Thursday, October 26, 2006

Feeling Comfortable

The train station in Ujszasa. 88 trains a day stop in our village! Tickets are cheap and everyone travels by train. Eger, Hungary - Dobo Ter (main square)














John enjoys a beer at our Botel on the Danube.
It's hard to believe we have been here for two months already! We are settled into a pattern at school and we are enjoying the team teaching arrangement. The only class we appear to have problems with is a 12th grade one. (They refuse to speak English and have been allowed to get away with this for the prior three years.) They are definitely a challenge!

Besides school, we find ourselves taking the train into Szolnok once a week to meet Emily (another CETP teacher) for supper and then we do some shopping. As much as we are enjoying being in Hungary, it is nice to have another native English speaker to talk to. We have a few favorite pubs we bounce between. Hungarian food is really quite good, once you can figure out what you are ordering! School lunches do prove interesting though; hot fruit soups are frequently served, as is pasta with sour cream and either sugar or walnuts. Different!
The otheroddball thing we have found (or oddball to us, anyway) is the size of the sheets here. They do not cover the entire bed and are not tucked in. I jokingly called them "tableclothes" laid on our beds. Well, yesterday at lunch we realized what we were eatingon! Either we have "tableclothes" to sleep on, or we hve "bedsheets" to eat on. They are the same!!!

We have done a lot of traveling. We have been gone almost every weekend. Budapest 3 times, Eger, Szentendre, and last week a 3-day weekend to Bratislava, Slovakia. I've included some pictures for you to see. We take the train everywhere and are spoiled by being able to relax and not worry about traffic. The people are friendly everywhere and tolerate our horrid Hungarian. We have seen so many beautiful sights from the Danube in the fog to town squares enclosed by 15th-17th century buildings painted in pastels that make you think you have stepped through the looking glass and back in time!

We do enjoy the peacefulness of our village life in Ujszasz. We awaken to the rooster and barking dogs of our farmer neighbor. We ride our bikes to the pub not having to worry about who will be the designated peddler. We take our canvas bag and walk to the grocery store to stock up on cola, paprika peppers, baking powder in tiny, tiny packets and Jogobella joghurt, which is the best yogurt we have ever had!!! We are finally figuring out how to read the train schedules on the rotating drums in the vonat allomash (train station).

Next week we have Fall Break. (Here we have Fall Break, Winter Break AND Spring Break! Eat your heart out Cara and Matt!) We will take the train to Zagreb and explore Croatia. So come back in a few weeks and hear about our adventures on the Adriatic coast!

2 comments:

jeremy said...

you will love Zagreb! and any other parts of Croatia you dash off to explore. recommendation: buy some sharp, smoked cheesy from the wrinkled old man in the market who speaks only German. It's the greatest stuff i've ever had!

The Hungary Traveler said...

May I also recommend venturing beyond Croatia to Slovenia? While teaching last year in Szolnok, I had the opportunity to twice visit this tiny, neophytic, hidden gem of a nation. Ljubljana is a classy, hip and inviting capital hub; Bled (and the nearby Triglav National Park) offers Rockey Mountain beauty; and Piran gives visiters a chance to step back in time to a quaint, medieval, Mediterranean port village. And the best part? All three are no more than a 90 minute bus ride from one another!