Week 22: back to Budapest!

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