Danubia

There's a brilliant book written by Simon Winder that provides a marvellous history of the countries, cities and people that inhabit the regions around the Danube in central Europe and at the same time provides a historical perspective of the old Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburg family that ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the cataclysm of WWI brought everything crashing down.

I read it voraciously and couldn't wait to visit the area now that the Iron Curtain is no more so when Viv and a friend said they wanted to visit the Christmas Markets in the area, of course I wanted to be a part of it. Particularly so when Viv said the itinerary would be Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg and then Prague.

At its peak, the Empire had over 60 million inhabitants and covered a vast area of central and eastern Europe. The economic powerhouse was Hungary... when it had Transylvania. The manufacturing powerhouse was Bohemia.

I have written a detailed blog tracked on the marvelous Track My Tour app which you can read here but plenty didn't make it to that blog hence this ramble.

Budapest is only 2 1/2 hours from Heathrow but courtesy of 50 years of the Soviet yoke it seems light years behind, except that isn't the right word. Western Europe has had 50 years of Marshall Plan stimulus followed by growth whilst the nations behind the Iron Curtain simply stopped dead. The catastrophe of WWII when the Nazis turned the city into a Fortress City (Festung Budapest) condemned it to almost total destruction. Our tour guide said that 70% of the city was destroyed in the process of 'liberation'. The Germans used the castle on the Buda side of the city as a base and consequently great aiming point for the terrible Soviet artillery.

Nearly half a million people died in this final battle. This is the Royal Palace. It still hasn't been restored.

One of the things I love about Wikipedia is that it provides massive amounts of insights nobody ever teaches you at school. My history taught me nothing about Hungary, Czechoslovakia or any other of the Iron Curtain countries other than the fact that the 'liberating' Red Army took them over and the Iron Curtain was created. Sort of makes you wonder if there was a specific desire to re-write history and gloss over the fact that the Soviet era was just as bad if not worse and regrettably much, much longer than the Nazis in Germany. The Yalta Conference was all about the Soviets getting what they wanted from a sick and ailing FDR and a marginalised Winston Churchill who could realistically do nothing to thwart Soviet intentions. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet era, much new information has been learned and more importantly disseminated so that nobody can gloss over the unpleasant facts any more. Or rather shouldn't.

Historians agree that it was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 that essentially paved the way for the rise of the Nazis in Germany, but it was also the catalyst for the right wing, ultra-nationalist regimes that spread across the new nations created by the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after WWI.

Hungary lost all the green parts, some 75% of its previous size.

Hungary, for example, lost 75% of its territory including the ultra important province of Transylvania which provides practically all the natural resources of the country. Yes, that one. The same as the one popularised by that guy in a cloak with funny teeth, violent habits and curious taste for blood. Its intra-war government was right wing, just as annoyed with the Treaty of Versailles and favoured the Nazis to the point of formally allying with them and joining their armies with the Wehrmacht in Russia, Yugoslavia and elsewhere.

The very brief rewards of being allies with the Nazis.

The Soviets therefore in their advance during 1944 showed little mercy. Over 900,000 Hungarians died in WWII, two-thirds civilians, and in the immediate aftermath over 100,000 ethnic Germans were deported to Siberian labour camps (few returned) and an additional 600,000 were 'transported' to the Soviet Union for what was termed 'little projects' -- massive rebuilding projects to repair war damage. Only half survived to return to Hungary with the final 'volunteer workers' only returning after Stalin's death in 1953. This is a staggering event in the history of a country of fewer than 10 million inhabitants.

All of this is dealt with by the House of Terror Museum just up the road from our hotel on Andrassy Ut, the main street of Budapest, equivalent to the Champs Elysee, Oxford Street or 5th Avenue. The building is eerie and fobidding as is the subject matter covered by the museum -- far more of the Soviet era than the Nazi era which was comparatively short as the countries were in fact allies for much of the time. I had the same feeling as when Viv and I visited Dachau which is in a lovely, very green suburb of Munich right next to people's back gardens. But for me (and I do reiterate that this blog is my story, not a history book) all that took place in WWII was before I was born and is therefore history to me, albeit very recent history. What transpired behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet era took place when I was growing up listening to the Beatles and the Grateful Dead thinking of nothing more than love, peace and happiness and making the world a better place. For the people there it was all about survival each and every day. They couldn't even begin to hope to plan as I could and as for the occupying forces, well the Soviets had zero need to build up these puppet nations. All they ever were were buffer states between the motherland and the west for the impending WWIII, so therefore completely expendable. This can be seen particularly in Budapest where war damage was never repaired, new building rarely if ever took place and on any street downtown, there could easily be a gap between row homes which had never been rebuilt or which had been turned into the now famous ruin bars.

The really interesting thing about visiting new places if you take a local guide is that they provide you with anecdotal snippets that don't make it to the history books or guide books but are those normal, day to day things that impact people. A particularly good guide can be a revelation. Our guides were terrific. Whether they are historically accurate or not, I don't know but they were certainly entertaining and if you're like me and like trying to piece together the why's and how's of places, even the smallest thing can be eye opening.

In Budapest for example, we talked about what Hungary actually does -- answer it doesn't other than agriculture really. Part of the reason for this is that they no longer control Transylvania, Romania does. And Romania was neutral at the start of the war and allied with the Soviets at the end. So no surprise that in the post WWII division of the world they got what they wanted. What Hungary does is agriculture and my visit to the Terror Museum was largely about the post war persecution of the farmers by the Soviets. Farmers were the closest thing to bourgeoisie in Hungary and the Soviets really focused their nastiest attention on the middle classes everywhere they were. As a result average earnings are around USD 400 per month today. That said, our guide and driver (Attilla, really) were very upbeat and well educated and spoke 4-5 languages.

We loved the place and cannot wait to return.

The difference between Hungary and Austria is enormous. Pre WWI, Austria even though it is the ancestral home of the Hapsburgs did essentially nothing. The economy of the empire was driven by Bohemia (maunfacturing) and Hungary (agriculture and whatever came out of Transylvania). According to our very humourous guide who kept on calling us "my dears" the Austrians were really bad at choosing allies for much of their history and were very much in favour of union with the Nazis despite whatever recidivist post WWII history may say. However they were still 'the West' and so in the post WWII division of Europe were lucky enough to come up on this side of the line... and so they thrived.

We really enjoyed Vienna. The Hofburg is a wondrous place and clearly the entire empire depended on the wise choices of one very strong woman at a very key moment in history -- the Empress Maria Theresa. Her father realising he had no male heir tried to get ahead of things and got all the interested heads of state around Europe to recognise his daughter as empress, something they changed their minds about the minute he died and which came to be known as the War of the Austrian Succession (in my history books anyway).

Pretty much all I remember is that there was something to do with a Captain Jenkins' Ear, the Prussians marched into Silesia (the empire's coal district so really important), King George II actually led British troops into battle at a place called Dettingen (the last time this has ever happened incidentally) and overall the British lost so had to give up a few possessions in the West Indies and India that they recovered only a decade later. Austria also lost a few possessions but importantly the peace treaty did ensure Maria Theresa's succession, particularly so as she got married and fairly promptly had 16 children, 10 of whom survived, 6 males in the total so her succession woes would not be repeated.

There was still time to nearly lose everything when the Turks nearly reached Vienna again but they prevailed with Polish help. Ha! And what did they do to say thank you? They, Prussia and Russia promptly 'partitioned' Poland between them! Ever heard of that phrase put not your trust in princes?

So much for just leaving it at 'Thank You'.

In the mid 19th century as the Ottoman threat had gone away, the then emperor had the city walls demolished and built the inner ring road that we see today. The land left over was sold off (mainly to Jewish merchants) which financed the building of the Hofburg to its current size.

Brilliant city. We want to return and spend more time there.

Salzburg was nice but the final highlight was Prague which is simply a lovely, huge medieval city. For some reason it did not suffer the same fate as Budapest in WWII and survived pretty much unscathed even though the Nazis wrought terrible oppression on the non-German people.  We didn't have the chance to visit many of the contemporary museums as the Castle on top of the hill in the centre of the city was so large and demanded our time.

The lovely Charles Bridge over the Danube

Our guide again was great fun and provided plenty of interesting insights but as with many people there are clearly subjects that you do not talk about. I think I found one and its all about the Sudetenland. I think. Certainly Slovakia.

In the map of the Empire at the start of this blog, if you look at the part that says Bohemia, think Slovakia and the Czech Republic for today. Back then it was all Czechoslovakia. Slovakia is the closest part to Germany and those reddish parts show where the 'German' population lived. The term 'German' is not what it means today as if you remember your history, German unification only happened in the 1850's and 1860's under Bismarck. Before that 'Germany' was dozens, if not hundreds of mini-states which together comprised a decent chunk of the Holy Roman Empire which became defunct in 1809 courtesy of Napoleon Bonaparte. This is why if you travel down the Rhine there are so many castles in the middle of relatively nowhere and comparatively speaking close together. They could be dukedoms, princedoms, archbishoprics or a host of other structures. As I said hundreds of them. Germanic was the loose term that held them all together in the same way as Italian related to the people that live in that republic today, in the past they weren't the same nationality at all. And that was how they wanted it too. In Germany, it was the Prussians who were the driving force and even they couldn't call the now unified 'Empire' Prussia, it would be Germany. So Germanic relates to ethnicity not nationality. (Simon Winder's previous book called Germania focuses on just this).

Austria is the orange part, Prussia the blue part. The smorgasbord of other colours represent the mass of other states and statelets that were subsequently swallowed up by Prussia

Hitler didn't care about the niceties, he just used it as an excuse for expansion and would have continued to do so if not stopped. Why Sudeten? I don't know I'm afraid. Today it is Slovakia and even though there was a bit of opposition to the move, it wasn't that severe. Any opposition that there was came from the Czechs who realised that Hitler wouldn't stop at just the Sudetenland (he didn't).

A couple of days ago I was reading an article on the BBC about the current Ashes Test match and for some reason went off on a tangent to look at something about the Timeless Test of 1939 which only ended because England had to leave to catch their boat home from South Africa (there can't be too many games in history where the team batting last and chasing scored 654-5 and didn't win but if there's a cock up to make, England will).

Wonderful quote from a SA player that he hadn't played in two many games where he'd had to have two haircuts during the course of play.

At the end of the article there were some headlines from major events that were happening at that time elsewhere in the world one of which was about Slovakia's ruling party allying themselves with the Nazi party line and philosophy. I wish I could find it again as I hope I have this right for it may be central to my story in that when I asked our Prague guide why after 500+ years of Slovaks being joined at the hip to the Czechs, mostly under the Austrians, that when the Soviet era ended it took about one minute and a half to decide to go their own way.

Her answer was that the Slovak language is flippant as are they as a people whilst the Czechs are serious as is their language, so why on earth would they want to be joined up to one another?

I think I am missing something here.

Prague today is doing slightly better than Hungary due to its manufacturing prowess but still lags the west and remains outside of the European Monetary System so doesn't have the Euro. It is a great place too and one that we want to return to again at much greater length. So much to explore and find out. So much more to enjoy.

Can't wait!