Ted's European Tour 2007

I tried to convince everyone we should hire some BMW K1200LT tourers from the journey but we ended up in a Opel Astra for a 2 day trip around the north east of Hungary. There is certainly no chance of dying of thirst in Tokaj. Even though we were a couple of months early for the big wine festival we did find a cellar that was open and sampled some of their wares. Being a stuffed bear and therefore having no digestive tract to speak of I had to immerse my whole body into the barrel. There was a nice statue in the town square where I could dry out.
Once I could be carried again without leaving stains on clothing we went to Grandma's home town of Tolcsva and visited her old house.
. There were other travellers from Africa in the area too.
After and overnight stay near the Slovak boarder we went on to Eger and the first stop was the Turkish Minaret.
After a big afternoon being tourists up the castle we stopped for a nice coffee and cake in the most famous cafe in Eger where the backgound music of Aker Bilk, Wayne Newton etc had us all singing along.

We're not sure if it was the stress of the recent road trip around central Europe or the smell of Goulash cooking wafting in from the neighbours but Gradma just couldn't reisist trying on the flower-patterned over-frock the cleaning lady had left behind and went into a full blooded eastern european frenzy of cooking.

The lunch that resulted certainly was delicious!

After lunch we went out to visit Laci andc Teri on their estate (75m X 15m) just outside Budapest. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, birds singing, fruit growing, palinka brewing...

Tomorrow we are off on another 2 day road trip inside Hungary. More on that soon!

What an exciting morning spent at the zoo. I saw animals I have only ever seen on TV. Of course there were no mackos, only me and thank goodness they didn't thrust me behind bars for the Budapestrians to look at, although there did seem to be quite a lot of interest in me and my origins. And why wouldn't there be? I did see 2 fellow bears, they were white and swam in water, polar bears I believe. An amazing collection of monkeys and a 2 humped camel with baby, lots of south American animals. At least half of the zoo was under renovation but all in all a very interesting morning. I also had my first taste of Langos -fried bread with garlic, the equivalent of hot chips.

Yesterday the guys took me out an about town. See the photos snappys of me strolling down Vaci Utca and having a coffee at the Gerbeaud. We also stopped in for a look at Szent Istvan Bacilica. I was hoping to get a photo of me shaking the 1000year old preserved right hand of Szent Istvan they keep there, but we couldn't find the keys to the glass case. We're off to the zoo today, plenty of photo-ops there for sure!

After a lunch date with a huge pot of stuffed cabbage with a pre-lunch palinka and several glasses of home made red wine at Steve's Aunt and Uncles' we decided to have a lazy day in today. The highlight of the day was watching the Simpsons dubbed into Hungarian...coooool, and The worlds funniest pets with a singing dog.