(Instead of me duplicating content, please see my first post about Austria, which I wrote more for my own benefit as an introduction) This is my favourite chapter!  Because I love the book,  I often listen before sleep, but because the reader’s voice is so modulated and lilting, I often unintentionally fall asleep, but this…

(Again I have used a YouTube video to provide some background, since I am ignorant of the history – perhaps this is one of the major reasons I am on this interrail trip!) Petronell-Carnuntum (Bad Deutsch Altenburg) “The magpies that flew to and fro in the thin yellow sunshine were beyond all joy-and-sorrow computation and…

(Paddy was walking across European countries which were already unravelling and we know that they were going to unravel even further in the 20th century.  I have found the relationships between all the countries puzzling so have included this video for my own benefit in the hope of clarification,) “I was wandering across a field…

“King (of the Magyars) Béla IV, brother of St Elizabeth, was the ablest of them. He lived in turbulent times. In recent decades, Jenghiz Khan and his descendants had laid Asia waste from the China Sea to the Ukraine and in the spring of 1241 news of great danger reached Hungary: after burning Kiev, Jenghiz…

“Far away on the other bank I could see my destination; it had been growing steadily in size since my first glimpse that morning. A cliff loomed over a long sweep of the river and on this ledge was perched a white fane that resembled St Peter’s in Rome. A light circle of pillars lifted…

What a fascinating day 4 was.  Serendipity strikes! Yesterday I eventually found a nearby laundrette – looked very dubious doorway, but opened into a fully automated operation.  Only I couldn’t see how it all worked.  No-one to ask until this man comes in with huge bags of washing .  Right:  I had the question already…

I wish I had been able to truly follow in Paddy’s footsteps, of starting gently from the Hook of Holland and meandering through the Netherlands before he arrived in Germany to be shocked by the reality of Nazism.  But economic reality – and the age factor – meant that it was wiser to fly to…

nd return later.  Fearing those long staircases, I asked an attendant for directions to a lift.  He said that there was indeed a lift, but that he would need to call for an escort.  Why I asked?  He told me, in English, that sometime in the past, the staff had hidden the lifts behind walls!  I…

Paddy’s chapters ‘The Edge of the Slav World’, ‘Prague under Snow’ and ‘Slovakia: A Step Forward at Last’ are full of examples of the confused emotions that the inhabitants of the Czechoslovakian Republic created after the breakup of the Austrian Hungarian Empire. I found Wikipedia’s pages very useful in untangling the history, at least to…

Paddy’s first memorable stop-off point in Austria Paddy ‘s visit would have taken place in early 1934. His description of the conversation at dinner with the old Count brings the ending of the Austrian Hungarian Empire into focus, a reminder of how the political, social and cultural world was undergoing truly undermining shifts, not unlike…