23rd June: Christy Corpus in Poland

Today was a public holiday in Poland due to the Christy Corpus celebration. Today was also the Polish Father's day. The morning started off with the usual hearty breakfast, prepared by non other than Dagmara's mom. Yes, we had the tomato thingy again. Loving them infinitely!

Breakfast table

Dagmara then brought us out around Kalisz town with her brother and sister-in-law. The town is really quite small. She brought us to their town theatre, to see the buildings that matters to them. It was such a wonderful town, to see all the old buildings that have several hundreds or even thousands of years. This is what a city full of history should look like. Around Poland, one can actually meet Pope John Paul II. Yes, he is a Polish, and no he is not alive anymore. Polish have so much pride in the previous Pope that they build monuments of him everywhere. He is like their national pride.  After that is to the Old Market Square to see the Christy Corpus celebration. It was not very big but yet still very grand. There was choir groups singing and many devotees were there to worship the corpse of jesus. I don't know much about this festival so can't elaborate so much about it.

Theatre

The Pope

Christy Corpus celebration

After the celebration, we went back for the Polish dinner, which is our lunch. Their dinner is usually taken between 2-4 pm. So that was what we did. We had tomato soup with pasta as starters. Dagmara's mom really is a good cook. The tomato soup is so refreshing and tantalizing. I wish I could have some now. Next up was main course. We are having the "pigeon" again, and so much more. Boyfriend did something silly during the dinner. He wanted to offer Dagmara's dad the bowl of potatoes but he didn't know how to say potatoes in Polish. But out of nowhere, he said "patatas?" (potatoes in Spanish) and Dagamara's dad couldn't understand. We had a good laugh:) After the meal, we sat around to chat. Dagmara acted as our translator because we could not speak any Polish and her family not a single English. Polish people are really nice. They may look or even sound rude when you first met them but deep down inside, they are really friendly, nice and hospitable.

The evening was wrapped up with a bowling session with Dagmara's friends, Marta and Lukasz. Well guess who lose? Yeap me! I don't know why I can never excel in sports. *sigh* And after that, we went for a drink in a cafe called Kaliszfornia (yeah, I know, the name!). Their chocolate milk shake was awesome. We were supposed to meet another of Dagmara's but in the end she couldn't make it, so we went to this cool Italian restaurant that is situated down a basement. So it was pretty cold down there. We were quite late by the time we decided to have dinner, so there wasn't anyone else other than us. Yeah, private restaurant! So, this was the last day of our stay in Kalisz. Tomorrow, it will be a new town.

22nd June: Polish Hospitality

After 2 nights of very little sleep, today all of us decided to sleep in a little later. When we finished preparing, we were welcomed by a huge spread of breakfast. Dagmara's mom prepared for us when we were still deep in our sleep. Lucky us, today was a pretty good day, so we all decided to have breakfast on the balcony of her house. Frankly, this is my first time having breakfast on a balcony, overlooking the beautiful garden, in a big mansion-like house. Haha I was so excited that suddenly I feel so sua ku!

On the balcony

Anyway, a good coffee always makes a perfect day. When we are talking about coffee in Dagmara's house, I meant real good coffee. Coffee from freshly grounded coffee beans, served from an over 1000 pounds coffee machine. Yeap. Can you smell the scent of the coffee in the air now?

Great coffee

From a travel website that we read, Polish people show their hospitality by ensuring their guests are well fed, even that means they have to go broke. Well, Dagamara's mom didn't went broke. But she certainly take good care of our stomach, not letting them growl of hunger. Look at the breakfast spread on the table beside assorted cheese, cold cut meat and bread, we have this tomato thingy which is both boyfriend and my favorite. I just can't get enough of them*slurp* It is tomato slices topped with cucumber, feta cheese and garlic spread, garnished with dill.

The delicious tomatoes

Polish sausages. As long as my finger

Polish donuts

After breakfast, we went around Kalisz town to explore and after we took a 20 minutes drive to another town called Goluchow to see Zubry or bison. Okay, I'm actually not a big fan of wild animals. So, the experience for me was just so-so. Furthermore, their fur was not really very nice. It seemed that they hair drop problems, with patches of baldness on their bodies. And they smell really bad. We even caught one of them pooping :D Hahahaha! This Bison farm is situated in a natural reserved. To reach this park, one have to walk through a small "forest". And on the other side, there is an old palace where visitors can go in to visit. But too bad all the explanations were in Polish. So we decided to just cam-whore.

Zubry,smelly zubry

Tonight's dinner was a barbeque session with Dagmara's family since the next day was a public holiday for them. And again we experience Polish hospitality with loads of food. First up we have cabbage stuffed with meat. According to Dagmara, if this dish was to translate to English, it literally means pigeon! This is really good stuff. Next, we have a lot of bbq-ed meat. Their bbq style is different from us. In Singapore/Malaysia, we bbq what we want to eat only. But in Poland, someone will be in charged of ccoking all the food and others will eat. After dinner was rounds and rounds of beer drinking. It was a very good night, only if the sky did not decide to rain. Everything was shifted indoors. A little of a mood spoiler but still a fun night.

21st June: Dzień dobry Polska!

In case you are wondering, that is Polish for good day Poland. So we crossed the Czech-Polish border and required to change a train in Poland before we reach Posznan, where our dear Polish friend, Dagmara was supposed to meet us. So we lugged our luggage down the train at freaking 4 a.m. and waited at the platform in the cold. And I was hungry. Lucky us for the summer, the days are longer. So at 4 a.m., the sky was actually bright. But it was still brr....So we hopped on to the train when it arrived, hugged our bags and continue to sleep as the estimated arrival time was noon.

4 a.m. and the sun is rising

Posznan is a town where Dagmara used to study in. So, she was quite familiar with this town. When we reached at noon in Poznan train station, she drove us for lunch. First Polish food on the menu, the traditional Polish dumpling called Pierogi. She brought us to this cafe which served just Pierogi, in assorted flavors, steamed or baked. And, I really loved it. Polish food-1, so far. After the lunch, we walked to the Old Market Square, which is like High Street in England, each city in Poland has their own Old Market Square where they have loads of cafes and bars for people to eat and drink. We were brought to this ex-brewery which unfortunately was not open for visit. So the guys decided to sit for a drink as we need to wait for our Danish friend to arrive at the airport.

Oven-baked Pierogi

Steamed Pierogi

Old Market Square, Posznan

Dinner is interesting for today. We went to this place called Dark Restaurant. Yeap, the name of the restaurant is Dark Restaurant. It is actually a themed restaurant. The customers are supposed to eat in the dark. Before the dinner, a waiter will be there to take down what you don't eat and allergic too. Next, you will be brought into a dark room, so dark that you cannot even see your fingers. And then, they serve you food, which you wouldn't know what they are. How do you eat? They have cutlery and they will guide you to them. But to use it or not is totally up to you. Many of us decided to use our hand instead. Of course there was also a bowl of water for us to wash our hands after the meal! Oh, you can choose between a 1, 2 or 3 course dinner. At the end of the dinner, we were brought out to the waiting room again and were asked to guess what we had. The waiter will then let us know if we guessed correctly or not. Interesting!

Dark restaurant, eat like the blinds

After dinner, Dagmara said she was going to bring us to see the most beautiful and romantic night scene in Poland. It was the Posznan celebration of the Mid-summer solstice. During this day, people will gather near a lake, buying big lanterns and light them up. It is a little bit like our chinese kong ming deng. You can write wishes on the lantern. We were already late for that event as people were counting down to release their big lanterns into the sky. Lucky for us that Dagmara's friend managed to get one lantern for us. So we quickly lit the lantern and let it go, joining the thousands of lantern in the sky. The view is indeed very breathtaking. It's like having thousands and thousands of stars right in front of you.

Lanterns decorating the sky

After a tiring day, it was a 2 hours drive back to Dagmara's house in a town called Kalisz. 

20th June: Goodbye Hungary, long train to Poland

Holding the Eurail pass sometimes can give us a headache as it is not applicable to travel to certain countries (even if you just need to pass through) and you have to still pay a certain amount for reservations on some trains. Our next stop supposed to be Poland. But to go to Poland we need to pass through Slovakia, which the Eurail does not entitle us to travel to. For the 3 days in Budapest, we were always going to and from Kelati train station, trying to find a way (which does not cost much) to Poland. In the end, we had to take a route, passing by Vienna, Czech Republik and the to Poland. All the countries and cities that we will need to visit later on. Furthermore, we didn't realized that the train station actually accept euros and their exchange rate was way better than the ones given by money changer. So we incur some losses by changing back and forth of euros. Yeah bad luck!

Anyway sad stories apart, today is the last day we have to explore the beautiful Budapest. So we woke a bit later this morning and head to the Great Market Hall, which claims to have authentic Hungarian food and loads of souvenirs to buy.

Outside Great Market Hall

Well, I really want to get my hands on those little things sold there, but this is just the 3rd day into our trip. Our aim is no extra luggage and try to save whenever and where ever we could. So no souvenir from Budapest.

Paprikash Spice Pack

Penguin meat anyone?

In the market

For lunch, we had stuffed chicken leg and Langos (pronounced as Lan-gosh). The traditional Langos is topped with vegetables, feta cheese and olive. But we opted for the cheese topping instead. Stuffed chicken is really too heavy for me. It is stuffed with some minced-don't-know-what meat.

Typical Langos

Cheese

Stuffed Chicken Leg

But that's typical hungarian food, very carnivorous! Furthermore, we had not digest our breakfast, so the lunch was really too heavy for us. In Great Market Hall, you can just the whole of your lunch time walking from stall to stall to decide what is best to feed your appetite. They really have a lot to offer.

Arrays of meat

To all my Singaporean/Malaysian friends, Langos actually tasted like ham jin peng that you can find in those you tiao stall, just that, they are larger and thinner in Hungary and they have toppings on it!

After lunch, I followed boyfriend around the city, taking last few photos of the bridges, the people. We even hiked up to Castle Hill again to camwhore . Haha. Well there weren't only us there, but loads of people, posing while capturing the beautiful city through their lenses.

Budapest

At about 4 p.m., we went back to the hostel, grabbed our luggage and head to Kelati train station for our 20 plus hours train to Poland. May we don't bump into any luggage robbery!

Goodbye Budapest

19th June: Budapest exploring!

A good day starts with a good breakfast. That's what our hostel owner think so too. The morning was started with not very fancy but filling breakfast. 2 breads, assorted cheese, coffee, tea, or milk and cereal. More than enough to fill us up.

Today is free tour day. Well, as budget travelers, we are always on the look-out for free walking tour. Although the tours are free, the quality is not taken for granted. The tour guides are usually friendly and very informative. Usually, we will look for Sandemann's walking tour. But unfortunately, they don't have it for Budapest, so we have to search for alternative. Lucky for us, 2Night hostel is very informative as well. So we had a brochure to a free walking tour by Free Walking Tour Budapest. Our tour guide was a very friendly girl. She gave us loads of information on the history of the city. I need to admit that I really forgotten most of the history (yes I have gold fish memory!), but I do know that Budapest is a relatively young country, achieving their independence around 1990s. But the growth and development of the city is really much better than where I came from which has almost 50 years of independence but still in the same growing phase as Budapest.

Well tour guide girl ( I really can't recall her name) lead us through the city, pointing out landmarks worth visiting and cafes, bars and restaurant worth spending money in. She introduced us to the lock tree/bridge concept which rumored to have started in Budapest. So, loving couple will buy a lock, engrave their names on it, lock on to the tree, throw the key together somewhere where they can never get it back and voila your love is locked forever. Interesting!

We will not be apart even till death

And half way through the tour, we have an "adventure" with this homeless guy who tried to attract attention buy hitting some pebble against a lamp post. Well, nobody actually gave him the attention that he wants, so he left!

Tour guide with homeless guy demanding for attraction

A church in Pest area

View from Castle Hill. All the effort hike up was worth it

Synagogue

After the tour, we just went around the town for a while before heading back to the hostel to get more information about Turkish bath. Turkish bath is a main attraction in Budapest. They have a few around town. But we decided to go to this largest Turkish bath in the Pest area. But before that, it was dinner time. This time round, we decided to give wikitravel a try. Under the budget recommendation, we went to Pozsonyi kisvendéglő which is just few blocks away from our hostel. I really recommend this for people on a budget. Their servings were really huge. I got full by just having a small beef goulash (which is supposed to be a starter for the locals).

Pork stew with potatoes

Beef Goulash - the traditional soup-based

Our dessert - Apple pie with custard. We ended up having it for supper.

Outside of the cafe

We were so full after 1 course that we needed to pack up our dessert as they cannot cancel our order. Yes, Hungarians are big eaters and surprisingly they are still quite fit.

Tour guide looked fit but Mr. Policeman's tummy said otherwise:D

Back to the Turkish Bath. In the Turkish Bath, there is a hot pool and a cold pool. And you can choose between unisex pool or mixed (requires swimsuit). But in some other places, they have alternate days for different sexes, so you can enjoy all the spa facilities comfortably. We went to Széchenyi Spa which is located in a city park. The building was magnificent, with very strong Turkish influence. And not forgetting, it was huge, that we couldn't locate the entrance. Since we were late, we can only have access to the hot pool, which reminds me of the hotspring when I went to Taiwan. The warm water just kicks off all the tiredness after all the walking. We paid 3400 HUF each for a changing room facility and the entrance fee. You'll be given an electronic wrist band which acts as a lock to the changing room and also give you entrance access.

The Bath

Hot pool

After the relaxing bath, it was time to head back to the hostel. Long walk back but we were super recharged so we didn't really mind. In the middle of the night, boyfriend had his crazy crave to take night shots. So we went towards the Danube river, across the bridge to get to the Buda side, just to meet other photographers, trying their best to capture the best of Budapest night. Chain bridge looked gorgeous with all it's lighting, the Parliament building looked as majestic as ever at night and the Castle on the Castle Hill will remind you how hilly the Buda side was. No regrets walking in the cold (strong wind when you approach the river) to catch such beautiful scene.
For night scene photos, please refer to this link : http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150252014371544.344925.626001543&type=1

After one hour or so, it was bed time. Must get some good sleep tonight as tomorrow night we will have the longest train ride ever!

18 June: London to Budapest

First stop of around Europe in 40 days, is Budapest, Hungary. Budapest (pronounced as buda-pescht) is a small little city. It is quite easy to orientate around the city, just remember the three district, the Buda (hilly one), the Pest (flater one), the Castle district (on the Buda side with their Royal Palace in it) and Buda and Pest are separated by the River Danube.

Leaving out of the bag for 6 weeks with boyfriend

We arrived in Budapest Airport around 4 in the afternoon. From the airport there are several ways to reach the city centre, Nyugati. You either take a bus and change on to metro or take a train, straight into the Nyugati Railway station. Since we were lugging a lot of luggage, we decided to take the train, which only costs us 370 huf per person. The train is an interesting one. Remember the train in the Harry Potter movies, whereby the seats were separated into cabins, we got on a train that has that orientation. Cabins and a narrow walkway, it is pretty interesting for me, like from a Wild, Wild West Movie.

The Wild Wild West train in Budapest. Yeap that's me!

So from Nyugati Railway station, we walked to our hostel, 2night Hostel, which is a cosy and comfortable hostel. The owner Matt, is very very friendly and helpful. For 11.34 euros per night, we got a 4-bed dorm, with linen and towel, and breakfast is included, not forgetting the oh-so-important wifi!! It is a really great hostel.

2night Hostel

Dinner was at this Hungarian food restaurant recommended by one of the workers in the hostel. We ended up meeting her there while she was having her dinner with her family. The name of the restaurant is Frici Papa, and we ended up having beef goulash (pronounced as goo-yash) and chicken breast paprikash. I really like the Hungarian food a lot, although they are all meat rather than vege. But the food they served are really very tasty and somewhat, a little bit similar to Asian food. Well, yes, sort of like a comfort food.

First dinner of Eurotrip

Hungarian Beef Goulash

Hungarian Chicken Paparikash

First night was left to explore the town. It is enjoyable to get lost in a new city, see new sights, hear new sounds! And it’s time to rest for tomorrow’s long day!