Once a great power in Europe, then part of the multi-national Austro-hungarian Empire (a.k.a. Dual Monarchy, or Austria-hungaria), which had an area of 621,538 km² (239,977 sq mi). Now after the end of WW1 in 1918 it is somewhat smaller in area and in population than Hungary. The territory of Austria covers 83,879 km² (32,386 sq mi). The terrain is highly mountainous, lying within the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 m (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 m (12,461 ft). It is home to much natural and man-made beauty.

In the summer of 2008 we visited the Czech Republic the first time since 1990 and found the regions we traveled through thriving and beautiful. If only the weather was better... Oh and if my car did not break down, and ...

The places we visited in 2003 during our Austrian-German-French trip

It is a slight exaggaration to name this gallery "Grece" as from all of greece we only visited Crete and Santorini.

Although Holland is just the west coastal region of the Netherlands the Hungarian name of the country is still Hollandia. It is a low lying country, about 26% of its area and 21% of its population located below sea level, only about 50% of its land exceeding one meter above sea level. Most of the areas below sea level are artificial. The highest point in Holland is about 55 meters (180 ft) above sea level, the highest point of the Netherlands is 321 m. I have never expected the variety we encountered there. We were lucky in many respects: timing: e.g. the Pride and the Body Painting Day in Amsterdam, the weather was only bad at one day when we visited Leiden.

With our friends we spent a good two weeks in Croatia, enjoying the warm Adriatic Sea

We traveled around this "Green Island" lazily in our 23 days of visit, just it was not as green as we expected because there wasn't enough rain this year.
What was surprising is that although the temperature was never higher, and mostly lower than 26 ^oC still when the sun was out it was really hot there.

We have visited so many places (and missed even more) that I decided to partition the visits into four albums, each for one direction on the compass. However this is not a strict geographical distinction. First Dublin has its own album outside this partitioning furthermore there are albums at this level which contain images from many parts of the country.

This trip is the realization of one planned 2 years ago and failed because of COVID. We spent only 10 days there from which 7 days on the ring road staying different places each day and almost three days in Reykjavik. We also partook in a little glacier walk and whale watching.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't favorable, we rarely had a day without rain.

This visit was a last minute affair, because, as the result of a bycicle accident, I broke my right hip in March and for 3 months I was not allowed to stand on that leg. (Incidentally this proves that sports are dangerous for your health!). Well, even after these long years Poland did not loose its charm for me. Interestingly many 'old' buildings you find there today was not there 36 years ago when I first was there.Those were destroyed in WW2 but have been rebuilt in the same style and form they originally had.

This holiday was different. Not because we have never been on Malta before but because I broke my right shoulder two weeks before the trip. This was painful and having only my left hand to use I could only carry a (borrowed) compact with a fixed 38mm (35mm equivalent) lens instead of my 'real' camera. Even so during the one week we spent there I managed to shoot some 1000 individual pictures. Many of them were stiched to 'panoramas' to create a wider field of view than 38 mm would allow. Hence the black parts on some of the photos.

We visited the two main islands of the Mediterranean island nation of Malta: Malta and Gozo. Malta is one of the world's smallest and most densely populated countries, at over 316 km² (122 sq mi) with a population of about 475,000.

Great Britain is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (United Kingdom or UK for short), which contains England, Scotland and Wales. As we visited Northern Ireland only very shortly during our stay in Ireland images from Northern Ireland are in that album.

Germany. A big country of 357,021 square kilometres (137,847 sq mi, lárger than Texas) with a largely temperate seasonal climate, a home for some 87 million people. A country that left behind the terrible times and now peacefully coexists with the other Euripan states. It has a rich culture and a rich economy and most of all a rich selection of photogenic subjects from landscapes through buuildings to people.

Italy is one of the wonders of the world. Fantastic cities, breathtaking panoramas and interesting people. It is relatively close to us. Although I have visited it many times I still only saw a negligible part of its beauties.The areas and cities I have visited are: around lake Garda, Rome, half of Sicily, Tuscany, and of course Venice.

In 2015 we visited a segment of Portugal: from Lisbon to Porto near the coast. We found a brilliant, beautiful and hilly country. We should go back there to see the rest...

When we decided to go to Spain and realized how big is this fantastic country and how rich Spain is in memories of the past, culture in the present and natural beaty we determined to constrain ourselves to see some of the former only. Here you find pictures of cities, churches, catles and other buildings.

Not yet ready. I'll be continuously add titles and descriptions to these photos.
Please check the photos of our one day trip to Copenhagen in the Denmark gallery!

Slovakia is our neighbour in the north. A beautiful country.The parts we visited were inside the borders of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon signed at the Grand Trianon Palace in Versailles, France in 1920 - the peace agreement to formally end World War I - which cut 2/3 of our land. It is small wonder that many nationalist political movements both in Hungary and in neightboring countries e.g. in Slovakia use this fact to antagonize our people and those in the countries which benefited from it. For instance I have heard rumours about the enmity in Slovakie toward Hungarians, but I haven't felt any ill will of the people (except a slight malice from some figures of authority).

As a young physicist I went to Istanbul for a week long conference held by the Europian Physical Society. We had some free time, one free day and a few times when the lectures were very boring, we skipped them too. These occasions were enough to have a quick view of the city and to excercise some photography. These pictores are from scanned slide films

The United States of America is the farthest country from us we travelled to. Consequently my wife and I together visited it only twice in 1990 and in 2000, in both cases for a short month. We travelled from the east coast to the west coast on our own car which we bought and sold there, stopping for a few days here and there. Second time we stopped at almost the same landmarks, cities and towns. In both cases I could take 8 rolls of film (about 288 frames) only, because for us film was expensive. My last visit this year was an official 5 days long one (including travel time) with 2 days added for leisure. This time however I shot 900 frames and only so few because I had no time for shooting.