The Central Station in Vienna is new and fancy and glossy, as are the Austrian and Czech trains that pass through. I don’t think there’s hardly any shit trains left in Austria these days.
Plenty of Hungarian ones though! This was my decrepit old train- the intercity express from Vienna to Budapest (stopping at Győr). It had compartments with sliding doors still.
Győr station is really quite stylish in a 1950s way. I took most of these photos while I was waiting around bored for my delayed train back to Austria. It was also a great place to do field recording.
Győr Station I
All the bases covered here. Hungarian landscapes, dinner, and tractors.
Memorial to the people who were deported from this station to concentration camps. Hungary had their own home-grown Franco style dictator, Admiral Horthy. Hungary being situated between Germany and the USSR, he had to pick an alliance, and chose Hitler. Despite being extremely anti-Semitic, Horthy drew the line at sending people to the camps and was stalling for time. When Hitler got word in the summer of 1944 that Horthy was trying to arrange a peace deal with Stalin and de-escalate the war, he invaded and installed the local ultra-fascist nuts, the Arrow Cross party in power, and within a month a huge amount of people were shipped to Auschwitz. More info here.
Disco payphone.
“Let’s travel with Hungarian Rail!”
About 50 years of solidified poster glue glop.
I bought this slice of cheesecake from the fancy bakery to take on the train. Hungary is very big on cheesecake. This was the weekly special flavour, chestnut. I regretted getting it. I like chestnut things, and I like cheesecake, but they were not a good combo.
Here’s Fertőszentmiklós where I had to wait 2 hours due to missing my connection. Thrilling huh?
It’s all go in Fertőszentmiklós.
I think this flowerbed was meant to be a map of Hungary…
Where am I going again?
This is the border between Hungary and Austria. Until 1989 it was heavily militarised, and still required you to go through a checkpoint until 2005. I saw an abandoned Checkpoint Charlie type place from the train window.
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