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| Munich's Frauenkiche, all grey and grumpy in the Bavarian rain. |
We begin the story of this vacation on a train station platform, because we're not doing this the normal way – it's a vacation of un-vacation-y things. We're taking the long way to Budapest. We're waiting for our train to Munich.
Despite its difficulties with kitchen appliances and the internet, Germany can do rail travel. You pay a premium, and in exchange you get a clean train, a bit of leg room, and a punctual train.
There was just one hitch that had nothing to do with the wonders of German train travel. Kata chipped her tooth on a baguette sandwich we bought shortly before we boarded the train. I panicked. She just looked at the nub of tooth in surprise and reassured me it was already a false tooth. She would settle with looking like a hockey player until we found a dentist.
We arrived in Munich, hoping to stroll the streets and see the sights. But the rain gods had other plans, and we spent a soggy afternoon and evening exploring the old town. We braved the rain between meals – sausages for me, soft food for Kata's snaggle tooth – and one-litre beers in warm beer halls.
Our train was due to leave at 11:30pm.
Night Train to Budapest
I'm coming out right now and stating that night trains are awesome. Instead of wasting a whole day traveling or losing bits of your life to endless waiting in airport, a night train lets you sleep as the traveling is done.
Is such a slow way too travel un-vacation-y? Perhaps, but I'd take a night train over one of those evil budget airlines any day. Back to the story, before I get worked up.
Our night train was not a German train. It was a MAV train, the Hungarian train service, which not only felt like we were stepping onto Hungarian soil, but was also cheaper than the German train from Dusseldorf to Munich.
We got a two-person compartment, which is pretty much what you've seen in the movies. You get your bunk beds and there's breakfast in the morning, and there's sink too! It is quite the upgrade from the six-person sleeper compartments I spent my travel nights in during my monthly trips to Berlin.
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| Beer-y Happiness by the litre! |
Varga Family Compound
When we woke up in the morning on the night train, we were in Hungary. Familiar territory!
In keeping with our un-vacation-y vacation, our Hungary lodgings were not going to be a friend's apartment in Budapest, like last summer. This was an all-family vacation, so we were staying with Kata's parents in the countryside.
This might seem awkward, but it really wasn't. For starters, the house isn't quite a family house as much as a family compound. There is a main house and a garage renovated into another, smaller house.
Kata's parents used to occupy the house, while her sister and brother-in-law and their four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son lived in the renovated garage. They swapping houses to give the kids some more space, but making changes in the smaller garage house first. This left it unoccupied, so we moved in there for the week.
With the little kids around, we spent a great deal of time with them on their schedule, which changed the whole pace of the vacation at the Varga Family Compound.
You wake up a little earlier to hang out with them. You play in the yard. You eat a lunch, because you're hungry from keeping up with little people who don't seem to get tired. Then you sit and enjoy some laziness while they nap. They wake up and, thank goodness, they want to stay close to the couch where you can remain sitting. Then it's a great family dinner with homemade food and an early-ish bedtime.
Plus, the two-year-old is just a little more ahead of me in Hungarian, so I got some language practice to boot.
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| Kata and the kids, including my two-year-old Hungarian teacher who says 'Cheese' with, well, that face. |
Eating in the Land of Meat with a Vegetarian
Kata had given up meat for Lent and had been so impressed with how healthy she felt that she decided to continue the meatless-ness beyond Easter.
In Hungary, almost every meal is eaten with meat, so it was clear she'd relax her rules for the sake of eating a bit of home-cooked meaty goodness.
The traditional Hungarian Easter dinner was cold ham with horseradish and hardboiled eggs. This was delicious stuff, so Kata snuck little slivers of the ham. The last meal was pork fillets cooked in a mushroom sauce. She accepted half a fillet. Between those two meals, she was treated to vegetarian meals, like Hungarian crepes, fried cheese (mmmmm!), and Grandma's potato dumplings. She did not go hungry.
Family Trip to the Hills
The Varga family is a serious hiking family and every Easter they do a walk around Szent Mihaly Hill, a forested hill that juts into the Danube River, just across from Visegrad.
I laughingly mentioned this is some sort of a boyfriend test. Then Kata's mom remembered they had indeed brought along an ex-boyfriend. I was determined to fare better than him and got my hiking game face on.
The hike was lead by Kata's dad, the alpha hiker of the family, and wound 21km up a hill, through a field, into a forest, up another hill to a lookout, and back down again to the city. It sounds gruelling when I write that all out, but the hike was great. The weather was cool and sunny and perfect for a hike. There were wild flowers everywhere and we had breaks for beer and ice cream.
I not only survived the hike, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I was told I fared much better on the hike than the last boyfriend.
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| Hussling up the hill. |
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| The monument to the Treaty of Trianon. |
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| The view of the mighty Danube from the lookout. If you look carefully, you can see the Castle of Visegrad. |
A Trip to the Dentist
As I mentioned earlier, Kata chipped her tooth on a baguette between Mannheim and Munich. Not an ideal thing to happen on a vacation, but there are worst un-vacation-y things that could've happened.
This meant a trip to the dentist. This is no extraordinary thing if you're Austrian or German. Hungarian dentists are so inexpensive and so competent compared to their Austrian and Western European colleagues, that people travel to Hungary to get dental work done. It's true.
Hungary thrives on dental tourism.
So Kata completed a rite of passage for a tourist from Germany: She visited the dentist. I came along and, as I waited, was confronted with the choice of flipping through Hungarian ladies' magazines or enjoy's the world's best view from a dental office.
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| A dental office's waiting room with this kind of view helps you ignore those drilling noises. |
Getting onto the Road
I'm ending this story on another train platform, this time in Budapest. We had traveled from Hódmezővásárhely way out on the Hungarian Plains, where we had visited Kata's mama – in Hungarian your mom is anyu or anya, and grandma is mama, after all this is a country where 'Hello' sounds like 'See ya.'
We filled up on mama's homecooking and quality family time, and now we were arriving to the one part of our vacation that was not so un-vacation-y. We were there for only one night, and we'd be typical tourists, heading to a bath and a ruin pub.
And in the end the best part of the visit to Budapest was spending time with friends, which was the same thing that made the trip as a whole so great, and unlike your typical vacation: the chance to spend time with family.