We’re probably heading there in November (yikes!) and are just now thinking about how we want to spend our time and what we can see. My fiance really wants to see some Dracula stuff in Romania, and I’d love to spend some more time in Budapest and maybe see some more of Hungary. Other than my brief trip to Budapest we’ve never been to any of those countries. We will probably be flying into Budapest.
We haven’t decided if we want to do the “if it’s Tuesday it must be Moldova” thing, or whether we can take more time and see some villages and such. We’re also considering whether it would make sense to do a tour.
Krakow is great and we wished we’d had more time to explore the countryside/mountains nearby.
Gdansk and Warsaw were really interesting for both WWII and Cold War stuff, though be warned that both were pretty much destroyed so what’s there, while nice, is largely replica.
Torun (also Poland, home of Copernicus) was fun, as was Czestohowa.
We did not love Budapest but I can’t quite say why and it’s a minority view.
November sort of discqualifies Croatia. You might get to some skiing near lake Bled and I would think it’s extra pretty with a coat of snow. Same goes for Prague and Budapest; if you’re lucky and it snows, you’ll be in a fairy tale. If you like cities: Budapest, Vienna (and Bratislava), Prague and Berlin are all a few hours ride from each other and if you have a car it makes a great two week trip. If you want to do the Dracula stuff, you’ll probably need to be in the Sibiu area (north of Bucarest) which is only a couple hundred miles from Budapest. This really is a driveable journey if you want to.
OK, then get a really good map of the railway system, and start at point A and go to point Z and stop along the way.
Most railway tickets allow you to stop along the way - so for instance, if your train stops in a cool village, you can get off and stay a day or two and then get back on the train.
Nice warm train, see the sights as you travel and usually some decent coffee or alcoholic drinks along the way.
Unlike the US, most European train stations are located in a good part of town, in the center of town, and there are usually some decent small hotels within walking distance. Also many train stations have tourist offices that can help you book a room (or side trips) on the fly.
You can take a commuter train north of Budapest to a town called Szentendre. In Szentendre there is a place called the Museum of Marzipan. Inside the Museum of Marzipan there is a life sized statue of Michael Jackson. Made of marzipan. It is super amazeballs wierd. There are many other things made of marzipan but MJ is by far the strangest.
You can look it up on tripadvisor but don’t look too much at the photos, because it will sort of spoil the experience. Szentendre is a little artists colony which is quite festive in the summer but I am guessing it is mainly shut down in the winter.
I prefer to just see a lot of a few places, rather than a little of a lot of places. Budapest is a glorious city, so is Prague (but in a very different way). I’ve always wanted to go to Slovenia which is one of Europe’s greatest secrets.
