It's been a while ...

Since I last updated 6 weeks ago, I've been to 6 countries and had 3 wonderful weeks in Budapest.  The photo above was taken in Kosovo, the last stop on our most recent 12 day trip.  Let me start though with our first trip!

When we were planning out our summer schedule, Glenn suggested we add on a short trip to Poland with a meeting in Germany so that I could shop for that wonderful blue pottery that I love so much!

I bought lots of pottery but in my own defense, it was not all for me.  I also bought some for my daughter who likes it too, tea sets for our 2 newest grand-daughters, a few gifts for friends, and fulfilled requests for a couple of others who don't have an opportunity to go to Boleslawiec themselves.  

From Poland, we drove to Germany to attend a meeting in a retreat setting. It was a great week of fellowship and worship.

After our trip to Germany and Poland, we had 3 glorious weeks back in Budapest!  We had guests a couple of times, so we did some more sightseeing in town.  This photo is taken from one of my favorite spots overlooking the Danube River.  If you squint your eyes, you can see the Parliament building on the left at the far end of the river.

Glenn and I did some massive yard work so made a couple of trips to OBI, much like Home Depot, even down to the orange and white logo!  However, I don't think there's a Home Depot in America that sells stills for brewing your own hootch.  :-)  

This large bottle of water is found in the automotive department.  We thought it was distilled water but it is actually mineralized water.  Can you tell me why apple scented mineralized water would be used in a car?

At our small Campona Mall down the street from our house, there's a kiosk in the middle that sells random food and drink items from around the world.  Imagine my surprise when I found Dr. Pepper Zero there, especially when you can't find it anywhere else!  By the way, our Tesco (think Walmart) is consistently selling Dr. Pepper (regular), as are a lot of other grocery stores too.  Finally!

Our last trip was a 12 day journey to visit our families in Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo.  Below are a few shots of our trip.

First stop:  Sarajevo, Bosnia.  Sarajevo is one of our favorite cities, especially it's old town area.  We visited one of the ruins of the site of the Winter Olympics in 1984. In it's glory days, this is where the bobsled competition was held.  It is sad to think that 10 years later the city would be sieged and the country would enter a four-year war.  At the end of the 3 kilometer bobsled ride down Mount Trebevic is a bombed out spectator area that once held hundreds of people.

From Sarajevo, we drove to Mostar where we experienced a torrential downpour while walking through the market area with the family we were visiting.  The water was gushing down the hilly streets, knee deep in places, and was pouring under storefront doors.  This man is trying to deflect some of the water so that it won't enter his store.  He was soaked!

We came to this street that was flooded up at the top of the hill where we needed to turn, so we had to camp out at this sidewalk cafe until the water level receded.  It was here that I learned to like Nescafe!

I took about 300 pictures on our trip of the many towns and villages through which we passed, and of the humongous splendorific (evidently not a real word since my computer is underlining it in red) mountains that were all around us.

I thought it very interesting that even though each of the countries through which we passed were mountainous, they all had a little different look about them.  I don't know if it was because of the different types of trees, the soil composition (rocky or dirt), or even the shadows from the clouds affecting the color of the leaves, but I never tired of the gorgeous views.  I did, however, hide my eyes on many occasions as we wound around many a mountain top with hairpin turns on skinny roads. 

Welcome to Montenegro!

We were enjoying a meal at a restaurant in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, and across from the hotel restaurant balcony in plain view were these unprotected Turkish ruins.  Can you believe it?  Unprotected and undeveloped.

On a funny note, the waiter gave me this menu and I noticed it was a different color from Glenn's and it says "For Ladies".  Now, why would they have a different menu for ladies?  

This is what it looks like inside.  So, do you notice any reason why this menu is for ladies?

If you said, "it does not show the prices", you would have been right and won a wonderful prize (if I was offering a prize).  This is the men's copy with the prices listed.  I guess the hotel is saying their restaurant is a fine one where women are brought to be wined and dined.

For our Sabbath, we decided to take a short detour into Albania for a day and a night.  We rented a room about 1/4 mile from the beach (we could see the Adriatic Sea from our third floor balcony) and enjoyed walking along the "boardwalk" along the beach.  There were 8 1/2 miles of dark sand but we only walked 2 or 3 of them.  We agreed we probably would never choose to vacation in Albania, but we were glad we chose to visit the country.  

By the way, that makes 61 countries that I've visited!

Albania was mountainous and beautiful, but the trash along the roadway was a little much for us.

From there, we drove to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.  

We stayed in the same hotel we've used before so we were in familiar territory.  We saw the Bill Clinton billboard and statue as before, but this time we came upon a quote from John F. Kennedy on the side of a university building.

Our last place to visit was in Pec (or Peje).  We saw this Pizzeria USA and wondered if there were any similarities with any pizzas in America!

One of the main things we saw in ALL FOUR countries was the abundance of peppers for sale on the side of the road.  We love peppers.  Sweet red peppers, long yellow ones, round orange ones.  We also visited a waterfall while in Pec (first photo) and took a couple of walks through their small downtown area.   In Pec, everywhere you look, you see mountains in the distance.

From Kosovo, the shortest route back to Budapest would be through Serbia but because those two countries don't have a good relationship, we had to go back into Montenegro and then pass into Serbia.  We have families in Serbia but since we have already visited them this year, we didn't stop.  Besides, after 12 days on the road, I'm kind of like a horse that sees the barn!  

Home for the week, then on the road again.  :-)

Just in the nick of time!

Something happened during our recent trip to Kazakhstan (in Central Asia) that will forever alter my decision to ride a cable car or gondola in the future.  Obviously, I am okay since I'm writing this, and in spite of this scary event, we had a great visit to Kazakhstan and hope to go back again some day.  

Bear with me folks to the end of this post.  

   

We went to visit Harold and Julie, friends of ours on the Member Care team.  They live in Almaty, located in southern Kazakhstan, a mountainous area.  While Almaty is the largest city in terms of square kilometers, has the largest population, and is the major commercial and cultural center, it lost it's status as the capital in 1997 to Astana.

Upon arriving, I was surprised to find Almaty a very modern city with many, many glass and futuristic skyscrapers.  Much more modern looking than Budapest!  

I had expected shepherds herding their flocks across rocky hills and men wearing long vests over tan tunics, scarves around their necks and round, wool hats perched sideways on their heads.  My mental pictures were totally wrong!  

Business men wore suits and women were comfortable in assorted pants and tops, and teenage boys wore faded, baggy jeans while teenage girls wore those very revealing, very short shorts.  Evidently, short shorts are very much in style here in Europe because in Hungary, at the Istanbul International Airport where we had our lay-over, and in Kazakhstan, ALL the teenage girls (and sometimes older women who definitely shouldn't be wearing them) were wearing those short shorts.

Even though Almaty is a very modern city in most ways, there are still many, many squatty potties to be used!  Fortunately, their sewage system is up-to-date and able to handle the flushing of toilet paper, unlike Greece and a few other countries we've visited!  

When visiting different countries, I always look to see if there is a trash can sitting next to the toilet, because if there is, that often means that toilet paper goes in the can, not the toilet.

Not ALL the buildings are modern.  Some had a very definite "communistic" look about them, a throwback from when Kazakhstan was part of the former Soviet Union.  

Almaty has trash pick-up two days a week.  People hang their trash bags outside their yard on the wall around their property for the city to collect on specific days.  They are supposed to hang the bags only on pick-up days, but some people put them out on the wall whenever they get a full bag.

I got to meet one of Harold and Julie's neighbors who lives a few houses down the street.  Kazakhs generally look mildly Asian with their olive skin, dark hair and small, folded eyes.  Most Kazaks are Muslim.  For many years, under the rule of the Soviet Union, the Kazakh language was repressed and people were forced to learn Russian.  Today, while most people still speak Russian, there is a growing popularity in speaking Kazakh. 

Grocery stores are available but I love shopping for fruits and vegetables in the "green" markets, as they are called.

Watermelons are in season and found every where, as were several other delicious types of melons.  This HUGE melon is very sweet, and tastes like a cross between cantaloupe and honeydew melons. These do not exist in Hungary as far as I know but I sure wish they did!  

The last time I had one of these melons, though much smaller, was in 2008 when I went to Russia.  At that time I (mistakenly) paid $7 for a melon the size of our cantaloupes because I didn't calculate correctly the amount of Russian roubles to the American dollar.  Ouch!  I don't know how much the above melon cost in Kazakhstan, but when I asked Julie the price, she said they are "cheap".  Good thing, because we ate two of them in the four days we were there!

In addition to the "green" market, we went to another market that was large and seemed to go on forever.  Hats, make-up, leggings, pants, tops, underwear, books, plastic toys, hardware, tools, fabric, towels, sheets and so on ...  You could find anything you could possibly want if you were willing to wander forever among the hundreds of stalls, which I was willing to do.  :-)

The meat section was large and smelly.  The meat on the counter between the woman on the phone and the man in the stripped shirt is horse meat.  :-(

Anyone need a pigs head for their next holiday celebration?

Even though the meat market was pretty disgusting to our American sensitivities, it didn't stop me from eating!  

Harold and Julie wanted us to eat a typical Kazakh meal called Lagman.  It is made with long, thick, chewy, hand-made noodles, and topped with chopped lamb (most often), chicken or beef and various stir fried vegetables.  It was delicious!  Supposedly at this place, one serving consists of TWO long noodles.  Very long noodles.  If that is true, I'd guess each noodle was at least a meter long.  (A little over a yard ... for those of you who live in America.)

For dessert, we stopped by a grocery store and picked up BAGS of chocolate and vanilla ice cream.  Why don't we sell ice cream in bags in America?  Or Hungary?  It's so easy to open the bag and slice off a piece, and it would lay very nicely over a slice of cake!

One day we went out into the countryside for a picnic and to the Shymbulak ski resort to ride a gondola to the top of one of the mountains.

On our way, we saw a yurt (sounds like a Dr. Suess word, doesn't it???), which is one of the oldest and greatest inventions of nomadic Eurasians!  With the help of one camel and two horses, the portable house and all of it's decorations could be moved from one location to another.  Yurts are circular, domed, and made of heavy felt.  Yurts do not have interior rooms; it was common to have one yurt as a bedroom, another yurt as the kitchen, and if wealthy, a third yurt for guests.

Because the walls are so thick, the air stays cool inside during the hot summer days and warm in the winter, protected from the cold winds, falling snow or pouring rains.  

Today, it is not unusual to see local restaurants in yurts, as in the photo above.  Customers sit around the low table on the colorful rugs to enjoy one of the many flavorful dishes of the country. Some yurts are also used as places of lodging for tourists who are adventuresome and wanting a taste of the culture.  

Fifteen miles south of Almaty is the Shymbulak ski resort, one of the venues of the 2011 Asian Games that was hosted by Almaty.  The resort has 3 successive ski lifts, which rise 10,500 feet above sea level to Talgar Pass.  

In order to get to the ski resort, we took a 20 minute ride up in a gondola (cable car) that holds 6 people.  The ride up was smooth and the views were breathtaking.  It was quite warm as we rose to the top because of the sun pouring in through the glass walls. 

Off in the distance (if your eyesight is good) you can see the city of Almaty.  Closer in, we could see hillsides covered with colorful flowers and blue-green trees.

We saw from the gondola several places where young people professed their love for someone else by laying rocks in the shape of a heart and writing their names.

After an hour or so at the ski resort we decided it was time to leave.  We are so THANKFUL that we did not leave a minute later!  Our ride down was just as smooth and warm as the ride up, but just as we approached and were about 6 inches from the deck where we were to exit the gondola, the entire machinery ground to a halt.  Slowly, screechingly, and with great effort, the gondola finally moved- inch by inch- to the deck and our door would open.  

With haste, we exited the gondola, relieved that we didn't get stuck on board!  I'm slightly claustrophobic so I'm relatively sure I would have had a major freak-out if I was stuck in the gondola with only two small windows! As we were walking back to our car, we noticed that none of the gondolas were moving!  There was a problem and all the people on the gondolas were stuck in the air!  Literally, we were the last people off the gondola before it broke down.  We got off JUST IN THE NICK OF TIME!

Several of us were curious about how long the folks would be stuck in the air and most of us were thirsty, so we decided to go to a cafe' at the world famous Medeu* ice skating rink where we had parked our car to watch.  We bought drinks at the Trader Vic's* restaurant/cafe and watched for an hour and a half to see if the cable cars would start moving, which, unfortunately, they did not!  

After praying for those poor, confined folks who were stuck in the air for who know how long, we decided to leave.  Honestly, all evening I kept thinking about those folks and how closely that could have been us; how miserable it would be to be stuck in one of those boxes for an indefinite amount of time.   We were 6 inches and 10 seconds away from a major freak-out!

*Medeu ice skating rink is located at 5,550 feet above sea level and is world-famous because of the more than 120 world records set there!  It was built in 1972 and is almost the size of two football fields.

*Trader Vic's is an American restaurant chain known for it's Polynesian-theme restaurants and their Mai Tai drink.  As of 2012, there are 4 Trader Vic's restaurants in the U.S., 3 in Europe, 8 in the Middle East, and 3 in Asia.  If you could read the menu above, you'd see that one of the 8 in the U.S. is located in Atlanta, Georgia.  We just happened to get a drink from one of the 3 in Asia!

Hopefully this week will be less "exciting" than our gondola experience!

An interesting week ...

Glenn and I hosted two Journeymen for two nights and spent one day with them in town.  Betsy is fairly new to Hungary and hasn't seen much of Budapest, and Lauren is almost finished with her two year term and will be heading back to the U.S. in a couple of months.  They visited the Castle District with Glenn while I had a physical therapy appointment, and then we met up at Starbucks for a bit of refreshment before seeing the rest of the city.  :-)  

I have always loved the front side of the Parliament building, but now that they have pressure washed the back and sides, and re-landscaped the grounds, the back is as beautiful as the front!  

It sprinkled while we were there, so the ground is wet and the sky is cloudy but that just helped to keep the tourists out of my picture!  Tourists is said with a slight snicker since I'm not one...

We went across the river to see Parliament from the front and found this new memorial to the flood of 2013.  The water level rose 29 feet last summer!  Do you see the dark marble wave at the bottom right corner?  The water came up to there.

Heading over to Heroes Square, we saw this Pub bike.  It is essentially a beer bar on wheels.  There's a driver who steers the bike, and a bartender who stands in the middle and pours drinks while the 9 riders drink and peddle.  It looks like a lot of fun to me, except the beer drinking part!

Never seen this before!  A place to plug in and recharge your electric car!

We've had for at least two years now a tour bus that drives through the city and then drives into the river.  I watched an 8 minute video on Facebook today that shows these buses and how they work.  The one in the video clip is sold for personal use as a high-class camper and a boat, complete with a  16 foot dock for jumping into the water.

This picture is taken in City Park.  As you can see, they have filled the area with water.  Now, I've shown pictures before of this location, occasionally during the winter months when they have turned it into a winter wonderland!

In the winter, the area is this really huge outdoor skating rink ...

... but in the summer, it's a lake, complete with paddle boats and row boats!  One summer it was filled with sand, sun umbrellas, cafe' tables and volleyball nets!  

It is now plum season and the trees down the street are loaded with them!  Wish we had a plum tree!

Have a good week!