Day 4: Prague to Budapest

I walked the kilometre to Prague station rather than brave the Metro again. It was a good move to give Lottie and me a bit of exercise before another 7-hour train trip. Highlight of the walk was seeing and enthusiastically greeting another Lagotto.

Trolley cases make a huge noise on the cobbles: the soundtrack to modern pilgrimages. I was walking down the middle of a traffic-free alley with narrow pavements on either side to get a better GPS signal, when a police car drew up behind me and I got a proper dressing-down for jay-walking. I felt a more measured response would have been “Madam, are you lost?” but I suppose it’s been a long time since even a British bobby said that.

The luggage

A few days ago in Hope Square outside Liverpool Street Station I was very moved by the statue to the children of the Kindertransport, clutching their small suitcases, teddy bears and violin cases. After refusing visas to Jewish migrants throughout most of the 1930s, the British government finally agreed to an emergency rescue operation in 1938. Around 10,000 mainly Jewish children were transported to Britain on trains and ferries from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. All the children were without their parents and babies were carried by older children.

With a horrible circularity, Prague Station has a Farewell Memorial recognising the sacrifice of parents who sent their children to safety knowing they would probably never see them again after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. Eight trains carrying children bound for the UK left Prague in the spring and summer of 1939 in evacuations organised by Sir Nicholas Winton, a former British aid worker who died in 2015 aged 106.

Farewell memorial commemorating the sacrifice made by the parents of the Winton children.

Not a lot more to report today. I had an uneventful trip and mostly had an old-fashioned style train compartment to myself for the whole time. Walked to the apartment, which is really comfortable and well-located for a walk near the river .

At the moment I’m having goulash soup with local cherry lager and have booked a ticket to Széchenyi Spa baths tomorrow.