it would move 97% of the water from the danube river through a concrete channel that could then be runhrough the turbines. hungarian scientists began to realize that there would be vast environmental consequences-- pollution of groundwater tables, even surface water would be polluted. it could potentially destroy habitat for animals. and there was another issue that downriver from the dam is budapest, a city of 2 1/2 million people. in time, hunrians, through street protests, et cetera pressured their own government to slow down on their... their half of the project, so that by late 1980s, the hungarians only had completed roughly ten percent of their project, where the slovaks had pushed ahead, actually, and were almost 90% done. so this started to cate tensions between the two countries. with the hungarians not wanting it to go through and... and stopping, the slovaks came up with an option to just completely finish the dam and the whole project on their side of the boundary. kulesza ( translated ): it has produced a tangled web of unresolved ecological, political and legal problems

the river danube divided buda and pest until a terrible storm led to the building of a bridge.e on the pest side. the count was on the other side of the river, the buda side. by the time the count got across by boat, his father had died. he had even missed his father's funeral. the count took on the task of raising money for this bridge to be built so people would always be able to cross the river. called the "chain bridge," because its cables look like bicycle chains, it was completed in the mid-1800s. a few years later, the cities of buda and pest were officially united, and for good measure, they threw in a third neighboring city -- obuda. it has been budapest ever since. some say the first king here was attila the hun, hence the name "hungary." others say the first king was actually st. stephen. there's a magnificent church built in his name. the funicular is a train that's more like an elevator. it travels up the steep castle hill. at the top is buda castle. for centuries, this is where the rulers of hungary lived. the city has seen some terrible times. the area has been c

assembling to hear their orders, building fortifications, raiding an enemy town, and crossing the danube in small boats, the army is shown to be an awesome fighting machine. but there is no glorification of war itself, which is necessarily brutal and remorseless. the victory column and the triumphal arch through which the retuturning army marched, dragging slaves and spoils of war, were forceful forms of propaganda for the righteousness of imperial power, guided by the emperor, the senate, and the people of rome. it was the arch that was the basis of a revolutionary new architecture. the post and lintel system of the ancient world was limited in the space it could span and the weight it could bear. the romans soon recognized the arch's strength and versatility and elaborated it into an art form of grandeur and utility. roman stone arches, like the one supporting this bridge built across the tiber in 62 b.c., were constructed of wedge-shaped blocks. the blocks, wider at the top than at the bottom, are locked into place by a central keystone. the weight of the structure compresses the bloc

there was a great british travel writer who traveled down the danube before the second world war and wrote diaries, and those diaries were lost or stolen at the end of the journey, and then he rewerote it -- rewrote it all, so it can be done, but it must be a terrible feeling. tavis: i am always fascinated by the backstory. how did you know that this was your vocation, your follow -- you're calling? >> i never did, really. i was educated in a private school in england amongst people who were being trained for banking or the army or business, and as i came towards the end of my education, i thought, "i must find something, or i will never meet any of these people ever again." tavis: at least once a week i have that thought. >> at that time, i was in the school and traveling with my guitar and singing around the place, and we used to call it something, and in my unreal mind, i thought i would like to be in the circus, in the traveling fanfares, as we call them. what do you call them? merry-go-rounds, and they have big wheels, and i looked at the accommodation, and it is small, i am not