Komoron

I had a terrible night last night out in the middle of nowhere. I was camped near a train line so they woke me up continuously. I still got up early, with the sunrise. If it was minus 2 last night it didn't feel it. It was cold, but not that cold.
I pretty much dawdled around today. I'm meeting Mick in Budapest on the 5th and I'm only a days ride from Budapest so I'm in no hurry. Wandered into a town for no particular reason then kept going. I got to Komoron around 9:30 and stumbled across a huge fort on the outskirts of the town.

Apparently Komoron and it's Slovakian buddy across the river called Komorno have been fairly important for defence over the years. I'm going to very briefly butcher the history.

The Romans had a settlement and at that time Hungary was split into 3 parts. Komorov was a border town back then.

Much later there was another empire whose name escapes me. The name starts with h but isn't Hungarian. It was apparently a pretty good one but really it sounded more like a kingdom or duchy to me. At that point in time the town was important in stopping the Ottoman empire. They had a navy of a few hundred boats that operated on the Danube. They'd carry 30 or 40 thousand people down to scrap with the Ottoman's. The boats were a special type, and from what I could tell they were more suited to having battles in the river than the Turkish Galleons so they tended to win. I found it really interesting that they used to have naval battles on a river. Most of my knowledge of European history comes from the Total War video games but they left that out.

The fort I visited today is the newest in a series of forts through the town. It was constructed in 1850. It was mainly built to hold off attackers and give the other forts (I believe there are 2 others) time to prepare. It is enormous. It was constructed with shorter, thicker walls supported by earthworks to try and combat the power of gunpowder. The inner wall is 10 metres high, the outer 8. There are four bastions, the main one overlooking the Danube. 3km of casemates run through the inner and outer walls with tunnels connecting them.
I thought it strange that the walls were topped with soil and consequently vegetation. I found out that that was so it could take the blow of the cannonballs with minimal damage to the wall. Apparently by the time the fort was completed with its 200+ gun emplacements it was already outdated. It had smooth bore muzzle loaded cannon (basically what you think of when you think of a cannon) ,which were virtually obsolete with the advent of rifled breech loading guns (basically modern artillery). Still, the fort system was considered impregnable and nobody managed to capture it.

From 1945 the fort was occupied by the soviets. It was a weapons stockpile. Far less interesting.

There were a couple of interesting exhibitions about fishing, gold washing and ship building within one of the bastions. Unfortunately the ship building stuff wasn't in English but I managed to gather from it that they had lots of different types of ships, but when the paddle steamer was invented and made the journey from Vienna to Budapest in 36 hours they decided to just do that instead.

Probably the coolest thing about the visit was that you are free to roam anywhere. These walls are fully intact. The casemates are all open. They are dark, and you can hear things squeaking, but I wandered down a few. There is a map to follow and those bits have lighting, but I wandered down some 200 metre long dark corridors just to see what was there. It is the ultimate place for a 10,000 strong game of hide and seek. Or a huge game of paintball! I was also the only visitor.

They had a bread museum too. Yep. I went in anyway but only half the lights were on and it kind of looked like they were just storing machinery from old bakeries. The whole thing seemed half baked. I loafed around for all of 10 minutes, mostly to try to figure out: why?

After that I ducked into town for a meal of traditional Hungarian Chinese food then found a campsite and had a nap. I'm about to head out and see what other local dishes they have. Maybe Indian.