Week 20: Stanton family reunion in Budapest

This week saw the first Stanton family holiday abroad together in 7 years! We spent a long weekend in a quirky apartment near the centre of Budapest. The first event of the journey was that Louis Alfonsi (the singer of Despacito) and his huge entourage were on my flight from Barcelona to Budapest. A little strange, as the flight was with budget airline WizzAir- maybe the cheque for his number 1 single hasn’t cleared yet! He apparently wanted to film something on the plane before we all boarded, delaying my flight by an hour. I was counting down the minutes to seeing my Mum and Dad, imagining a cheesy airport reunion scene, but it turned out they were waiting in the arrivals lounge of a different terminal. Confusion aside I was over the moon to see them again after 4 months. We spent our first evening relaxing in the apartment, waiting for Craig (and Mum and Dads bags) to arrive, and then eating takeaway kebabs. The next day we set off exploring Budapest. We headed over the river and hiked up the hill to the Citadel, walked across the Chain bridge, then we got the metro out to Hero’s Square and walked around Vàrosligeti-tó Park. Along the way we found some nice spots for a drink: we chilled in some deck chairs along the Danube river in Raqpart Bar and later looked out over the city rooftops in 360 Bar. For dinner we went to the outdoor Street Food Karavan, where there were about 10 street food vendors selling everything from burgers to traditional Hungarian Goulash and Lángos. Take your pick, grab a beer from the bar, and find a bench! This was great for a nice relaxed, fun, and cheap dinner, we definitely recommend Street Food Karavan to anyone heading to Budapest.

 

After spending Tuesday hiking around the city, Wednesday was our relaxation day. We walked to Margaret Island (a small, pedestrianised island in the middle of the Danube river) and spent 3 hours at the Palatinus Strandfürdö spa. This suited everyone as Dad (the swimming fanatic) could swim some lengths and the rest of us got to relax in the outdoor thermal pools. There was even a wave pool and water slides! After the spa we walked through the Japanese Garden on Margaret Island and then headed home, via a beer in the city centre at a great place we found to dip your feet. For our last night we ate at a fish bar on Dob street. We found this street while walking back to the apartment and it is lined with great looking restaurants- we struggled to pick one. From Jewish street food to a “Makery” where you sit around a table and cook your meal together as a group.

 

On Thursday we said goodbye to my parents and set off to meet our next Workaway hosts. They own a small farm in southern Hungary near the town of Csólyospálos - a change from the bustle of Budapest. We were met from the train at about 17:00 by a host who speaks a lot less English than we had anticipated based on our messages back and forth! After arriving at his farm we discovered that there was no bathroom or shower, only a compost toilet outside. The bedroom on offer at their farm also had pork meat hanging up to dry and a broken sofa bed with no sheets or pillows. Thankfully we were offered a room at his parents farm down the road, where there would be a bathroom with both a shower and no toilet. No internet, but that was a sacrifice I was happy to make. Támas and Anita were also hosting a Swiss couple (Camilla and Matias) with a 2 year old son and a girl from Taiwan (Chomin), who were all nice and friendly. We helped them feed and water the pigs, goats, cows, chickens and emus and then went to bed, unsure what the next couple of weeks would hold!

 

We start work about 8am each morning, mainly tending to the animals and vegetables, building/repairing the odd bit of fencing and generally help out where we can. We finish work for the day at around 12.30pm for lunch. Lunch seems to be the main meal of the day here so Anita or Camilla usually prepare something hot with pasta or rice. Hungary is known for the paprikas (or peppers as we call them in the UK) and zucchini (courgettes) so they are almost always on the menu! The local town of Csólyospálos is quite small and there isn’t much to do. We have a couple of bikes we can borrow to get into the town but they aren’t in good enough condition for a day out cycling and I think you would have to cycle quite far to get to the next town. It has proved a slight bit of a blessing though, as it has forced us to just enjoy sitting outside reading and relaxing. And even though our hosts don’t speak as much English as we thought, they are really nice people. At the weekend they took us to a traditional Hungarian horse fair and a tractor rally, which were actually quite cool experiences. In a strange way not a million miles away from the sort of events you get in rural Cumbria where we’re from. And I finally got my hands on a chimney cake- a long tube of dough cooked over a fire and then coated in sugar and flavour (chocolate in our case)!

 

Admittedly, we were a little shocked when we first arrived with Támas and Anita but our first few days have been fun and interesting! Workaway can be a little strange at first, trying to settle in to someone else’s house and suddenly spending so much time with people you’ve only just met. But we are yet to have a bad experience so we will just embrace this new and different place, which is surely the whole point of travelling! 


Total joint spend: €2308

Week 19: parting ways in Warsaw!

On Tuesday we drove with Piotr to their main house in Warsaw. Piotr and Kinga kindly offered for us to stay here for our flights out of Poland.

Craig left at 5am on Wednesday morning to head home and surprise his sister for her birthday, leaving me alone to explore Warsaw on Wednesday and Thursday morning. Craig chose a rather complicated route home consisting of 8 different connections- he missed one but thankfully made it home! 

I got the bus into Warsaw city centre easily enough- quite a few of the buses we have gotten in Europe have been well labelled and have electronic screens indicating the next stop, much easier than getting a bus in the UK. I was pleasantly surprised by Warsaw, a few people we met in Slovakia described Warsaw as “just another city”, and Piotr also explained that much of Warsaw was destroyed in WWII, so it is not very old. So I didn’t have the highest of hopes, but I found Warsaw to be quite beautiful. I walked for about an hour before reaching the old town, which was apparently rebuilt after the war using original bricks etc. I stopped at Podwale 5 for lunch, a quiet place with chilled music and free wifi. The waitresses were really friendly but did struggle to translate the daily set lunch menu, but I opted for it anyway and enjoyed a tomato and lentil soup followed by a really yummy grilled chicken breast with couscous and salad. Really delicious and all for 25 zlotys (around £5) with a 0.5L beer too. After exploring the old town a little more I got the bus back and picked up some beer and dinner on the way, and settled in for a lonely wifi-free night. I admit I was quite nervous staying somewhere unfamiliar all by myself - hence the beer! I enjoyed Warsaw much more than i expected, however, it wasn’t quite the same without my travel buddy.

On the Thursday I pottered back into Warsaw to pick up a few bits and pieces and then got the bus to the airport to fly to Barcelona for my friend’s hen party. As a bridesmaid I have been helping plan this weekend for months so I was very excited! I landed late Thursday night and got a good nights sleep in a hostel before meeting the other hens on Friday. It was great to see some familiar faces from home, and meet some new faces before the wedding in October!

After the girls left on Sunday I stayed in Pension Aris for the Sunday night. I can recommend both this and Buba House for solo travellers in Barcelona. Pretty basic but very welcoming and I felt very safe the whole time (Pension Aris had a finger print scanner to get in!).

The excitement continued into the following week as on Monday I flew from Barcelona to Budapest where I would be reunited with Craig, and also my parents (yippeee) for 3 nights, which will be covered in the next blog post!


Things we discovered:

- Polish mosquitos are the worst!
- They enjoy wafers in Poland. Whole supermarket sections were devoted to differently shaped wafer for home baking.
- Almost everyone we met in Poland also has an English name that they introduce themselves with. Eg Piotr = Peter, Jurek = George, Kasia = Kate


Total joint spend: €1850

Week 18 (Kazimierz Dolny): our final week in Poland

Our final week in Kazimierz Dolny saw us continue to help Piotr at his mums house in the next village, Mecmierz. We chopped wood and trimmed a lot of hedges- I even had my first go using a petrol hedge trimmer! I declined a go with the chainsaw though, I'll leave that one for Craig. It's been nice to get back out into the garden and do some physical work again, but it's been very hot in Kazimierz this week!



Piotr has continued to show us the sights and culture of Kazimierz in our free time. On Tuesday we went to a small bar in the market square to watch an Argentinian band. There were no vocals, just piano, drums, and an accordion-type instrument. It was fantastic! Later in the week the local band "The Kazimierz Hobos" also played in Mecmierz. The band sing about anything Kazimierz Dolny, from the nun cult to the fire station, and from the brief translations Piotr gave us they seem very funny! The atmosphere was amazing, everyone was dancing and knew all the words to all the songs! We really felt like we got to experience a staple of Kazimierz! After the gig we headed down to a bar in Kazimierz market square for beer and some guitar playing. Piotr brought a second guitar from their home in Warsaw so Craig and Piotr could play together and entertain the other bar-goers.



To top off our cultural activities we also went to an art exhibition opening of a friend of Piotrs. There was a great turn out to this too. Kazimierz has a great community feel to it and you see all the local faces in the bar, at gigs, in the gallery, at the market on a Friday. It's great!

We celebrated our final day in Kazimierz with a last ice cream and another campfire at Pia's house, a friend of Piotrs. I really love sitting around the fire roasting kielbasa and drinking beer. We had more music and singing, this time joined by a Jazz Violinist too! It was a great end to our time in Kazimierz Dolny, although we are sure we will be back again in the future!





Total joint spend: €1780

Week 17 (Kazimierz Dolny): birthday in Kazimierz

So we’ve now been with our Kazimierz hosts for 2 weeks. It doesn’t feel like that long, but we did settle in pretty quickly. We got to know the girls quite well from the English lessons we’ve been giving them, it helps that they’re both really enthusiastic and friendly. Our time in Italy and Slovakia served us well in this regard- we’ve had plenty of ideas for games and conversation starters which hopefully made our lessons fun and useful for them. Piotr and Kinga have been very grateful to us for the English tuition, and encouraged us to take the girls out for ice cream and just enjoy the town with them. It doesn’t feel like work at all, but English conversation practise for the girls obviously something our hosts really value. Win-win!

This week was our last with the girls, as the youngest left for a summer camp, while Kinga and the eldest are now doing a Workaway as guests themselves in Spain. Kinga did one last year too in Portugal, and obviously enjoyed it enough to do it again and even become a host- something we’ll definitely consider in the future when we have a suitable place. So for the rest of our Polish Workaway we will be helping Piotr, who has a few jobs lined up for us including gardening, DIY, and preparing meals.

In our time off Piotr is great at keeping us entertained, whether it’s bringing us along for some market square busking or providing recommendations for where’s best to explore (as we may have mentioned before, local hosts’ knowledge and company is one of the major benefits of Workaway). Among his recommendations was roots gorge, one of the network of loess gorges surrounding Kazimierz. In fact, the street that our hosts live on is at the bottom of one of these gorges, and if you walk past the house and continue up the cobbled street for just a few minutes it turns into a dirt track, and soon after becomes a forest. Roots gorge in particular is an interesting place, so named because of the exposed tree roots along the walls of the gorge.

Craig’s birthday fell in this week, so after a few beers together in the market square, Piotr took us for a traditional polish lunch. This involved pork, herring and the most vibrantly-coloured soup (borscht) we’ve ever seen. Following lunch we went to the nearby town of Lublin, where there was a political demonstration going on. Kaczyński, de facto leader of the right-wing ‘PiS’ party was trying to pass legislation around control of the supreme court which many found controversial. The prime minister has since unexpectedly veto’d the move, so now Craig and I can both claim the title of successful political activist, clearly having been historically significant figures in Poland’s political future.



Other highlights of the week have been a near-constant supply of ice cream and a trip by ferry to the renaissance castle in nearby Janoweic, a very interesting cultural stop situated on the beautiful Vistulan hillside.


Total joint spend: €1717.51