Hungary: Part 2

Day 4: Sunday

We finally woke up in time for breakfast at the hotel! WOO WOO.  Heads up: Hungarians don't do syrup...BUT, they have Nutella all over so that'll do.  

We got all ready for church and started our commute.  We took the subway and got out and walked down some pleasant middle class neighborhoods to get to the church building. When Jess was serving they had built this building, and since then had added on because of growth.  It was so clean and taken care of.  First thing when we walked in Jess introduced me to one of his old Hungarian missionary companions!—crazy right?  It was so fun to talk to Jess each Sunday and find out who he ran into while he was at church that week because there were so many who he’d known on his mission!  The entire country of Hungary is only one stake.  Crazy right? 

About half the ward spoke English (at least as one of their languages) and the other half spoke just Hungarian, so they had a translator in the back of the room and headsets.  That's rad.   The meeting was so great.  Being one who is never persecuted for my beliefs, it was humbling and inspiring to hear so many testimonies of how these wonderful saints (many of whom were recent converts) withstand persecution daily.  

Jess introduced me to Sam and his family after Sacrament (They worked together at the embassy).  Jess owed him some money and knew he wouldn't take it, so we found his son's primary class and asked to borrow him for a second.  Jess gave him the money to give his dad.  (with great instructions about keeping it in his pocket until then).  

He was sooo cute and said, “ooooh THANKS! This is soooo nice of  you, cause we’re building a house and those cost two thousand gazillion dollars!”  Cute, Cute, Cute!  Then the teachers asked if we could sit with their class cause they needed to meet with the bishop.  Best 10 minutes of the day. I love kids! They’re HILARIOUS!  When we brought them to Sunday School and were leaving one of the kids, Seth, who we’d known for that whole 10 minutes gave me a giant hug before I could leave.  I want to be more like kids! (we got a text later that day from Sam---I guess he and Aiden had in the middle of a board game when Aiden whipped out the money and threw it on the board, "oh, I almost forgot, Jess wanted me to give you this." He wrote something about 'well played', and 'using his own son against him'. :)

On our walk back to the subway, Jess kept apologizing for how hot it was (it was super hot that week J) and I was trying to explain how it didn’t matter. And that having a vacation with ups and downs is exactly what I want. I love having both.  And HA!—somehow we started talking about getting mugged, and I thought that would be such a cool story (assuming nobody died…) to tell afterwards.  But…say someone (Jess in this scenario) did get hurt. Jess said when people asked me about the trip I could always say ….”You can’t always judge a trip on who you bring back with you.” So so true.  

After getting home on Sunday--taking a NAP--WOO WOO, and getting up when we wanted to, we chatted with the boys and then left for our hike.  See that statue on the hill behind me?  It's their Freedom Statue (like our Statue of Liberty).  

I don't know what it is about bridges--but I think their soo romantic.  As we were crossing from the Pest side to the Buda side with all the hills and tree's, I had such a rush of every positive emotion ever.  The sun was setting, the water was glistening, I was there with Jess, holding hands, laughing, and just felt so so so happy.

Aren't those buildings built into the mountain cool. I like them.

Queen Elizabeth Bridge

Our walk down to the base of Gellert Hill was...well...super stinky.  Wowza--having their sewage right below the streets is super unfortunate in some area's.  We're just really really blessed in the U.S. that so many places smell like...not sewage.  Ups and Downs right :)

Before starting the hike there was a super pretty waterfall--ahhh.  And then we were off up the switchbacks with so many stairs.  Up there it smelled WONDERFUL and it was shady and the hike was awesome!  (at least for me cause I don't have bad feet....Jess was nice to do this--he paid for it later--stupid plantar fasciitis.)

The first statue we got to was a memorial for St. Gellert. The hill was named after bishop Gellet who came from Italy around 1000 AD to help St. Stephen, Hungary’s first king, to convert his people to Christianity…Resisting pagans killed him by rolling him down this hill in a barrel. 

See this violin-ist?  Street performers were everywhere.  I loved that.

And at the top of Gellert Hill was their Statue of Liberty or Freedom Statue.  The inscription during the communist rule, “In the memory of the liberating Soviet heroes. Erected by the grateful Hungarian people in 1945.”  Then, in 1989 with the transition from communist rule to democracy it changed to: “To the memory of those who sacrificed their lives for the independence, freedom, and prosperity of Hungary.”   

The view from the top of the hill was incredible. It was night and all the city was lite up and just so pretty.

We walked down, and this time crossed Queen Elizabeth Bridge.  We stopped halfway (kind of a tradition now since our engagement on the Golden Gate Bridge) and we started talking about our engagement story.  How I had NO doubts when he surprised me with the big question, how he knew he had to ask me before I left California, how fun it is to love.  We talked about how fun and funny our parent’s engagement stories are.  I am so grateful to have married a man who I can talk and talk and talk with.  PLUS, I'm sooo grateful for an opportunity to travel with him and to have conversations and idea's spurred by events and sights and experiences that we never could have had without it.

Day 5: Monday

Woke up, at at the hotel again (one of the servers was just like Alfred off of Batman--so regal and distinguished) and walked to

TRAP (Team Race Against Puzzles)

This was definitely one of the COOLEST things we did the entire trip!!!

Basically you're locked into a room with the instructions that you must disable a bomb before an hour's up...You spend your hour walking around, fidgeting with everything, finding clues, figuring out which clues go together, opening locks, and deciphering codes.  (Then occasionally when we were behind schedule and in danger of 'blowing up' if we didn't hurry, we'd hear a slow voice from the speaker in the room say something like, "you can take that picture off the wall." or, "have you found the ruler behind the pipe?").  I wish I could explain it better because it was sooooooooo insanely fun!  At one point I had to kneel in one spot of the room (releasing a magnet or something...), so Jess, in another part of the room, could pick up an urn.  At one point Jess had to ride a stationary bike so that a light would light up behind a fiber-glass section of the room and maneuvered a puzzle behind that fiberglass until a key popped out of the wall, or walk into a wardrobe and push the back panel of it--and it brought us into another room....So.Cool.  Just soooooo cool.  So stink'n fun and amazing and awesome!

That night we wen to the Szechenyi Baths.  

waiting.....

Apparently 5:00-ish is rush hour there cause they were full and so we all just waited...till people came out...like 15 minutes ish.  It was kinda hot.
Once inside

we paid and got special electronic wristbands that opened our changing room/locker. 

 Then we were free to swim in any of their 18 indoor or outdoor thermal/medicinal pools.  

It was so weird for me to see so many people just lounging about.  No slides, no drops…just being in water.  I was so confused for so long…still am a little, about the point of these.  Plus--seriously weird that there are no kids right?

Jess tried to explain by saying it's similar to going to a club or to the mall to hang out with friends or loved ones.  Europeans just go to the pools…okay.  At any rate it was a beautiful building and we thoroughly enjoyed just playing in the water, going in the mini lazy river, and hanging out together.   

We were so weirded out by this pool for awhile.  It was totally dark green water.  Look at the water around it to see the difference between regular water and this one. Why were people in it? We finally found out it was one of the medicinal pools. Apparently this one's medicine is dirty colored. :)

Plus they had sauna’s—which are kinda fun. I still don’t know the health benefits—but there was a grumpy man inside with us, that had a fancy wooden paddle that used to wipe off his sweat.  So that was cool. 

That night we talked to the kids.  Luke had been been so excited about his loose tooth for WEEKS.  It was so wiggly, and dangly that I told him to go to the bathroom and pull it out.  He totally walked to the bathroom, and yanked it out his tooth right then!  We loved hearing him yell happily from the bathroom and come back and show us his giant hole!  Woo Woo.  Plus, how cool is it that the tooth fairy found him in Wyoming! So great.