Hungary... part 1...

How fitting that our first moments in Hungary and Eirin and I were Hungry… needless to say we found this hilarious and after our 7 hour scenic train ride... Hungary in Hungry was right up there with Monty Python.

The best thing was seeing Livia again. For those of you who don’t know Livia was a good friend of mine from Kuwait and we were going to be staying with her. She was gorgeous as ever and her dad came to the station with her to pick us up. We went back to their place where we met Livia’s mum and Marcus the German Shepard and Tirme (Stripy) the cat. Loverly… and the table was laden with Hungarian goodies like traditional Salami, Radish and cheeses, and for dessert (Erin was to become addicted) Turo Rudi: a sweet cottage cheese bar coated in chocolate… mmmm…

We were starving a stuffed ourselves and so we think we must have set some sort of trend for the rest of the week because we never ate so much in our lives… perhaps instead of calling ourselves ‘The Travelling Wildberries’ we should call ourselves ‘The Travelling eat all the berries and anything else that crosses our path’.

Livia and her family were so kind and so welcoming we felt like we’d come home. Indeed Livia is our Hungarian sister and will remain so (in fact with the two red heads I was like the odd cousin). Our Saturday morning began with a trip to Saint Andreas… I’m writing the English version because my Hungarian is terrible (though it did improve during our time in Hungary – Eirin and I can say like 20 words now…)

Anyway, Saint Andreas was beautiful, firstly, just nearby we went to a small open air museum that had been set up to celebrate and commemorate Hungarian folk culture from around the country. The different regions were represented by the different styles of houses all around, along with lace making room, indigo dye making, leather maker, and so on. And for some reason I took about 25 pictures of a windmill that was there and some donkeys…. Oh and there were pigs too, really, really, really, stinky, stinky, stinky, awful pigs which reminds me why I don’t eat pork… because pigs are a filthy animal… (“And I’m talking 10 times more charming than that Arnold from Green Acres”)… but enough Pulp Fiction… I’m rambling.

Afterwards we went into Saint Andreas proper and went to a doll museum – I love dolls! Yay for dollies… we went to the river and Eirin and Livia had ice-cream… I managed to resist because after already eating two lunches I felt that muffin top was getting outta control!

That reminds me… Eirin has devised a plan for the Muffin top… called ‘no muff too tuff’ ha ha… and the motivational centre of the plan is ‘muffin to nuthin’, repeat all: ‘muffin to nuthin’, ‘muffin to nuthin’, ‘muffin to nuthin’… very important…

Afterwards to continue on our merry sightseeing way we went back into Budapest and saw the Danube, whose strong currents were on full display. That’s one river not to fall into… though perhaps a cheap trip to other parts of Europe? We saw the frozen girl statue on the bank of the Danube, and viewed the Palace from the Pest side.

The palace, or castle area, is on the Buda side, were Livia lives too. Budapest was originally 3 cities, Buda, Old Buda, and Pest, Pest is the newest started in the 17th Century and where the parliament currently sits. Eirin and I thought Budapest truly charming, it made such a difference having a real tour guide who takes you to all the secret, local places like… The chocolate bar!!

to be continued...


Us at the Castle