I left Barcelona on the 14th of March and started my Interrail trip with destination Istanbul.
Bern was my first stop. I was hosted by Beat, who kindly downloaded Organic Maps on my mobile phone, so I wouldn’t need internet to find my way around in Istanbul.
Bern was beautiful and lively, celebrating the night of museums and I attended the 30 th anniversary festival of Ghiribizzo choir with Caterina, my day host.
Rosalind and Nigel hosted me in Vienna, showed me around the monumental city and explained me their itinerant life, especially the period they stayed in Bucharest, one of my stops in the way to Istanbul.
Oliver and Katalina, with their sons Abel and Aaron, were the following hosts in Budapest. They managed to make me feel at home in spite of their busy family daily life and we enjoyed mixed Hungarian and Spanish cooking.
Next morning, I joined Erzsebet, my day host, who showed me the Hungarian historical spots, took me to a typical food restaurant and we said goodbye before I started my exciting tour in the house of music.
I travelled east to Nyiregyhaza, since I wanted to visit the city of Kodaly school singers whom I hosted some years ago. Servas hosts living nearby, Peter and Iona, invited me to a delicious recently picked mushroom dinner in their home in Sóstó after a pleasant walk around the lake.
After crossing the Rumanian border and changing trains, I arrived in Cluj Napoca, Transilvania (Koloszbar in Hungarian).
Laszlo, Recha’s husband, hosted me and showed me their home private museum. He walked me into a historical tour of the town and helped me realize that “the Orient Express train was not there anymore”, so travelling by bus from Bucharest to Istanbul was much faster and convenient. Lazlo’s mother prepared a tasty dinner for us and Zoard, his son, also shared the meal, only Recha was missing who unfortunately was on a business trip.
My day host Simona was waiting for me at the Bucharest train station and we shared time and interesting visits and conversations about our life experiences with young spirit mature women’s complicity. I also spent a day in the medieval city of Brasov, visiting the historical center and monumental churches.
My arrival in Istanbul was kind of complex, such a huge city with different atmosphere, language, currency…
Omar, Evren and their daughters Ilke and Idit were there to host me and show me their environment, culture, and we talked about their city with cultural diversity.
Hearing Ramadan drums at night was something unexpected and felt like a welcome to my first time in Asian land.
On my way back, I travelled by train through Romania, with scenery plenty of blooming white flower trees, stopping in Craiova and Timisoara, stared at the beautiful mountains, prairies, rivers sightseeing in Hungary and Austria to reach Graz. I entered the Alt Tyrol in Italy with the impressive Dolomites mountains profile in Bolzano, magnificent snowed Alps’ sightseeing all the way to Asti, area close to Torino, finding my beloved Mediterranean sea in Nice, already in France. I finally reached Barcelona 22 days after my departure.
This article is a homage to my Servas hosts who made my trip interesting, warm and easy. I feel like the luckiest person for having met them and shared time and conversations with them. Even if the pictures are mostly bad quality, they capture special moments of my trip.
By: Paloma Begué, Servas Spain