don't take my picture, you beeznatch!

i'm home, but i've found reasons to continue this amaaaaaaaaaazing blog. as i was looking through the ten thousand pictures i took on this trip, i realized how many hungarians i had pissed off over the course of three weeks...zooming in on my photos, i found these people giving me the stink-eye...
those three weren't as offended by my tourist behaviour as these few, though...
noticing a pattern, i discovered that people really get mad when you take pictures of them while they eat...this guy was in pécs... but these people were trying to enjoy their lives with drinks and a meal at the lake balaton wine sellers (not cellars) before i came along and ruined their lives...
back in budapest, i really thought i did a number on this kid...
but then i read his mom's purse and realized why he was so upset...
and finally, i don't know what this guy's problem is, but he needs to get over himself...

Too. Many. Things. To. Write. About.

behind behind behind! and I’m flying home sunday!

here’s the short of it after lake balaton: we drove south, then east, then northwest…first to pécs, which was a tad under construction.

the best part of my day was finding a collection of locks across the street from some university.

those of you who can read hungarian may find some humour in this close-up.

after pécs, where we didn’t even have time to spend the night, we passed through mohacs ‘til we got to szeged. there, we watched some movie we didn’t understand about a kid named öcsi who seemed to be having a lot of dreams (we think).

it was a fun city, slightly seedier than the rest we visited, with prostitutes greeting us on the drive into town…in the center, though, szeged was cleaned up and proper like this…(mike wouldn’t let me take pictures of the hot street girls.)

we also agree that szeged is probably home to the best bakeries in the country, but mike has dibs on our pictures of foodstuffs…speaking of food, however, we visited the pick salami and paprika museum where we got to taste some of the famous salami. after swallowing a bite of the tasty meat, we got to read about the salami-making process.

i like to think i would’ve been one of the groping women, but i can only dream. in the museum we also saw lots of pictures that made us very hungry.

not satisfied with that experience, we visited a nearby pick market. for some reason, we didn’t buy anything, although I wanted to try the famous winter salami (called téliszalami) encased in horse intestine.

after our first day and a half of szeged, we drove drove drove across the border to subotica, serbia (sorry, dorina…it was mike’s idea) where we saw markets that looked like this, chock full with hungarians and paprika.

so much paprika that people were buying it by the sackful.

we left Serbia…

…spent another half-day in szeged, and then drove through kecskemét to get back to budapest where we picked up my brother aaron (yes, i have one) at the airport.

hard to believe he’s al’s age, isn’t it? i could’ve chosen a more embarrassing picture of him, but he has young children i don’t want to scare.

and finally…finally…i saw sam!! sam (better known as spam) who I haven’t seen in ten years, spotted me walking down the street with mike and aaron, so we met up at a cafe, and he told me all about the people we used to know who either own four-star hotels now or who went to jail (including mozes aron…eeee hee hee)

boldog szent istvan napot!!

hungarians sure like to get wet...

we visited a few places around the hungarian sea, lake balaton, but i think balatonfüred on the northeastern shore was my favourite.

this place is s’posed to attract older people, because there’s a heart hospital nearby...go figure...

swimming in the lake is like swimming in a gigantic, shallow, calm swimming pool. there’s no sand like at the beach but, instead, there’s soft green grass and trees everywhere…not to mention the appealing eye candy.

there were also loads of places like this where we bought fattening food mike will discuss in detail later.

oh, and then there were these things…gross...they were not fattening enough for us to eat.

the town of kesthely to the far west was mostly nice for its flowers...

but nearby héviz was nice for its warm-water lake that was so deep we had to rent inner tubes...

these waters are s’posed to be good for gynecological healing…maybe students going into that field, or perhaps midwifery, should look into the benefits of geology on the female bits.

the area around the 78 km-long lake is rather nice, too, although I’m not sure if it’s necessarily physically healing or not...

lastly, if you ever decide to come here, you should probably watch out...

szia, marcell!

eger is a very pretty little town...it’s my second time here, and the pictures I took three years ago were better, so i’m cheating a little. here are some views from 2006...

not sure what my dad has to do with eger’s history, but i found this sculpture honouring his vulgar behaviour in the main square...

funny, i also found this kakaós csiga in the flowers...

can you guess what this is called in english?

this picture is proof of my love for mike...

now here is a man looking quite intimidating...

but he didn’t do a very good job guarding the desserts i got at the nearby marján cukrászda. i wonder who stole bites out of them.

the one on the left is called túró rudi after hungary’s famous refrigerated treat of chocolate-covered cheese. the one on the right is a sour cherry strudel. there was nothing sour about it, though...it was nagyon finom! here is the real túró rudi...

in a tunnel very near the city’s castle, locals like to show off their graffiti talents…three years ago, this was the artwork on display (excuse the blurriness)...

now it looks like this...