If you have followed our posts here on EuroCheapo over the last three years, then you’ll certainly know that we are not really urban creatures. True, we have spent many happy months exploring European cities, often those that are lesser known, and we have written about many of them—Roskilde, Poznan and Trieste, for example. Europe’s » Read more

For over a thousand years, kings and queens from every part of Europe and Asia have enjoyed—and fought for—Budapest’s natural hot springs. Seemingly every other conqueror of the city made his mark by building a bath (or “fürdo” in Hungarian) to call his own. Each day, more than 350,000 cubic meters of hot water gushes » Read more

It was 25 years ago this spring that Athens assumed the mantle of being Europe’s first ever “Capital of Culture,” and so kick-started a program that has developed into a mainstay of the European culture and travel calendar. Since then, cities from Bruges to Bologna, Stockholm to Sibiu, have basked in the limelight for a » Read more

What train routes might make it into a list of Europe’s greatest train journeys? The book that inspires us to ask this question is published next month by Time Out Guides Ltd. Great Train Journeys of the World is edited by Andrew Eames who pulled together a team of leading luminaries on rail travel to » Read more

  I awoke this morning to hear a story on National Public Radio about the financial crisis affecting certain Eastern European countries, especially Latvia, Hungary, and the Ukraine. Edward Lucas, of The Economist magazine, pointed out that Latvia’s situation is pretty dire: a bank recently collapsed, the nation’s debt is swelling, and the country’s economy shrank » Read more

A royal turkey spread, photo courtesy of RoadsidePictures Sometimes you just can’t make it back to grandma’s house for Thanksgiving because you live (or are traveling) far, far away. While a few Cheapos in our office were living in London the year before last, they had an admittedly hard time thinking about family back home, » Read more

The 2007 Rubik’s Cube World Championship winner solved the puzzle in 12 seconds. Not only is the “Rubik’s Cube,” invented by Hungarian Ern? Rubik, a global sensation, but it’s also a colorful and cheap souvenir. When in Budapest, we recommend picking up a couple cubes for the folks back home. Solving the low-cost souvenir puzzle Patented in » Read more

Editor’s Note: In our “Checking In” series, we interview hotel and B&B proprietors about tips for visiting their city. Today we “check in” with Dr. Ryan James, who runs the BudaBaB, a bed and breakfast in Budapest, Hungary, with his partner Ron Schmitz. Dr. James is also the author of Frommer’s Budapest and the Best » Read more

Built in 1905, the Fisherman’s Bastion is a wide, turreted monument in the neo-Romanesque style of architecture. You can reach it and the views are pretty much the same. The whole thing looks like a medieval wonderland. Hungarians refer to the Bastion in their native tongue as, “Halaszbastya”. It was originally intended for basic decorative purposes, » Read more