Day 12: Bratislava to Komarno…no wait, Esztergom

Today was an odd day involving a bike shop trip, some frenzied bike repairing, a tram trip, a long walk to the train station, lengthy delays and some on-the-fly rerouting of this out penultimate day. However, we saw one of the most impressive cathedrals in Europe as a bonus.

I had been fretting about the bike most of the night and so got up early and headed to the “local” bike shop which was very firmly in the doughnut-of-shit which surrounds the historic centre of Bratislava. When I asked for brake pads, the hipster dude manning the shop supplied me with a box of random brake pads and suggested I searched through it. And, at the bottom of the box were these beauties.

Eight euros and we were back in the game.

I high tailed it back to the hotel and spent a miserable and dirty hour fitting the brake pads and realising that they didn’t fix the problem. Trying to do proper bike repairs using a crappy multitool that I bought 15 years ago was not an enjoyable experience.

How I wished to be home and have my bike stand and proper tools.

Of course everything got filthy because we’ve been riding our bikes for 11 days and oiling the chain every day but, crucially, not cleaning the chain every day. Eventually after much oily swearing I managed to work out that the brake calliper had somehow misaligned itself. Realigning brake callipers is a fiddly job at the best of times but using a crap tool on an upside down bike in a dank and dark underground garage tested both my skills and my blood pressure levels.

By the time this was all done, I was hot, sweaty and there was no way we were going to be able to cycle a hard 110km to Komarno. We did some googling and discovered that there was a train to Nové Zámky where we could change to a train (that maybe took bikes…) to get to Komarno. The internet was confusing and we certainly didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of Slovakia in 40C temperatures.

More googling, more route planning and we decided to go to Štúrovo. There was a direct train and it’s just across the river from Esztergom which was on our day 13 route. In one fell swoop, we had solved the Day 12 problem and considerably reduced the punishing 120km last day to Budapest.

All this cleverness did involve having to go to the railway station to get tickets. We took a tram.

The tram stop.

After winding up through the streets of Bratislava, we were dumped into the main railway station which is, I have to say, not the most wonderful of places. After the tidy streets of the old city, this made Euston station look like St Pancras.

Brutalist and bad.

After some confusion, we bought two one-way tickets to Štúrovo on the 12:05 with our bikes for a grand total of 22 euros.

We took the tram back to our lovely hotel, and on the way saw the iconic upside down Bratislava building.

I think this houses Slovakian TV or something.

We packed up and checked out in order to push the bikes back to the station. The heat was building and it took a good 30 minutes to get to the train station. We were comfortably early but the train was comfortably 50 minutes late. We had nearly 2 hours of hanging out in the station. We saw a tiny spherical family eating madly to maintain their sphericity. There were goths, old people, pickpockets and the worst PA system announcing departures.

Our bikes amid the communist era marble and cheese-like concrete.

When the train finally arrived it was…brilliant. Comfy seats and air conditioning. It even had a buffet trolley. I had had visions of the train I’d got in Romania but this one was a very good experience.

We arrived in Štúrovo around 14:30 and then had to make it across to Esztergom without any bile routing. The train station was a miserable concrete hutch with the world’s — in a very strong field — smelliest toilet.

Glad I wasn’t buying a ticket here.

The station was around 7km from the centre of town and immediately we were faced with the sorts of roads with which I was so familiar two years ago. Decaying tarmac, huge bumps and evil potholes. And, of course, lorry and car drivers who aren’t in the mood to slow down even fractionally for a cyclist. We’re not on the German Donauradweg now Toto!

There was only one near-death incident before we reached the María Valéria Bridge which crosses the Danube between Slovakia and Hungary. Since its opening in 1895, it’s been destroyed twice. First in 1919 for reasons which are bound up in the complex and impenetrable history of this region and once again in 1945 as the Germany troops retreated. Because the communist governments of Hungary and Czechoslovakia hated each other — for more complex historical reasons — the bridge wasn’t rebuilt until 2001 thanks to the EU — I love the EU for stuff like this.

Thanks to the EU and their wonderful Schengen Agreement, we rolled across the bridge and into country number five.

Our final country on this trip.

The bridge also has fantastic views of the Esztergom Basilica and castle although that’s probably more to do with the Catholic Church than the EU.

We will be seeing more of this later.

As we were dynamically re-planning the last couple of days of the trip, I had booked a place in Esztergom which sort of looked ok on booking.com. By the time we had negotiated the complex one way system and maniacal Hungarian drivers, we turned up at a small run down cottage with four hopeful and untrue stars plastered on the outside. This definitely wasn’t going to work. We had passed a couple of modern looking hotels on the way in and finally found the Portabello Wellness Hotel. It’s comfortably four star and curiously cheaper than the hovel-like cottage place that I had booked.

We headed out almost immediately to go and see the Esztergom Basilica.

Esztergom is one of Hungary’s oldest cities. Paleolithic remains have been found on Castle Hill. The Romans had a fort here — they had forts everywhere— and when the Magyars arrived, Esztergom became the capital of Hungary. Despite its strategic strength, a Mongol invasion in 1249 moved the royal capital to Buda and the Catholic Church took over the old royal palace. The Turkish occupation during the 15th and 16th centuries left the town in ruins but from 1822 to 1869 the basilica was built at the top of the hill. This is the biggest church in the country and the alterpiece in the choir is claimed to be the largest in the world.

It certainly looked big to us. We paid an extremely large amount of Hungarian Forint — the equivalent of about 5 euros — for the full experience.

The crypt was…creepy.

We wound our way up endless stairs and tiny towers with spiral staircases to reach to top of the dome which afforded outstanding views of the town and the surrounding countryside.

The bridge down below.

On the way down, there’s a gallery with the world’s best located Costa coffee joint.

This is not Knutsford Services Costa…

On the way down we were allowed into the Treasury where all the gold chancel cups and crosses are kept along with the vestments worn by the archbishops through the ages. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photographs but seeing all that gold and jewels on display suddenly made it very obvious why the Vikings pillaged monasteries and churches. They had a lotof gold.

The best was left to the end. With very little fanfare we were in the main church.

Huge and overwhelming

The Basilica benefits from being built relatively recently compared to the large cathedrals of Europe. It’s not as ornate but as a building it just works better. According to the extensive signage around the place, the architect based his design of the dome on St Paul’s Cathedral since, as he put it, “if they already solved the problem, I should do the same thing”.

It was really pleasing to have ended up in Esztergom as a result of random equipment failures and rail delays. Had we been doing the 120km ride from Komarno to Budapest, we would have zoomed straight past taking one picture of the Basilica on the hill and just moved on. The town is a little gem and well worth visiting.

Tomorrow is the final day. The upside of the bike repair problem is that we’ve cut the last day from 120km to around 75km. Easily doable even in the forecast heat. And then we’ll be done…

The Stats:

• Two tram rides, a 30 minute walk, 125km on an train and a 7km cycle. Lots of walking up stairs in the Basilica though.

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