The Hungary Family Plan

When I asked my mother what she most wanted to see while she was in eastern Europe, she said "Budapest!" So I booked a weekend for the family in Hungary's capital.

family on the hill

As witnessed in this blog, I've been to Budapest several times before. I love the city - there's just something about it that really appeals to me! I was happy to share the experience with my family, though it was trying at times to get through, since none of us knows Hungarian.

Mom's favorite quotable moment was on the bus. We were trying to find the guest house apartment I had booked for us, and accidentally took the right bus the wrong way. In an unfamiliar part of town, we are speaking English (loudly) and attempting not to start a fight on the bus (at least I am) when my mom asks a middle-aged man how to get from where we are to the apartment.

"You are English?" he asks.
"No, American."
"Oh. America is very big country."
"Yes," agrees Mom.
"You like Budapest?"
"Very much so far."
"Budapest is nice city."
"The weather is nice."
"You like Budapest. Budapest is nice city."
"Yes."
"Budapest is nice city. You like?"

At that point, it was apparent to me the man had exhausted his English vocabulary. However, he was light years friendlier than anyone my parents had met in Austria! It was charming of him to try, in any case.

We made it to the apartment all right and in one piece. Our delightful host Tibor mentioned this-and-that monument, restaurant, museum, pub. The apartment was adorable and spotless, and these greeted us from across the street:

famous Hungarians?

 After we settled in, we wandered around to the banks of the Danube, across the bridge from Pest to Buda, and  walked through the park, up the Buda Hills to the Liberty monument and back down. Some pictures from that excursion:

For dinner, we went to this restaurant that played "Gypsy music." I had always wanted to go to one of those shows, and convinced the family to do it. Unfortunately, as Dad put it, "They put the 'gyp' in Gypsy," charging a ridiculously high "cover charge" to hear the musicians and tasted the "complimentary" wine that turned out to complement very little. Thus is the woe of the naive traveler!

The next day, we went to the baths - the Szechenyi spa - and had a lovely time lounging around, though the weather was in the 70s, and a bit cooler than what we could have hoped for for the outdoor pool.

On the way home, we saw a hubbub in the park - it was a wine festival! I just had to see what was up! We bought glasses of different kind of wines to taste. The festival seemed like an annual thing. Mom and I enjoyed it, but Dad and Sam are just not wine drinkers! Perhaps I will have the chance to do it again...

We also went to St. Stephen's cathedral, the Fisherman's Bastion, and other Budapest sights. There were two weddings taking place at the Fisherman's Bastion (it is wedding season, after all!) but we did not take pictures. In my opinion, it's a little (or a lot) weird to take a picture of a stranger's wedding.



On the way home, we ran into a school group of graduating high school seniors on their way to one of their teacher's houses to say goodbye and wish her well in song. It is a tradition called "serenade" in Hungary (I heard the explanation eavesdropping on a couple sitting at an outdoor cafe) and the graduating class goes to every teacher's house the day before their ceremony. Their voices were beautiful, lifting through the trees: poetic, romantic, tragic; soothing and lyrical, yet sad.

It made me wonder what teaching in Hungary would be like - better or worse than in Austria? How different? How similar? Would my lack of Hungarian pose a problem? One semester of the language (as a student in Berlin) has allowed me to introduce myself, list off the colors, and get into trouble with men named Attlia. (That's a story I will not share on the internet)...

Although I have friends who have braved teaching in a foreign culture without first learning the language, I am not so brave. I'd rather stick to living in a country where I can at least converse in the language before I agree to move there. Perhaps this is unremarkable, but I always know I can discipline the kids myself if they get bad enough (and they'll know exactly what I mean).

I think everybody enjoyed themselves, but with Sam and Dad, it's sort of hard to tell sometimes. The weather's been nice, and no one has been complaining outright and constantly, all very good signs! I joke, but only slightly...

parliament building 

chain bridge

The next leg of our journey is to Prague. More on that later!

Linzer Weekend

A few weekends ago, I went to Linz for the weekend to catch up with some old friends from Amstetten, and accompany Jake in meeting some of his distant relatives in Bad Ischl. It was an interesting experience.

First, on Friday, I went to a whiskey convention (my first) at the Arcotel convention center with several other teaching assistants in Linz, which, I'll be honest, I didn't really enjoy. I'm definitely more of a wine gal, so the whiskey - even the good stuff - was lost on me. I'd like to try new things, and I did end up enjoying some of the Scotches they had on sample, but I don't know the  first thing about a good whiskey. And, predictably, my taste runs expensive. After an afternoon of sampling, I guess for now I'll stick with wine.

There was also a wine convention (festival?) in Linz at the mall on Saturday. I would have liked to stay and go through the different wines, like we did with the whiskey, but we had to get to Bad Ischl. Seems either the hangovers were too much to plunge in, or I'm the only wino in the bunch. Anyway, I stayed long enough to get a couple of bottles of wine, which will certainly go up on Wine Snobbery on a Budget.

Jen, Jake and I went to a pottery class at the Volkshochschule. That was possibly the most fun of the weekend. I hadn't worked with clay since elementary school, and I had never thrown anything on a wheel before. I tried, but my technique needs lots of improvement. I didn't make anything except blobs that fell apart on the wheel, so I stuck with hand molding, and made this person:

I call it "Napping Nude #1" !

And there were other, finished pieces that had already been fired and glazed. They looked pretty good. A lot of creativity running around Linz! Jen did some great stuff, and this one guy made a fountain.

Saturday saw us taking the train to Bad Ischl to meet Jake's relatives his mother found through genealogical research. I think it's wonderful to have found them, and to share all of this family history, but I couldn't help but feel, though he and Eleonora, the woman we met, share a common ancestor four generations back (her grandfather and his great-grandfather were brothers), having coffee with them, family tree spread across the small round marble cafe table, reinforced the fact that they were still strangers despite this connection.

To be honest, I've never really cared much for genealogy, though it is amazing the facts you can dig up by following someone's family line. I guess to me the interesting part would be not who is related to whom, but more the stories you could find from learning about people in the past - your past. Or your present. I doubt I will ever meet Eleonora again, but it was curious to see how a life can be altered by one person moving to a new country. It makes me wonder how globalization will change immigration.

 Here are photos of Bad Ischl:

view from the train

Bad Ischl is famous for being a spa/resort town, the one in fact where the empress Sophie (mother of Franz Joseph I) came to get infertility treatments...they must have worked, since she conceived Franz Joseph. It was also a favorite of Franz Joseph's wife, Sisi. Though, she did take any excuse for a vacation. The Kursalons (spa centers) are still being run and going strong, though they're quite pricey for being given in such a famous place.

downtown

very famous "Trinkhaus"

I will curb my ranting for some beautiful scenery, namely the river Ischl:

And back to Linz: this is the house Johannes Kelper (the father of modern astronomy) lived in:

And the Marienkirche (practically every town in Austria has one):

And a beautifully blossoming tree in the courtyard of the Standesamt: