Company – Round One

Our first visitors arrived last week. My son, Greg, his wife, Susanne and her mother Joanne along with Carol’s brother Dale from Louisiana all arrived in Budapest and met up on Thursday night. They did a lot of walking, explored Castle Hill area and walked over the Chain Bridge at night. They got to Pecs on Friday, fully bonded and ready to party.

We met them when they hopped off the train in Pecs last Friday morning. It just so happened that another Fulbrighter and her family came to Pecs to visit at the same time. We had quite a crowd to welcome to our fair city.

I made another iteration of my Goulash soup for our company. After a twenty minute walk up the hill from the train station to our apartment, I heated up my latest effort for lunch. There were no complaints. However, Greg had Goulash several more times while he was here and I think he liked the restaurant variety better than mine.

That night because our friendly waiter Bolas was working, we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Zona Bistro, and then walked around town a bit. At about 10 o’clock Greg, Sue and Dale headed off to the Ifusaghaz for a Reggae happening. The reports were that Greg turned out to be the celebrity of the night since he was from California. Someone bought him a “Hungarian shot” and we are still not exactly sure what that was. When Dale tapped on the unlocked door at 1:30 AM to be let in, I could tell that a good time was had by all.

Saturday was a walking around day and that night we went to a Blues Club to hear Big Daddy Wilson and his two Hungarian accompanists. It turns out that Big Daddy is from Edenton, North Carolina – about 100 miles from where I grew up. Talk about a small world!

Then on Sunday we headed down to Villany again. We hadn’t been since February when it lightly snowed. The wine and food were even better this time. The wine tasting turning into wine drinking and once again we found more favorites to introduce to our future company.

Greg and Dale contributed to the local economy by buying a few bottles of wine – some to take back to the US and some for the remainder of their stay in Hungary. It still amazes us that they don’t ship.

Dale and Susanne went to Carol’s lecture class on Tuesday morning and took a picture of the Professor and her class.

They then headed out for some last minute shopping and we escorted Dale to the train for his return trip. We had a few more days with G/S/J here in Pecs and then we all went to Budapest for some sightseeing and a trip with the Fulbright group to the Herend Porcelain Factory and Tihany.

Surprising as it is, Carol just happened to find a couple of pieces of porcelain that she really liked. The challenge now will be getting them back to SLO unbroken. We put G/S/J in a taxi early Saturday morning for their return, hit the City Market, and then hopped on a train back to our Pecs home.

We had an absolutely wonderful time showing our “home country” to our first guests. We ate and drank quite well, saw many wonderful sights, ate and drank quite well, heard good music, and in case I forgot to mention it – we ate and drank quite well. We got home and slept 12 hours Saturday night – we must have been tired.