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| Terror House - Budapest |
Not kidding. We got to the train station, and after several exchanges with the ticket lady (Who spoke ONLY Hungarian) we learned that the bus taking us to our train was an hour late. Then, when we got to the station, we found that our train was an additional 30 minutes late. Yet it wasn't until we were halfway to Budapest on the train that I realized my glasses were still in our hotel room in Tokaj! By then it was too late to turn around and retrieve them.
Luckily, our hostel host in Budapest is very nice. He called the hotel for us and requested that my glasses be sent to Budapest. For some reason metal can't be shipped in the Hungarian post from Tokaj, but it can from Budapest. My glasses should be in Budapest on Monday or Tuesday, at which point the guy here will forward them to Bled, Slovenija, where we will be from August 16th through the 19th. We may have to modify our travel schedule depending on shipment, just so I can retrieve them. Hopefully this won't negatively impact our travel schedule too much. But there are worse places to be stuck for an extra day than Bled. I still can't believe I left my glasses! Eleven years of wearing glasses and never once have I left them anywhere until today...and at the most inopportune time ever. Hopefully this will be sorted out promptly.
We're back in Budapest. Today we checked out the Terror House which documents the massacre and torture of Hungarians during the World Wars and Soviet control. It was really intense. That's really all I can say. The museum was VERY well done, but intense is the only word that adequately describes the atrocities that it depicts.
Tomorrow we leave for Ljubljana and Slovenia. Thank God! Nothing against Hungary. It's been amazing and beautiful, and while I feel like we haven't adequately explored the country, we've had a patch of bad luck since we entered the border. In addition to the metro-police fiasco of our first day, Kati got sick later that day. We headed off her tonsil problems only for her to get a head-cold. Then, once that started to clear up, her knee started hurting. Then, she got sunburned in Miskolc. Then we had travel problems in both Miskolc and Tokaj, and finally, I left my glasses in Tokaj! It's a beautiful country and hopefully we will be able to spend some more time here in the future, but I hope that our departure to Slovenija will leave our bad luck and travel difficulties here and the rest of our trip will run smoothly. I'm crazy-excited to be heading back to Slovenija again.
Our train trip to Ljubljana is over nine hours long. We leave at 12:00 in the afternoon and should get in around 9:30 at night. Luckily, I know the city and we're staying in a hostel with 24-hour reception that I've stayed at before. Despite the strange hours, getting there should be relatively easy. A day on the train will also give our legs a much needed rest after this past week. See you in Slovenija!
Good Grief - you have more perseverance than me! I would have left Hungary after the first incidence. Hope you get your glasses back, and the rest of the trip has no hitches. (You know, you had to leave them, because you were so worried about doing that - a self-fulfilling prophecy).
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