Budapest (part one of our trip)

I am going to go have to go back to my own journal to remember some of the stuff we did in these places as it seems like forever since we were there only 3 weeks ago. I guess when you go to nine countries in three weeks, it is not completely embarrassing to forget exactly what we did at the beginning of our trip.

We started by leaving from Prague on a bus for Budapest at 4 on Friday afternoon. Our first tense moment of our trip came about 1 and a half minutes into it as mom all of the sudden couldn't find our bus tickets that she had just been holding minutes before. After a couple anxious minutes mom returned to the bathroom (of course having to pay for the second time) to find that she had set them down in there. Our bus was very comfortable and we rode it for the 8 hours or so and arrived in Budapest around Midnight. Peter Gal was there to pick us up at the train station and we went back to he and his wife Erika's house for the night.

We left Saturday morning as Peter wanted to take us to a Vineyard that a Brother from one of the churches in Hungary owned. It was a really neat experience as we got to try many different kinds of wines, even the fresh made stuff. It was also really neat because we were there during their two week harvesting of the grapes so we were able to see the actual making of the wine.



We made it back to Budapest in time to here the Orchestra practice in Peter and Erika's upstairs room that they have specially for Orchestra. They were all very talented and we got listen to an hour or maybe a little more. After their practice, we went to singing at church and there met Edwin Szalai where Brady and I stayed for the night. He is actually from Breidenbach, Germany but his sister lives in Budapest and a group of guys from Hungary along with us stayed there with him. Before going to his sisters for bed, however, we went to the Prague Castle District with the young kids from Budapest and had a singing which both sounded beautiful and we had a beautiful view of Budapest!





We had a wonderful Sunday in church in Budapest. While the Sermons are in Hungarian, of which I pick up absolutely nothing, they have someone that translates very well into English so that we could hear the message.

On Monday, Dad, Mom, Brady, and I spent the morning touring the Hungarian Parliament Building and walking around the Castle District. It offers one of my favorite views of Budapest.





We spent the rest of Monday seeing Louie Pede's (sp?) electrical/hardware/lamp business and also going to Peter Gal's printing shop again. Louie and his daughter Arranka then took us to a few places around Budapest to show us around and also took us to the Hungarian/Slovakian border to a massive cathedral that I think gets recognition in Vatican City.



We ate so much excellent food over the weekend. Each meal after about my 3rd serving of each thing, I tell myself that I am full, but I can't hardly stop eating :).



We left Budapest on early Tuesday morning heading toward to Vienna, Munich, and eventually to Switzerland, but I'll let Brady take the next stretch!