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.

Prague Pt. 1

We made it to Prague, Czech Republic! Again without any mishaps! Wow I don't want to jinx anything here, but if this could continue for the rest of the trip? That'd be great. Of course, that means fewer crazy stories for you guys, but less freaking out on our part.

Our hostel is right next to Charles Bridge, so we can pretty much walk anywhere and there is no need for Metro navigating. (Though the Metro has A/C and the hostel doesn't, which is rather irritating.)

It's super super hot outside, so we will try to get a semi-early start in the morning. Old Town Square is only a 15 minute walk anyway. Free walking tours are in abundance here!

It's hard to see, but these funky looking leaves caught my eye.

Our hostel is in the building right in front here, with the red/brown roof. This is coming back from the supermarket at about 8pm.

Tessa has this thing for her spices. To the extent of hiding the rest of our precious basil, in plastic wrap, in the curry powder container, in order to keep it from getting lost in the food bag. Which of course is not what it looks like.

Budapest

Is it really arrogant to say I've been here before? Well I have. And it's a beautiful city so I'm glad to be back. In our original plans, (wow "original plans" we had no idea what we were getting into....) Budapest, Hungary was not on our list. But since it's halfway between where we were in Romania, and Prague, we figured it wouldn't hurt to look around for a day.

For the first time in weeks, we did not get lost at all on our way from the airport to the hostel. We even made a run, backpacks and all, to our favorite grocery store, Tesco. We missed you Tesco, and your Wally-World-type qualities. Mostly Tesco stores are in Western Europe, because we certainly didn't spot any in Romania.

The hostel we are staying at is called the Black Apple. There are stencils of black apples painted on the walls, but they really look like funky shaped cherries. It's a nice place, but the kitchen is smaller than one in a New York apartment; we're just glad it has one. Even if the stove is built into the top of the toaster oven.

We booked a dorm with five beds, since it was cheapest. And we had some nice roomies, a French girl who was going out for her birthday, and the Aussie dude. 

We talked a lot to Aussie dude when we arrived (but never got his name) since it was way too hot to actually leave the place. Oh, and this hostel doesn't have A/C. This hasn't really been a problem in the trip until now, but you just need more than a standing fan for 93 degree weather in a city. Also these ceilings are 14 feet high. Which is sort of eerie.

I got off topic. Aussie dude has a guitar with him, which gets him points on the backpacker scale of coolness, along with his green roll of duct tape, another point. But he also put on deodorant half a dozen times during our conversations that evening, so that may lose him points. (Note to self: I will write a post soon with our Backpacking Scale: Rules and Regulations. You guys will like it.) 

Despite the cool room and people...we changed rooms. The whole place had lots of windows, but it also faced the main street. And with ambulances screaming by every ten minutes sounding like an alien space ship, (I really worry for the health of this city's people) we knew there would be no sleeping that night. Our new room faces a slightly less busy street.

Well, we are off to take advantage of the free city walking tour like we did in Bucharest. We have our bottles of mineral water to fend off the heat, no worries.

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I forgot, a few pics from our last day in Targu Mures, Romania:

We got pizza!!!!! It helped with the homesick a little. But it also had corn on it, which was new.

Tessa broke the room.

One of the foods we will both miss are "cocoa shells" which are about ten times more awesome than cocoa puffs. And on this particular bag had the ingredients listed in no fewer than 20 languages. That is a record for this trip.

Okay new plan.

Remember that last post?

Yeah nothing actually happened the way we planned today. This is where the lesson "always check twice, or thrice, or just be really really sure" comes to use. 

For the first time in two months, we missed our ride. Now that's technically not that bad of a record. But for us? Yeah, that was about the last straw. As we finally get back on our feet, ready to finish this trip after almost booking a flight home...then missing the bus to Budapest that only leaves every three days or so.

We were waiting for an hour, totally on time. Just at the wrong stupid bus stop a half mile away from the correct stupid bus stop. So we slunk back to the hotel lobby from the night before, since it had wifi. I might have cried a little. In frustration. I was so ready for that 11 hour bus ride that would get us out of the silly transport town of Targu Mures. 

By the way you should google maps that really quick, for some perspective. Targu Mures, Romania -- Budapest, Hungary. (And how far away we are from the rest of the world.)

After making a list of options:

Finally we got out wits about us, and checked in for another night here at Hotel Darina, because we decided there wasn't a way to leave the city today.

*fast forward through about 10 different plans*

Wow, Targu Mures does fly to Budapest. Awesome. It's five times as expensive, but there's a flight tomorrow. *book* It's amazing, all over Europe you can just buy an air ticket somewhere the day before, pretty much no problem. This was a budget airline, sure, but the flight wasn't even full.

We are out of Romania now. Technically we were there three months of the year, 6-29 to 8-1. ;) I'll really miss it there.

Okay moving on. Hungary! (And a new currency for two days. That's always fun to work with.)

Where do we go, from here?

I guess we are feeling a little like Buffy and the Scooby gang right now. Though dancing and singing hasn't been our top priority on the farm, we've gone through quite the mid-trip-crisis.

Goodbye, Ferma Indianlui; till the next time we come back to visit beautiful Romania. We are on our way to Budapest now, only an 11 hour bus ride...fun stuff, that. 

I guess I better start from the beginning, this past week. In my last post, I believe I mentioned I was sick. Well I didn't actually end up recovering until yesterday, after a trip to the hospital and some antibiotics. I relapsed into some worse kind of bug, and we still aren't sure what it was, but I threw up for the first time in seven years, so that sucked. In fact, I was sick so much my stomach wouldn't really uncramp, hence the hospital visit. 

Krishan knew someone at the hospital so I didn't had to wait in the waiting room very long, and after an ultrasound to look at all my insides, they gave me an IV drip with some muscle relaxants and glucose to rehydrate me. I had never been to a hospital before so I had a slight panic attack (um needles.) but Daciana and Tessa kept talking to me and I made it pretty well. Honestly I don't remember much of it. 

At this point I felt the worse I've ever felt before, and Tessa and I had a little melt down a long time coming...we were hours away from changing our tickets home to next week. Honestly, 60 days in, we are both completely burnt out from traveling and just really want to go back to the monotonous routine of every day life. This morning though, we felt a tiny bit better (and after finding out how much it would take to get home early, um ouch.) we decided to continue almost as we planned originally. Even though we are both really homesick. 

To vent, here is what I am missing right now:

Ice cubes

Yoga

A different shirt than the four I have

Not having to shop every day for each meal

TV (if I'm being really honest here.)

Oh, I forgot I owned a laptop.

Any paper book

Shampoo

A/C

Mexican food

My kitties

But I'll get them all back in about 40 days. Not that we are counting down or anything.

Since we decided to stay, as Calvin's dad would say, it builds character.

Doesn't make it any easier.

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. 

~~

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.

~

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.

~

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.

~

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.

Yeah we're still here.

A few more activities happening in the last few days....

One of Krishan's friends has a bee keeping hobby, and she offered to show us the hives in the food forest because she happened to have some extra gear on hand. I knew I wasn't allergic, so I took just the netting hat and put on my jacket, and Tessa put on the spiffy full body suit just to be safe, because she is allergic to about half the world.

There are three hives, one recently swarmed. That means when a hive gets too big for the space, and there are too many bees, they start to make another queen, and the new group needs a new place to go. The two hives are now three.

Neither of us are afraid of bees, so it wasn't super terrifying. Certain bees have different jobs, and I think it's the drone ones, they kind of perpetually dive bomb you. But bees are good. And if you talk quietly and stay calm, they stay calm too. Relatively.

The lady (I can't say we ever learned her name, but she was Dutch) smoked the hives and took some slats out to show us the inner workings, and to check the hives were healthy. Healthy hives have a queen (which is hard to spot sometimes) and sections with honey, and different compartments with the larvae. All of the hives he has are doing quite well. And also, before I thought the smoke made them sleepy, but Dutch Lady said they don't like it, and it makes them stay inside the hive because they think something is wrong.

~~~~~

A baby buffalo was born last night! We were all hanging out near the fire and they brought it down from somewhere, I'm not exactly sure where, but the carrier van came from the hill slash forest.

We didn't see it being born, but I did get some video of it wobbling around. The baby buffalo was still slick and had its umbilical chord. They let it wobble into the pen with others, and its mama. At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened. There were five workers involved and a lot of Romanian back and forth.

Well it doesn't look adorable from this picture today, but that's the best picture we could get, and it's mama was giving us LOOKS. That's her ear to the right.

Sorry for the Tessa's-arm close up. But I wanted you to see the LOOKS we received from the mama.

~~~~~

After learning Philippe is an artist, we both really wanted him to draw something for us. And he is leaving in two days, so we spent half an hour yesterday interrupting his yoga-ing in the back garden, trying to figure out which medium he prefers and what he needed. Considering we couldn't get much, Krishan found some water colors and we both managed to scrounge up some small pieces of paper. Something simple, that is all we ask for....

We concluded bribery would be our best hope, and so came up with some ideas. I gave him a small earbud rubber thingy, since he had lost one of his, and I brought two pairs of earbuds. And Tessa fixed his murse (man-purse) by sewing a new zipper for him. This was a pretty fair trade, for backpackers on a farm.

Philippe's murse below. He wouldn't let me take a pic with him wearing it, and it took some convincing to even get it alone. "Why? Why would you want to take a picture of that? Well if you must."

~~~~~

Our zucchini is still...growing. Way too much. But, Krishan is leaving tomorrow for Bucharest again, and will bring a bunch of them to his restaurant.

Ah. His restaurant! I haven't mentioned it yet, have I? Well. You'll have to wait till the next post.