Budapest

Firstly, and most importantly, Lindsey is doing well. She has not been vomiting, nor attempting to claw my eyes out, but we still have a few months of pregnancy to go. She will tell you that being away from American restaurants is excruciatingly difficult during this critical period of pregnancy. Unfortunately Chipotle, Cafe Rio, Pizza Hut, Rumbi and Little Caesar's are unavailable.

We had an ultrasound over a week ago and saw our baby. By analyzing the pulsing sounds and images of the little heart, we were able to confirm that our firstborn's heart indeed beats for America. So all is well and we found a very good doctor who speaks perfect English. She also worked in the US for quite a long time as an OB/GYN.

Now, what can be said about Budapest? It is located in Hungary, which is another one of those former Soviet states. It is the third former Soviet country that we have visited since our arrival in Europe over three months ago. Much like Slovakia, Hungary has some visible lasting affects from communism. Not least among these is the feeling that if someone sneezes too hard, several blocks of rickety old buildings will come tumbling to the ground.

One thing that was surprising to see was the people in Budapest - the actual Hungarians. We didn't really know what to expect to see once we arrived. We figured it would have been similar to Bratislava where we were greeted at the train station by a pregnant, gollum-esque woman who was enjoying what was probably one of many cigarettes during her day.

I had assumed all Hungarians were gnarled old women with scarves on their heads and whose knobby knuckles protruded as they clutched crooked walking sticks (needless to say we decided well in advance not to accept any shiny apples from strangers). But despite their super weird language, Hungarians are quite excellent and beautiful people as far as we can tell.

One quick interjection/observation before we continue with this thing. This one is about Europe in general. When we return from our little Euro excursions, people often ask what the place is like and what we saw when we were there. We have noticed that usually no matter what city we visited, our answer to this question is generally the same. It goes like this: "It was fun, there's really cool old architecture, we went to a castle, we saw a cathedral, and we ate (name of local cuisine) at the banks of the (name of river).

Now, don't misunderstand. Europe is not necessarily boring, but we have noticed that each city has the same basic category of sights to be taken in. Furthermore, if any city has been an exception (well, that's not exactly the right word... how about 'enhancement') to this, it has been London. London has all the aforementioned and much, much more. Anyway, that's just an observation. Back to Budapest.

The Andersons were with us on this excursion. They came to Vienna to visit us and to travel around a bit. They also came with peanut butter M&Ms and Costco trail mix. Lindsey and our little embryo were equally thrilled. We stayed at a luxury hotel on the banks of the Danube (courtesy of the Andersons) and took in every reasonable sight in the town. The highlights of which were, get ready, St Stephen's Cathedral, the castle district, and the architecture of the parliament building. All of which are pictured here:






We're glad to be back in Vienna and can't believe our time here is more than half way finished. There is still so much we want to see in the next 2.5 months. But if we can manage to see Paris and nothing else between now and when we go, we'll call it good.