Bye Romania and Hungary

M Romania..

Well we stayed in Medias, Romania until Nov. 26. Jes worked all that week on renos/building an old existing house in the small village of Lunca. He really enjoyed the company of the 3 or 4 guys he was working with. Every morning before leaving they did a small bible study, and while working they would sing/whistle worship songs. Jesse had a lot of fun joking around with them and they did well communicating despite only one Romanian knowing English.

I did all sorts of odd jobs throughout the week. Some mornings I had no clue what the day held, but there was always something! I helped prepare for christmas crafts with the kids, went out to a village and helped to run street kids outreach programs, one day I sorted a huge clothing donation with our good friend/roommate Monica, then the next day after it had been picked over we resorted it into boxes. Then, joined by a fellow canadian, Grandma Noreen - who I know from volunteering at Kids Kottage, we organized and counted 987 pairs of winter boots. Wow what an amazing donation! CAIRD, the organization we were volunteering with, will be going into Moldova and delivering 650 of the boots there. The rest to Romanias.

Romania was really like a retreat for us even though we were volunteering. We just met so many really awesome people and were really encouraged by the experience. We stayed an extra day as Jes got pretty sick with a stomache bug, but we were very thankful it happened when it did and not in some 16 bed hostel.

Our next stop.. Budapest.


Budapest

J So we left Romania with big hugs and our friend Moni (Monica) escorted us to the train station (knowing our track record for missing trains thus far) but we activated our EuRail pass and started the 9 hour train ride.. it seemed long as we stopped for some time at the Border, but no problems with getting into Hungary, and at long last we arrived in Budapest.

That first night, after checking into our very cool hostel called the Loft, which yes, is a Loft.. we went for a walk. No toques, and for some reason I wore only 1 of my jackets.. one word.. BBBBRRRRRR. As we stood between Buda and Pest (yes at one time they were two seperate cities divided by the Danube river) we marveled at the beautiful city and the many bridges connecting the two halfs. Oh and we froze. So the next morning, we bought toques and stopped by the very cool open air market. It's not a heated building basically and there are dozens of stands where people sell fresh fruit, meats, and snacks (mmm strudel).

We spent the afternoon checking out the Jewish Muesum and Synagogue, and from there to the House of Terror, which is a building which was used during WWII by the Nazis and afterward by the Arrow Cross government and finally the Soviets. It now is home to a very cool, large, interactive and thorough Museum about life during those years. Our only regret was only arriving an hour and a half before it closed so we were a bit rushed.

We also stopped at the Opera house, which was beautiful, but we decided to pass on the tour which was about 14 CDN as we pondered going to our first Opera!

Back at our hostel we met some cool people, the feel of the little hostel (a total of 18 beds) made for a cozy and intimate feel, our first night we were treated to authentic Hungarian grub, oh and they had cool movies going all the time. We watched Transformers and Anchor Man.

The next day we made our way to the Castle Hill district in Buda, we saw Matthias Church (which had a neat mini museum inside) and beside it the Fisherman's Bastion. If we hadn't mentioned it to this point, the one big disadvantage of traveling at this time in the season, is that almost every church or castle you get excited about visiting.. is under construction. I'm sure my friend Searle the scaffold man is going to love some of the pictures we took. lol

We also toured the parliment buildings from the outside, and got held up for half an hour as diplomats and fancy pants people arrived in tour buses, apparently they needed a big crowd of angry tourists behind a police line to make it look offical. They explained in perfect Hungarian why they felt the need to prevent us from getting back to our bus stop, of course the thing about Hungarian is we had no idea what any of it meant, which made for an interesting time in Hungary. lol

M Later we went to one of Budapests famous baths (they do wear bathing suits in these ones). There were 3 outdoor pools. The first pool was warm, not hot, but had many neat features such as jets that bubbled up and made it look like it was boiling. In the middle there are jets that creat a strong current, and you jump in and spin around like a washing machine. It may sound weird but it is tonnes of fun. The second pool is a cold pool for lane swimming. The last was the best it was a huge hot tub with water pouring out of statues so hard it made for an awesome massage.

After the pools we walked around and saw a park with people skating, but the skate rental shop was closed so we could not join in. We had to change hostels the next day as we decided to stay an extra day and ours was full. Luckly we found one without trouble.

We went to the Holocost museum. It was very sobering and informative. That evening we pretended like we were not backpackers and dressed up as best we could and went to see an opera in one of Europes most famous opera houses. It was beautiful inside. The opera was good as well. We saw Madamme Butterfly. Apperently all opera´s are in their origional language which we knew going in, so it was in Italian. But there is a screen above the stage with subtitles in Hungarian. So we missed out on the exact plot, but we got the basics. From what I could gather it is almost the exact same story as Miss Saigon, only the woman is from Japan not Vietnam. They had two intermissions with tasty little treats and beverages (which were suprisingly affordable). Oh and the music from the orchestra was wonderful.

On our last day in Budapest we went up to Hero´s Square and walked around a castle, we also went back to the market for more of these tasty little oranges and struddles. We did some window shopping down the main pedestrian street, then headed to the train station.
Our next destination.. Vienna, Austria.

We arrived in Vienna last night. We had tried booking a hostel, but everywhere was full, so we decided to use our gift certificates for Best Western, it wasn't exactly cheap, but what a comfortable bed!!! Included was this awesome breakfast buffet too. After settling in we wandered the streets trying to find an affordable place to eat. A little off the beaten track we found it, Schnitzelhaus! (Mmmm schnitzel)

Today we moved over to our hostel where we will be for the next 3 nights. We walked around downtown and saw St. Stephens Cathedral, this huge church with catacombs in the basement. We took the tour of the catacombs and saw huge underground rooms full of bones of people, some of which had died during the black death (plague).

We then wandered the streets and stumbled upon the palace. Beautiful. Then wandering a bit more we found our first christmas market of the season. It was really neat, but everything was way over priced, we did enjoy some hot wine, a wild boar sandwich, chirstmas music and holiday decorations.

We hope all our faithful blog readers are doing well. Bye for now.