Journeys, Dreams, Reality, Experiment

There are many descriptions in our Travel section of places I have never experienced, or places I last saw many decades ago. So I am about to take a different approach to travel.

There are journeys we dream about that have not yet happened, and perhaps never will. And there are journeys that do happen, only to disappoint us because reality does not always resemble the picture our imagination has created.

I have reached an age when I can organise my time according to my own interests. So I am starting an interesting experiment: I will travel around Hungary by train and by car, taking with me travel guides published in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Until now, these books have simply been sitting, largely unread, on my bookshelves.

It will be fascinating to see how the past and the present intersect.

The idea is not entirely mine. It was inspired by a much larger-scale television project: Michael Portillo’s Great Continental Railway Journeys. The series, first broadcast in 2012, followed journeys described in George Bradshaw’s 1913 Continental Railway Guide. Portillo used the century-old guide to explore places across Europe and to compare the world described in the book with the reality he encountered.

I intend to try something similar on a much smaller scale.

I will also write about journeys that currently exist only in my imagination. If I eventually reach those destinations, I can return to the story and write about what I actually found there.

What do I expect from this experiment? Much like in our Culture section, I want to share personal experiences, while also holding up a slightly crooked mirror to the descriptions and expectations found in older travel guides.

And perhaps there is another reason for doing it. I see these journeys as a small tribute to Michael Portillo, to George Bradshaw and to the idea behind Great Continental Railway Journeys.

After all, good ideas deserve to be continued.

By: Viktor Szentkiralyi