayed the same since the early 20^th century regarding the lost cities. Rail connections are one of them. While Budapest is still the best place to begin any journey to all seven lost cities, national borders cause complications. These are a legacy from the aftermath of World War I when border control inhibited pre-existing rail routes. It took 84 years, accession to the European Union and Schengen Zone for borderless travel between Hungary, Austria and Slovakia. This is also slated to happen with Romania when it becomes part of the Schengen Zone in 2024. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Serbia and Ukraine. Borders are always complicating factors, the ones between Hungary and its neighbors still act as irritants for the traveler. The situation has improved, but it is still an obstacle the traveler must have overcome.

The complications of borders were expected after the Treaty of Trianon went into effect on June 4, 1920. The nations which had gained the lost cities were suspicious of Hungary’s future intentions toward them. Even with large numbers of Hungarians migrating out of the lost cities and into the newly constituted Republic of Hungary, there were still large numbers of Hungarians that were the cause of consternation for Romania (formed in 1866), Yugoslavia (formed in 1918), and Czechoslovakia (formed in 1918), Austria was a different matter altogether, but it too eyed Hungary warily. Better to make travel between these nations and Hungary more difficult. Borders were a form of security. Judging by the coming of another world war, they were not a very good one.

Awaiting arrivals – Eisenstadt Railway Station

Living On The Edge – Burgenland & Bratislava
As any traveler does before setting out on a journey, I am searching for the best route between my destinations. It makes sense to start in Budapest since it was the transport hub for the Hungarian half (Transleithania) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From Budapest, the question is where to go first. That decision will go a long way in determining the route I will take to travel from one city to the next. I am not looking for the quickest route between the lost cities. I am searching for the one that will prove most intellectually satisfying. One of the most important elements of any journey is getting off to a good start. That might sound simplistic, but when it comes to travel my experience has been that the beginning of a journey van either set the traveler up for success or failure. With that in mind, I want to ease into this journey. Looking at the seven lost cities, Eisenstadt in Eastern Austria stands out as low hanging fruit ripe to be plucked with a leisurely rail ride.

Due to the starting and final destinations for this initial leg of the journey being in different countries, it will require multiple transfers and take almost four hours. I can think of worse things than riding the rails across western Hungary and then hopscotching between a couple of stations before arrival in the Austrian province of Burgenland. It only seems right that I should finish this first leg of the journey in what became a newly created ninth Austrian province in 1921. Along the way I will be passing through Sopron, known as the most loyal city in Hungary because it voted to stay part of the country during the messy aftermath of the post- World War I treaty making process.

Eisenstadt is a good first lost city to visit for logistical reasons. Of the seven lost cities, it is the furthest one to the west and in near proximity to Bratislava, which will be second on my itinerary.   Bratislava, known by Hungarians as Pozsony, has done better economically than any of the other lost cities. The reason can be summed up as location and size. Bratislava is just 30 kilometers from Vienna. It has become something of a bedroom community to the Austrian capital. Bratislava also became the capital of Slovakia in 1994. As the seat of government, the city had a self-reinforcing economy. Due to Slovakia’s lower taxes and cost of living (not the case anymore), businesses and people poured into the city. It was the largest city in the newly created country.  Bratislava continues its impressive growth today. The city’s Old Town is spectacular, and the surrounding area has much to recommend it.

Power & prosperity – Bratislava (Credit: Jorge Franganillo)

Lost & Found – The Eastern Frontier
From Bratislava I really have only one choice, head eastward. This is the direction that has captivated me ever since I first set foot in the region. As much as I love Budapest and Bratislava, nothing fires my imagination like heading ever deeper into Eastern Europe. This is the true heart of a region that has been greatly misunderstood by the western world. It is also a region that the Treaty of Trianon upended to a greater extent than anywhere else. The heartlands of historic Hungary can still be found in eastern Slovakia, sub-Carpathian Ukraine, and western Romania. These places are home to the lost cities that are the next stage in planning my itinerary.

Click here for: Eastern Questions – Plotting Paths To Kosice & Uzhhorod (The Lost Cities #3)

Point of Pilgrimage – Rakoczi Memorial House: Nationalist Tourism (The Kosice Chronicles #8)

I recall sitting down a few years ago with my Hungarian mother-in-law at her home in Debrecen. She had just returned from a trip to the European part of Turkey. I was interested to see her photos and hear her thoughts on visiting Edirne (once famously known as Adrianople). Specifically, I wanted to learn about her visit to the Selimye Mosque, a masterwork of the Ottoman architect Sinan. My mother-in-law told me pretty much what I expected to hear. The mosque was a magnificent work of architecture worth visiting the city to see it. She then began to show me a few other photos from her trip. These seemed to interest her much more.

Her journey had been with a group of Hungarians who made a special pilgrimage to a place I had never heard of nor seen before. Her photos were of a typical looking Ottoman home, which happened to be the final residence of the exiled Hungarian leader Ferenc II Rakoczi. The home was in the city of Tekirdag (Rodosto in Hungarian), on the Sea of Marmara in eastern Thrace. While my mother in law proudly showed me these photos, I felt a sense of bemusement mixed with admiration. This historic site seemed rather obscure. I could not help but think that Hungarians sure will travel a long way to see anything associated with their history. Nonetheless. the pride with which my mother-in-law showed me those photos was so impressive that I committed that moment to memory.

Exile by the Seashore – Rakoczi Museum in Tekirdag (Credit: Ollios)

Never Surrender – Keeping Up The Fight
It was only in retrospect that I came to realize my own ignorance regarding the reverence that Rakoczi was held by Hungarians. I had always viewed Rakoczi as an exemplar of a recurring Hungarian historical trait, a man who could not quite achieve the greatness that was once within his grasp. Hungarians view him quite differently for several reasons. They are proud of the fact that Rakoczi’s War of Independence (1703 – 11) was one of the longest fights for freedom in European history. It was also the first Hungarian uprising against Habsburg rule, a defining moment which would famously happen again in the mid-19^th century. Rakoczi may have been on the losing end of his war, but the War of Independence did help Hungary maintain national autonomy. This is something that would never have happened without the uprising.

Rakoczi could have decided to stay in Hungary under the terms of the Treaty of Szatmar that ended the war, but his distrust of the Habsburgs led him into exile. He never surrendered, which was symbolic of his character and by extension, Hungarians as well. The Rakoczi home in Tekirdag acts as a point of pride for patriotic Hungarians, a place that thousands willingly make a pilgrimage to see each year. The Turkish state gifted it to Hungary in the early 1980’s. Over half the visitation each year is by Hungarians who make the trip to see where Rakoczi spent his final years. After the visit with my mother-in-law, I made a mental note that I should try to visit Tekirdag if I ever found myself in that area. Little did I know that in Kosice a rough approximation of this same experience was on offer.

The Great One – Ferenc II Rakoczi Statue at the Memorial House in Kosice

Nationalist Attractions – A Living Legacy
A couple of streets back from Hlavna Ulica, the main thoroughfare in Kosice’s city center, stood the Rakoczi Memorial House, an exact replica of his exile home in Turkey. Only then did it dawn on me that for Hungarians the memory of Rakoczi and his exploits were not just the stuff of history books, they were a living legacy. The house, though a replica, was a tangible place where Hungarians could make their own personal pilgrimage. It may have been over three hundred years since Rakoczi’s War of Independence ended in defeat, but he was still alive in the hearts and minds of his countrymen. Kosice is now mostly a Slovakian city, but it also offers a heavy dose of Hungarian history for visitors. With capitalism supplanting communism in Slovakia, the tourist trade is an important part of the economy in Kosice. National differences are easier to set aside in the interests of making money. Rakoczi brings Hungarians to the city who willingly open their wallets and spend money in the restaurants, hotels and attractions in the city they still call Kassa. The vision of Hungarian nationalists, who at the turn of the 20^th century pushed to bring Rakoczi’s remains back to the city and build the replica house, also created long term tourist attractions. For a Hungarian, imagining Kassa without Rakoczi is almost impossible. And yet, not that along ago the situation was quite different.

Consider this, one hundred and twenty years ago, a visitor to Kosice would have been hard pressed to find any site associated with Rakoczi. The 1900 Baedeker’s Guide to Austria, including Hungary, Transylvania, Dalmatia, and Bosnia does not mention anything about Rakoczi in their writeup for Kaschau (the town’s German name). Things had changed by 1911, when Baedekers Guide to Austria-Hungary was published. Travelers learn that Rakoczi’s remains can be found in a vault below St. Elisabeth’s Cathedral. They can visit the Rakoczi Museum which is also shown on a map of the city. It is not surprising to find the sites associated with Rakoczi listed since it was a major event when his ashes were reburied in the cathedral. At the same time, the city also decided to honor Rakoczi by enshrining his legacy with the rebuilt replica of home from Tekirdag.

Home Away From Home – Rakoczi Memorial Museum in Kosice

Passing Time – A Life In Exile
The house was a near perfect replica of the cantilevered, three story Ottoman structure Rakoczi inhabited during his exile. Though it was a reconstruction, the interior did have some of the original furnishings from the home in Tekirdag. Rakoczi was a warrior and a statesman, but he was also an expert carpenter. His favorite pastime in exile was passing the days doing woodwork. Ironically, the pieces on display robbed the original house in Tekirdag of some of its authenticity while giving the Memorial House a bit more credibility. This makes sense in at least one respect, more Hungarians are going to visit the Memorial House in Kosice than the one in Tekirdag. While I hope to visit the house in Tekirdag one day, I was grateful for the opportunity to visit the replica in Kosice. It gave me an idea of what Rakoczi’s life in exile must have been like. To be honest, it looked pretty good.

Click here for: The Man On A White Horse – Horthy Riding Into History & Catastrophe (The Kosice Chronicles #9)

Kosice, Kassa, Kaschau – The Past Is A Different Country

In 2013 Kosice, Slovakia was designated as a European Capital of Culture. Slovaks were understandably very proud of this distinction. They put forth a concerted effort to promote the many architectural and cultural achievements of the city’s past. By promoting Kosice’s long and storied history they also inadvertently shined a light on the influence of its former ruling class, almost all of which were Hungarians and Germans.  These two groups dominated the city’s economic, political and cultural life for hundreds of years. The Slovak population was marginalized. They did not gain a decided advantage in the political life of the city until the creation of Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I. At present, Kosice is dominated by Slovaks. It is a definitive part of Slovakia , after all it is the second largest city in the nation, yet its current inhabitants do not own Kosice’s past. Astonishingly, they hardly even shared in most of it.

The past that is presently on display at the heart of Kosice’s old town, along the beautiful Hlavna Ulica (Hlavna Street), is almost solely the creation of Germans and Hungarians. During the middle ages, the Germans funded and constructed the city the most prominent buildings. Later during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the Hungarians made the city a showpiece of Eclectic and Art Nouveau architecture.  All of this was left behind for the Slovaks to preserve, even if it was not their own history.

Kaschau – A City of Brooding Grandeur
The towering stone architecture of St. Elisabeth Cathedral dominates the heart of Kosice. This is the physical legacy of an ethnic German population that once dominated a city they called Kaschau. The cathedral, in all its brooding, Gothic grandeur, towers over the inner town. The Germans developed the city as a crossroads at the center of intersecting trade routes. By 1480 its population had grown to approximately 10,000, huge by the standards of that time. The wealth accumulated from lucrative mining operations and the trade in salt, was used to pay for the cathedral’s construction. Building began in 1378, but it would take one-hundred and thirty years before it was finally completed. The colossal stone structure was a sign of permanence and power, a lasting example of the importance that the Germans attached to Kosice during that time.

St. Elisabeth Cathedral in Kosice – a masterpiece of brooding grandeur (Credit: Ville Miettinen)

Kassa – Home of the Disloyal
Aside from the cathedral, much of the architecture in the old town of Kassa (the Hungarian name for the city) arose from the imagination of Hungarians. At the height of their influence, around the turn of the 20^th century, Hungarians made up half of Kosice’s population. Presently, they make up little more than 2.5% of the populace. Yet the legacy they left behind, architecturally, historically and culturally is secure. For instance, Francis II Rakoczi , leader of the 1703 to 1711 War of Independence against the Habsburgs, is buried in the crypt of St. Elisabeth’s Cathedral. This makes for a delicious historical paradox, as a Hungarian national hero is entombed within a German Cathedral now celebrated as the part of Slovakia’s heritage. Those who enter the tomb are confronted with multiple Hungarian flags draped over and around the stone coffin. Despite the contradictions, the placement of Rakcozi’s makes sense. For many centuries, Kosice and the surrounding area was part of Upper Hungary, a region that was at the heart of Rakcozi’s life and also of his rebellion.

Francis II Rakoczi’s tomb at St. Elisabeth Cathedral

One of the most famous cultural figures associated with Kosice is also Hungarian, the internationally renowned writer Sandor Marai. Marai was born in the city and spent most of the first two decades of his life there.  His creative imagination was nursed to fruition by a series of formative experiences growing up in what was then a provincial city on the fringes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Marai’s most famous book, the international bestseller “Embers” is a fascinating rumination on loyalty and betrayal. Read another way it can be interpreted as a metaphor for the dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, namely the relationship between Hungarians and the national minorities, one of the largest of which was the Slovaks.

Sandor Marai – literary son of Kassa

Kosice in the 20^th century – Separation Anxieties
In the last one hundred years Kosice has been ruled by two entities that no longer exist, the Kingdom of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In addition, two nation states have ruled it as well during this time, the Republic of Hungary and Slovakia. It was not until 1920 that it came to be administered by Slovaks as part of the newly formed nation of Czechoslovakia. Less than two decades later, Adolf Hitler gifted it back to Hungary after Germany dismembered Czechoslovakia.  This arrangement also brought World War II to Kosice. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in late June of 1941, the city suddenly came under aerial bombardment.

Fatefully, this led the Hungarians to declare war on the supposed aggressors, the Soviet Union. There is vigorous debate among historians on whether the bombing was done instead by the Germans in order to gain Hungarian entry into the Second World War. Whoever was responsible, the result was that Hungary entered the war, with resulting disastrous consequences for the country. After the war, Hungary was forced to cede Kosice once and for all. It stayed part of Czechoslovakia until the Velvet Divorce of 1993, when the Czechs and Slovaks split up. The city then became part of Slovakia.

Modern Kosice – The Future Is Now
Today modern Kosice sprawls outward from the city center. It was formed in a rapid expansion that took place during four decades of Communist rule. Due to the development of heavy industry, such as the manufacturing of steel, Kosice became one of Czechoslovakia’s most important cities. It now plays a key role in the Slovakian economy. What was once the East Slovak Ironworks is now owned by the U.S. Steel Corporation. Communist block micro-districts, made up of endless rows of high-rise apartments, are the most noticeable aspect of modern Kosice’s urban sprawl. These apartment blocks supported the city’s four-fold increase in population, from 60,000 in 1950 to 250,000 in 1991.

Apartment blocks – the legacy of the Communist Era

Is this development the legacy of the Slovaks or Communism? Probably a little bit of both. As unsightly as this industrial landscape and apartment blocks happens to be, Kosice today supports the largest population in its history. It is has become an economic powerhouse, accounting for nearly a tenth of the Slovak economy. The Slovaks may have been ruled by others for nearly a thousand years, but they obviously know how to run a modern economy. To their credit they have also been responsible for the high degree of preservation which makes the Old Town worthy of its European Cultural Capital designation. Kosice is today a city of Slovaks, but the German and Hungarian legacy remains. It is not enough to share this legacy, it also should be celebrated.

European Capital of Culture – Hlavná ulica (Main Street) in Kosice (Credit: I,Tucquero)