Continuing my spotlight on countries competing in the current big football tournament.
Hungary
I have only ever visited Budapest in Hungary, though I have travelled by train through the country to Prague & Bucharest.
My picture is slightly unusual as it does not show any of the Hungarian capital’s prized sights.
It is a scan of my visa to visit the country in 1987. A visa that I never used! Let me explain.
Hungary was a country shrouded in mystery back then. Firmly behind the Iron Curtain, to visit you had to apply for a visa, explain the reason for your visit in detail, and once there would need to report to a police station within 24-hours of your arrival.
We had planned to arrive by train from Austria and depart to Yugoslavia as another requirement was to leave on a different route to that which you had arrived. As it happened, my travelling companion lost his passport in Munich so our plans were scuppered.
This led to high drama as we were escorted out of the then Yugoslavia by border police from Maribor which is now part of Slovenia.
Switzerland
I often describe the country as God’s train set. Almost impossibly beautiful landscapes criss-crossed by gleaming red trains passing through mountains, over precipitous ravines, past huge alpine forests and deep blue lakes.
I first took a train there on my 1987 inter rail trip, visiting the likes of Montreux, Interlaken & Lausanne. The picture below however I took from the Bernina Express from Tirano on the Italian border to Brug.
Here we passed a crystal clear mountain lake, one of many stupendous views along the way.
