 Hello ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining me and welcome to Chopron. This city is in northwest Hungary, it's a very beautiful, attractive historic city and what we're going to do in today's video is we're going to go and explore what's left of the old city walls. So where I'm currently walking, I'm outside the old city but we're going to go and find them now. It's not quite like York in the UK or Chester where you walk around the top of the city walls. The city walls are hidden behind buildings but there's quite a lot of them. You've just got to really look for them. So this city dates back to Roman times, then it was called Sabantica but the Romans eventually deserted the city. Between the 9th and the 11th century the Hungarians arrived and they began to build the city up. They began to fortify it. See this rather communist looking building here? It's through here where we find the city walls or our first glimpse of the city walls. Doesn't look very exciting you know just the new dustbins when we go through here. And here we are, here are some of the city walls. Now this wall is going to get quite exciting because as I said they're hidden behind buildings so we've kind of got to look for them. So these city walls were what the Hungarians would have built up. So like I say they date back between the 9th and the 11th century. We're down here and see if we can go kind of into them. I think we'll be able to go up on top of them some of the time. But as I say we are kind of behind around the back of buildings that is a doorway here. Not like it goes anywhere, it's just going in anyway. And it kind of goes through to another doorway. And I appreciate you now can't see a lot. And that door's locked so let's go back out because it's a bit pointless being in the dark. But at the same time quite exciting even going there. So let's go round and go on top of the city wall. There was a little bit more history. There was that period of Hungary where the Ottomans took over most of Hungary. Well they ravaged the city but they didn't take it over. So what happened was a lot of Hungarians began to flee here and they would sort of hide out and live here. And its importance grew. It's quite interesting because there's basically this map. We're going to follow this yellow line around and follow the city walls. And it tells you a bit about them. So this is the Bayley promenade. So you can see it's quite fortified. If we go up here, so the city walls they do lock them at night but they lock them about nine o'clock in the summer. And it's about quarter to eight so we should get round this. We've got these steps here and we'll be up on the city walls in a moment. So like I say it's not quite like York when you think of a city wall walk. It's a sort of area of public land between two buildings and then there's various random gates going off that are locked up probably because there are people's houses behind them. But here we are. We're up in one of the towers. If you look through there you'll be able to see where we went. So quite exciting. That is supposed to be one of the oldest apartment blocks in Chopron which was cut right through the city walls which is a bit of a shame. There's not much more down there other than this other tower. I won't go down there because we've got quite a lot of other bits of city walls to get through. It's a bit weird you've got this bit of concrete brutalism and then you've also got against the old city walls. So we're going to go down here. It also involves walking through lots of other odd buildings and almost like through people's gardens. There's a bit of a mess on this graffiti through little random courtyards. It's quite an exciting walk. So we come to here and we're in a courtyard. We're going to go through. That way we'll take us into the narrow streets of the old city which we'll do more of or we'll do some of that later. We're walking through some more courtyards. There's lots of Baroque, Austro-Hungarian buildings in this city. It's a really beautiful city. The other thing the city is quite well known for is the Choproni chur or Choproni beer. If you've ever been to Hungary and you've had a beer, you've probably had that beer. It's a very nice building. Nothing to do with the video at all, but I always like to see them. There's a Ladeniva. I think they're the best 4x4 ever or if that one the best cars ever. Ladeniva, quite a new one that is. Anyway, back to more ancient history rather than more modern history. We're going to go and find the city walls again. And here we have probably the most obvious part of the city walls the bit that people always do see. It's a bit here. In fact, wherever we're in that courtyard, I think if we've gone down, we could come down those steps. This is a pretty big, big round tower. But if we go down here, my plan is to sort of find our way around the back of the building. So you get a good idea here. This is one of the main streets outside the city walls. And out here, the streets are a lot wider, a lot more space. There's lots of nice restaurants and places to get ice creams down there. But if we go down here, it's going to be completely different. There's a lot of churches in the city. That one possibly is a monastery. I'm sure one of them is, but I'm not entirely sure which one. Possibly that one. So we come down here. So where are we now? So this is still the Bailey promenade. So like I said, there was that huge tower behind us. It's possibly the biggest tower I've ever seen on a city wall. They've kind of put these strange concrete sort of bits against it. Then if I have any light, you can actually walk in and out of them. But I'm not going to, because it's probably a bit dirty behind there. But yeah, look at that. That's weird. Anyway, let's continue to follow them. So they disappear behind this hat, but I'm very confident we can follow them. I'm just going to keep going really following. This is where it's going to get exciting. We're going to start walking through backyards and through restaurants and all sorts. It gets really odd. So we've got up here, and I think I'm about to walk through a restaurant where people are eating their evening meals. As you can see, I'm quite literally out. Go through here and come up here. There's another little courtyard. So that looks nice. All those plants growing. Here we have another gate, but I think this has been rebuilt. You can see we're crossing like an old, wait, it's a modern old drawbridge. This is clearly not original. I quite like it. So if we go into here, oh yeah, you can see that's an old tower. Now if we go up here, I think we'll be up on the city walls again. I also want to do some more down on the city walls again. So yeah, look, we're up here on the city wall. But they've actually built buildings against the city wall. So when we go down there, we won't be able to see this bit. But if we step into this little tower here and have a look out the window, you can see we're going to walk along Neanex and we will be able to see it. But first, talking of the old city, we go to the end here. We can have a look at some old ruins. It's anything back. I'm not going to put a date on them, but some old ruins and you can clearly see the city wall goes around there. So we're going to go back down. We're going to walk around there and keep going. That, by the way, is the fire tower. More of that later. But that is the tower. Going back to the Choproni beer, which I mentioned, that beer is on, or that tower, rather, is on the beer. It's kind of like the symbol of the city. So the line of the city wall. We've got to go back through this strangely modernised bit or rebuilt bit to continue. We're going to walk through some more courtyards and through some more residential bits, which is kind of exciting because if I didn't know about this city wall, I probably wouldn't come into this little courtyard because I wouldn't be sure if they're private or not because I know I can walk all the way along here. So we come through here and ahead of us, that would take us back out onto that main street again. What we're going to do is we're going to go down here now. This is looking quite exciting. So we go down here. So let's do not enter there because that goes into flats. That's perfectly understandable. We come down here. We go under here. Look. I don't want to disturb them too much, but look. Look at those cute little kittens asleep there. Mochka. That is a cat. Chitza is kitten. So look at them there asleep. I don't want to disturb them, but they're so cute. Anyway, let's go round up here. So, yeah. Well, look, there's a bit of old city wall there hiding in amongst these houses. Go round here now. Yeah, so, okay. Am I now walking through someone's... I think I'm like literally walking through someone's back garden and I've just walked into another restaurant so there's people eating food there. And we come down and here we are, quite obviously the city walls. A moment ago, we were up there in that window. I think it's an idea of where we've just been. So we're going to continue to follow these very obvious city walls around here. I just like how it's so hidden. I've been staying in this city now for three days and it's only taken me this afternoon when I discovered there's this hidden world of city walls. And that is like the narrowest building ever. How do you get onto that balcony? So narrow. That's weird. Oh, I see it's like a stairwell tower. And on the stairs go like that. Still don't quite get it, but yeah. Interesting building. Right, where are we now? So we're down... those ruins I showed you are behind this part of the wall. There's a more modern... if you sort of think this is the ancient level of the ground, that's the modern level of the ground. So these buildings were sort of down at basement level. So the first floor from the street will be up there, where those windows are, which you can clearly see by the level of that modern bridge. That's for those ruins I showed you. We're now down at the level of those ruins. What I'll do, I'll stick the camera through here. You'll be able to have a look. Bring the camera back. Now there's like an outer and inner walls here. The outer walls are rather ruined. I'm going to step over them under this bridge and follow this cobbled street. And in a minute we'll come to the fire tower. So the fire tower is the tower you see on shop only beers. Now I'll never quite get these hacks, what it's job is. I understand that the city at one point did burn to the ground. And when they rebuilt the city they built a fire tower. And the idea of the fire tower is they will watchmen up the tower up there and they would look out if there was a fire they could direct the firemen where to go. I went up there the other day. You can go up to that level there. It's great, you get brilliant views. And then when I came back down to the ground I had, you've guessed it, a pint of shop only. So yes, that is the, effectively the northern gate. Now the city walls have been sort of obliterated here. I think that slab of concrete is to show you that was the walls. It's going to get even more kind of strange now to walk. But what we're first going to do, we're going to walk underneath the fire tower into one of the main squares just to let you see the classic part of Chopron. I think what we're going through here is called the Foutier, which I understand means the main square. So we're right in the old city centre. So there's the tower above us. Lots of places you can, you know, have meals here as well. Beautiful old church there. If you visit Chopron and you're not sure what to do, there's a tourist advisory centre in that building. So, you know, you can go there. So this is, now we're in the main square of Chopron and it's beautiful. The Foutier, look at that. The tower, it's amazing sight. But we've got to continue following these walls. Now these walls, they go behind those buildings there. So we've got to go and look for them now. It took me a few goes at finding them. I missed them the first time completely. So, look at that. Like I said, this was also the northern gate of the city. So what we're going to do, we'll go through here. So the reason I had to rush that bit there was there was some music playing in that restaurant and you may or may not know but when you're making videos for YouTube you've got to be very careful. Sometimes music gets in the back of your video and you're in trouble for copyright reasons. So that's why I rushed that bit. So apologies. I think this arch here is showing where the wall would have been. So we go through. So I've actually come out of the city. Let's go through here now. So it says here, Baelic promenade. So that's like basically following the wall. So, it's got really quiet now. Feels like a bit of a ghost city. It's just like no one about. You know, it was all people eating food and it's quite lively around there now. It's just like dead. You know, you won. There's the city tower there. The fire tower, rather. If you go and visit the fire tower you can also go in there and see lots of historic stones which they found around the city. So it's worth going to see that. Now we're following this. So, as I said, it's completely different to sort of York or Chester. York or Chester, they kind of go up in the trees. Well, we're kind of down in the trees. With the odd tower now. So it's pretty private what's on that side of the tower. But it's fascinating to follow. Look at this. I think we're about to walk through another restaurant now. I don't know if this restaurant's open but it's got all of its tables out. So you can actually sit here and have a meal if it's open against the backdrop of the city wall. And, of course, have a pint of Chopproni which says, although the camera's not been out, it does say Chopproni on that umbrella. So yeah, it'd be quite nice to... I'll probably... Chopproni, I might have to have a pint on that when I'm finished. The wall continues in front of us. And then eventually it will eventually come to an abrupt end. At the other end, there's not a lot left at the wall. But so far, we've done quite well. We've seen quite a lot of the walls. The last time I did a video with some Hungarian city walls, completely the other side are hungry, I was in Pate, which is Hungary's fifth largest city. And I did a video there where I went into one of the old baleys and we climbed up to the top. So if you're interested, have a little link on screen now. Here, I'll see that video. We're going to continue along here. It says Attila Eritreum, which means restaurant there. It actually says restaurant as well. Because we're surrounded by Austria. There's a lot of... Most of the signs are written in German as well. Look, the path gets really narrow here. Should go here. I don't think many people do this part of the wall. You see everyone looking at it on the busiest side of the city and taking pictures. But I don't think so many people come around here to see this part of the walls. And some really bad I found. It says, give you an idea, we started around there. We've been all the way around there. That's the fire tower. We're now here. So we've got one last long straight to go. That makes it sound like a race track. We've effectively circumnavigated the old part of the city. We've weaved in and out a bit. So here we get to another one of these little gateways. So yeah, it does say April to September. Open from 9 o'clock to 9 o'clock. So yeah, I haven't got a rush. I've still got a fair bit of time. I'm going to go down this passage right now. Interestingly, if you ever look here, looks like there's been something built out against it. See these sort of apertures in the wall along here? So there's a floor about where my head is. Not too sure. This building looks a bit abandoned. And then as we continue on, see, look, this is quite interesting. There's that tower. Someone's effectively built into the tower. So that's now part of someone's house. Not too sure. And we're kind of behind other people's houses and flats on what really is a nice, pleasant, quiet area. So I'd say if you live there, you look out at the old city walls, which no one really knows about. Or at least they don't know too much about this side. There's benches facing each other. It's like they're on a train. You don't often see benches like that unless you're on a train. Anyway, and here we have the back of some more flats with a Christmas tree growing. Now I wonder if that was someone's Christmas tree one year and I've just planted it. There seems to be a bit of a section of the walls missing here. But then they start again there. I think we've come to the end. I think what I'll do, because we're coming to the end, I'll go in and finish inside the city walls. It sort of seems appropriate to start it outside. So we've effectively, we have now done the city walls. There might be, there are, yeah, there are a couple of odd fragments of the walls, but I understand there to be in private kind of courtyard. So we can't actually go and see them. So we won't do that. So if pretty much comes to the end, come out here by church. And it's done and finished in one of the beautiful narrow streets. So it really is a really nice city. I've made a few other videos while I was here. The other video I made, I went to a model village just on the edge of the city. And there was certainly a model of the fire tower there. And I think there was a model of that big church we saw. And that was currently free to visit because the model trains weren't working. But if you're interested in that video, have a look at Lincoln screen now, that shop on the miniature. And now here we are. I'm the little person in the big city. Well, look at that tower. Reminds me of Kubrick's team museum in London to look at, but it's not a team museum, it's a church. That there is called Templon Utska. Utska Street. And I think you probably get. Templon is church. There you go. It's a church. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you very much for watching. Please do feel free to like, subscribe, and comment. And from the beautiful city of Chopron in North West Hungary. Goodbye. This on that.