The Weekend :)

Well, Yes, I have been away the past three days, but I had my first visitor!

Yup, that's right, I was a quasi tour guide this weekend to Max. It was great fun, minus the rain! and boy did it rain! However, as I have three WHOLE days to catch up on, I will spread the posts out over the week! (it will also save me from posting 'interpretive' grocery store conversations...).

Anyway, to get you up to sped on the meticulous details of my life since I last posted. Here is it, in one paragraph. The weekend was great, as we went to a museum and a cool club (to be covered in their own blogs), to the castle and we also went to a couple of really nice restaurants. It was nice having a visitor to be able to go out at night with (and explore the city). I no longer had to talk and converse with RS (Rick Steves).

So this is the play by play:

Thursday night Max arrived. Arrival didn't go as smoothly as possible because he didn't know what buzzer number to call at my apartment. I think I remember sending it to him, but I also sent him a million other things, so chances are it got lost in passing. Anyway, I was on FB doing nothing in particular (except for stock people, of course). Suddenly, i got a message from him asking me to message him my buzzer number. He was at an internet cafe up Mester Utca...he found the internet cafe by asking a man in Arabic where 'internet' was. Who would have thunk. The Schwarma (here they call them Gyros actually) man, speaks Hungarian and Arabic, and since Max knows some Arabic (internet being one of that 'some'), he found me! The world is a very globalized place.

When he arrived he brought with him a bag of presents! These presents included 100ml of peanut butter (which you cannot buy in grocery shops, and which I think of as comfort food). On that note, I think I could probably get it at the expat shop. I will check it out, but a box of crisco sells there for something like 25 bucks, so who knows how much PB would be. While the PB is not kraft (it's the health food store kind), it is still super yummy! (I have to ration it as 100 ml is really not enough to a Canadian who normally keeps three different types of PB stocked in her pantry. Smooth, Crunchy AND natural .... you never really know what type you'll crave). It was only 100ml, because checking bags on cheap European flights is very expensive, and 100 ml is the maximum you can bring of a liquid.......

He also brought me a pair of very warm socks (which will be super useful as the weather at the moment is rainy and cold).

He also brought a new Hungarian phrase book, as I misplaced mine last week and have been sans linguistic aid since then....

and....an old cell phone that I could buy a sim card for, so I would have some form of communication beyond my computer....

and...an alarm clock that has a radio. Now I can put to rest my little blue travel alarm clock that makes a very annoying noise in the morning, and has a very unreliable snooze button....

and...and...

finally....
he brought me a hard drive. a tetragazillion gigabit hard drive filled with ENGLISH MOVIES and TV shows. yay! I am not really a huge movie and TV watcher, but I tell yah, alone in a city with two English TV channels (both are horrible news channels that repeat every 49 minutes), really makes you miss English media.

He also said I could hold onto the hard drive to store all the movies. We watched two this weekend (as the rain barred some of our outdoor 'city park' activities).

So right, back to the story.....Friday I went to work. The IT guy J was finally there (he was out of bpest for the last few days). He was able to fix and sort of some stuff with my computer, and I also got a cell phone. yay. Now I have two phones. One isn't hooked up yet though. However, email me and I will send you the number and then you can call for any emergencies. Apparently it is free for me at least if you call me :). I can also trans-continental text....but I am not sure if that will cost a kazillion dollars or not.....anyone want to test it with me?
After work (which ends at 1 30ish on Friday), I met up with Max and we went and toured Castle Hill. This time I got to be the RS and show him everything (it was fun!). We went for coffee at the Kavehuss called Ruszwurm, which was really nice. It is really neat and small. You feel like you are in someone's parlor having coffee and pastries. I sort of screwed up the ordering (confused gram with decagram), and we ended up with too many of these 'salty' scones, but that meant we had extras for dinner and snacks the whole weekend. I didn't take any pictures (because the place was so small and quaint that I felt weird), but check out the website! I couldn't decide what I wanted, so I will definitely have to go back! (for those interested, I chose a Tirol Strudel with Meggyes (cherry), we also tried these things called pogácsa, which are called 'salty tea cakes'. They were salty alright. very salty, but flaky and pretty good....the pogácsa, was also the thing I got the weights confused with...so we had ALOT of them).

After that we continued walking around the castle. This time there was no wine festival so we got to walk around the other side and see a great view of Pest, including the parliament (that square building is one of the baths!) and the chain bridge (the centre and left photos!). We then walked over the chain bridge over to pest, down through Roosevelt Square, through to Vaci Utca (which is the main tourist drag). It has a bunch of shops and 'traditional' Hungarian restaurants. (by 'traditional' I mean they are targeted at tourists, so the food isn't truly 'authentic', but the prices are!). After that we made our way back to the apartment so I could change (out of my work clothes) and then head down to the Okotogon for dinner. We also were going to meet up with some people who work at the embassy. We went for dinner at a hungarian restaurant called 'Menzes'. It was a 1970 deco place that served traditional hungarian cuisine. I had pork and sauerkraut. and well all I can say was that it was incredibly salty. In fact, I really only ate the pork and a bit of the sauerkraut for my blood pressure's sake. Max had a Hungarian version of steak and mushrooms. We also had some Hungarian beer (which is nice and light, and a good summer beer! (no more ales!)). For the starters we had PICKLED PEPPERS and a garlic soup that came with a smaller version of a Lángos. It was very....Hungarian....

After dinner we met up with some of the younger people who work at the embassy (both Canadians and some Hungarians too!). We went out to this bar called "" which is a ruin pub, a type of pub that is apparently really known in Budapest, and well not so much outside of Budapest. The pub is not really a pub persay...it was actually an old three story apartment building 'converted' to a pub. I use converted very losely as all they really did was remove the doors from all the rooms. You are free to roam around and choose a place to sit and drink your drink (the two photos on the right are the main courtyard (which becomes out doors as the roof slides off), and an example of a 'room' you can just sit an have a drink in!). There was a hug bar on the ground floor and one on the second floor. In the basement there was a dance floor placing Hungarian folk/dance music. It was pretty cool. here are a couple of pictures of the bar. I will post a full blog devoted to it later on this week!) There was also an 'American hot dog stand'.

We left the bar around 1 30, and the trams had stopped running so we had to take our first 'night bus'. It was basically a bus filled with young pepper at various levels of intoxication. We weren't worse for wear, having eaten a large meal and had only one beer. It was interesting though! There were a couple of English speakers on the bus (and sadly a pick pocketer). He didn't manage to get the girls wallet but max saw him try!

Saturday we got up in the morning and headed for the Museum of Terror (which will be another separate post). In a nut shell, the museum was really interesting and very well presented! I brought RS with me (as he has a chapter on this Museum), and it proved to be very useful (it also meant that I didn't have to buy a head set!). Max thought the RS book was very 'American'. and well I guess it is (as all the humour and cultural references, focus on 'cheapest' things are American-related). But, I get the jokes and gladly translated :).

After the Museam of Terror we went for lunch/coffee/cakes and a Hungarian Canadian owned, newly restored, coffee house in Andrassy Utca about a block from the Museum. It was wonderful! The place was recommended by the trade commissioner at the Embassy (just doing her job :)). It was fabu! Here's what it looked like inside. We had a Lesco stew, which is a traditional Hungarian stew made of sausages, paprika, onions, tomato, and egg. the bread was made on the premises! It was actually very very good, and I am going to try and recreate it! For dessert we had a chocolate moose bomb that was milk chocolate with chocolate, caramel and peanuts and a poppy seed cake with lime icing. Both very good (however, I liked the poppy seed cake the best). I took pictures of them all, because I am a nerd.

After Luckas we went to the mall. It was raining and we didn't really want to go home yet, and well most things in Bpest at 4pm on a sat were closed. Except for the mall. So there we went. We wondered around. I showed max all the interesting stores (and he gawked at all the German owned ones). Then we came home, had dinner (which was a hole bunch of 'Hungarian' things we got at Match, one was a 'prepared egg' that turned out to be a deviled egg (I added paprika to it as we do at home!) point for me!).

Sunday we went to the grand market hall. But it was closed. I thought it was open on Sunday but closed on Mondays (here it's either or). Turns out this market is closed on Sundays, open on mondays! SO we walked up Vaci utca again...this time it was POORING rain and well it was a bit cold and rainy. I thought max had a plan, and he thought I did, so we both 'followed' each other for a hour. Then I got really cold and was already wet so I demanded we stop and figure out a plan. We went to a coffee shop to warm up and decided that seeing as it was pooring rain we should just go home and watch a movie...by pooring rain I mean POORING, WINDBLOWING.


just finished dinner and am going to start to watch Chocolat from my new hard drive. Work and MRP tomorrow!!!

Jess

p.s catherine---send me your address!
Mum, did you get the floors done? (I saw millie's post of FB).
Dad, kelly, pat,,,send updates!!!