On Thursday this week we parted ways with Tamás and Anita. We got some lovely pictures with them and Tamás' Dad, who had kindly made us some sandwiches for the journey, and they also gifted Craig a goatskin drum! This was a pretty cool present, it's nice to get a souvenir that is in some way genuine and not from a tacky tourist shop! Craig now thinks he looks pretty cool with a drum tied to his bag when we are travelling.
After a couple of hours on the train back up to Budapest, our new host Zita met us near the train station. Her and her Husband, Arpi, did a four year round the world trip on bicycles as a honeymoon, kind of puts our little jolly around Europe into perspective! They are still active in the travelling community - they are about to publish a book, regularly do inspirational talks, and often host Workawayers and Warm Shower-ers (warm showers is a website where people host bicycle travellers for free). In fact soon after our arrival, an American doing a cross-continent trip, Kyle, arrived (check out his blog here). His trip has an emphasis on freedom from the material world and meeting new and different people.
Being travellers themselves Zita and Arpi made a huge effort to provide us with plenty of Budapest sight seeing information. Our room was full of maps, recommendations and city guides. We did a lot of the touristy stuff with my parents a couple of weeks ago, but we were still looking forward to seeing a few new sights.
Our first full day with Zita and Arpi started with a run down of the jobs we could do-mostly gardening, furniture painting, and DIY. Zita was happy for us to pick and choose which jobs we wanted to work on and when. In our first week here we built some compost bins, painted a metal table and repaired some wooden ceiling panels in the house.
At the weekend we ventured into Budapest, via the very easy number 110 bus. We wandered the streets just soaking in the vibe, and came across Szimpla- the bar that had had a queue down the street the last time we were in Budapest but now was much less busy. Szimpla is a 'ruin bar', which are derelict buildings full of mismatch furniture that are turned into bars. They are all the rage in budapest, but Szimpla is the oldest. We got a shisha and a few beers and wiled away a lazy afternoon in there. In the evening we went for pizza with our hosts. Their local pizza place had a half price offer on so we each got a 40cm pizza for €3-4 and took the leftovers home for breakfast!
The new working week started with a project ideally suited to Craig- reconstruct an old outdoor bench. The metal frame is in good condition, but the wood has begun to rot away, so it's a case of measure up the existing wooden parts and cut and drill new ones to replace them. Tune in to the next blog post to see how we get on!
Total joint spend: €2432
Where have we been
Saturday 23 September 2017
Thursday 7 September 2017
Week 21 (Csólyospálos): our second week on the farm
So we’re nearly two weeks into our Hungarian farming funtime! We have gotten into the swing of things since our last post.
The work here is simple but rewarding. We feed the animals every morning, cutting alfalfa for them all with a scythe (no machinery or automation here!) and then give them all water. Its around 35 degrees here each day so the animals are normally quite thankful for a drink. The little pigs are especially funny and always dive straight into the water troughs for a bath.
We also help pick courgettes at Tamás’s parents farm, most of which go to the pigs as they are too overgrown (though definitely not overgrown for an English palette!).
Apparently the small courgettes get sent to be made into those fancy vegetable crisps, so they have to be around 3.5cm in diameter. Communicating this concept without them speaking any English was a bit of a challenge! We tried holding up different sizes of courgette with thumbs up and thumbs down signs in the form of a question, but even this didn’t get a clear response. But we must have done a reasonable job, as at half past nine in the morning after an hour of courgette picking we were rewarded with a nice glass of red wine, as you do at that time of day.
Despite the language barrier with the grandparents, we came to know them as kind and generous people through deeper forms of communication, such as chess. Tamás’s father turned out to be some sort of undiscovered grandmaster, roundly and frequently beating us when we played. He even toyed with us, in one game giving a dummy gasp as we took his queen and walked right into his carefully set trap to checkmate us. Just as well we don’t know any Hungarian swear words.
We spent our second and final weekend at a friend (and fellow Workaway host) of Tamás’s for a small gathering with food. His place, also a small farm, was in the process of being renovated, and filled with artwork and projects done by past workawayers. He is from Switzerland, moving to Hungary for a more laid-back pace of life. As a result of having Swiss, Hungarian, English and French (his current workawayer) nationalities present, English was the language of choice, and it struck us as interesting that even if we weren’t there, everybody would still be conversing in it. How lucky we Brits are in our native language! We ate some pörkölt (a sort of Hungarian stew) which made use of every part of a sheep you can think of. This didn’t put us off though, and it was delicious probably because it was cooked in the traditional Hungarian way in a special pot over an outdoor fire for about 4 hours.
We just have a couple more days here until we head back up North to the slightly more cosmopolitan Budapest. We have definitely come to enjoy our time here more than we initially expected. But one thing we won’t miss is the water. They do occasionally buy bottled sparkling water but most days tap water is the only option. We were told it is safe to drink, but we discovered it has a VERY strong metallic taste. We think it must be iron as it tastes and smells a bit like blood. It even started to turn my blonde hair orange! Although Craig quite liked my new colour (perhaps unsurprisingly) I was worried about how permanent this effect might be so I avoided washing my hair, relying solely on dry shampoo, for over a week. Here’s hoping for an iron-free shower at the next hosts!
Total joint spend: €2360
The work here is simple but rewarding. We feed the animals every morning, cutting alfalfa for them all with a scythe (no machinery or automation here!) and then give them all water. Its around 35 degrees here each day so the animals are normally quite thankful for a drink. The little pigs are especially funny and always dive straight into the water troughs for a bath.
We also help pick courgettes at Tamás’s parents farm, most of which go to the pigs as they are too overgrown (though definitely not overgrown for an English palette!).
Apparently the small courgettes get sent to be made into those fancy vegetable crisps, so they have to be around 3.5cm in diameter. Communicating this concept without them speaking any English was a bit of a challenge! We tried holding up different sizes of courgette with thumbs up and thumbs down signs in the form of a question, but even this didn’t get a clear response. But we must have done a reasonable job, as at half past nine in the morning after an hour of courgette picking we were rewarded with a nice glass of red wine, as you do at that time of day.
Despite the language barrier with the grandparents, we came to know them as kind and generous people through deeper forms of communication, such as chess. Tamás’s father turned out to be some sort of undiscovered grandmaster, roundly and frequently beating us when we played. He even toyed with us, in one game giving a dummy gasp as we took his queen and walked right into his carefully set trap to checkmate us. Just as well we don’t know any Hungarian swear words.
We spent our second and final weekend at a friend (and fellow Workaway host) of Tamás’s for a small gathering with food. His place, also a small farm, was in the process of being renovated, and filled with artwork and projects done by past workawayers. He is from Switzerland, moving to Hungary for a more laid-back pace of life. As a result of having Swiss, Hungarian, English and French (his current workawayer) nationalities present, English was the language of choice, and it struck us as interesting that even if we weren’t there, everybody would still be conversing in it. How lucky we Brits are in our native language! We ate some pörkölt (a sort of Hungarian stew) which made use of every part of a sheep you can think of. This didn’t put us off though, and it was delicious probably because it was cooked in the traditional Hungarian way in a special pot over an outdoor fire for about 4 hours.
We just have a couple more days here until we head back up North to the slightly more cosmopolitan Budapest. We have definitely come to enjoy our time here more than we initially expected. But one thing we won’t miss is the water. They do occasionally buy bottled sparkling water but most days tap water is the only option. We were told it is safe to drink, but we discovered it has a VERY strong metallic taste. We think it must be iron as it tastes and smells a bit like blood. It even started to turn my blonde hair orange! Although Craig quite liked my new colour (perhaps unsurprisingly) I was worried about how permanent this effect might be so I avoided washing my hair, relying solely on dry shampoo, for over a week. Here’s hoping for an iron-free shower at the next hosts!
Total joint spend: €2360
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