Budapest is a very beautiful, vibrant city, and we're having a fantastic time getting to know it. So far we've travelled on several lines of the Metro (underground), and several different tram lines. Everywhere you look there's something new and interesting! As well as riding on the Metro, there is a small but really interesting Museum of the Underground located near us at Deák tér station.
Budapest was the first city on the European Continent to complete an Underground line, in 1896, although there had been an Underground in London slightly earlier. It is totally straight and built using the cut and cover method, under Andrássy Avenue. Today it is called Line 1 and is declared a World Heritage site.
Like most older underground systems it still retains many characteristic features. Here is one of the station name signs.
The 'Blue' line 3 is completely different, having been built with Soviet assistance, but is also very 'characteristic'! The original rolling stock is very much Soviet-style, and really interesting. They have amazing acceleration!!
The small Museum is very well done indeed and contains three original 'cars', which are of a style that I have never seen before, using German chassis. Innocently I took a photo, but found out very quickly that photos are not allowed! In fairness, you can apparently buy a special 'photo' pass.
Here is an old photo of one of these 'cars'. I was particularly intrigued by the shape and massiveness of the chassis!
All in all an excellent day and everything is very good value, given the Forint exchange rate. My daughter and son-in-law live above a very dynamic 'food' street with many sidewalk cafés and I can testify that the food is excellent!!
We're currently travelling in Europe, specifically, visiting our daughter and son-in-law who live in Budapest, Hungary. I really enjoy visiting Europe of course, and fascinated by the history in general, and railway history in particular. After two nights in Paris, staying at a hotel which is actually part of the impressive Gare de Lyon (station), we caught a TGV Lyria train to Zurich for an overnight stop. Although this was good, my comment would be that the seats are not well placed relative to the windows and we had a bit of trouble seeing outside. Incidentally, we passed through Mulhouse, France, which is home to the incredible Cité du Train- the French Railway Museum. Next time!!
The following day a longer journey with Austrian Railways (ÖBB) which was very impressive indeed!! Absolutely incredible scenery, as you can well imagine, travelling between Zurich and Innsbruck via the Arlberg Pass, and everything about the train was absolutely first class!! Could not recommend ÖBB more highly!! The train is branded as Rail Jet but is fundamentally a 'normal' loco hauled train running on the normal track network. This varied from barrelling along at really high speed, sometimes through long tunnels, to crawling along single track sections. I was very impressed that we were often doing 160km/h (100mph) as seen on the TV monitors, however later on we got up to 220 km/h for some quite long sections!
My only slightly negative comment about this train was that the Rail Jet branding extended to some writing on the windows which made photographing the magnificent scenery a little difficult, although there were some windows without any writing on them.
The section of the trip from Vienna to Budapest at the end of the day is best left unmentioned due to extensive disruptions as a result of the current Migrant Crisis here in Hungary, but again ÖBB certainly did their best. Anyway we arrived without too much delay, and great to be met by our daughter and son-in-law, who we haven't seen for a year.
Exploring fascinating Budapest tomorrow!!
