Budapest Round Two

   

     I'm at home now, after a good house cleaning session. We're listening to Rascal Flatts, enjoying our cozy Christmas tree while watching the snow fall outside, and waiting for Mom, Dad, Rosie and Rachel to get back from their Italy trip! Claire is making cookies to welcome them with. Praise God for family, Christmas lights, snow and coziness!

   

Outside the car
after we successfully
made it to Budapest.

     Our Budapest trip all began smoothly and as planned, the five of us piled into the van on time and began our drive to Sopron, right on the border of Hungary. I wanted Madeleine and Michael to see all the beautiful old buildings we had found there, and so that was our first destination. Michael drove, I was co-pilot, and Madeleine, Rosie and Rachel goofed around in the back seat and kept everybody cheerful. (They also helped navigate when my phone would freak out later in the trip, it often politely asked Michael to make a U-turn on the freeway.) We arrived safely, the drive was only about 40 minutes. We realized we didn't know how to find the Old Town where we had been last time, since I had only told my phone to direct us to Sopron, and nothing more specific (silly me). My Austrian phone wasn't able to make connection in Hungary, so we drove down a one way street the wrong way, got out of that predicament and found parking, and then went on a hunt for our favorite part of the city.

We enjoyed jumping and sliding on frozen puddles along the way (you can never get enough out of those amazing little guys) and then somehow we ended up coming across the church sort of hidden among the other buildings that we had found last time, and when we discovered that, Rachel and I remembered how to find our way around to the the rest of the places we'd been. It was a little miracle, since we really had no idea where we had parked in relation to where we'd hoped to go, or how big the town was and which direction we should head. We just walked down a main street until I felt like we should turn right, then all of a sudden we recognized some things and there we were! We stopped by a bank and got some Hungarian money, and bought some weird pastries. We walked around the same places we did last time, but no Gelato this time since it was so cold.

Madeleine and Rosie found
 a wine bottle in the Castle wall...

We were there for a few hours, and at about 1pm we decided to head back to the car to drive to Budapest. Unfortunately I hadn't thought through the timing very well, and when we plugged our new destination into my phone, we were going to arrive at least an hour after our airbnb host was expecting us and I didn't have a way of contacting him. We didn't want him waiting around for us, so we just decided to keep driving, and pull over at a place where there might be wifi so we could text him and let him know our arrival would be later than we had told him. So off we went!

    We drove about 15 minutes, and Michael started noticing the gears being funny on the car, and we could smell some burning rubber or something (we had noticed the same smell the day before and Dad had taken it to the mechanic and gotten it "taken care of..."). We were looking for a place with wifi, and found ourselves in a small not very promising town for that, just houses here and there and a grocery store. We came to a stop sign, realizing that we were not likely to find a place in that town where our phones would work, when we noticed large amounts of smoke pouring out the front of the car. Thus began our approximately five hour "stranded in random Hungarian town with no working phone" adventure!

     It was really pretty interesting, actually, since we hardly ever have really stumbling logistical issues. There we were, all pumped to go spend a day and a half in Budapest together, with an airbnb booked, one day to go to Budapest in because we had limited time with Madeleine and Michael, no working car, in a freezing cold town as it was getting dark and no way to contact anybody because we were in a different country- although we were only about an hour away from home. 

     So what did we do? Well, while Rosie and Rachel stayed warm and no doubt helped the process along by their presence and by willing the phones to work and I tried to look helpful while being confusedly interested in the fact that something had actually gone "wrong" and wondered what normal people do when that happens, given that we were all there alive and had money and company but just didn't quite know what to do with ourselves...God worked his work through our competent driver and master nurse sister!

Michael and Madeleine just began thinking and trying one thing after another in order to get a hold of somebody who could help, which would involve finding a way to make a phone work. We had a couple numbers we could call on my phone, but only got automated messages in Hungarian.

Waffle-cone thingie from
the Christmas Market outside St. Steven's.

I could try to describe the whole process, but basically we spent maybe 45 minutes listening to Madeleine calling various phone people in Europe or the US until she somehow got data on her phone and could contact Dad over Facebook. After that, I think Dad spent those next five hours being the middle man with our rental people and car insurance, and we hung out in a grocery store parking lot (we drove the car a few hundred meters and parked it there), bought some groceries, cleared ourselves from the suspicion of shoplifting that fell on us because Michael was eating a bun in the store (we'll definitely learn how to say "I bought this already" in Hungarian for next time...), had a delicious car picnic, met some friendly Italian men who came to tow our car, then carried our bundled selves and luggage into a cosmetics store and Michael and I played with the kids' wooden toy car play set while we waited to hear about a rental car. I couldn't have thought of a better group of people to get stuck in Hungary with. :) 

In front of Fisherman's Bastion
and St. Matthias Church.

     After a while the need for a bathroom meant we carried our stuff out into the dark and cold, crossed the highway and trekked along the side of the road to a loud bar (with a bathroom!) and bought a beer and a few weird sweet juice drinks that we called our "Crappys." (I think the correct term was "Cappy").

   

On our way up to the Palace
on the Buda side of the city.

Some of us took naps around the table there, and finally Dad told us that we should be contacted about a new rental car within the "next ten minutes." Hurray! We were still determined to go to Budapest even though it was getting pretty late (our airbnb host, Peter, had been notified and said that we could come as late as we wanted and that he had left wine and chocolate there for us.) Ten minutes turned into an hour, but eventually a little five seater car made it's way to our Hungarian Crappy Bar and we did a quick bit of paperwork and were off again! 

     We made it to Budapest, spent a good half hour looking for parking, and when we finally found a spot and tried to lock up to begin our walk to the airbnb we discovered we couldn't unlock the car from the outside with our key. (We hadn't closed all the doors yet, so there was no real problem.) This began the long stream of jokes about our next rental car that we would receive after this one had locked us out forever, disappeared or exploded. 

 
 But none of those things happened and we arrived at our airbnb (grateful for that wine and chocolate), and then Michael and I went back out to find pizza to bring back. We took a detour and got to see the Parliament building all lit up over the water (we didn't know we'd end up staying late enough the next day to see it in the dark with the girls also, but I'm so glad we did, it's not something you want to miss). 

Across the water from Parliament!

     Next morning Michael went out early and got us all breakfast, and then we went off to explore the city! There were several Advent/Christmas markets still going, so we explored those and walked across the bridge and along the Old Castle/Palace. We visited St. Mathias church and Fisherman's Bastion again, and then took a boat ride on the Danube when it got dark! It was so nice to sit down (we'd been walking all day) and cruise along enjoying our lukewarm hot chocolate and singing Christmas carols or our various three part harmonies we used to sing with all our sisters. We were sitting outside on the deck because there was no room inside, and it was much nicer that way even though it was cold. We had fresh air, a clearer view and freedom to sing! After that we walked back to our car which we half expected to find crashed at the bottom of the hill where we had parked it, or completely covered in parking tickets...but all was well. On the way the girls stopped by a shoe store while Michael and I waited in Starbucks, and they got Madeleine some much needed boots. As we left the city Madeleine said, "Guys, I'd like to congratulate us all because we did that whole trip and never once stopped at any of the McDonalds!"

     Then we drove all the way to Trumau, with a quick stop at McDonalds, and got a good laugh out of listening to Michael try to communicate with the drive-through lady with his non-existent German: "Shprekin the Inglish?" confidently combining all sorts of unidentified accents into made up German phrases.  

     When we got home we watched "It's a Wonderful Life" and drank gin and tonics because it was Madeleine's last night with us in Trumau. :) And there you go, our Budapest adventure. :)

      I hope this description wasn't too detailed in the random logistics, I just found those little mishaps to make clear the fact that time spent together with happy attitudes and people you love can turn many a challenge into a wonderful trip and adventure, one far more interesting than what one might have planned beforehand! Thank you Lord!

The whole team. :)