Budapest exploring pics

The walking tour was good, but so hot because it starts at 10:30, and is about 3 hours long. I vote midnight tour for the next one. If only.

One of the coolest things I learned this time was Hungarians are technically from Asia before mixing with other cultures (after wars had to bring in new population) so that's one of the reasons their language is so different than the areas around it. George Lucas actually used Yoda's lines in Hungarian. He wrote them in English, translated them to Hungarian, and then back to English. That is why it sounds so weird. :) so Hungarian is the Jedi language.

Anyway here are some sightings from our explorations. We did look around after the tour as well.

Chain bridge from a hill on the Buda side.

Last time I was in Budapest this was our ride, Viking River Cruises...so not thinking about how awesome it was...and with no heavy backpack...during the cool Christmastime.....

As weird as this is to say...I'm pretty sure I've seen this before.

A far-away view of one of my favorite buildings I've ever seen. It's the third largest Parliament building in the world. I think it's London, Brazil, and then this one.

Tessa tends to find cool graffiti.

:)

Yellow watermelon. What.

This is possibly the best and cheapest ice cream I've ever had. Tessa got: dark chocolate, hazelnut and vanilla and I got: peach, pear, and hazelnut. We went twice within the day and a half we were there.

The view from my bed, looking up.

Famous hourglass that's turned around every new year.

Mushroom ceiling on the Metro.

Also. I tried to discreetly get pictures of this awesome phenomenon. This is the first city we've seen so far, that the advertisements are placed diagonal like the Metro escalators...you see where I'm going with this. Once you tip your head and look at it one way, you can't un-see it. We love this.

One more week of Romania

It finally happened. I got sick.

I was crossing my fingers for a completely sick-free trip, but it was inevitable for the length of my trip. I'm better now after two days of fever, four heads of garlic, and lots of mint tea. One of the workers was sick too, and then Bernardo, another volunteer, got sick just after I did, so we figured it was some sort of influenza going around. 

It was the worst week I've had in recent memory. I literally felt like I was going to die. It's bad enough getting sick away from home, but then factor in the whole: Transylvania. Farm. Closest village 40 mins away. Maybe a doctor. Probably not English speaking. 

Okay enough depressing news.

Well Philippe left, so that is depressing; I lied. He has been out one friend we made on this trip so far, since we've been so busy hopping from place to place, and every hostel we've been in anyway has been empty. Tessa puts it best, "It's like summer camp is ending and we have to say goodbye to everybody." Considering it was just the three of us though...everybody consists of  Philippe. He is in Budapest now actually, where we are heading next. 

A new volunteer arrived soon after he left, to fill the whole. Tessa was beginning to go stir crazy without someone to tease and mess with. Thankfully Daciana is perfect for that, and has lots of working energy. 

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Yesterday I finally saw the cheese making process! Unfortunately I forgot to grab my camera since it was a last minute discovery, but I'll try to see it again in the next week.

(Sorry, no picture here.)

Two days ago a van arrived and this is what we did: 

"It's a white van. With a body bag on top."

Okay so once it got here, the body bag turned into a blue canoe, but I think it's easy to see how similar they look from half a mile away.

This old couple, Helena and Nick, are from the Incredible Farm. (Incredible Edible) From what I understand, this Incredible farm is outside Yorkshire, and is like a self sustaining community with educational courses on farming and natural things of all sorts. 

Helena and Nick are on a trip around Romania, kind of an annual thing. They are full of knowledge and are currently talking with Krishan about ways to improve the farm. I think they're very nice and unique people in general, and share fun stories with us.

This is a blog post Nick recently wrote, and I encourage you to take a look; it's a beautiful little story.

http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/blogs/viscri-comes-home-a-true-farytale

The gypsies in some places are known for their bowl carving, and Helena made sure to buy a whole bunch of them this year. Tessa helped her oil some.

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Cathryn made some ice cream with the Buffalo milk: walnut cinnamon. We didn't have the patience to seperate cream for it for now, so it's more ice than cream, but still tasty! Buffalo milk is significantly higher in fat than cows milk so that helps. And it's fresh/raw, so whole milk.

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Today we got back to hard working in the field. I stay wayyy away from Tessa and her scythe.

And the rest of us are left with these tiny things for detail weed-annihilation. 

(I think I posted a pic before.)

They're still wicked fun to use. :)

The problem with the food forest is the thistles and other nasties are getting way out of control, and we are trying to convert the land from...wait I can remember this...bacterial to fungal? From weeds and grasses and flowers, to soil...stuff. Okay Tessa understands this much better than me.

Pretty much we have to chop down everything to let the trees and bushes grow. And over the past few weeks summer has done her job and everything we don't want alive, is waist high! Not good!

It's getting better now. Lets have another pic of Tessa's badassery.

Excuse the crookedness. This is candid, so sneakiness was involved.

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We have one more week here! About. We leave August 1st or 2nd. And one way or another, we will get to Budapest...still working that part out.

Two thirds of this trip is over! And I'm-dare I say it?- ready to go home now...but I'm sure this will change once we get on the road again. It will be weird since this has been our home for the whole month.

Tessa and I will definitely come back someday. In the very least, we need to get some gypsy bowls.

Poenari Castle

We took a baxi (yeah they're here too) to the village of Căpățânenii Pământeni today. Poenari Castle is here, which is the castle famous (to pretty much nobody but historians) but to them it's known because Vlad Tepes (aka Vlad the Impaler) lived there for a period of time.

He is one creepy lookin dude. My picture of his statue in Bucharest does not do the creep factor justice, so here you go:

If you want to read about the sickening torture he was known for, the "impaling"  here it is:   http://www.oddee.com/item_96596.aspx

Warning, it's gross.

In order to get to this castle you have to take the baxi to the town mentioned above, and then walk a further 2 kilometers out of town into the mountains. It's an extremely pretty area. Then you find the stairs in the trees, and start ascending the mountain. It's almost 1500 steps which doesn't sound too horrible, but on switchbacks up a mountain, straight up, in the mosquitoy forest, realizing how out of shape you are...oh and don't forget the fact that you're wearing leggings and heavy socks and hiking boots even though it's 85 out. Because lime disease.

After much huffing and puffing, we reach the top! It only took us 45 minutes or so. And it's cool with a nice breeze. It costs a few bucks to get in (5 Lei= $4ish) which is kind of silly. And the guy who is the only one working up there has to walk up and down the mountain each day for work. That's a commute that'll get you in shape.

There isn't much of the castle. Like, it's not huge, and extremely off the track, but that's cool for us. We found a ledge, ate lunch, and revived ourselves before exploring around and taking pictures. Tessa read that a portion of the castle actually fell into the river below in an avalanche at one point. There is no roof, so it was hard to picture if what we walked on was the top? Or just broken down? Only a few people came while we were up there, so we had much of the place to ourselves. And had way too much fun goofing off. 

Part of this goofing off was going to include making a cheesy vampire pose somewhere, but we spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to make fake fangs with your fingers and it was just not working at all. So we resorted to looking thoughtful about how we would torture out next victims.

Some pictures.

Almost there!! And it's flatish ground.

"Very nice slave labor handicraft." 

"How shall I torture someone today?"

"We're in Dracula's castle, suckers!!" (Oh bad pun, Leah.)

Sorry Tessa but I couldn't not put this up. It's our failed attempt at looking vampiristic.

By the way this whole history is about as accurate as the Greek mythologies/history, because accounts from twelve different angles say different things. But it's generally the popular belief. Popularly the general belief?

There is a castle in Brasov, Romania, that claims to be the "Dracula's castle" but it's super touristy, so we are going with this one. Anyway Poenari Castle claimed to be Vlad the Impaler's castle, whom Dracula is claimed to be based off. There is a lot of claiming in history. Again. You just have to go with it.