Much as we are enjoying ourselves over here, I have to say that we missed being in the US on July 4! Especially we missed the July 4th parade in Montreat, seeing all of our friends and family, and, of course, swimming in our pool. But we had a good weekend too, albeit with a few missteps along the way.
On July 4, we got up early and headed down to Munich to fly out to Budapest, Hungary. We have friends from Montana who are living there now as missionaries, so we wanted to visit them as well as see the city. We had a long layover in Zurich, Switzerland, which ended up with us missing our flight to Budapest! That was a bummer, as there were no more flights out that day and we had to pay extra to 'change' our flight to one the next morning. Then, we had to pay for a hotel room in Zurich and train tickets to get to and from the hotel and the airport. But we decided, after some lamenting, that we would just make the best of it, and we wandered around Zurich a bit, saw some cool buildings, ate some great food (raclette!), and watched the people walk by. There are some really interesting people out there! On Saturday, we went to the airport and flew on into Budapest and took a taxi to our hotel in Pest. You may or may not know that Budapest is actually two cities separated by the Danube River. It is a beautiful city, interspersed with some communist-looking buildings too. Lots of contrasts. As we walked around, we saw lots of policemen gathering (SWAT team- looking police) and closing off some of the side streets down a main street. I am talking hundreds of policemen, with riot gear and everything. We found out later that there was to be a Gay Pride parade that afternoon- just our luck. After eyeing the restless crowds and small stockpiles of eggs and tomatoes, we thought it best to go back to our room and rest a bit. The Chain Bridge is a beautiful bridge across the Danube, which on Saturday had a great festival going on, with great food and music and craft booths. On Sunday, we took a Hop-on Hop off Bus Tour of the city, which was great. That night we attended a Hungarian Folk Dance show and then went on a nighttime cruise on the river. It was beautiful! The music was great and the dancing was colorful and energetic. Many famous composers were Hungarian, notably Liszt and Dvorak. All in all, we had a great time, except that we never were able to connect with our friends from Montana. They had had to go to a wedding in Prague and did not make it back until late on Monday, when we were on our way to the airport to come home. At least that was the plan..... as we waited in the small airport terminal for our direct flight to Munich, a thunder storm rolled in and our flight was delayed, then...you guessed it.... cancelled. But not before we got to sit in the small plane on the tarmac for 2 hours, hoping they were going to fuel us up and let us go. No such luck. At about 2 am we were on our way to a hotel, but we had to get up early to catch a flight out at 9 am. It was no fun, but it all turned out all right. Certainly, the whole weekend made us some memories! Last weekend, we went to a really neat raptor show at a castle in the village of Riedenburg, the castle Rosenburg. The place is called Falkonhof and they have a fun and interesting (at least I think it was interesting- it was all in German!) show with falcons and eagles and such, wheeling and diving over the audience's heads, coming perilously close to the tops of heads and sun umbrellas! The setting was fantastic too- on the top of a hill, in the castle yard, with years of history and tradition behind it.
This weekend is the BurgerFest in our village; it means 'Citizen Fest'. We are looking forward to some great German food and maybe buying some cool handcrafts. We are also getting our new German bed on Friday- we have been sleeping in a double bed, which is quite small compared to our King Waterbed in Hickory! It has been hot here, which combined with no AC makes for uncomfortable days.
Miss you all. Please come visit!
Nan & Ben
