Hungary

  Hello again, lots to get to,so... here we go!  We're sitting in the pub of our hotel as I write this, I'm not sure why I feel the need to tell you where I'm writing these things, guess I just do. So, we are currently in Oradea, Romania, we've been here for a couple days now. Maybe we were trying all the wrong things, but it seemed really hard to get into Romania from Hungary, you know like, sorry only one bus a week to Romania or you will have to go back Budapest and then transfer here etc. Well we're here now and ready to see Dracula country, they do seem to play this up quite a bit. One more thing before I recap Hungary. Here it's been quite noticeable... people are staring at me, like I'm from a totally different planet and to be sure, I think, in the short time we have been here, I haven't seen 1 Asian, I did see 6 black guys yesterday... we stared at each other.
   So, in Budapest I wanted to stay on the Buda side of the Danube, it had the old castle and town, I sort of had the idea it might be like Croatia, where old town was where you wanted to be, but apparently not in Hungary, old town is, well just the old part of town. The Buda castle is beautiful and all the buildings around it, but not much else happens on the Buda side.
   Around this time we had been lamenting how we haven't met very many people on our trip so far and... there you go, we met 3 people in one day. One young man came up to us while we were at McDonald's, and just started talking to us, somebody has been feeding him the wrong information about America and the rest of the world, awkward conversation that was rather difficult to get out off. Next we met the owner of a shoe store that was very kind and helpful, and we both enjoyed our conversation with him. Then we met Alain, Evelyn and their son Aaron at a cafe by the mall. Alain worked for Avis, so his english is quite good. Anyways walking back to our apartment, it turns out they live in the same building! totally crazy. We ended up hanging with them for a couple of days before we left for the Pest side of town.
  You know, I don't think I ever really understood the big fuss about truffles before, but we found a food and wine festival in Buda and spent most of our time at the truffle booth. I think I understand now...truffles are DELICIOUS!
  OK over to the Pest side of town and TA DAH, everything is happening over here, cafes everywhere, restaurants, beer bikes, basically a bar on bicycles with a keg that you pedal around town while drinking, I think a pretty good idea, all sorts of stuff. The apartment we have is right near one of the nightspots, perfect location. Again I don't want to go into a detailed travelogue about what we did everyday, but I do want to touch on a couple of things.
  We went to a jazz bar one night, there seemed to be quite a few in Budapest, we picked one that seemed to be for locals, not really the tourists. Very cool, one guy playing electric guitar and the other playing the hammered dulcimer, what!?, yes playing jazz, google that baby, again very cool.
  We went to the museum of fine art, holy crap that is one big museum, we saw lots of very cool stuff and really ran out of time to see all of it. I did want to mention this before, in the first museum we went to in Zagreb, a museum of tradational Croatian art, they had quite a few paintings on glass, which I guess was popular there in the early part of the 20th century. The detail in these paintings is amazing and... you had to paint it backwards!
  OK onto stuff we love to talk about...poo. I'm not really sure I understand the design of the toilets over here.Is it so you have to use that little brush they have beside the toilet? So everybody is on the same page, the toilet designs have varied, but they all hit some porcelain before hitting water, maybe that's it , no splashing. Anyways the one in Pest was really interesting, it had a little depression in the back of the toilet, so it would hold all your poo there for you to see, like this what your poo would look and smell like in nature. THEN! you flush, so it's like launching a ship out of drydock, I always made sure I was standing as far away as possible for this part.
   From Budapest we made our way by bus to Eger, a little town northeast of Budapest in Hungary's wine region, famous for it's Bull's Blood. It was nice to get to a smaller town.
  So we go to the train station in Eger to see if we can book a train to Timisoara in Romania. The one lady that doesn't speak english directs us to the lady that barely speaks english...and off we go!  She explains in Hungarian, which we sort get, is that we will have to go to Budapest first and switch trains there and go onto Timisoara, ok no problem. Well actually problem, to get the lowest price you have to book at least 5 days ahead of your travel day, OK how much is the not lowest price ticket so we can leave on the day we want to? Double, so instead of $20 , it's $40, OK fine let's do it. You have to understand, all this time she looking up schedules in binders and booklets, not on the computer. So she comes back, OK here's your ticket...Budapest to Timisoara at 7am, Huh What WHOA wait a minute, how are we supposed to get to Budapest by 7am? Lots of buses the lady says. Yes OK but what if we don't want to get up at 3am to get the train at 7am? Can't we just get the train from Eger, transfer in Budapest and go to Timisoara? Yes you can do that!! finally Ok cool. Train leaves at 345am....ughhh. is there a later train? more books and binders...yes! one at 1pm, ok great let's book that one. Then she disappears for what seems like a long time, then she comes back and says " sorry train full" yup ok. Frustrating for all of us, oh well ended up taking a bus to Debrecen and a train to Oradea. And here we are all caught up!!

  Love and Warm thoughts from Oradea, Romania

Carrie and Glen

Family Fun

      Hi all, it’s been a while since I wrote. I did have a pretty good excuse… having lots of fun with family. So let’s see, since I last wrote we had just moved to Milni , just south of Dubrovnik. A very nice small seaside town, apparently a favorite vacation spot for the Croatian army, so it saw , and you can still see  some damage to buildings from the war here 20 years ago. Actually almost everywhere we have been , you can see evidence of war, it’s sort of hard to wrap your mind around the thought that people were dying  here just 20 years ago in a bloody civil war.

   Ok this is how it started, this is so fantastic to me, I am just amazed and glad that we were able to pull it off.  On Tuesday June 17^th, Carrie and I went to the Dubrovnik airport to meet our nephew Tyler Williams from  New Zealand, via Portugal and France. 2 hours later, David arrived from Nicaragua via Norway. The next day we moved to a house in Dubrovnik and Maggie, Sean’s mother from New Jersey met us at the house and finally…. Later that night,  Sean, Erica , Cora  came in from California via Moldova where they had been visiting Kate for a few days, and then hopping on the same plane as Sean, Erica and  Cora, Kate also made her way to Croatia. So here we are 8 adults and a baby, together in this beautiful country, ready to have some fun.

   I don’t want to go into great detail about what we did for the next couple of weeks, and we have posted a lot of pictures on facebook, which I think will give you a pretty good idea of what we were up to. I do want to talk about cooking and eating though. Since there were so many of us and some of us, actually most of us were tryng to stay on a budget, cooking was a good option. Not all the restaurants were expensive, just like anywhere, and you could do some baked goods and a cappuccino in the morning quite inexpensively. All 3 of the houses we stayed in had pretty good kitchens and of course they all had the world’s dullest knives, my total pet peeve. I think we all agreed, the nights we cooked, and everyone cooked, we made better food than we could have gotten at a restaurant for at least half the price.  Mushroom risotto, pasta carbonara ( oh my god the Pancetta here is amazing and well… cheap and the Feta! BOOM!)  Gyros, chicken with gremolata, etc. we all ate very well. For me, to have all our family around the dinner table, eating, drinking and having a great time together, means a lot to me.

   So I am sitting on the upper balcony with Carrie in the house on Vis, and I see a gentleman walk out onto his balcony in the house adjacent to ours. I go to say good evening to him and then stop, because I realize I don’t know if he’s a local or a foreigner, so what language do I use? Meanwhile he is no longer looking at me, so I have lost that opportunity. Carrie, who is sitting with her back to the man, has no idea what is going on, she is talking to me and by this time my attention has wondered slightly, this never happens by the way. So imagine Carrie is sitting at the table, talking to me and I am watching the man on the other balcony, take his shirt off and hang it on the line, look at me..I smile, Carrie is still talking to me. He takes his shorts off and hangs those on the line, no looking this time, I look at Carrie and wonder if I should interrupt, and decide not to right now. I look back just in time to see, yes of course, the man taking his underwear off and hanging those on the line…Ta Dah , naked man on the balcony across from us, does it get any better than that? An emphatic NO Then he looks up at me, smiles , waves and goes back inside, waving back never even crossed my somewhat astonished brain…so I did not…love travelling.

               We did do some diving on Vis, I have to say it was kind of disappointing, I was looking forward to diving in Croatia ( OK let’s be honest, I look forward to diving period) It was cold, but we knew it was going to be, it was expensive, but we hoped we could get some sort of deal … we didn’t. We dove 3 times and went to the same dive site all 3 times..lame. We max depthed or close to it all 3 times…again lame. OK I ‘m getting depressed just thinking about the whole experience, only think happy thoughts, only think happy thoughts…so yeah we did some diving in Vis.

     As I write this. we are going through passport control on the train into Hungary. We have decided to spend a lttle or maybe long , time in Budapest. Last night we took the train from Split to Zagreb and we decided to spring for the sleeper car, an extra $40 each. We got a room to ourselves and of course beds! Neither Carrie or I had been on a train in years and the sleeper car was a nice surprise for us, we thought we would just have a bunk bed in the hall somewhere. We left at 10 last night and got into Zagreb around 630am, we stashed our packs in a locker and walked around town for a bit. Walking through the mall by the train station, I found a McDonald’s, OK before you get all whatever, yes I did want an egg mcMuffin.. and I got one, but the nice thing about McDonald’s, when you travel, is that, they all have free WIFI and outlets so you can plug in your stuff before going on a long train ride to Budapest. OK so the train station is great, and it was built in something like 4000 B.C. , but they didn’t have electricity back then, so they didn’t think back then to run conduit through all the rocks and bricks, for all the electrical outlets they will need, so Carrie and Glen can plug in their Ipods, so they can listen to music.

    We both loved Croatia, the country is beautiful, especially  all the little towns on the coast. It is getting kind of sloppy messy with tourists, so going inland for a while, might give us a respite from all the hoardes there vacationing. On the other hand, we are going to a pretty touristy city, might have to start rethinking our plan if we want to get away from the crowds. Well I think that’s enough for now, we should be getting to Budapest in about 4 hours and well it’s past noon now, so….it’s beer time.  

  OK, one more thing. One day while walking back  from the beach in Split, I was thinking about what to make for dinner and thought maybe some tsatziki might be good and that I should remember to pick up some dill if I can find it in the fresh green market. Finding fresh herbs other than parsley has been close to impossible. Literally 3 steps later, there was some wild dill growing out of a crack in the pavement by the side of the road. Hmm guess I can check that off the grocery list. This place is cool…love travelling.

Love and Warm thoughts from Hungary

Carrie and Glen