Our train journey into Hungary was supposed to take 10 hours, but about an hour from Budapest we sat idle on the tracks. No one could tell us anything, so all we could figure was that it was broken down. We sat there for three hours turning our journey into a grueling 13 hours. It was a tough day to say the least, and was the longest travel day we have had yet in our year of travel. I had been to Budapest before on prior trip, and it was one of my favorite cities. We had a nice room for 4 nights right in the downtown area. The first day there, we made our way to the Central Market where we perused the gifts, food stalls, and aromas of the place. In the afternoon, we took a walking tour of the city for 3 hours, and got a good glimpse of our surroundings and obtained some history. The highlights of the sites were: the Danube River, Matthias Church, St. Stephen’s Basilica, House of Terror Museum, Castle Hill, Parliament Building, Heroes Square, and the Sechenzyi Baths. During our second day, we ate some really good Langos, which is deep fried pizza dough covered sour cream and lots of toppings. It was a heart attack waiting to happen. We then spent about 4 hours at one of the famous thermal baths, Sechenzyi Baths. Here, they have about 25 different thermal pools at different temperatures. After wrinkling up, we made our way back to our hotel. That same night, we went out to one of the ruin bars in town. During the post-communist era, Budapest accumulated many abandoned buildings. In return, they converted these buildings into bars in one central district, the Jewish District.

We also learned some fun facts while touring Budapest. They are:

1. A Hungarian invented the ball-point pen
2. A Hungarian sculptor invented the Rubik’s Cube
3. Hungarian is one of the top 3 toughest languages to learn in the world.
4. “Thank you” in Hungary actually means “keep the change.” So if you give a waiter a large note and say thank you, don’t expect anything back. They get very upset if you change your mind.
5. Yoda in Star Wars speaks in Hungarian sentence structure.
6. The aliens from the movie Blade Runner actually speak in Hungarian.

After leaving Budapest, we took a bus to the small town of Veszprem. This town is a small village located next to the even smaller town of Herend. The main reason for this stop was to visit the Herend Porcelain factory. Herend is a one street town, and everyone in the town works at the factory. We took a small mini bus to the factory one morning, and signed in. We were the only ones there, and got our own private tour. We saw how they made all of the pieces, which included sculpting and painting. It is very intense work, and they spend countless hours on each piece. We also visited the museum where there was a school group of young kids. They were running all over the place, and I don’t know whose bright idea it was to bring them to the most expensive china shop in the world. Morgan attended a porcelain rose making workshop, and we got free coffee and tea in the café. Here, they served us on their Queen Victoria pattern. We spent the last part of the day in their huge store buying said china. We walked in, and the staff dressed in black suits gave us the look that said “these people are not going to buy anything.” Once we started pulling china off the shelves, spitting out product numbers for things we wanted located, and decided to purchase, their demeanor changed entirely. We still looked like back packers buying hundreds of dollars of china. We kind of threw them for a loop, and they looked shocked. We got what we were there for, and headed back to Veszprem.  Morgan calls it her “Pretty Woman” moment.

In Veszprem we had a homestay with a nice, older gentleman. He was very kind, and drove us all around town wherever we needed to go in his Mercedes. We felt like we had our own chauffeur, which was awesome since it was raining. He set the table for our breakfast every morning, and was very inquisitive about where we were from. He tried to improve his English by talking with us, and looked up what there was to do in Tennessee. The second day, he had to make a trip to Lake Balaton. He let us ride with him, and we got to see the largest lake in Europe and visit the town of Tihany. We had a room upstairs at his house, and enjoyed our two days there very much. We then took a train to the town of Eger where we spent three nights.

Eger was a nice town located northeast of Budapest, and we spent most of our time visiting the local wineries in the valley. There were about 50 cellars, and we visited many of them. They are all dug out of a hillside, and are literally caves where they store the wine. They offered free tastings, and then you could purchase by the glass or by the liter. We were buying glasses of wine for $1, and bought a 2 liter jug on the way out for about $10. Overall, it was a great experience. Once leaving Eger, we had to go back to Budapest to fly to Milan. We spent two more nights here, and went shopping for family back home. We were very tired at this point, and had already checked out of our travel mode. We had done everything that we wanted to in Hungary, and we were just preparing ourselves to go home. We kept to ourselves in our room most of the time, and created huge lists and spreadsheets of all we had to accomplish when we got back. We became quite anti- social. We ate local goulash and drank coffee on our last day, and then caught a plane back to Milan. We actually flew into Bergamo, and stayed one night there. It was a really nice town in the mountains about an hour from Milan. Lucky for us, the day we tried to take the train to Milan from Bergamo, the railway workers were on strike.  Almost all the trains were cancelled. We finally caught a packed train to Milan, and we later found on Italy’s rail website that they have a list of scheduled strikes year round.  These strikes are scheduled months in advance. How nice of them to let us know when they will walk off the job.

We checked into our nice B and B in Milan run by a Chinese family… odd. It was a weird set up, but it was clean and quiet. There was a shared bathroom, and in the room next to it, a creepy man staying with his mom. Fortunately, they had twin beds, but always gave us weird looks because they would lay in bed with the door open and watch us walk through the hallways. The next day, we took a train to Lake Como, and spent the afternoon walking around the lake and just taking in the sites. We took a picnic lunch, and ate it in one of local parks. It was in a big yellow grocery bag, and we got all sorts of looks and snickers. I guess most locals just eat out, and don’t carry around large bags of food. I promptly threw my bag away when we were done. We ended the day at a local café. I ordered a large coffee, and Morgan ordered a latte. I got a shot glass of coffee, and Morgan received a glass of warm milk. I guess next time we will make sure to order “café” latte. They literally meant just milk on the menu.

The Milan airport is yet again about 50 miles from the center of the city, so on our last full day, we took a train to the airport. Tonight we have accommodation about 5 km from the terminal. Tomorrow, we catch a 0900 flight back to the US. We are beyond blessed to have been able to travel Europe for 3.5 months, and cannot wait to see everyone at home. We have lots of stories and plans for the next two months. I will write another blog post recapping our trips, and finalizing this grand adventure that we have been on. I will also post our favorites from our entire trip, a finalized map, and numbers such as how many plane and bus rides we have taken. I have kept meticulous notes. This will take some time!

See you all soon!

Cheers,

David and Morgan