I probably got a little carried away with posting a thousand pictures from France. That was only day ONE of my adventure. But, I mean, when's the next time I'm going to be in Paris?
So, I was overjoyed when I saw Sarah and her manager person Adam at the Budapest airport (about a 3-4 hour drive away from Bekescsaba where Sarah lives). My first impression of Hungary: fog. Supposedly it's not always that foggy, but the only thing I could see were the signs that said things like"kijárat" and "Hódmezővásárhely". I got pretty good at my Hungarian pronunciation by the end of the trip, but here's some of the cool things Sarah and I did together in Hungary:
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| This is the castle/mansion we biked to. The day before Christmas eve the weather was beautiful! It was just like old times biking to the baptism monument in Broeksterwoude (in the Netherlands). Sarah is a way faster biker than I am, but I also found out that it was partly because her classy personalized volleyball team bike rides a lot better than the second hand one they had for me (but I did not complain because it just felt so awesome to be back on a European bike). Sarah told me to get on top of this bird feeder but it seemed a bit too precarious. |
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| They decorate all the Christmas trees with pieces of chocolate. It's awesome because then you can just eat the decorations when Christmas is over. So... the door was open of the side building of the mansion, and we assumed that meant we could just walk in. It was freezing inside and we saw this homely Christmas tree and wandered around the whole place until we got a bit creeped out by the hole in the wall and the weird noises. But. Then we saw this man who supposedly (I didn't understand a lick of it) said we could get a tour of it for like 900 forints or something. We had to put on special shoe covers before we walked around. I'm sure he was telling us really fascinating cultural things about this mansion, but honestly, our free tour of the side building was probably more interesting. |
No one stole our bikes and we made it back to Bekescsaba without too much trouble.
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| We met up with our cool friend Richie to watch the new star wars movie (in Hungarian). I might have to watch it again so I'll be able to understand more of the jokes but I think I got the main storyline. |
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| They didn't have any Star Wars posters that we could take our picture in front of but that was basically the only disappointment of the night. |
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| Sarah took me to the Piac (the marketplace) where we bought wrapping paper, these yummy cherry and cheese strudel things and more cookies, cakes and pastries than you would believe. It was all very yummy. |
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| This is langos, deep fried scone things that we also bought at the market. One of them had goat cheese in the middle and the other had sausage and pretty much everything you could imagine in it. It was so yummy but I felt like I never wanted to eat again after. |
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| This is the kolbasz (sausage) we bought from the market in its intestine wrapping. Apparently Bekescsaba is world-renowned for it's sausage. I also thought it was pretty good but it was a while before I could try it after I'd eaten all that Langos. |
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| This is the big church in the town square where they held midnight mass. I've never been to midnight mass before and it was kind of a cool experience (bucket list: go to midnight mass in a language I understand). |
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| On Sunday afternoon we took a nice walk around the city. This is one of the biggest churches of it's kind (Evangelist?) |
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| I think we're standing on a mound where thousands of people who died from cholera were buried. |
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| Here we debuted our career as street performers. We didn't make a lot of money, but I'm pretty sure all the people in the town square were very happy with our lovely songs. |
Ok. So here's where the story gets a little crazy. As I mentioned before, Sarah plays volleyball all over Europe, and it just so happened that she had a tournament in Zagreb, Croatia from Monday to Wednesday. The plan was that I would either stay at Sarah's place for two days in Bekescsaba or be able to ride the bus down with the team. I haven't seen her play in ages, and I've never been to Zagreb before so I opted for that option.
Unfortunately, due to some difficulties, I was unable to get on the bus with the team. I was stranded. In Bekescsaba. Where no one speaks English. And the wifi at Sarah's place didn't work. After throwing myself a pity party, I went to the nearest place I knew with wifi (the church) and contacted Richie. I felt a lot better after eating at the Csaba burger and traveling to a castle in Gyula with some of Richie's friends, a recently returned missionary and her parents from Lehi, Utah.
For a visual representation of this next part go to: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/B%C3%A9k%C3%A9scsaba,+Hungary/Szeged,+Hungary/P%C3%A9cs,+Hungary/Zagreb,+Croatia/@45.9261708,14.6564527,6.37z/data=!4m26!4m25!1m5!1m1!1s0x47442b94eb71f6fb:0x400c4290c1e11c0!2m2!1d21.0877309!2d46.6735939!1m5!1m1!1s0x474487e22bcce54b:0x400c4290c1e1190!2m2!1d20.1414253!2d46.2530102!1m5!1m1!1s0x4742b111ea3252e3:0x400c4290c1e1200!2m2!1d18.232266!2d46.0727345!1m5!1m1!1s0x4765d692c902cc39:0x3a45249628fbc28a!2m2!1d15.981919!2d45.8150108!3e0
Anyway. This returned sister missionary and her parents were some of the most amazing people I've met. I feel like meeting them was probably an answer to all my grandma's prayers. It turns out that the next day they were planning on traveling to Pecs, which is very close to the Croatia border. I looked it up and found that trains ride from Pecs to Zagreb every 2 or so hours so figuring that if we arrived in Pecs about 4, I could catch a train to Zagreb and be there before midnight, I reserved a spot in a hostel. I asked them if I could get a ride since my train alternative for getting to Zagreb had me leaving at about two in the morning and arriving at around the same time. It was such a pleasant ride down with them. We went through a Hungarian car wash (if you ever want to do that plan about and hour), and it wasn't even too foggy. Five hours together in a car can make you pretty close to a person, so instead of just dropping me off at the train station in Pecs, they came in to make sure I caught my train. It's a good thing too, because the ticket lady informed me that there were no trains riding from Hungary to Croatia. The bus station people were a little more helpful, informing me that although no busses rode from Pecs to Croatia, I could take a bus back to Szeged and then go through Serbia on my way to Zagreb. However the next bus to Szeged didn't come until the morning. My new friends suggested I come with them to the ward party while I figured out what I would do.
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| No one in the ward could understand why I was there. At first they thought I was the returned missionary's sister, but once they found out that I had met them only yesterday, we had to explain so many times who I was and what I was doing there. Still, they were so welcoming and kind, and Pecs is such a beautiful city, and their friend David was so awesome taking us around the whole city as we searched for the best pizza place that I couldn't help loving this place that I ended up in accidentally. |
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While I was at the ward party, I ended up getting a facebook message from some Bekescsaba fan named Attila saying that he could give me a ride to Zagreb from Budapest. That was my best offer yet. The next morning, I caught a train to Budapest at 6, got there at 9, met Attila at 10, got a tour of Budapest for the next hour while we picked up some other fans, and then drove for five or so more hours to get to Zagreb.
Attila and the Bekescsaba fans were awesome. Every time I would just about fall asleep on the car, Attila would point out some awesome city or geological feature. When they got drunk, they spoke even more English! |
I got to watch the last tournament game. Bekescsaba won and my sister even got the winning point. Plus, I got to ride back to Bekescscaba with the team!
We were kind of tired New Year's Eve because our bus didn't make it back to Bekescsaba until 5:30 in the morning (we ended up driving through Budapest). But it was my last day in Europe and we told Richie we would go to Budapest for New Year's eve with him.
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This is a cool lizard that we saw.
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| Awesome church on castle hill. |
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No judging, but we ended up eating Mexican food in Budapest for lunch. It's a little place called Gringos burritos. Richie really wanted to eat there, and I really wanted to eat. It wasn't bad, but Mexican food isn't really that good on that side of the planet I think.
It was freezing cold and we almost froze to death waiting for a bus that we mistimed to get me back to the airport. Fortunately, this guy saw Sarah's volleyball jacket and gave us hot chocolate for free just cause of that:)
In conclusion, it was awesome. I'm so lucky. I'm also ready to stay put for a little while. But just a little while. #seeyalaterseeya. #nextweekaustin. #thenbrazil
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