Budapest
Trip Start
May 07, 2005
1
50
117
Trip End
Ongoing
Budapest,
Hungary
Sunday, October 16, 2005
This was the first host that had had children. It was nice. Different and good. Her younger daughter didn't speak English but liked us pretty well. Mostly she decided that sense she couldn't understand us she would mostly ignore us. At one point she had the bright idea that even though we couldn't speak Hungarian we might be able to read Hungarian. The older daughter understood a little bit of English and was pretty happy to speak it.
Sadly we only spent two nights in such a marvelous town
Crosswalk
. During our full day there we forgot our camera and had to buy a disposable one. It will be a while before we develop it because now (as I am sitting in Paris) they want $25 to develop it. We spent the afternoon exploring Castle Hill and learning about some of the history. Hungary has a fascinating history with the Hapsburg empire, Austria, and Russia. Lots of old buildings. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 Budapest was fairly quick to adapt to the new market economy. This is because 1) Hungary had the most liberties of all of the soviet countries, and 2) because they had changed rulers so many times that they learned to be adaptabale.
That night Judit took us to a civic center where they taught traditional dance. I stuck to my policy of only dancing when I plan to leave the country but everybody was a newbie so I didn't feel too foolish.
Judit was a wonderful person with lots of experiences. She has travelled all over the place. She has a degree in computer science but never had a job with computers. Instead she is a psychologist and a language teacher. She once taught Hungarian to the president of Auchan (a huge French supermarket chain, which strangely we can't find in France). She felt it odd that the president of Auchan didn't recognize the symbol for the British pound.
Judit had two cats, Socks and Crookshanks. At first we thought they were both wonderful but later decided that one was less than wonderful after spraying Kim's backpack. We were afraid it was a tragedy but the smell completely rinsed out. I think Judit was embarassed.
She also has two turtles that weren't very social. I stepped on one of them but not too hard. One of them tried to eat cat food and almost fell into the food dish.
