The distinctive, colourful roof of St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna
had enjoyed its opulent surroundings, including, in addition to the usual crop of Habsburg family members, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Kennedy and Khrushchev. Back in the city, we found ourselves descending into the gloom of the morbid but fascinating Habsburg family crypt and then marvelling in the Imperial Treasury at an astonishing collection of court paraphernalia, including the octagonal crown of the Holy Roman Emperor. That evening we toured the Ringstrasse, location of some superb public works of the mid-19th century including the Opera House and Parliament building. After a tour of Vienna’s Military Museum, including the bullet-scarred car in which Franz Ferdinand and his wife lost their lives in the fateful summer of 1914, we boarded our train for what was, after 1867, the second city of the Habsburg Empire: Budapest. As we left our hostel that evening, we encountered a huge mural that reminded us of the relationship between the two countries. It depicted the tragic figure of Sisi, who had championed the cause of the Hungarians in the Habsburg Empire in opposition to her husband, Franz-Joseph, and is therefore still much loved in Hungary. Turning the next corner, we were brought face to face with the more recent past as we wove our way through the Jewish ghetto of 1944, an area that also bears the scars of 1956 in its bullet-riddled buildings. The most poignant of the communist-related sights was the Memento Park on the outskirts of the city, which houses many statues from the era, preserved after the fall of the regime in 1989. Memorials remain controversial in the city: the Russian war memorial has been defaced often and a
A cannonball embedded in the exterior of St Stephen’s Cathedral was a reminder of Vienna’s often turbulent past
memorial put up earlier this year commemorating Hungary’s role in World War II had to be erected under cover of night by the government in an attempt to evade protesters. Our final evening saw battle joined in the traditional end-of-trip bowling competition and, after some highly competitive matches, Mr Smith was presented with a brand new pair of shoes to replace the previous pair which had been virtually worn through by pounding the streets of various European cities over the years. Having spent the final morning cramming in some last-minute sights and buying souvenirs, we flew back from hot and sunny Budapest to cold and rainy London, all thoroughly tired but having learnt a huge amount about these two intriguing and interconnected cities.
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