Budapest Again and Home

 We drove away from Banska Stiavnica Monday morning on a road that wound through the mountains with beech trees arching over the roadway. Just outside of town was a very old or perhaps abandoned apartment building across from a mine where people were living in poverty.  A group of three teen boys hung out by the road. Trash was strewn around.  This was the first sign of bad housing we had seen so far on the trip. There were sometimes people begging for money, often outside of churches. No big encampments of unhoused like around American cities that I saw though.

Many towns had remains of mining operations but only a few seemed to still host some industry.  Nevertheless, the houses and yards seem well kept up.  We passed lots of home orchards with apple trees heavy with apples.  Eventually the hills evened out into pretty farm fields and larger towns.  We returned the rental car to the Bratislava airport and caught a taxi to the train station.  This taxi driver asked us if we liked Trump.  We all agreed that maybe Trump, Slovakia’s leader, and Putin were triplets.

Monday was a national holiday, Our Lady of Sorrow’s feast day.  It didn't really impact our travel except that I couldn’t mail my postcards in Slovakia.  We got the train back to Budapest, and caught a taxi to our rented apartment, not far from where we stayed the first time.  This taxi driver knew all the little roads without consulting a map and looked like he’d been driving a cab for 50 years.  Our apartment was in a turn of the century building with a very faded exterior.  Through the doors was a staircase and sort of central area with some openings.  Not really a courtyard, but maybe it had been at some point.  Our apartment was sort of on the second floor and had been beautifully renovated.  It made us very curious about what was behind the other apartment doors!  Only one section of original floor remained and maybe the orginial interior doors.  We think the building would have been within the 1944 Jewish ghetto where people would have been crammed together into any building within the ghetto.  Now just the four of us shared 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.  

We went across the street for a very early dinner of good Mediterranean dishes (chicken livers with pomegranates, different types of hummus, a fig and grapefruit salad, a fava bean spread, falafel).  Unfortunately, that dinner significantly upset Linda’s digestion, and partially upset Jake’s in the middle of the night.  I slept really well and woke up feeling on the mend from the cold I’d had the last few days.

Tuesday, Jake, Jim and I did a tour of the nearby Dohany Street Synagogue, the 2nd largest synagogue in the world after one in Israel (and until NYC builds a larger one as is planned). It’s little odd for a synagogue in that it resembles a Catholic or Episcopal church to some extent.  Our guide said it was an attempt to make those other Christian religions feel that Judaism wasn’t that different.  There is even an organ that can’t be played by Jews on Holy days because it would be considered work.  It was played by some very famous non-Jewish people though. The Synagogue was built by Neolog Jews, more progressive compared to Orthodox Jews.  But the similarities to other churches didn’t seem to help prevent anti-semitism.  In the 1920s Hungary passed a law allowing only a small percentage of University students to be Jewish.  

During WWII the Synagogue was occupied by the Nazis and the surrounding buildings were part of the Jewish ghetto in 1944-45.  It was a harsh winter that winter and living conditions would have been terrible.  The park outside the synagogue became a place to bury the dead.  Since then the dead have been identified mostly and reinterred there.  Some were moved to a cemetery elsewhere due to other development.  The park is planted with mulberry trees that are being overtaken by ivy. I found a landscape history of the park, but nothing about why mulberry and ivy were chosen as the two plants. 

There’s also a memorial marker for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews by giving them papers for safe passage.  He was taken by the Soviets and no one is sure where he is buried. In the memorial garden area named after him, is a metal sculpture of a weeping willow where each leaf is engraved with the name of a person who died. The tour guide was quite good at not leaving us totally depressed by pointing out that there is still an active congregation.  He has relatives buried in the mass grave, but he also had grandparents married in the synagogue (he was young enough his grandparents would have survived the holocaust).

To keep with the theme, the next day I saw the Shoes memorial along the Danube where Jews were taken, told to remove their shoes, and shot by the Hungarian Arrow Cross party members.

There’s also a memorial to victims of the Nazi occupation that some feel exempts Hungarians from atrocities committed.  An alternative memorial in front of it discusses the rewriting of history by the Orban administration.  It’s impossible not to think of the rewriting of history at National Parks, the Smithsonian, and on US government web sites.  And also of how hard it is for average people to really stand up against government oppression.  The same park has statues of Ronald Reagan and George Bush the first I think (I only saw Reagan).  Surely Trump will be next if he deigns to visit Hungary?  Jake visited the House of Terror while I was at at the Botanical Garden. I think it covered both the Nazi and Soviet eras. 

To go back to my happy place, on Wednesday morning I visited the Botanical Garden.  In the 1770s it was established at the edge of the city, but is now surrounded by a huge medical complex and apartment buildings.  It had a strong focus on medically useful plants at one point and was of course a teaching garden with the section on plants arranged by Family changing as the plant families changed for some species.

The greenhouses were packed with tropical plants arranged in groups - cacti, bromeliads, orchids, African violets, ferns, carnivorous plants.  I’m not sure how they keep track of them all, but they obviously have some good horticulturists there.  There is an area with rock gardens displaying plants from different mountainous parts of Hungary and eastern Europe.  Those could use some weeding, but new plants were being added.  There are very old trees, and a small bonsai collection.  Several school groups (or maybe one large one) were visiting the garden. I love that you can now use Google Translate and your phone’s camera to translate descriptive signs into English!  Knowing the Latin names of plants helped with plant id. I took the metro to get there and back.  Very easy to use and clean.

I did some shopping at some craft shops not far from our apartment.  One called Paloma, is a courtyard with artist studios and shops.  I happened to meet an artist who does great bird and insect paintings.  I had purchased a few of her things at another shop, Rododendron, just before!  Budapest has a lot of bookstores and seemingly a good arts community.  Also lots of musicians.  While having a cup of tea at a cafe near the river, we listened to two people go over a complicated piece of music as a cello in a case sat next to them.  

We had dinner one night at a Chinese restaurant near our place, Biang Astoria.  Our server was from the Philippines, working in Budapest the last two years to support his wife and three children outside of Manila. After 2 years he’ll have to reapply for a new work permit.  He hopes to start cooking some Filipino dishes for the restaurant.  I think he said there are over 10000 Filipinos in Budapest.

From our apartment window, I watched people on the street below for a bit.  There are quite a few people who scrounge through the trash looking for recyclables that can be turned in for a little cash.

Our last night we went to Flava, a nice restaurant by the German Occupation memorial.  I had one last glass of a very good Hungarian red wine with my chicken shwarma and grilled brocollini. Since I had had an Ischer (walnut shortbread with cranberry filling covered in dark chocolate) at lunch, and Jim and Linda had shared a chimney cake filled with ice cream (some sort of dough baked into a chimney or cone shape and then filled) earlier, only Jake was left out of the last day’s dessert-fest.

Finally, at 4am this morning we caught the Airport Express bus a few blocks from our apartment.  Free for seniors!  Around 7euros for the rest of us.  The bus was full at that hour.  Jake discovered on the bus ride that our original flight to London had been canceled due to bad weather, but American had rebooked us on Air France through Paris.  We made the earlier flight easily since Jim and Linda’s flight was earlier than our original flight and we’d decided to just go to the airport with them.  There are strikes of various sorts in Paris today though which held up our flight for a little, and may have resulted in a big slow down going through security at the airport.  Our flight to DFW was still boarding though and we are in the friendly skies as I type.

Some other things I would like to have done in Slovakia and Hungary but will have to wait for another time! In no particular order, but for future reference:

Visit a spa

Hike in the West and lower Tatras and around Banska Stiavnica, also visit in July for more flowers.

Meet more local people, maybe by staying somewhere less touristy for longer - language was really a barrier to this

Attend a concert in Budapest or Bratislava

Visit a few museums that we didn’t have time for or that weren’t open

See a castle or castle ruins

Banská Stiavnica

 On Friday we took the train back to Poprad and a taxi to the Budget rental car office at the Poprad airport.  If you don’t know the rental car office is in the airport, you probably wouldn't find it.  The arrivals section of the airport was locked up, so they must not get many flights/day!  We got two rental cars because Jake and I and Jim and Linda will take one car back to Bratislava on Monday and Judy and Neal are staying in the area for a reunion of their Peace Corps friends.  Jake and I drove one car as Jake is still recovering from a cold and I am coming down with his cold, and the others took the other car.

The drive took us across rolling hills and then into a region of steeper, wooded hills.  It reminded me a little of West Virginia with small towns tucked into valleys and big mining and logging enterprises.  They were cutting trees along a section of the road, maybe to widen the road.  Driving on the winding road with big logging trucks coming the other direction required some concentration!  

We agreed to meet in Banska Bystrica for lunch.  This would have been fine except it turned out there was a big festival in town.  The regular parking areas on Google Maps were inaccessible and we ended up driving around in a lot of traffic.  Eventually though we found free parking at the Europa mall not far from the main square.  We found the others sitting at an outdoor café but left them there to find food (I was hangry by then!).  We found an Italian restaurant just off the square and ordered a pizza.  The crust was pretty good, toppings just so so.  One nice thing about restaurants generally here is that when you order a pitcher of water it often comes with lemon and mint.

After lunch we wandered past some of the craft and food stalls.  It was hard to see the historic buildings with all the booths, a stage, etc., and neither of us felt particularly like touring anyway.

It was another 45 minute drive to Banska Stiavnica.  The main roads here were closed off for Salamander Days, a big two day festival.  Jake and I had a terrible time finding an alternate route to our rental house, Villa Lucia.  At one point Jake had to back down a really narrow road with a stone wall on one side and a metal fence between us and a big drop off.  Another bad turn required a 20point turn to escape.  I started getting out to scout out ahead whether we were on a navigable road or not.  Finally though, we found the rental house around 4pm!  The others showed up an hour later having had no problems arriving there from a grocery store at the edge of town.

The house is beautifully designed, but has a lot of impracticalities.  For instance the kitchen is all high end Smeg appliances, but figuring out how to use the built in Expresso maker required 45 minutes.  We still haven’t figured out how to use the microwave/oven combination.  The owners did send short videos about using the coffee maker, microwave, and directions to the house, but they were only moderately helpful (the directions video would have been great if the main road hadn’t been closed).  The upstairs bedrooms have comfortable mattresses, but are on the floor because of the slanted roof with tippy, very short side tables and no bedside lamps.  The light switches are electronic and have also required some trial and error! There is a big gazebo, with clear plastic sides that can be rolled up, next to the house which was nice to sit in yesterday afternoon.  

It's a steep walk down into town, but scenic.  The Salamander Parade was supposed to start at 8pm, so we walked down around 6:30.  The main square was teeming with people with long lines at most of the food booths.  The parade route was already lined with people.  The others went to a restaurant for some dinner, but Jake and I weren’t particularly hungry and I just got a piece of currant and cheese strudel for my dinner from one of the booths.  We walked down the main parade route and found a slightly elevated spot to watch the parade from.  The first part of the parade was big groups from mining and forestry departments and social clubs, and from some companies.  Many were dressed in uniforms with lots of pins or medals on them.  Some groups had musical accompaniment or were singing songs.  The groups passed by for about 45 minutes, and then there was a long lull.  We were really tired and decided to give up on the rest of the parade.  By the time we got back uphill to our house, we could hear cheers from the crowd and loud music, but we may never know what the second half of the parade brought!

 Saturday was much quieter in town, although there were still performances on the stage and some food and craft booths.  Neal bought a bottle of new wine for us to try.  It’s sold in recycled soda bottles and is cloudy and fizzy.  Sort of like fizzy grape juice with alcohol, as might be expected. 

The town is a UNESCO world heritage site for its mining culture.  Mining dates back to the Celts in the 3rd century BC.  The salamander legend is that a shepherd saw two salamanders,  one covered in gold and the other in silver.  They disappeared under a rock, and when he moved the rock, he found a big lump of gold.  Salamanders are part of the medieval coat of arms of the city.  In the mid 1700s, the town was the third largest in the Hungarian empire due to the wealth generated from mining.  It was a center of innovation in mining technologies and supported perhaps the first technical university. Mining inevitably declined though, and now the town is trying to preserve its beautiful historic buildings.

  We toured around town seeing the old castle (13th and 14th century), the new castle (mid 1500s, built to warn of Turkish invasions), the Church of the Assumption (parts from the 13th C., but more “recent” Baroque to 19th C. interior). We visited the botanical garden, started in mid 1800s on a former school campus.  There are some impressively old trees like two sequoias at the entrance, but the garden doesn’t seem particularly well maintained beyond the entrance.  It is next to the old mining school, which was hosting a gem and mineral show.  

We had lunch outdoors at a restaurant along the main road through town.  They had some interesting dishes including an Azerbaijani walnut and pomegranate dish and a Georgian dish.  I had the chicken schnitzel though, guess I just wasn’t in an adventurous food mood!  We stopped by one of the small grocery/convenience stores in the middle of town and got supplies for a light dinner.  Linda and Judy made some toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches and I cooked some frozen stir fry vegetables with extra peppers from the market.  We also opened the Slovak white wine our host had left for us – a little young, but a decent dry white wine.

Today (Sunday) is rainy, and we are hanging out at the house reading, writing, doing laundry, etc.

High Tatras Part Two

 Wednesday 

I hiked alone today as Jake still has a cold and everyone else wanted to just hang out in town after yesterday’s hike.  I decided on hiking from Tatranska Lesna up a river to a chata (hut), about a 2 hour hike one way and not particularly steep. On the train I realized I had forgotten to bring my water bottle, but I figured I could buy a bottle of water at my stop. However, I was the only one to get off at the Tatranska Lesna station, and there is nowhere to buy anything at that stop, just a school of some sort.  I decided I’d hike to the closer waterfalls and then turn around and come back.  The trail is well marked and goes along a rushing, boulder-filled river.  It seemed as though there had been a lot of downed trees due either to beetles or a storm some years ago or both, but it was still very pretty.  The hike started through a little aspen grove that reminded me of NM hikes.  It was nice to be on a trail with so few people! I saw very few animals though.  A few chickadees and a tiny viviparous lizard. The viviparous lizard often gives birth to live young and is (according to Wikipedia) the northernmost non-marine reptile species.

There are supposed to  be 7 waterfalls, but as there are so many little cascades, it’s hard to know what’s being counted as a waterfall in most instances.  After about an hour I wasn’t feeling dehydrated at all, I’d found a few handfuls of berries, and looking at the map, I was closer to the top of the hike than I expected.  So I continued uphill and got to the large upper fall where the trail forks.  Lots more people up here. From there it’s about 10 minutes walk to one of two huts that have food and drink for sale.  I went to Bilikova chata, which is very close to the top of the ski slope tram.  It seemed closed, but it turned out they were serving food on the lower deck that had a nice view of the mountains. Chatas vary quite a bit in how large and elaborate they are.  Some are hotels and serve hot meals, others really are more like a hut that sell some beverages.  The ones that aren’t accessible by vehicle have supplies carried in by hikers who are paid by the pound. They are also paid to carry out the trash and recycling.

I walked back to Stary Smokovek along the hiking trail that parallels the tram, about 2.7km.  Back in town, I called Jake and he met me at ItaBu Bistro for a very good burger and sweet potato fries.  Later in the afternoon I meandered around town looking for postcards (turns out the tourist info office is the best and pretty much the only place to find them), seeing some of the historic buildings, having coffee and cake at a Cukaren café, and sending a couple postcards from the local post office.

Neal had a good experience with the local dentist.  There’s a very modern office in an apartment building in town and he stopped by first thing in the morning when it opened and got an appointment for early afternoon.  Laundry turns out to be VERY expensive at the only laundromat in town according to Judy.

Thursday

 It was raining in the morning and determinedly cloudy most of the day.  Jake decided to be up and about today though so after breakfast we all got the train to Tatranska Lomnica. I did see one large deer from the train.  We were hoping to be able to do a hike or take the ski lift up, but it was too cloudy for the ski lift, and the Info center didn't have any easy hikes to recommend.  I went in part because I wanted to see the botanical garden, and so we all went there instead!  The garden is a few acres and the highlights are the rock garden areas.  They seem to be all planted with native plants, and most of the areas featured plants that favor dolomitic rock.  I was a little surprised by this as I thought I had read on a sign on our second hike here that in this particular part of the Tatras the rock was mainly acidic granite. Although I downloaded the online audio guide, I couldn't get it to play in English.  The garden also has plants for sale.

We had lunch at a cute little restaurant featuring Slovak food.  A lot of the décor was old skis and ski boots.  The town seemed larger than Stary Smokovek and maybe a little more upscale.  Late afternoon Jake and I walked west on the multiuse trail that links all the towns/resorts together and you realize how close a lot of the train stops are!  We walked west two stops past several more turn of the century villas.  There are also lots of modern buildings.  And a cute little ski school for kids. We had a decent dinner at the Japanese restaurant in town.  Although sushi was on the menu, we stuck with the cooked seafood in ramen bowls and rice bowls.

High Tatras

 We took the train from Bratislava to Poprad on Sunday, about a 4.5 hour ride going from the flatlands to the mountains.  We passed lots of large farm fields with corn, sunflowers, some sorghum, and maybe soybeans or potatoes.  There were also lots of little country homes with small gardens and orchards where city dwellers escape to on the weekends.  Some towns had big factories including Kia and another car manufacturer and wood processing plants.  Ikea owns several wood production companies in Slovakia now.

In Poprad we changed trains to the smaller electric train that goes up along the base of the High Tatras.  It took less than an hour to get to our town of Novy Smokovec, next to the slightly larger Stary Smokovek.  We are staying at the Greenwood Hotel, just about a block uphill from the train station.  It’s a nice hotel with a big spiral staircase in the center.  It seems very family-friendly with kids toys in the hallways and dining area.  You just have to not be concerned about the giant staircase.  The dining room serves breakfast (included) and dinner (must reserve).  We have not reserved dinner because the restaurants of Stary Smokovek are only a short walk away.  Our first night we had dinner at Kolibri, a traditional Slovak style restaurant in an older wood building with walls hung with wood carvings and historic trappings, very cozy and good food.

Our first full day in town we took the cable car from Stary Smokovek up the mountain and then a trail to see a waterfall.  The cable car was packed and runs about every 30 minutes. The trail was also pretty busy.  It is “paved” with rock, making hiking dry but requiring precise foot placement. If you go past the waterfall, you eventually get to a chata, or hut, where they serve food. I turned around at the waterfall though and we all had lunch at the restaurant at the top of the cable car line outdoors on the deck after our hike. They have a cafeteria, and the food seemed pretty good.  How many ski lift restaurants offer roast duck leg on red cabbage with steamed yeast dumplings after all?  When we got back down, Jake and I checked out the local coop grocery and pharmacy (Jake has a cold and wanted some cold meds).  

Around 4pm, it started pouring rain, and my friend Olga Dzurova arrived by car.  I hadn’t seen her since we met at my dad's house in NC in 1992, but I have a  beloved lacework fern she made hanging in my office.  We had a cup of tea at the hotel and then walked over to Stary Smokovek.  It started raining again though, so we ducked into a very good Brasserie for a light dinner.  It was great to catch up with how her life had gone in the last 30 years!  She is a wonderful artist, working mainly in fabric, but also drawing and painting.  If you enjoy wool felting, check out her web site, https://olgadzurova.sk

Tuesday we took the local train to the end of the line,  Strebske Pleso, about 45 minutes away (Pleso means lake).  The original plan of taking the chair lift up and walking down was abandoned after discovering that the lift ticket was pretty pricey and that the walk back down might be rather steep. The hike around Strebske Pleso seemed too civilized, although it might have been just about right.  We did get to see some world class ski jumps though and a stone age burial/cult sacrifice site. We opted instead to walk to Popradske Pleso, a mere 2.5km walk.  Walks are designated by time rather than distance here, and this one was rated as taking the average walker 1:45 minutes. Clearly the average Slovakian walks faster than our group (however, in our group 2 people  have new knees and one has an aching hip). The first km was all uphill on a rocky slope. The second 1.5 km was on more rock “paving” including crossing old rock slides.  We did have a lovely stop for cake that Olga had given me halfway up the hill.   Just past a trail intersection I decided to go ahead more quickly, and just then one of our group fell and he and his wife decided to descend for bandages (the descent took far less time than the ascent fortunately, and you can get bandaids, antiseptic, and a referral to a dentist at the local pharmacy).  There were magnificent views of the mountains along the rest of the trail to the lake.  I passed a lot of large groups of school-age kids, maybe a hike to start off the school year?

The lake itself was a bit of letdown, because it seemed so populated.  There were lots of people there, a hotel, and a food kiosk. So I ordered a bowl of mushroom soup and apple strudel and sat at one of the picnic tables overlooking the small lake.  As I sat there, I realized there were some rather large strollers and people with bicycles. How on earth could they have traversed the rocky path?  Well, of course it turned out there is a paved bike route all the way down to the next train station.  As I was about to leave, Jim called out to me.  He and Linda had just arrived and Linda was off learning about the bike route.  The three of us took the paved path downhill, 2.5km, to the Popradske Pleso train station.

The High Tatras have had some foreign tourists, but it seems as though most people vacationing here are Slovak.  Granted, my distinction among eastern-European languages is practically non-existent.  Hotel and restaurant staff generally speak some English as do train ticket sellers and tourist-office staff.  Often people seem to speak very little English though, or maybe they are reluctant to speak English.  I have been very impressed by the helpfulness of translation apps.  You can now point your app at a sign and translate the words, have it listen to spoken words and give you a translation, or type in what you want to say in English and stumble through pronunciation in Slovak.

The forests at this elevation are mostly spruce and larch.  There are quite a few wildflowers.  This time of year, it has mostly been fireweed, a beautiful blue gentian called willow gentian, yarrow, and purple lettuce.  There are some raspberries, lingonberries and other blueberry relatives with fruits now too.  I’ve seen a few mushrooms, and yesterday’s rains may bring out more.   I think there have been too many people on the trails to see many animals or birds.   Once you find a trailhead, the trails are well-signed.

Budapest to Bratislava

 On this trip, we are meeting friends from Santa Fe in Budapest and Bratislava for a trip in Slovakia.  We meet Jim and Linda in Budapest and then the four of us travel to Bratislava to meet up with Neal and Judy.  Neal and Judy spent 2 ½ years in the Peace Corps in Slovakia 25 years ago.

After 20+ hours of travel - Santa Fe to DFW, DFW to Heathrow, Heathrow to Budapest, taxi to hotel, one of our travel companions, Jim, was waiting for us in the hotel lobby.  The only delay was on the Santa Fe to DFW flight because thunderstorms shut down DFW.  We arrived at DFW  with 30 minutes to spare before boarding and only a 20 minute walk to our gate.  Although we had been warned about how nightmarish Heathrow can be, we didn't have any trouble transiting to our Budapest flight.  I think it's a new thing that you don't have to go through security at Heathrow on some flights.  

Budapest started out as two cities, hilly Buda where the nobility lived, and flat Pest where everyone else lived (or at least that is my view as a tourist who has only seen a little of each side!).  We stayed at the Eurostars Danube hotel in the old Jewish quarter of Budapest (on the Pest side), a great location a few blocks from the Danube.  The hotel was on a nice quiet dead end street but with lots of cafes and restaurants just up the street.  The best part was a shower with great water pressure and lots of hot water!  Jim and Linda had picked out a restaurant online, but it had a waiting line and we went instead to a whole row of restaurants and picked one pretty much at random.  It had traditional Hungarian food.  Not being very hungry I ordered a salad with grilled camembert.  A whole camembert is a lot of cheese.  Jake's dish of slices of goose liver was very tasty.  The local draft beer was pretty mediocre.

Our first day in town we got off to a late start after a leisurely breakfast at a brunch place nearby.  We wanted to try bagels, but they weren't as flavorful as New York bagels. Good strong coffee though.  We all got tickets for the CityBus hop on hop off tour as it seemed like it would be a lot of walking to see everything.  We got off at City Park which holds a “fake” castle, built with temporary materials for a World's Fair, but rebuilt with bricks and stone after the public found it very popular.  The park also houses the famous Szechenyi thermal baths.  We peeked through the window at the outside pools, probably a great way to spend a relaxing day!

Our next hop off was on the Buda side of the river to see the Castle complex.  It was undergoing a lot of construction, but it was interesting to see the relatively plain castle, but beautiful Matthias church.  Apparently an earlier church on the same site was founded by St. Stephen in 1015, the first King of Hungary who christianized the Magyars. The church was actually named after a later King, King Matthias Corvinus who remodeled and expanded the church in the 15th c.  

From there, we walked over the Chain Bridge back to the Pest side of the river and over to our hotel for a rest.  That evening, Jake had made a reservation at Stand25, a restaurant recommended in the NYT 36 Hours in Budapest.  It was a lovely place on the Buda side of the river.  We took an Uber there.  The driver spoke only a little English, but had a Chinese made instant translator that worked pretty well.  He would talk into it and what he said was translated into English and spoken through his phone.  He was driving a rented plug in hybrid car.  He had ordered an electric car, but realized he had no way of plugging it in since he lives on the 5th floor of a highrise apartment building.  He doesn't have a balcony that he can hang solar panels off of either.  Apparently public chargers are more expensive than buying gas. 

The meal was Hungarian, but very refined.  I had a perfectly cooked pike filet with a green pepper sauce for instance and a chilled tomato soup with watermelon.  The server recommended a local white wine (a furmint, dry) that was quite good. Jake had a very nice duck breast dish.

Day 3 we went first to two big market halls after a croissant at the nearby French cafe. It was a pleasant walk past mostly turn of the century or earlier buildings with some modern ones mixed in. The first market, Rakoczi, had very few stalls open. We walked back down towards the river to the much livelier Central Market.  This market is rather touristy but does have stalls selling meats, cheeses, and vegetables.  There are also a lot of stalls selling paprika, Unikam (a famous liqueur), and other Hungarian foods.  We took a pastry break at the nearby Anna Cafe with Dobos torte and kifli, a crescent-shape pastry filled with walnuts in this case.   I went back to the market to check out the craft stalls on the second floor but they were filled with mostly mass-produced kitschy things.  

In the afternoon, Jake and I did the Danube boat tour that came with our City Bus tour.  It was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but there was no narration of what we were seeing.  It gave a great view of the magnificent parliament building.  Overall, the narration on the City Bus wasn't great either and it might have been better to just learn the local tram system.  We had dinner at the Central Cafe, a refurbished grand Cafe with a pianist and cello player serenading us.  The woman pianist looked profoundly unhappy, but the cellist smiled and nodded when he caught a diner’s eye. We finished our meal with a sampling of three desserts since we were at a famous Cafe!

Some things that struck us about Budapest - there seemed to be almost no police presence and very few if any panhandlers or homeless.  Have they been driven out as seems to be happening in DC?   Do they have the homeless problem taken care of?  The city was teeming with tourists from all over and the city looked pretty good, but we only saw the touristy part.  I read a fascinating book over the last week called Ballad of the Whiskey Robber by Julian Rubinstein about Atilla Ambrus, a Transylvanian Hungarian who became Budapest’s most famous bank robber in the 1990s.  The book covers the 1980s - early 2000s, the post-Communist, pre-Orban era, and I felt like it provided some insight into the current state of Hungary and Budapest.  Look him up, his life makes for a  really great story. The first line of the book is, “Hungary has always  been unlucky”.

Friday morning we  set off for the train station to catch a train to Bratislava.  We had planned to catch an 11am train, but due to construction around the hotel and set up for a concert we missed the taxi the hotel had called and arrived too late at the station.  We hadn't gotten tickets yet though and there was another train at 11:30 that we caught.  The train ride is about 2:25 minutes.

Our friends Neal and Judy met us at the station in Bratislava.  We took a taxi to our hotel in the historic part of town, Hotel Skiavitz.  It's a very nice hotel, but our room faced the street.  It's a very loud, very late crowd out there on weekend nights!  Lots of tourists and young people in groups (maybe bachelor and Bachelorette parties?).  We had a very early dinner outside at a restaurant on the tree-lined,  shady Josonskono street.  Afterwards, Neal wanted to revisit an Irish Pub that held fond memories of Peace Corps gatherings.  Jake is suffering from a head cold, so he went to bed. Neal, Jim and I went and had a small beer and watched the people go by.  It was still only 7pm when we left, so I left the guys at the hotel and took a stroll around the old part of town again. 

Saturday morning we walked over to the large market building and enjoyed buying some snacks for our Sunday train trip - good bread, cheeses, plum jam, nuts and cookies.  There was a huge festival along the leafy street with craft demonstrations, vendor booths, and performances by local folk singers and musicians.  Lots of people were dressed in their area's traditional dress.  We saw lace makers, woodworkers, ceramics, bell making, and basket making. I was also pleased to try sea buckthorn sorbet at a gelato stand.  Sea buckthorn is an invasive plant I've written about, but never tried.  It was a wonderfully tart sorbet with a taste a little like orange and mango.

In the afternoon, we all found the laundromat and a very helpful clerk helped us figure out the settings for the washer.  

Late afternoon, Jake and I took a walk up the hill to the reconstructed Bratislava castle and admired the views over the city.  To one side was a huge area of wind turbines in the distance, and on the other side a fossil fuel energy production facility.  On the other side of the river were many of the Soviet-era panaloki buildings (cement high rises).

We all met to find a place for dinner at 7pm.  We walked over to the Flagship restaurant.  Supposedly the second largest restaurant in Europe, it felt like a German beer hall.  It was in a former monastery turned theatre, then restaurant.  They brew their own beer on the lower floors and the restaurant is on the second floor.  The food was fairly average although abundant,  but it was a fun experience.  It also features an enormous ceramic creche with hundreds of figures.