Hungary

 

Roland and I just returned from a cruise on the Danube River from Budapest to Bucharest. In the process, we visited five Eastern European countries: Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. My next few blog posts will be in the nature of a travelogue, starting with Hungary.

We spent the first three days in Budapest (pronounced Budapesht) and experienced the food. We didn’t try the chimney cake, which is almost all sugar, but we did try other traditional Hungarian dishes. The first night we both had Hungarian goulash, which is a soup with beef in it. It must meet both of those requirements (soup and beef) to be real Hungarian goulash. The second night Roland had chicken paprika and I had Gypsy-Style Pork Neck. Both were very good

Of course, Hungary isn’t only food, and Budapest itself had many interesting sights. On the Buda side of the Danube, we walked to Fisherman’s Bastian and saw Matthias Church. Apparently Matthias was the only Hungarian king that the people actually liked. The next pictures show a street musician, Fisherman’s Bastian, and the exterior and interior of Matthias Church.

The next day we took an excursion to Gödöllö Palace, which is relatively small as palaces go. It was built by a count in the 1750s but eventually became a summer residence for Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife, Empress Elizabeth. That’s the next photo.

We left Budapest at night, with the Parliament Building and other buildings along the Danube lit up, as you can see from these photos.

That wasn’t the end of our stay in Hungary, however. We spent the next day docked near Kalocsa, Hungary. This is stork season, and we saw several nests along the way to an organ concert in St. Joseph’s Church. The stork’s nest in the photo is on top of a chimney.

We ended our time in Hungary with a visit to a horse farm, where they gave us a demonstration of traditional Hungarian horsemanship. The final photos show a rider in traditional costume cracking his whip and another riding ten horses at once (or rather guiding ten horses at once since he can’t stand on that many backs).

Next week’s blog post will be about Croatia.