A week in Budapest

We spent the last week in Budapest. We learned two words: jó napot kívánok (Good day/hello) and köszönöm (thank you). We used them all over the place and made the Hungarians smile, especially when Lucy would say "köszönöm!" We also started to recognize a few other words: tej/milk, a long something starting with "s" that meant "you're welcome," and something that sounded like "see-ya," but meant hello/goodbye. If you get a chance, you can see Henry saying köszönöm. It is very cute.

What we saw as we walked out of the apartment building at night.

Kirk had a long week with his three-day seminar and training about 60 students in a research project. He had great help from a Ph.D. student, Bojana, from Croatia. We had her come to the apartment and eat dinner with the family at the end of the week. The children were charming while she was there. They were not charming most of the rest of the week.

Walking across the Chain Bridge linking Buda on the west
to Pest on the east.

The children mentioned a number of things we did in their blog posts. Here are a few other notes.
We bought the biggest loaf of bread we have ever seen. It weighed 3 kilos (6.6 lbs).

They bake their bread with the paper sticker on it;
in the grocery store, it has the bar code on it. 

We brought part of it to Vienna and are still eating through it.

We bought quail eggs and ate them as scrambled eggs for breakfast. They were good.

Edward holding a quail egg. We scrambled 15, and
got enough for everyone to have a taste.

We stayed in an apartment that was right next to the Buda castle.

Our apartment, as seen from the Castle.

This was very scenic, but also very challenging since it was on a hill. We had to climb up and down steep cobblestone roads and stairs to get to it.

The grocery store (Spar) was at the bottom of the hill,
next to the Danube river. We went shopping every day.

I asked all the children what they enjoyed about Budapest. Andrew said the chain bridge. Edward said the chain bridge. Lucy said the metro or U-bahn (Vienna's metro) as she calls it. Henry didn't say much. I enjoyed going to a wonderful folk art store. It only sells high-quality handmade items from all over Hungary. It is not a "souvenir" shop. They have some needle lace that is hundreds of dollars for a piece the size of a postage stamp. I didn't get that, of course.

Inside the sore.

It was an interesting experience to be in Budapest. We never thought we would be here.