Oh Budapest, how I loved you

  The latest and greatest and weirdest. The currency in Budapest is the Hungarian Forint (HUF). It's a Denar in the Republic of Macedonia. I'm so glad I gave up spending money. It's easy to do when I need to buy so little, and don't want to do all those calculations with multiple currencies. After almost 9 months we still only have 2 suitcases each. My souvenirs for each country is a coin from there. Except I missed Nicaragua. But I have a coin purse with one coin from Canada, the U.S. Costa Rica, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, and now Macedonia (not to be mistaken for the other Macedonia in near-by Greece). One day I will put them all in a frame on the wall.

  Each place we go is unique. The apartment in Budapest looked fairly normal in most respects. That apartment had 2 bathrooms. One room just for the toilet, which makes sense to me. I never liked the idea that the toilet is usually a few inches from the bathtub. But that room was claustrophobic. I could reach out and touch every wall. A few mirrors would go a long way. I could stand up from the pot and risk 2 things, banging my head into a shelf and bumping it into a little hook they put in the wall next to the teeny sink in there (which I did, by the way – trying to avoid hitting my head on the shelf). It had a toilet with the tank above it on the wall. To flush the toilet I had to reach up and pull down a handle on a cord hanging down.

  The bathtub and bigger sink were in a separate room with the washing machine. Yay it had a mirror and a big window with lots of natural light. It was roomy in there, except there was a clothes drying rack hanging from the ceiling. It was also special because the faucet was so long and tall. It had to be, it went between the tub and the sink. Meaning that one way it was normal for the sink, and then I twist it and it’s now over the tub and fills the tub. My first bath since… the first week of April. I didn’t take a second bath because I was too tired to clean the tub. It was pretty gross after we washed some clothes. The washer drains into the tub. And there was all kinds of dark contaminated looking stuff coming out of the hose from the washer to the tub. Just ew.

  But it was an okay place to crash for 4 nights, other than that. We were hardly ever there once we figured out the tram/bus system. The underground train was hard for me. I haven’t yet mastered the skill of being so close to other people and not staring at them. At least above ground I could stare at the window. In a tunnel all I could do is figure out where not to stare. Then I kind of got the part where I could stare at a reflection of someone in a window. Much less intrusive. We stayed was a pretty and quiet street. Most of the apartments looked like extra large homes. They were 3-4 stories tall and surrounded by 3-4 story tall trees. I could live in Budapest. It took us an hour to get to the scenic part, but time was all we had! They had dogs at the mall, people who needed to exercise more (Poland had more slim and well dressed people everywhere).

  Even something as simple as going to a big fruit market can be tricky. First of all, I don’t even like olives if they aren’t black ones from a can in North America. So I am sidetracked by the 16 bins of olives of black, brown and green. They must grow a lot of olives here. I try to imagine how much I wouldn’t like eating any of them. And what it would take to get me to even try. Then I have to carry all the food home, so I can’t buy heavy fruit. Then I have such limited communication tools. I pointed to the cherries, gave the guy a 1,000 HUF and hoped for the best. I was eating cherries for over 2 days.

  I liked Budapest because Ron smiled all the time. Was it the perfect weather? Was it the wonderful scenery? Was it the small prices for everything? Was it the outstanding architecture? Was it the big blue sky that seems to go on forever? Was it the incredible thermal mineral bath health spa that soaked in for 2 days in a row? Was it the million statues all over the city, all begging for you to stare at them? Was it the mighty Danube river? It’s the longest non-Russian river in Europe, going from the Germany to the Black Sea in Ukraine. It’s also a 20^th century graveyard for powerful warships. We should go back the end of June – they say the Germans scuttled hundreds of ships to avoid being captured by the Soviet Union in 1944. And you can see them when the water levels drop in the summer.

  Then as we left beautiful Budapest we drove to the airport along a parade of flowers by the side of the road. Red poppies, 3 different shades and shapes of yellow flowers, and these 3 foot tall purple flowering bushes that had no leaves, just flowers. They were all ‘weeds’ too. In the morning light they were wonderful. I’m so thankful we decided to stay there for 5 days instead of a 3 hour layover.