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