Heading off to quieter zones

I think I have more or less adjusted to the 6 hour time difference (slower here) in Europe. I am sleeping more normally, less lethargic in the afternoon and a bit more used to the pace and 'life-style' (if there is one!).

In half a day's time, R and I will be setting off to the quieter town of Pecs (we are right now in the busiest part of Hungary) and spending one and a half days there. I bet the pace will be even slower. There might be nothing much to do (not that we do much now; we merely walk. Alrite, let me rephrase), ok, walk. Well, I guess I take it more as a breather, to compensate for the two hectic days of walking we have done in Budapest.

Yesterday, we had spent the morning in the marketplace near the hostel. There was just SO MUCH selling in there! Strings of bacon. Piles of liver. Batches of vegetables (check out the eggplant, huge!). I think with that alone, I can relocate here.

Plus, the water is free. As in, Hungary has a rich underground store of water. There are fountains and taps (and yes, initially I would have thought the former served a decorative function while the latter is more of a public administrative function) all around the area. I even joked to R once that the tap was for drunkards to wash their face sober after a night. And I was right! The fact is, you can just fill up your bottles with the water and drink it (although it tasted a bit unusual). So far so good-no tummyaches.

We had a Communist Walking Tour in the afternoon, during which the guide had brought us around the more interesting communist-related sights and talked his way through. I thought this was more interesting than the first tour I had. Guess maybe I am more fascinated by the historical aspects of a country than its true geography. As I have mentioned earlier, these tours are free. From what I found out from one of them (there is one speaking guide and two accompanying guides), tour guides even like this have to take courses and pass exams before they are deemed qualified to 'show' Hungary. Each of these guides are rotated, meaning they would need to handle sights-tours, communist tours or the Jewish quarters tour. I would imagine they are a versatile group.

We ended the evening by climbing up to Buda Hill. At the top of the hill stands a lady statue known as the Statue of Liberty. Not quite the same as the American one which holds a torch in the hand, but I would imagine of a similar background. This statue was built by the Russians to celebrate the so-called liberty of the Hungarians (a big contradiction in many senses). Anyhow, the skies here don't turn dark till 9pm (because it is summer) so we wanted to capture the night city scape. It was yes, in retrospect, a night worthwhile because the city looks beautiful. The bad thing was however, the subsequent series of unfortunate events. First, I hadn't brought my windbreaker and I was freezing (we were up on a hill). Then, we kind of lost our way. That made me really terrified and worried. And the last of it all (no wonder, the Chinese like to say, bad things always happen in threes), we were caught in the rain. I chattered the whole way back (I have a fear of cabs because we were warned about them earlier).

The last sight we will visit before we set off to Pecs is the House of Terror. Sounds a bit of a guiness wanna-be place to me but it is actually more of a place of historical value documenting what happened during the world war.

Till the next stop with Internet access (whenever that may be)!