A Profile of the Beautiful City of Pécs

On friday morning, a group of three of us left on a 9:45 train to Pécs (pronounced "Pay-tch"). Pécs is the fifth largest city of Hungary, located about 130 miles south of Budapest. Pécs was selected to be one of 2010's European Capitals of Culture, along side of Essen (Germany) and Istanbul (Turkey). This honorable designation allows European cities to showcase their cultural significance on an international level. Since Pécs was a class day-trip for last year's interim in Budapest program, a few of us had already been to Pécs and were excited to see the changes being made for this new year.



Once we got off the train and trekked to the center of the city, we immediately began to notice a lot of construction. It seems that a lot of the changes and renovations being put into place for the year as a European Capital of Culture are still going on. Large monuments were taped off and guarded while renovations were made. We could only imagine how beautiful the city is going to look in the snow-free spring and summer.

Despite the associated cold, we welcomed the huge flakes of snow that really set the mood as we hiked up some of the hills to get great views of the city. While Pécs is a fairly large city (about 150,000 people), it had a smaller town feel and appearance.