Tag Archives: Soviet empire

Dresden: twice risen

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Sad though it may seem, Dresden’s greatest claim to fame these days is probably that it was bombed pretty much out of existence by the RAF on the night of February 13th 1945: There are lots of modern buildings interspersed … Continue reading →

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Leipzig

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Sunday lunchtime, grey sky, almost no-one in the streets. a young nutter sat on the pavement, cheerfully declaiming. An entire Russian brass band busking, and all the other buskers within earshot playing along; later, a six-piece English rock band with … Continue reading →

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terror and comfort

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Mark Rossiter

Today I went to the Terror House in Budapest. This is a museum set up in the house which was the headquarters, first, of Hungary’s Nazis, who ruled brutally for a few months in 1944-45; and then of the Hungarian … Continue reading →

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Budapest

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Mark Rossiter

My arrival in Budapest wasn’t too salubrious: a drunken woman and a man with a weatherbeaten face and a moustache like out of a chronicle of some Balkan war shouting and throwing a table at each other, and an old … Continue reading →

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Győr

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Mark Rossiter

From Bratislava I went on into Hungary down the valley of the Danube, through fields of sunflowers and giant wind turbines (at first I had assumed these were Austrian, but they went right on into Hungary, too). I arrived at … Continue reading →

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through the Iron Curtain

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Mark Rossiter

There is no doubt that Vienna is quite a mind-blowing town when it comes to art, even if (judging from the work in the Secession House) it looks like it might be living off its former glories (but perhaps that’s … Continue reading →

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Mitropa

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Mark Rossiter

is there such a thing as Central Europe? Once you leave France something definitely changes, but is that only because France has a unique sense of its own identity? Or is there a continuity among the lands to the East? … Continue reading →

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