Difficult Destination – The Journey To Uzhhorod (The Lost Cities #4)

There comes a time when I am developing a travel itinerary that fear takes hold and threatens to stop me from visiting the one place that is integral to the whole plan. In this case, that place happens to be Uzhhorod. That small city on the southwestern edge of Ukraine, a stone’s throw from Slovakia, and within a short drive of Hungary is my challenge, my obstacle, and my opportunity. The lost cities itinerary I have spent the past several days developing is now dependent upon an obscure city that kingdoms, empires, and nations have inherited, but never really knew what to do with it.

Uzhhorod is an outlier. Look no further than the fact that its location has helped it escape the worst of a horrific war. Uzhhorod is as hard to grasp as it is to access. A city that I have previously avoided because I did not have the time nor the energy to visit it, a city that has the most multiple personalities in its disorders, a city whose history is a mixed-up mumble jumble of ethnicities, languages, nationalities, and cultures that it defies logic. A city that adds another layer of complexity to my lost cities beyond the Hungarian border project. A city that has been lost to every entity that has tried to claim it since the turn of the 20^th century. A city that represents a place not only on the map, but inside of me. And now Uzhhorod has come back to baffle me.

Palatial transport – Uzhhorod Railway Station (Credit: Elke Wetzig)

Magical Thinking – Tendencies To Avoidance
Buses, I hate them. Border officials, I fear them. Transfers at train stations, I loathe them. These are the barriers that are causing me consternation as I try to find the best way to Uzhhorod. This should not bother me as much as it does. I love challenges. I am not so sure I love multiple challenges. Kosice to Uzhhorod is not an easy journey, even if there was no war going on in Ukraine. No trains travel there directly. The best routes I have found are indirect ones which require confusing acts of avoidance followed by unavoidable obstacles. My first mistake was to assume I could somehow make this journey easy on myself. Easy would mean straightforward. In the best of all worlds, I would find a train (always my preferred method of travel) from Kosice to the border. Then I could take a quick transfer by taxi into Uzhhorod. I discovered that is impossible.

That did not keep me from descending into the realm of magical thinking with a train taking me straight from Kosice to Uzhhorod. Never mind the different railway gauges, never mind border control, never mind the war going on, never mind reality, never mind that in these war-torn times almost everyone is heading in the opposite direction. My absurd railway fantasies were stillborn not long after they were first formulated. And still I kept thinking this should be so easy. Two major regional cities, Kosice and Uzhhorod, not very far apart, should somehow be connected. What I failed to take into consideration was that nothing had been easy here since the start of World War I had been through endless upheavals. The tumultuous times have occurred with such frequency that it is almost as though they have been institutionalized.

Made for waiting – Cierna nad Tisou Railway Station (Credit: Matijak)

Taking Sides – On The Brink
After being brought to the brink of depression by the lack of a straight shot between Kosice and Uzhhorod, I decided on the most sensible course of action. I would do whatever it takes to get there. The two travel options I found were not exactly appealing. The first was to get a bus from Kosice to the Slovakia-Ukraine border. That sounded rather simple, until I learned that it took four hours and ten minutes to cover less than one hundred kilometers. I did not even bother exploring that one further because all I could imagine was a rickety bus, belching out diesel fumes, while trying to dodge planet sized potholes That might sound like an exaggeration, but no more of an exaggeration than a bus traveling an average speed of 50 kilometers per hour all the way from Kosice to Uzhhorod.

The most difficult destinations to access are often the most rewarding. By that standard, Uzhhorod should be positively sensational, though at this point I am having my doubts. I will be thrilled if I can get there in the least stressful and most straightforward manner possible. I did manage to find a way of avoiding buses, but there is going to be no way of getting around border control. The journey will consist of first taking a train from Kosice to Cierna nad Tisou. I found the name of the latter more wonderful than the idea of changing trains there. From Cierna nad Tisou, I will take another train onward to Chop, which is where the official border crossing into Ukraine is located. Chop, as a name, always sounds so strange to me. I know from experience that the name is nothing to laugh at because the border officials there are very serious. I have spent many hours at rail sidings in Chop while train cars were modified for a different railway gauge. This was a small price to pay for a journey to Lviv in western Ukraine.

A beautiful past – Postcard of Ungvar (Uzhhorod) during the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Credit: Old Ungvar)

Obstacle Course – Waiting On The Border
At Chop, there will be a second train transfer for the trip onward to Uzhhorod. The only thing more difficult than this minor odyssey will be plotting my next route into Romania. Three lost cities – Kosice, Uzhhorod, and Oradea – in succession, each of which are in different countries. Most things in the lives of Eastern Europeans have gotten easier since the Iron Curtain collapsed, travel is not one of them. Neighbors in this neck of the woods are not very neighborly when it comes to crossing borders. Traveling from Slovakia to Ukraine and Ukraine to Romania still requires passing through tight border control. I wish that the situation was different, but it is not likely to change for the better until the ongoing Ukraine-Russia War is resolved. That resolution keeps getting pushed ever deeper into the future. That means longer waits for anyone hoping to visit the lost cities.

Click here for: Time Management – A Race Against The Clock To Oradea (The Lost Cities #5)

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

Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Those three cities are as far eastward in Europe as most foreign visitors are likely to get. An argument can be made that none of those cities are even in Eastern Europe. Vienna and Prague see themselves as part of Central Europe. Budapest is close to the midpoint of Europe. As for Eastern Europe, it starts somewhere beyond those three cities. For purposes of my journey to the lost cities of Hungary, Eastern Europe could be said to start the moment I leave Bratislava and head eastward into the heart of Slovakia. This is a land little known to westerners, but of endless fascination for those who dare to visit it. Even from an armchair halfway across the world, I feel my pulse begin to quicken as I plan a journey into a remote and fundamentally different region of Eastern Europe. Whereas Vienna, Prague, and Budapest seem to enjoy being perpetually preserved in the past. The lost cities next on my itinerary have never been able to escape it.

The old and the new – Kosice (Credit: Draco)

Internal Affairs – Getting To Kosice
I find it strange to think that Bratislava and Kosice, the two cities which dominate the western and eastern halves of Slovakia today, were officially known as Pozsony and Kassa not so long ago. Other than Transylvania, Bratislava and Kosice were the greatest losses suffered by Hungary in the post-World War I Treaty of Trianon. Pozsony had become the coronation capital for Hungarian kings after the Ottoman Turks occupied much of Hungary, Kassa was home to one of the most magnificent cathedrals in Europe that housed the tomb of Ferenc Rakoczi, who led Hungary’s war of independence in the early 18^th century. As I continue to plan my itinerary for the seven lost cities found just beyond the current border of Hungary, Bratislava and Kosice loom the largest. Because of their importance, they have ample rail connections. For example, Bratislava is just an hour and 14 minutes by train from the previous stop at Eisenstadt in eastern Austria. Best of all, I can sidestep Vienna on that short journey. I would much rather see the countryside of the Burgenland (formerly West Hungary) than pass through the busy railway stations and urban sprawl of Vienna. 

Traveling onward from Bratislava to Kosice will be more time consuming due to the distance between Slovakia’s two largest cities. The average train journey between them takes five and a half hours. This raises an interesting point. The only time I traveled to Kosice was over a decade ago on a same day round trip from Budapest. That journey took three and a half hours. This is an hour and a half faster than the journey between Bratislava and Kosice. The railway network in Hungary was created with Budapest as its main hub. Long before Kosice was connected to Bratislava, the city’s first railway connection opened in 1860 via Miskolc, in what is today northern Hungary. The line I took on my first trip to Kosice followed this same route. The difference is that it now crosses the Hungary-Slovakia border.

Fortunately, there is no longer a delay for border control between Hungary and Slovakia since both are members of the European Union and Schengen Zone. The border still exists, waiting to cross it does not. It is also interesting to note that I could take a train from Bratislava to Budapest and then Budapest to Kosice in just over six hours, not including time to switch trains. That is not much longer than it takes to travel directly from Bratislava to Kosice. The reason for this goes back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire where railway lines that ran to, through or from Budapest were given top priority. Travel from Pozsony (Bratislava) to Kassa (Kosice) prior to World War was between two provincial cities. Nevertheless, I prefer a non-stop train from Bratislava to Kosice. This will allow me to see the countryside of central Slovakia, always a delight in a country known for its splendid nature.

Point of arrival – Postcard of Kosice Railway station in the 1920’s

Isolationism – Neither Here Nor There
The next lost city on my itinerary after Kosice is an outlier that will make the journey more difficult and fascinating. Uzhhorod is not on the Eastern European travel circuit. When it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Uzhhorod was known by its Hungarian name of Ungvar.  The city was then, as it is today, a geographical oddity, located in a neither here nor there netherworld. Uzhhorod is on the southwestern edge of Ukraine. The Carpathian Mountains separate it from the rest of the country. This has made it a safe haven during the Ukraine-Russia War. Uzhhorod has little strategic military value. The city has changed hands from Austria-Hungary to Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union to Ukraine since World War I. And yet it remains as isolated as ever.

Uzhhorod is not far from Ukraine’s borders with Slovakia and Hungary. Historically, the city has more in common with Hungary and Slovakia than it does Ukraine. That should make it easier to access, but it doesn’t. The Ukrainian border is where the European Union comes to an end. This makes crossing over it more difficult. An added issue is that Ukraine uses a different railway gauge then its western neighbors. For those who choose to ride the rails, this means getting off one train and boarding another or waiting for a couple of hours as the train’s undercarriage is switched to fit the narrower gauge rails. There is the additional complicating factor of the Ukraine-Russia War.

Object of desire – Uzhhorod (Credit: Ekaterina Polischuk)

Going Nowhere – Challenge & Opportunity
Getting to Uzhhorod from Kosice will not be easy. Nothing worth doing ever is. I have never been there before, mainly because it is on the way to nowhere. This makes Uzhhorod the quintessential lost city. In the past, I could never really make it part of a multi-stop journey. I imagined it as a one-off, the end of a line that I either bypassed or avoided. An obscure destination that I could not fit into an existing journey. That is no longer true. My goal of visiting the lost cities of Hungary means that I must visit Uzhhorod. The only problem is the best way to get there. That is the challenge. It is also an opportunity.

Click here for: Difficult Destination – The Journey To Uzhhorod (The Lost Cities #4)

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)

The Limits of Chauvinism – Eastern Slovakia’s Powerhouse (The Kosice Chronicles #2)

Crossing the Hungary – Slovakia border has never been easier. There is no passport control, no inquisitive border officials with probing questions, no metal detectors and no endless waits. If there is a need for an advertisement on the advantages of European Union (EU) membership it should involve someone seamlessly crossing a border. It happens hundreds of thousands of times a day across the EU, to the point that no one even notices anymore. The train trip from Budapest to Kosice became a day trip option the minute that border controls were dismantled between Hungary and Slovakia. Delays disappeared overnight and cross border relationships could be cultivated or in some cases rekindled.

Crossing the border by train would have barely been noticeable, if not for a stop that was made at Hidasnemeti on the Hungarian side. It was there that the Hungarian ticket taker offboarded. Soon he was replaced by another ticket taker who worked for Slovakian railways. This minor pause would have escaped my attention, if not for the fact that the Slovakian attendant came back through to check everyone’s ticket again. This obligatory process took place while the train was already racing northward. Within the hour we would be arriving in Kosice.

Destiny in the Details – Kosice (Credit: Adam Jones)

Smokestacks Rising – A Steel City
What did I really know of Kosice before my arrival? The short answer was not much. I was aware of one thing, the city’s status as eastern Slovakia’s largest city and a main hub for the entire region. I also knew that it had an American connection in the form of a massive U.S. Steel plant (formerly the East Slovak Ironworks). The Kosice I wanted to see has nothing to do with smokestacks. Instead, it was the historic city center with its gothic, medieval, baroque and turn of the 20^th century architecture that proved to be a magnetic attraction. The appeal of this had been an afterthought for over a hundred thousand Slovaks who emigrated to the city during the decades which followed World War II.  An unfortunate side effect of this boom was that development of Kosice, from the 1950s onwards was unsightly.

Heavy industry led to air pollution. Poor architectural aesthetics and less than desirable air quality did nothing to stem the human tide which flowed into the city. New arrivals were packed into towering concrete monstrosities where they lived shoulder to shoulder in what was supposed to be a worker’s paradise. Much of the population and building boom was due to the East Slovak Ironworks, a communist era industrial behemoth that transformed the face of Kosice. This was by design, as leaders in the Soviet Union selected Kosice to be the epicenter for the entire Eastern Bloc’s steel production.

There is a great deal of Kosice’s industrial output in the housing estates of cities that fell behind the Iron Curtain. Kosice quickly became known for its rapid industrialization and urbanization. Industrial development led to a fourfold population rise in Kosice over the ensuing years. Factories and towering apartment blocks sprouted around the city. The latter still stand today. These were one of the first things I noticed looming over the city as the train made its way into the city. The communist period also coincided with Kosice becoming a primarily Slovakian city, something that it had rarely ever been during its long and storied history.

Smokestacks On The Horizon – U.S. Steel Plant in Kosice

Concessions To Trade – Between Profit & Loss
The current ethnic makeup of Kosice is fundamentally different from the multicultural city that had existed since the Middle Ages.  The first written document on Kosice appears in the 13^th century, just before the Mongol horde swept into the Kingdom of Hungary. The Mongols vacated the area a year after their apocalyptic arrival, but they left a wasteland behind. Hungary’s king at the time, Bela IV, was looking for immigrants to repopulate the area. This brought waves of Germans to the area. Many of them were merchants and skilled craftsman. They helped boost Kosice as a burgeoning center of trade. The town was ideally positioned on a popular trade route from central Hungary northward to Poland. This route in turn connected to other trade networks stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kosice grew wealthy on the profits accrued from the commerce that was conducted there. It also brought Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans and many others to the city.

In the latter half of the 15^th century, these trade networks began to fray as the Ottoman Empire began its surge northward. The Ottomans ushered in a tumultuous time for Kosice, which resulted in it constantly changing hands. The city was under the sway of such disparate entities as the Principality of Transylvania, Hungarian led Kuruc rebel forces, the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. By the beginning of the 18^th century, the Austrian Habsburgs had won out, but not before their rule was nearly derailed by Hungarian Ferenc Rakoczi’s War of Independence from 1703 -1711. As I would soon find out, Rakoczi may have lost the war, but he would forever be immortalized in Kosice.

Impossible to Ignore – Kosice in 1617

A Gloriously Conflicted Past  – Impossible To Ignore
Hungarian influence grew in Kosice (Kassa in Hungarian) throughout the 19^th century, especially after the Austro-Hungarian Empire was formed in 1867. Nonetheless, the city continued to be decidedly multi-ethnic. The 1891 Austro-Hungarian census done by language showed that half the population spoke Hungarian, one-third Slovakian and one in eight said German was their mother tongue. A later census that took place in 1910, showed that almost three-fourths of Kosice’s inhabitants spoke Hungarian. This was almost certainly the product of manipulation by Hungarian authorities. Such chauvinism had its limits and they were reached by the outbreak of World War I.

The oppressor became the oppressed after the war, when Kosice was given to Czechoslovakia. This inaugurated an era when Slovaks were in the ascendant. Most of Kosice’s multiculturalism vanished with the post-World War II expulsion of ethnic Germans and oppression of Hungarians. Communism made Kosice a Slovak city through and through. When it collapsed, the Slovakian population was left looking for something other than heavy industry to heal their economic wounds. One of Kosice’s great selling points was its historic city center, an architectural and cultural wonderland full of charm. Ironically, this area has always been the epicenter for multi-cultural Kosice. A place impossible to ignore, despite or perhaps because of its gloriously conflicted past.

Click here for: A Sense Of The Sensational – Jakab’s Palace & Gothic Glamour (The Kosice Chronicles #3)

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)

All They Needed Was A Reason – The Bombing Of Kassa & Hungary’s Entry Into World War 2

Just after lunchtime, on June 26, 1941, three unidentified planes appeared in the clear skies above the Hungarian city of Kassa (today Kosice, Slovakia). They soon let loose a stream of bombs on the unsuspecting city, civilians ran for cover as the bombs exploded. In just a few minutes the attack was over, over a dozen people had been wounded and some minor damage had been sustained at several buildings, most prominently the post office. It was a quick strike, over with almost as fast as it had occurred. Yet though the bombing may have been brief, its ramifications were long lasting. The next day, Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union, ostensibly over the attack. It was a fateful decision, the consequences of which would be felt for decades to come.

Civilians view damage to residential area after bombing of Kassa on June 26 1941

Few events in 20th century Hungarian history, loom as large as the bombing of Kassa (Kosice, Slovakia) on June 26, 1941. The disastrous consequences which eventually would flow from this incident, seem out of all proportion to the size and scale of the bombing. The attack damaged some buildings and caused minor civilian casualties in a city that Hungary had only regained two years before. This after Kassa had been part of Czechoslovakia for nearly twenty years.  Kassa was considered by Hungarians to have been theirs all along, but it was a provincial city of only peripheral importance to the nation. More symbolic than strategic.

Assigning Blame or Seeking to Understand
Intriguingly, historians have not been able to pinpoint who actually was responsible for the bombing. There are questions as to whether it was a conspiracy formulated and carried out by the Germans, an attack by the Soviets or perhaps even the Romanians. The bombing of Kassa has become one of Hungarian history’s most intriguing whodunits. Both academic and armchair historians have spent countless hours trying to solve this mystery. By doing so, they have overlooked an even more important question, namely why. Why would Hungary enter the Second World War over what seems retrospectively to have been an incident that could just as easily have been brushed aside. The focus on who carried out the attack while of interest,  is little more than an attempt to retroactively assign blame. Conversely, seeking to answer the question why helps us better understand the fateful decision to go to war.

One way to get at the why, is to understand Hungary’s geostrategic position at the time of the attack. The Hungarian leadership must have been rather happy with itself over the string of successes during the lead up to and early part of the war. They had regained several historically important territories that had been lost in the Treaty of Trianon, the post-World War I peace settlement. Among these were southern Slovakia, northern Transylvania and northern Serbia. These had been regained with minimal military effort. They had literally been “gifts” from the Germans.  Yet territorial  “gifts” from Hitler always came with a cost. A minor cost inflicted at the time, with larger payments due at some ominous future point.

Cheering crowds in Kassa greeted Hungarian leader Miklos Horthy after the city was regained in 1938

A Dangerous Game
Hungary’s major interwar foreign policy goal – some might say their only goal – was to reverse the taking of traditional Hungarian lands in the Trianon settlement. If this meant throwing in their lot with the Nazis, well then so be it. After all, the Allies were the ones who had inflicted Trianon on the Magyar nation. The Hungarians were playing a very dangerous, exceedingly complex game. The question seems to be how far they could go in meeting German demands, while still staying out of the war. It was a classic historical case of the Hungarians wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to avoid getting involved in the war while keeping their territorial gains.

What may well have tipped the country into war was strangely enough not direct German pressure, but instead indirect pressure from their main rivals. Both Slovakia and Romania were supporting the Germans. Romania for one, reportedly dispatched ten divisions to assist Germany in their invasion of the Soviet Union. They also provided a critical source of petroleum for the German war effort.  Such assistance might very well mean that Germany would favor the Romanians in territorial disputes with the Hungarians. The risk that this might occur meant that Hungary had little choice, but to end up fighting with Germany on the Eastern Front if they wanted to keep all the land they had gained over the past three years.

If Not Kassa Then…
The bombing of Kassa gave Hungary a convenient reason to enter the war. If not the bombing of Kassa than it would most likely have been something else, sooner rather than later, that precipitated Hungary’s entry into the war. The Hungarian leadership would not stomach a loss of  their territorial gains. Ironically, it turned out to be a city in the lands lost due to Trianon which provided the rationalization for going to war. It was not so much the Germans, as it was the shame of Trianon that led the Hungarians to declare war. There is history and then there is deep history. History was made due to what happened in Kassa on June 26, 1941, that was the history of the moment. Yet the history of Hungarian involvement in the Second World War has its roots deeper than any one bombing incident. The Hungarians were led into the war by their single minded focus to keep their revisions to Trianon. This was the undertow that pulled them down into the depths.

Trianon was truly a disaster for Hungary and not just at the time it was signed, but also decades later. Both loss and recovery of the lands proscribed by the treaty led to disastrous policies. The major difference between the outcomes is that following the First World War and the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary was still a sizable, independent mid-sized nation. After the Second World War, Hungary was still a nation, back to its original inter-war borders, but it was no longer independent. It would now be a vassal of the Soviet Union for decades to come. This was the ultimate cost of entering the war on Germany’s side and trying to recover and keep the traditional lands of the Hungarian Kingdom.