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© 2026 Erik Bethke
Leslie and Kapácsi László, both eighty, in a Budapest hotel lobby
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Operation Bozmeg

Sixteen days by rail, Amsterdam to Budapest, August 2026. A handbook written before, an itinerary, and a retrospective assembled afterwards from 1,419 photographs and 86 conversations.

1,419

Photographs

86

Conversations

2,656

Messages

1,714 km

By rail

Eight

Cities

Sixteen

Days

Three Documents, Two Directions

Two of these were written looking forward: a Baedeker-form handbook to the twelve stops, and the itinerary that fixed the trains. The third was assembled looking back, out of what the camera roll and the conversation logs turned out to have recorded.

Strasbourg at night, lit windows over the water

The Handbook

A Handbook for Travellers

Written before departure, in the form Baedeker settled on in 1844: twelve stops from Amsterdam to Budapest, each with a short history, hard numbers to plan against, and a starred list of what is worth your legs.

A laptop open on a train table, countryside sliding past the window

The Itinerary

10 to 27 August 2026

Seventeen nights, six countries and sixteen trains. The route climbs from the North Sea to the Alps in five days, then stops moving entirely for ten nights on the Danube. Leslie turns eighty in Zürich.

Leslie and Kapácsi László, both eighty, in a Budapest hotel lobby

The Retrospective

What I Photographed, and What I Asked

Assembled afterwards from 1,419 photographs and 86 conversations, 10 to 28 August 2026. A camera roll read back as a GPS track, two accounts read back as a diary, and one piece of ground in Hungary.

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All three open to blog subscribers

The handbook, the itinerary and the retrospective are free to read for current subscribers to the blog. Enter your email on the unlock page and a one-time link will let you in for seven days.

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Operation Bozmeg — Amsterdam to Budapest — 10 to 28 August 2026 — 1,714 km by rail