The road home

Adam drove me to the station after breakfast: it was pouring with rain, otherwise we would have gone by the  very efficient tube - easy to access from where he lives, and the whole public transport system is free for us elderlies: no tickets or passes seem to be needed.

From Budapest, there are trains to Munich every two hours: arriving at Keleti, I find that my reservation is in fact for the train two hours later. Problem: but overcome by Adam's tact and the inspector bending the rules. I wouldn't want to have been in Hungary without an interpreter at my side.

Last time I was there, I remember Adam walking me to Margaret Island in order for us to be able to converse without fear of eavesdropping devices: this time, his concern was about gypsies... and more particularly socialists: there is a much misguided European conspiracy against Fidesz, the conservative party currently ruling Hungary, he thinks.

However much standards of living have risen over four decades, I still find Budapest an uncomfortable place to visit, the beauty of the place and the kindness of its people notwithstanding.

After a crowded journey most of the way to Munich, I have four hours to kill here (more rain, an inhibition to sightseeing this time round), mainly in the station restaurant: it's called a tapas bar, which gives you an idea of how it feels. Nobody would of course know that I'm today celebrating (?) my 70th birthday.

Simon Boccenegra

Adam and I share a love of opera: together we saw Tales of Hoffmann one very hot night in London, and then Faust in Budapest on my first visit. On that occasion, the opera house was closed, so this evening, when he took me to see Simon Boccenegra, I was there for the first time. Most magnificent the Hungarian State Opera is too, more on the scale of the Staatsoper in Vienna than Covent Garden. In the stalls, the seats are wooden, so rather bum-numbing, but the legroom is fine. Once again, the night was warm.

S.B. is not my favourite opera, but it has its rousing moments. The production didn't excite me, and indeed had puzzling aspects, but the Fiesco (Giacomo Prestia) sang well. Judit's cousin leads the orchestra, and got us our tickets, along with a free programme and drinks in the plush Green Room. (No alcohol on sale there.)

Earlier, Adam had taken me on a grand tour of Buda (the National Gallery), and across the Chain Bridge to Pest - the Greham Hotel (with its Dale Chihuly chandelier) and St Stephen's Basilica. Returning by tram, we walked quickly past the street sellers - mostly more pressing than these I photographed.

Szechenyi Baths

My friend Roland had told me about Budapest's bath culture, and I was amazed Adam hadn't ever been to what seems to be its Big Daddy here, the Szechenyi Bath and Spa. A truly magnificent complex, it has 11 medicinal pools with water temperature of 28 C or above. That's indoors, and excludes several saunas. Outside, there are three large pools, one having an inner channel with water swishing you through it - rather alarming. Some bathers were sitting in the warm water playing chess. Others did water aerobics under instruction. We could have spent longer than our two hours there.

In the evening, we drove out of the central area of Buda to visit Adam and Judit's daughter, son-in-law and family (three daughters), and then further to see their younger son again in his newly-acquired bungalow, set in a large, leafy garden. There we met his wife (a judge) and their two characterful sons.

Budapest (or rather Buda)

More than forty years ago. I was invited to spend a couple of days in Budapest by an Hungarian doctor: I had met Adam in London where I was then living and let him sleep on the floor of my flat. My hospitality to him was amply repaid. We have kept in touch.

Now I am staying with him again for three nights. This evening I met his younger son Abel - the same age as Agnes and father of two sons of his own: Abel (in his spare time) plays in a band, Crescendo. Like his father he speaks excellent English which is just as well. He asks searching questions, which are hard enough to answer even in my own language.

Walking in old Buda this afternoon, I realised that I had forgotten how beautiful it was. "You have Edinburgh," my friend says, "but instead of the railway line between the Old and the New Town, we have the Danube."

Last night, Nicholas and I were due to share a sleeper on our train from Sighisoara. On being shown in, we discovered the window blind wasn't working. Big fuss! So the nice attendant ("I would like to go to live in England...") eventually showed Nicholas into a first class compartment in the next carriage, and thus we each ended up on our own. I soon fixed the blind, turned my watch back an hour and went to sleep: two customs interruptions, but not too bad a night.

Adam met us at Keleti Station, we dropped Nicholas off at his hotel and then crossed the Danube by the Chain Bridge to Buda. I barely remembered the flat where I'd stayed all those years before, though the address had stuck in my mind. It was good to meet Judit at last, though I had already encountered her rosary hanging from the car's rear view mirror. She greeted me with an elaborate breakfast, including cherries from by Lake Balaton. This evening, I ate a large plate of fresh peas from the same source.

Brasov

The sun is shining here, and indeed it's rather too hot for sight-seeing; so after a mini-wander around (an an excellent lunch), I'm sitting in the cool lobby of Hotel Casa Wagner, in Brasov's main square, away from the Whitsunday crowds, with an equally cool beer to hand. In other words, it's a good life!

My train journey came to an end this morning at 10ish, just under 48 hours after leaving Cheltenham. The best part was the last: I had my 3-person sleeper from Budapest on the Ister Express all to myself, and awoke to see hills peeping out of the mist and the sun slanting across the landscape from left to right, rather than from right to left as last evening.

The train was not, thankfully, in a hurry, so I was able to enjoy the very attractive and varied landscape - fields much divided up, sheep (with shepherds), hay stooks, woodlands with banks of false acacia trees in bloom, lakes and rivers, birdlife (plentiful), and even a couple of horse-drawn carts. They obviously haven't all gone for lasagna.

In the villages, each house with its steeply-raked roof, there was not a lawn to be seen: gardens are intensively cultivated with vegetables - all of course far ahead of ours at home.

The final run into Brasov was across flatter territory, snowy mountains being now the backdrop, a reminder of Brasov's strategic importance in old times. I received an uninvited (but rather welcome) history lesson from a certain Peter, who was unashamedly out to earn a little money: he approached me with a distinctive brand of English (Orwell is his favourite writer) as I stood taking a photograph of three trumpeters in costume high up on the platform of the city centre tower (they perform at 12 each day as a reminder of the role of the human fire alarms of former days, Peter told me). Vlad the Impaler was, he assured me, a goody: having read a full and very gory description of his methods in my Rough Guide, I remain unconvinced.

I really do recommend coming by train if you are thinking of Romania for a holiday. I had a delicious dinner in Paris - at Brasserie Flo, the station restaurant: in Munich, I arrived off the Cassiopeia in time for breakfast near the Marienplatz; and in Budapest I ate well at the recommended Rosenstein. Both German and Hungarian sleeping cars were more than adequate, though, going for a shower this morning, I found it in full use as a broom cupboard. And loo paper is BYO.

Switching between French, German, Hungarian and Romanian may sound interesting, but - though this feels like a contradiction in terms - English is the lingua franca.

Budapest (or rather Pest)

Sharing my sleeper from Paris to Munich, I found lovely Elena. Formerly from the Urals, she lives with a husband, who drives South to go fishing twice a year in Croatia. He had dropped her in Strasbourg, from where she'd caught the train to Paris for a week's sightseeing and shopping - less of the latter because of "too much choice". Now, she was en route to Vienna, where the fisherman would be put her into his net and drive back home to Moscow. He works in logistics, but his passion is competing to catch carp.

Elena, born in the USSR, says that, while not much interested in politics, she feels she is part of a lost generation. Her reading for idle moments is H.V. Morton's "In search of England" - in Russian. She has never been there, but taught English at secondary level before marrying.

It felt warm already on our early morning arrival in Munich. I had never spent any time in that city before, so walked rather eagerly towards the centre, some of the architecture of which was older (and finer) than I had anticipated. I discovered the baroque vastness of St Peter's Church, where again I found myself at Mass - in German, but ad orientem. The priest dispensed at the altar rails, mainly to kneeling communicants who received on the tongue. Moving afterwards to the Cathedral, I found another Mass about to begin, this time with choir and a very full congregation, many in traditional dress. Some celebration upon the eve of Pentecost evidently: I didn't stay long enough to discover what.

It was time to catch my next train, to Budapest. This was extremely full. The fine weather didn't last: cloudy in Salzburg, by Vienna it was pouring with rain. However, as we were leaving Austria behind, the sun came out again, glinting on the largest array of wind turbines I've ever seen.

Having crossed the Danube, the train arrived here just before five, at a very different sort of station from Munich's Hauptbahnhof. "Scruffy" sums it up, but I felt better about things after a lemon sorbet from the ice cream lady, and learning that the main façade is adorned with statues of James Watt and George Stephenson. Having worked out how to collect my onward ticket from the machine, I walked off to explore, and soon found myself in Kerepesi Cemetery, the Père Lachaise of Budapest. Idling round an eclectic collection of impressive tombs and memorials on a fine evening was just the perfect antidote to a day spent in a train crowded with lively children. A helpful man appeared at one point and handed me a plan of who was buried where, but I fear the names meant little to me. More usefully, he pointed me in the right direction for something nice to eat.

Hungarian

In September 1970, I spent a couple of days in Budapest, staying with a doctor friend, whom I'd met (and had to stay) when he had visited London earlier that Summer. It was one of those episodes, the importance of which bears no relation to its duration. The reason? The intensity of the hospitality I received from Ádám and his mother, living in circumstances far reduced from those they had earlier been used to, but unceasingly generous to this traveller passing through - certainly compared to the standard I'd set in London.

Since then, we have corresponded regularly - if only at Christmas - though I have never been back to Hungary. Knowing Ádám (and - over time - his family) even in this tangential way has stimulated an interest in all things Hungarian, particularly the music of Bartók and Kodály. Politically and economically, the country appears from here currently to be in a mess, alas - but this seems happily unreflected in the family photograph I've just received, taken near Lake Balaton last Summer.