The First Time I Ever...

I get so excited over some of the most insignificant things. Living in a foreign country gives us many opportunities to rejoice over so many things that in America were no big deal. For example, this week for the first time EVER I saw American-style whole wheat bread in Hungary!

Of course, it only had 16 slices and it cost $2 for the little loaf but it was soft and sliced and soooo good. May be the best $2 I spend each week! It is not easy to find soft sliced bread of any color but it's especially difficult to find a good, healthy, dark bread. I was told that the reason you don't find many dark breads in Hungary is because back in the communists' days, dark bread was all you could get, and now that the days of communism are over, they don't want anything that reminds them of those days. That's what I was told, anyway. Don't know if it is true or not....

Back to the whole wheat bread... I got the last loaf on the shelf at Tesco the other day and I'm hoping that it will continue to be available from now on, but I'm not getting my hopes up! Too many of our personnel across Europe have found a product that they really liked, and when there were no more on the shelves, would talk to the manager about reordering the such-and-such only to be told that they weren't going to stock it any more because they couldn't keep it on the shelves! Too many people kept buying it that they had to keep ordering it and restocking the shelves. Evidently, they didn't own the store; they were just working in it.

Glenn and I now have our own personal driver. Not really, but we like to think we do! Zoli is a taxi driver that we now call any time we need to travel to the airport or train station. He lived in New York for a few years so he speaks English well. We enjoy our conversations with him and hope to get to know him and his wife better. They attend the local Catholic church so we have that in common, except we attend a Baptist church. :-)

On Tuesday, Zoli took us to the train station and we headed south for the Serbia Team Retreat.

We spent one day in Novi Sad (population 400,000) with the team leaders Mike and Pam before heading to Brzece, a small town in the mountains for the retreat. (Yes, I spelled the town name correctly. Alex, I'd like to buy a vowel to put between the r and z, please.) Here we are standing in front of OUR Danube River as it passes through their town. I think Novi Sad, overlooking the Danube River, looks a lot like Budapest, only not quite as pretty. But then again, I might be just a wee bit prejudiced. :-)

Their town square was quite beautiful and quaint, and not nearly as crowded as ours are in Budapest.

We visited the fortress of Petrovaradin on the hillside overlooking the Danube River that reportedly has 16 miles of tunnels underground from which the Serbs were able to deter the Turks from advancing northward. It is a fortress that no enemy has ever taken throughout the ages. In the fort you could see holes in the walls barely off the ground from which guns would shoot the Turks (and all other enemies) as they tried to take the city. If you look carefully, you can see a door underneath the bridge where you could enter one of the many tunnels.

What time is it on this clock? 1:30? WRONG. Years ago when sailors would come around the bend of the river in their boats (maybe a little tipsy), they couldn't see the small hand of the clock to know what hour it was. The story goes that someone switched the hands and so that the long hand actually tells the hour now instead of the minutes. It evidently didn't matter the EXACT time to the sailors, it just mattered what hour of the day it was. So I took this photo at 6 o'clock-ish.

You can see pylons in the Danube River left-over from the bridge that was bombed and destroyed by the Germans in WWII.

On Thursday we headed to the mountains (to an out-of-season ski resort) for the Serbia Team Retreat. We loved the rolling countryside, the many grape vineyards that climbed the sides of the hills, and the bags and bags of red peppers and apples for sale, stacked up on the side of the narrow winding roads leading to the hotel.

Part of the retreat was spent going over everyone's Grip Birkman results so that they could learn what strengths each person brings to the team, which would give them a greater appreciation for the differences in their co-workers. Here, Pam, Mike and Carl are working "together" to build the tallest structure they can out of uncooked spaghetti noodles and marshmallows.

This team came in third place. :-(

The captain of the team that came in second place is very competitive and didn't like being in second place. He said that second place is just another word for losing. Ah, but it was fun watching the 3 teams work out their strategies, or not use a strategy at all!

This man led the Grip Birkman part of the retreat and did a good job. He won everyone's heart when he gave everyone Oreo cookies that he used for one of his examples and then let us eat them!

The retreat ended this afternoon and we head back to Novi Sad tomorrow and then on to Budapest on the night train. Glenn reserved a sleeper car for us so we will at least be able to stretch out and get a little sleep. (emphasis on little) We leave Novi Sad at 10 pm and arrive back in Budapest on Tuesday morning at 5 am. After running a few loads of laundry and repacking our suitcases, we leave for Prague on Wednesday morning. Do you know the song On the Road Again by Willie Nelson? That's my new song.

Catch you next week!