Last day in Hungary!
Our last excursion in Hungary was a bus trip to a town with medieval origins – Pecs.
Arriving in the port of Mohacs, we were to be transferred by bus to Pecs.
However, due to the low water conditions mentioned previously, our disembarkation process was not as easy as “hey, walk out the door and down the gangplank to shore”.
Instead, it was quite the experience, as we had to dock up against another ship, which had gotten “stuck” in Mohacs (been stuck being docked for 10 days and counting because the hull of that ship was about 2 feet lower than ours, therefore we could go and they couldn’t, thus causing them to cancel their scheduled cruise).
Anyway, back to our experience. In order to disembark we had to go up to the sun deck (top deck), cross from our sun deck to the other boat’s sundeck via temporary gangplank, take the stairs down to the lobby of the other boat, and then exit via their gangplank to the dock. (With the same process in reverse upon our return!)
The bus ride into Pecs took about 45 minutes or so. Pecs is the fifth largest city in Hungary. It is surrounded by a lot of agriculture (wheat, sunflowers, grapes, corn, etc.) so had an appearance similar to home. At one time the town was booming with business due to the coal industry, but they had since stopped mining coal.
We were there mainly to see the Cathedral of Peter and Paul, although there were also some Roman ruins (those damned Romans were everywhere!!!), as well as their lovely old town area.
The cathedral was very impressive, and had and a massive organ in the sanctuary. MASSIVE!
There were a couple of burial tombs in the basement, which was itself quite splendid:
Before leaving the cathedral we were treated to an organ concert, during which we soaked up the beauty and impressiveness of the building. And took more pictures, of course.
Here were the organs back up above:
With some more pictures:
Next we checked out the Roman portions / burial crypts, which were part of an archaeological underground dig. The reason the cathedral was built where it was, is because of an ancient mural in the tombs known as “Peter and Paul’s Burial Tomb”.
The Romans had established the town in the second century and the city converted to Christianity by the 4th century, which is what makes these ruins fairly unique (other were still most often pagen at the time). The mural has suffered plenty of damage but was still intact enough to appreciate the ancient artwork.
After the ruins, we walked to their down-town / pedestrian area where there were many quaint shops, hotels, other churches, etc. to do a little shopping and obtain refreshments.
Here are some pics to give you the flavor of that area:
After Pecs we returned to the boat to await our “face check” with border patrol.
It went something like this – wait around (nap, lounge up top, have a drink, play cards) until we were called to the main room. In the meantime the captain and the front desk manager took a case onshore containing passports for every guest and crewmember aboard.
We were advised the process could take 30 minutes or could take 3 hours, depending on the whim of the Border Authority, which is why everyone took up onboard activities.
Once customs reviewed the passports, two police officers brought the case back on board and set up shop at the boat’s reception. We were then called up to the front desk floor by floor for the face check – similar to going through customs but kinda weird because they first handed you your passport back from the case, you then waited for one of the policemen to beckon you forward, where you handed them back your passport, and then they held the passports up to see if you look like your passport pic, which if they were satisfied they would then stamp your passport (and keep it), releasing you back to the general ship.
It was fine, but the older gentleman in front of us got a good looking over before his passport was stampled!
Once done with that, we set sail for Belgrade, Serbia.
After leaving the Hungarian border we snaked though Serbia and Croatia as the Danube separates the two countries (often in odd places and not necessarily at the middle of the river as would be typical in the states). So we would go through several miles of Croatia before going back into Serbia, then to Croatia for a bit, then Serbia, etc.
That’s about it for Day 4, hope you are enjoying.
Cheers,
Tim & Jay
