jocelynpre

Hi,
We've done so much in the last couple weeks that I don't really know where to start or what to write about, but I think I'll limit it to a few highlights from all three countries.

In Hungary, after seeing the crazy cowboys in Bugac (which you can read more about in Eric's blog, and can see a bit later in pictures), we headed to a little town called Abony where Peter's dad, Joe is from. If was a bit exciting going there because it was the first place we've visited that wasn't in our guide book, so it took a bit more effort to get there, and then figure things out. Luckily it was smallish so we were quite easily able to figure things out and find a place to stay. It ended up being really quite fun too. The woman who owned the motel we stayed at didn't speak a word of English, but we still managed to carry on almost a half hour conversation with her, full of arm waving and hand sigals and with the help of our guide book and a pen and paper. I guess in smaller places with little tourism, people are more genuinely interested in who you are and where you're from. She then decided to bring us up beer from her kitchen and managed to tell us the best place to go eat - a little diner/truckstop place, apparently voted second best in all of Hungary. Eric ate the best goulas soup of all the places we ordered it in Hungary here too, so it lived up to its reputation. We went and found Joe's old house, the 'Kostyan House', but unfortunately the gate was locked and it was a bit gloomy outside so we don't have the best pictures of it. Still, all in all, I was really impressed with the little town, its people, the market and little churches too.

We then headed a town called Eger, famous for its wine cellars. We spent a couple nights there, which I won't write much about, but I believe Eric's blog has more to say about it if you're interested. Next we headed to another town off the beaten track, where Eric's grandmother is from, and you can read about it from his point of view as well.

From there we thought it would be relatively easy to get to Romania, and we were very wrong! We spent a couple days travelling solidly, from dingy town to another, waiting in train stations and eating sandwiches and bananas along the way. We'd eventually managed to get through the border, to a small place in Romania. We found a bank machine, and we're waiting for our train to get to our destination, Sighet, in the Maramures part of the country. Unfortunately, we neglected to realize that we'd gone through a time change over the border, so ended up waiting until 9 at night for an appropriate train to the next town along the way. Because of this we had to stay in a random city not in our guidebook, arriving late at night (we later learned was known as the ugliest in Romania). We decided to trust one of the many taxi drivers to take us somewhere cheap (thankgod for the phrasebook!). The next day we ended up waiting until late afternoon for a bus, but eventually, at long last we were in the beautiful Romanian countryside.

When we arrived, we were lucky to find that a hostel had just recently opened up. It's run by a British guy who's married to a Romanian women. They spend their summers here and winters in Bristol, and are very very nice people. We quickly decided to spend much more time here than we'd originally planned. Now let me get to the exciting part! The landscape here is absolutely stunning, and even better are the people. A large number of people here dress traditionally, and if you explore into the smaller towns in the countryside, almost everyone does. Women wear kneelength pleated skirts, knit sweaters and headscarves tied under their chins. There are stooped old ladies wearing this everywhere you look, but even many of the younger women dress this way too. Many of the men wear hats, some look like from the fourties or fifties, but others have the traditional straw hat with colorful ribbons around it. Horsecarts are at typical way to get around, and the cars just dodge them as best as they can through town. Almost everyone will greet you on the street, or at least smile and nod. People are open and friendly, and spend lots of time gossiping and socializing. In the smaller towns, many have built little benches outside their house gates, where they'll sit and socialize with people passing by. Some of them even have little roofs built on them so they can continue the gossiping even in the rain. Apparently this happens even more on Sundays after church, while they're all dressed up in more colourful traditional clothing, but we'll see it for ourselves tomorrow!

Our first day here we stayed around the town, and vistited an outdoor village museum. Old 16-18th cen houses have been set up here, so we spent a couple hours wandering around. We even had an old guy give us a bit of a tour in French (mysteriously, French is quite common here).

The next day we took a bus to one of the small villages, and then wandered back half way by ourselves, walking through other villages on the way before hitching the rest of the way back. Hitching here is the most reliable way of getting anywhere, and you just pay the driver the bus fare. We've found out though, that many people won't accept money from us, because we're a bit a novelty. Everyone loves Canadians! It was a really cool day though, we saw a strange wooden contraption which had been built on the river where villagers washed their sweaters and blankets. They'd diverted water so it poured into a kind of barrel, bubbling up and spinning whatever was placed inside round and round. It was really cool. We also saw about six old sixteenth century wooden churches, and were invited into a local man's house. This was actually a bit creepy, because he was quite drunk, but he introduced us to his mum, who tried to sell us some beautiful quilts and traditional costumes which were displayed in her living room. It ended up being really interesting to see, and the guy was harmless. I'm glad Eric was there though, otherwise I would have run quickly in the other direction and not had the fun tour of the yard and barn animals!

Yesterday we went with Rob and his family (who own the hostel) across the Ukranian border to see a market. It was an experience, let to say the least! Eric's written up a bit more about this, and you should read it. It wasn't exactly fun, but it was certainly exciting at parts!

I'm sure if you've read this far, your eyes are sore, so I'll stop here. Tomorrow we head on towards a region called Southern Bucovina to see some famous monasteries and frescoes. It should be great, but I'll be a bit sad to leave here. I love the place we're staying, it feels like we're a part of the family almost!

Anyways, I miss everyone lots, and hope things are going well in good old Canada!!!! xoxoxoox
Joce

Hi,
So we had an exciting stay in Budapest to say the least. I guess I left off at the air race... We arrived early, but still had to fight our way through over a million spectators along the river. We were really lucky and managed to find a shady spot sitting down with a perfect view. Once we found it, we were too scared to move incase we lost it, so we spent hours sitting there dangling our feet over the edge of the railing. It was pretty funny, our feet were so swollen by the end of the day that it was really hard to get our sandals back on again!

The race itself was fun to watch, but the highlight, in my mind anzways was the airshow where three planes did all sorts of spins and loop de loops really close together.. It blows my mind that they can do anything like that. A german guy sat down next to us and was really friendly and explained to us all sorts of little details that we never would have known. He told us about the owner of the team and how he was the only person to privately own a Cobra helicopter, etc.... useless information for sure, but fun to know. The helicopter was shown off and flown around for a while. I thought it looked like a big scary wasp - pure evil! The hungarian guy we were rooting for unfortuately messed up right at the beginning and was disqualified. Im not sure who won in the end, but it was pretty exciting anways.

That night, we went to eat dinner at a fancy restaurant (compliments of Erics Hungarian grandmother who wanted us to eat well and experience good traditional hungarian cuisine...THANKS!!!!) It was pretty fancy, with musicians playing classical music and so we decided to order wine with dinner instead of beer. It was a good choice too, because were no longer in beer country... wine is the way to go in Hungary. In fact, were soon planning on visiting a small town called Eger where there are tons of wine cellars to go to where theyll fill up any bottle you have for cheap. Well have to be carefull there!!

And just in case anyone is wondering, Im not putting in apostrophees (haha is there a way to even spell that?) because I dont think they exist in Hungarian and I cant find one anywhere on the keyboard.

So after dinner, we headed back to the Danube to watch the fireworks.... Yes, we were lucky enough to have stumbled across a national holiday... After about five spectacular minutes of watching them, all hell broke loose! The wind picked up, tree branches started whipping around, people started panicking and running, rain started and within 2ö seconds I was wetter than Ive ever been in my life and if that wasnt enough, it started hailing!!! The fireworks continued, and we could sort of hear them, though the rain was so hard they werent really lighting up anymore. Soon we were being rushed along with the stampede of people to get to cover - it was insane! We later realized that before the fireworks started, the flashes wed been seeing werent part of some crayz lightshow, but was actually sheet lightning. Anyways, we got home safely, and I have to say that although we didnt see many fireworks, it was still a pretty exciting night. I just felt sorry for all the children and older people who got stuck in it. Im Eric wrote more details about the storm in his blog if anyones interested. ericsblog.travellerspoint.com

We spent the last coupld days at Lake Balaton, where we camped and made a trip to a thermal lake where we floated in innertubes for a few hours surrounded by tons and tons of people. It was strange to be in a lake that felt more like a pool than anything else, that is until we saw a dead fish floating around.... I cant say the lake seemed the cleanest with all those people and the temperature must have incubated bacteria... ew ew ew... and its supposed to be a heath spa! Ha ha but Im just being silly, Eric informed me that about 8ö million litres of water pumped into that lake everyday (lava water), so it must be fine.

Now were in a little city called Keckskamet and weve arrived for a little festival. There are tons of little booths selling Hungarian snacks - such as Langosh, deepfried dough with cheese and sourcream spread over it... my god its delicious, but soo disgusting too - and theres wine tasting too as well as musicians and entertainment. Its pretty cool to see. Weve decided to forgo the wine tasting until we get to Eger, as we plan on getting up early tomorrow to take a day trip to a smaller town close to here that has cowboy shows. Apparently the Hungarian cowboys do crazy things, for example, one guy will get five horses galloping together, holding all the reins while standing on the backs of the last two. Im so excited, its going to be thrilling. Im sure Eric will take lots of pictures too!

Anyways, take care everyone..
xoxoxox
Joce

Hey everyone,
Sorry it's been so long since I've written... but I'll start from Prague because I'll forget mostly everything before then... but if you're curious, you can read about it in Erics blog.

We spent a few days in Prague, and it was definitly the most stunning city I'd been to yet. Everything about it is big and impressive, including the kabillions of tourists infesting every last inch of it! I managed to get around this slightly by waking up ridiculously early and heading straight to the castle to take advantage of a few hours of peace there. I even got all artistic and took a sketch pad and pencils and attempted to draw a landscape of the city from the top of a wall... until I realized that every tour group that passed would hover over my shoulder to see what I was doing. Needless to say, it was embarassing and I'm shy so I quickly gave up. I think the best part of Prague was that we discovered how absolutely amazing Czech food is. My mouth waters just remembering it! And if you just took a few streets away from the tourist streets you could find really great and cheap local pubs with really great and cheap beer. Mmmmmmmm .5 litres of Pilser Urquell for less than .2 litres of coke.

Straight after Prague we headed to Pilsn to tour the most famous brewery in the world. Eric's idea, not mine, but it was still fun, and I have to admit that I'm hooked on it. We got to taste it fresh from the cellars and everything. Those pictures should probably be up fairly soon, they're in the next batch anyways!

We then headed to Cesky Krumluv, a tiny little touristy town south of Prague, where we spent a couple days relaxing, eating good food and drinking good beer and floating circles around the town in inner tubes - down waterslides and little rapids... FUN!

Next stop was Bratislava, Slovakia. We stayed in a very hippieish hostel with a big statue of Lenin on the wall, and posters of Bob Marley everywhere. We saw Devin castle, on the Danube, which was really stunning, and then wandered around the old town. It was a smaller and less touristy city than the last we've been to, which was nice, but otherwise, it doesn't compare to...... Budapest!!!! Which is where we are now.

Budapest is phenominal so far. I really really like it. There's an air race going on this weekend, so we get to watch planes racing really low to the ground along the Danube river, going under bridges and through big balloon pilon things. So far they've just been practicing, but tomorrow is the big race, so we're going to try to find a good shady spot nice and early on to watch it from. The other highlight so far are the baths. We spent the best part of the afternoon today soaking in thermal outdoor baths surrounded by a beautiful building. You can go inside and explore through tons of different rooms full of saunas and steamrooms and hot and cold baths. It's really beautiful and relaxing, I think I'll sleep well tonight.

So that's all for now, if you want to read more, again, Eric's blog is probably much more detailed.. so go see it!

Love and miss everyone lots!!!!!

Here are some pictures, they range from Riga, Latvia all the way to Zakopane and the Tatra Mountains in Poland. I'm going to be really nice and label them for you!!

The Old Town in Riga, Latvia

Statue in Riga

A really sweet blue house in the Old Town, one of my favourite Riga pictures

Different angle... wait was it a blue house?? Cool sky too!

A typical street in the Old Town, I love how narrow the streets are and how high the buildings are.

Me on a seesaw in Ventspils on the West coast of Latvia - one of Eric's favourite pictures of me.

Our camping spot in Ventspils.

The travelling cow in Ventspils - apparently he's been all over the world, I don't believe it.

I can't remember who this guy was, I guess I liked him at the time.

A random cobblestone street in Ventspils

A crazy Soviet statue in Riga (we went back here after Ventspils, so they are in order)

A church across from our hostel in Siauliai, Lithuania.

The graveyard behind the church.

Hill of crosses up close.

Hill of crosses from further away.

Beach in Klaipeda, Lithuania, on the Western coast.

Sunbathing at the beach with a cool aussie and a French Canadian.

Me and a stork.

Eric and a stork.

Crazy wooden statues in Juodkrante, Lithuania.

Another statue.

Church in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Frank Zappa statue in Vilnius... don't really know why, but it was in Lonely Planet so we went to find it. Cool graffiti behind it though.

The best parts of Vilnius!! I loved this old part near our hostel.

Eric liked taking pictures of it too.

An awesome statue in the same neighborhood. It was the Uzupis Republic area, self proclaimed country within the city for the hippies and artists and drunks.

LENIN!!!

STALIN!!!

Stylized Lenin

Stalin

Lenin. Seriously, this guy was HUGE, like 18 feet high!

Lenin, looking a bit friendlier.

Another church in Vilnius.

And another.

Castle in Trakai, Lithuania.

Eric, about to lose his head, but looking pretty happy about it.

Inside the castle.

More castle.

And more.

Action shot of me feeding a swan. He ignored it though.

Me, posing on a boat, like a princess!

Me actually working.

Another church in Vilnius.

Old town of Warsaw.

More old town.

Statue in Warsaw... not sure why the horse is killing someone.

Me posing like a movie star.

Palace of Culture and Science. No joke. This was Stalin's gift to Warsaw.

Ja Chce Pierogi!

Eric Chce Pierogi!

Wawel hill in Krakow, Poland.

Virgin Mary in the Wawel HIll cathedral. One of many.

Gate to the old town of Krakow.

Church in the old town of Krakow.

The dragon that breathes fire, if you text message it!

Me going down into the Salt Mine.

Chapel in the Salt Mine.

More chapel, it was cool, all carved by miners out of salt.

Lody (icecream)

More Lody!

Old town in Krakow.

Papa Smurf, in Zakopane, Poland.

Peak through trees. In the Tatra Mountains.

Me hiking in Tatra mountains.

Pretty lakes.

View from the top of our crazy hike.

Eric striking a pose... lunging from the top. Macho man that he is.

Me on the top, looking slightly nervous.

Another pose.

Us at the top.

Eric being all artsy fartsy.

The resthouse we stayed at for two nights, it was sweet!

Cool stream, again, Eric trying to capture something with the water moving.. i dunno.

Eric soaking wet.

Me climbing.

Cool ridge.

Artsy fartsy number two.

Hello,

So now we're down in Krakow, a five hour train ride south of Warsaw - a train that never went faster than about 20 km/h I might add. When we arrived, we hiked from the train station a few km to where we thought we'd be staying, but instead found a sign on the door with my name on it directing us to a bar. We went and got some drinks while waiting for the owner to show up and drive us to the place. The evil place. I'll explain later.

The next day we took a bus to Auschwitz. We took a guided tour and were herded around with mass amounts of tourists. Nonetheless it was a good experience, I'm glad it's over, but very glad we did it. I think it was more important to Eric to see it, but I really learnt a lot.

The day after, we went to see the main sight in Krakow, Wawel hill, which has a castle and a cathedral on it. It was really cool, we picked the perfect time of day to go see it because a huge thunderstorm came crashing down on us as soon as we got to the top. The storm must have been right above us, I don't think I've been frightened by lightning before! Anyways, after this we walked around the old town, which was really cool, but not as great as we'd been led to believe. We both agreed that the fact that all the old buildings had huge chain stores in them took away from the 'medieval' feel of the place, and instead we felt more like we were in a mall. A really nice mall. Anyways, I think perhaps we're being spoiled with old towns and now we're being more choosy. In my mind Riga is still the best, but maybe that's because it was the first one I saw and now they're all blending together. But maybe it really was better!

The next day was a non-day. We tried to go to the salt mine outside of Krakow, but got stopped right at the door. We were locked in our apt by the other guests who hadn't realized that if you double lock the door you can't open it from the inside. This was fine we thought, a little annoying, but not the end of the world. We were, afterall, checking out that day so we just had to wait for housekeeping. Unfortunately, housekeeping never showed up, as the room apparently wasn't booked for that night. We didn't have any luck shouting down to the street for help either because everyone spoke Polish... and we honestly didn't try to hard because we kept thinking someone would show up. Around 12 at night the other guests finally came back and we charged downtown for some much needed kebabs and icecream. Luckily we hadn't starved all day because there was some brown rice in the cupboard that we cooked in the kettle. We've decided, to keep our spirits up, that this day never actually existed, and will therefore hopefully never speak of it again.

Today we went to the salt mine, which I must say was worth the wait. It was really interesting, and (thankgod) cold! I think we've only had one day under 30 degrees since we arrived in Europe. We had an awesome tour and our guide gave us some salt crystals (illegally, shhhh she could lose her job). Afterwards we went to our favourite perogi restaurant and then ate icecream from Poland's best icecream place. We assume it was anyways, for some reason this place had the hugest line up of locals despite the fact that there were many other icecream places around. Eric likened it to the soup nazi episode of Seinfeld and since I haven't seen this episode I'll take his word for it. Except that the people inside were really nice even thought they were so rushed. I don't get the logic, but fair enough.

Anyways, I'm sure your eyes are sore now....
I'll let you all return to your lives in Canada, and I'll be sure to write again soon and let you know what's going on... We're heading to the mountains and then to Slovakia, then Czech Republic... we think.

Miss everyone lots,

Joce