Short Kate, Tall Backpack: Hungary and the Laziness Thereafter

"Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."

Thank you Albert Einstein, you always know what to say don't you.

This accurately sums me up right now/this past two weeks/after vacation. To prove how accurate it is I'm going to admit the most effort I put into finding the advice from Einstein was google "lazy quotes" and the first site with one of the first quotes on the matter won me over, well hell, I don't really have a strong will to find something better and it sounded fitting. Maybe after my mystery novel I'll play the villain and hide my kindle for a while and quickly finish up watching Downton Abbey, the strangely addicting English PBS show I have absorbed myself into.

Me at Memento Park, home to all once important
Communist Statues in Hungary. Very interesting!

So much and so little has happened since my last archived post. I can tell you a bunch of what happened at the same time tell you how little I did anything after a ten day recess in Hungary. I can't explain the Easter activities that happened after the vacation in this posting. Its too much culture in one blog post the server might explode. So it's not exactly a funk, I'm happy to the point of giddy that spring has produced the first harvest of cherries and strawberries to consume and I have a long list of awesomeness I can add to my recent events but anything workwise was not at all present.

My vacation in Hungary was everything you would expect a really nice vacation in Western Europe (ish) to be. Belgian beer following delicious dinners, endless exploring of Budapest, including its Turkish Thermal baths, the opera house, Margaret Island, the snazziest cafe in the world and the other typical things you do and see in a big European city. The beautiful Hungarian Parliament building stood directly across from our hotel on the Danube where I caught up on what a free continental breakfast tastes like and I came across a fly fishing shop and a few second hand shops I needed to... explore. I was as happy as a hippo in a mud spa. And Chinese! Food that is. How could I forget!? We searched high and low for a place and nearing 2 hours of walking around at night before I finally asked a guy on the street if he 1) knew English and 2) could point us towards a Chinese place. It might just be the best meal I had and the free hot and spicy soup is something I should never forget (sorry traditional Hungarian soup Goulash, you came in second). Köszönjük Hungary!

After three nights in Budapest the rest of the trip was spent near Lake Balaton, a big lake surrounded by little lakes and castles and once active volcanoes but now home to summer vacation are like Wisconsin minus the mid-evil stuff but still all the cheese and sausage desired. We stayed a kilometer away from Lake Heviz (pronounced Hay-veez), the second largest thermal lake in the world. It was like swimming around in a retirement home's luke-warm pond. The weather was so hot and wonderful I actually burned when we were in Budapest and only rained once as we checked out some old castle ruins over looking Lake Balaton. Maybe it was good I held off on writing about the tannful trip as I remember Wisconsin was still mid Ice Age in April and early May...correct? It was also the time of the Marathon Bombing. I haven't watched so much tv my entire time in Peace Corps as I did that week as the craziness went on in America.

We stayed in a club resort thing that had a horse stables and clay tennis courts. Time flew by between horseback riding (duh), a day long bike ride in pursuit of a place to fish, castle hunting, playing tennis, eating everything we wanted, and glorious golfing day right on the lake at the "Imperial Lake Balaton Golf Course" that I hope you interpreted as I did with a nose in the air and snobbish tendencies. It. Was. Awesome.

Before I left for Hungary I made sure I knew how to say please and thank you in Hungarian. It's a cool language that I enjoyed trying to use. If you don't do this before traveling to far and distant lands, I recommend you start to. I felt like the tiney-weeney extra communication skills went a long way. I'll brief you on the p's and q's if and when you come to Moldova no problem but sadly don't be surprised like I was when I found out they don't say thank you when you hold doors open for them! Damn communistic times mistrust :(

Köszönjük! (Kur-sur-nem)= Thank You! Szívesen! (See-vah-shen)= You're Welcome!
Kérem (Kee-re-em)= Please Igen (E-gen)= Yes Nem (Nem)= No
Szia! (See-ya) Hello! <--- The strangest thing for your brain to translate because it sounds like they are saying good-bye to you before you even begin!