There are regular comfortable EuroCity trains from Prague and Berlin; sleek, fast RailJet services from Munich and Vienna; for those with the stamina for very long journeys by day, it is even possible to travel to Budapest by direct train from as far away as Zürich (11 hrs 15 mins) or Hamburg (14 hrs 20 mins).

South towards Serbia

It is moving south from Budapest that demands a more sustained engagement with the timetables. There are perilously few trains across the border between Hungary and Serbia. Just two direct services run each day between Budapest and Belgrade—one by day and the other by night.

Take the day train if you are minded to come this way, for this is a journey well worth making. Leon Trotsky nicely identified the appeal of the route when—as he traveled south in 1912 preparing to report on the Balkan Wars—he observed in his diary that “although the railway from Budapest to Belgrade proceeds mainly in a southerly direction, from the cultural standpoint one moves east.”

The landscape is nowhere startling, yet it has a quiet beauty. Running south from Budapest to the border there are prairie-like grasslands, productive farmland, forests and occasional saline depressions. These are the landscapes of Sándor Petöfi’s poetry. An hour or two out of Budapest, the train stops at Kiskölrös, the town where Petöfi was born.

Entering Serbia

The first community in Serbia is Subotica, a place that packs a few surprises. It is famously multilingual and multicultural, a hallmark of Serbia’s semi-detached northern province of Vojvodina which has six official languages. Subotica is well worth a stop for its extraordinary feast of art nouveau architecture. Look out for the overly fussy town hall and the more restrained synagogue with its striking triple-tier dome and green glazed tiles. Beyond Subotica, it is a pleasant run south through Novi Sad to Belgrade.

Crossing borders

If you are traveling from Budapest to Belgrade, bear in mind that you’ll need to use one of the twice-daily long-distance trains to cross the border—although there is also a useful thrice-daily branch-line service from the Hungarian town of Szeged to Subotica.

The daytime train on the Budapest to Belgrade route is called the Avala. The journey takes about eight hours in each direction. Belgrade need not be the end of your journey. There are good onward connections to Podgorica in Montenegro and Skopje in Macedonia. This month has also seen the reinstatement of the direct train from Belgrade to Thessaloniki in Greece—only for it to be suspended again almost immediately due to flooding. However, the railway authorities in the region are evidently working day and night to restore damaged sections of track, so the through rail services that run south from Belgrade to Macedonia and Greece should be operating normally again by early next month.

Find out more about train times in the latest issue of the European Rail Timetable.

The post Exploring Serbia: Traveling by train beyond Budapest appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

Tokaj or Tokaji

Say Tokay and most people will immediate think Hungary. But the Tokay region, which produces some of the world’s most celebrated and sought-after dessert wines, transgresses borders, and the northernmost portion of the designated Tokay region is actually in Slovakia.

This is a part of the world where one letter makes a big difference. On maps, the range of wooded hills that dominate the Hungarian part of the Tokay region is known at the Zemplén Mountains. Move north into Slovakia and they become the Zemplín Mountains. In Hungary, the wine is known as Tokaji. But in Slovakia, the name is rendered as Tokaj.

The wines on the Slovakian side of the border are every bit as distinguished in character as those from Hungary. They rely on the same three basic grape varieties and the production and quality control standards of Slovakian Tokaj wines conform to those laid down for Tokaji in Hungary.

The Penzión Tokaj on the Ostrozovic Estate. Photo: © hidden europe

A taste of Slovakian Tokaj

Last week, we took time to explore the Slovak side of the Tokay region. We stopped off here and there in quiet villages like Malá Trna—where Hungarian is evidently still the most commonly spoken language. It’s a nice reminder that modern frontiers in Europe do not divide ethnicities or language groups. Then we moved north to Vel’ká Trna, a predominantly Slovak-speaking community, where we met Jaro Ostrozovic.

Jaro was born just a few miles away to the south in the border town of Slovenské Nové Mesto, but is now based in Vel’ká Trna, where he and his wife Jarka manage one of the premier Tokaj wine businesses in Slovakia. The Ostrozovic Estate produces the full range of Tokaj styles from the tongue-tingling dry samorodné through various grades of sweet aszú-style wines (locally known as Tokajský výber) to the intoxicatingly sugary esencia.

They also produce regular wines from each of the three main grapes that are combined in making the region’s signature Tokaj wines. Those grapes are the furmint, the yellow muscat and the lipovina—the latter will be familiar to lovers of Hungarian Tokaji under the name hárslevelü.

Wine growers Jarka and Jaro Ostrozovic. Photo: © hidden europe

The Ostrozovic Estate

Visitors to the Ostrozovic winery in Vel’ká Trna can tour the cellars, sample the wines and stay overnight. Room rates start at €35 for a single or €25 per person in a shared double. It is a chance, too, to try some of the local Zemplín cuisine.

As to the wines, you’ll be in for a treat. The rich concentration of natural grape sugars and favorable conditions for the development of botrytis give Ostrozovic favored status for making classic Tokaj sweet wines. And they won’t break the bank. Prices start at just over €10 for a Tokajský výber. We happen to be fans of the drier samorodné style, which is often frustratingly hard to find outside the Tokay region and one or two other markets (such as Poland, where it has long found favor as an aperitif). The Ostrozovic version is delicious and just €6.80 a bottle. Just look for the word suché on the bottle to be sure that you really are buying the dry wine. It is something quite special, redolent in many ways of palomino sherry.

The Slovakian Tokaj region deserves to be far better known. It is overshadowed by its very much larger Hungarian counterpart to the south, and it is a small player within the wider Slovak wine industry. If you have a big budget, sixty euros will buy you a very fine bottle of Ostrozovic esencia. Taste it to discover why historically Tokay has been feted as “the wine of kings, and the king of wines.” But even a sample of the lesser wines from the region will be enough to convince you that Tokay is something very special—especially when it is Tokaj from Slovakia.

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