A weird start to the day. I’ve had mad dreams the last 2 nights for one, very vivid. Woke up at 6.30am and went to pit washing on. Turned the phone off aeroplane mode (for battery life) and the first thing was an emergency alert from my mum’s phone…8 hours previously. I figured it was hopefully a false alarm (there have been several before), and anywhere, that was 8 hours previous, so no point calling at 6.30am! (It turned out it was a false alarm, but as I hadn’t called straight away, my mum didn’t think it was necessary to send a message saying “sorry, false alarm”.)
Washing went fine, but the dryer took AGES. In the end, I (foolishly) got frustrated and took it out. It was rather damp. I didn’t want to wait even longer and pay more…so the damp stuff is now hanging on chairs in the downstairs lobby while we hang around for a while before taxi time.
We had a walking tour, which Aurélie had found in French to make it much more palatable to the in-laws. The guy was knowledgeable (and from La Rochelle originally), but a bit…smarmy. And of course the tour went on about 50% too long for the kids. What did I learn?
- Mainly how little I know about a bunch of stuff
- I knew about Sephardic and Ashenazi Jews, but didn’t know the Ashkenazi came from a bulk conversion to Judaism by the king of Kazar (I think?), while Sephardic came from conversions after the Spanish Inquisition – coincidentally this is a part of the Ben Aabramovitch story I’m reading.
- Post-war, there was a call for a Slavic state. UK apparently worked to engineer this, resulting in a South Slavic state: Yugoslavia; and a north Slavic state: Czechoslovakia.
- I didn’t retain the name, but someone got so many Jews out of Hungary to the fledgling state of Israel that essentially Israel was set up by/for Hungarian Jews.
- Budapest was ~25% Jewish before WWII.
So then the tour finishes, kids (and I) are needing a wee, and people are peckish, so the guy gives us a recommendation which we take. It turns out to be a Thai fusion restaurant called Quì which is quite high-end, definitely more fancy than we were expecting for a quick tourist lunch! And that then puts the kibosh on the dinner place close to the hotel I had reserved where I was hoping to claw back some credibility after last night’s poor showing. So probably something ultra basic in the hostel café…ah well, at least it will be cheap!
Tonight is our first Night Train – our last two trains are both overnighters. I have no idea what these will be like. I’m having to repeat the trip’s motto “it’s not a holiday, it’s an adventure” fairly frequently to remind people (and myself!) not to expect luxury, comfort, food or even sleep…
I slipped out on my ownsome to the nearby restaurant that looked really appealing and I wished we’d gone to last night…I invited the others, but left them watching the Olympics while I enjoyed a very good goulash with a couple of glasses of red. Still had time to watch Men’s 1500m qualifying and change footwear before the taxi arrived.
Night train! 2100 from Buda-Deli (Deli means “South”). You could get on board the sleeper car from 2030, so we were well installed before it set off. A bit quirky – the middle bed in my cabin doesn’t work, so I’m up in the Gods. There are various dials for things that don’t seem relevant – a volume control? I haven’t heard any announcements… and hope not to do so – by the dial just goes round and round…hmm. The family are taking this with a very positive attitude, so we’ll see how we get on!
Oh, I have to also shout out the Meininger who had an email address to send stuff for printing, so I could print the Ljubljana-Bled bus tickets. No charge! Really great hostel – if they could add a bit of washer-dryer capacity and oomph, it would be perfection. (They provided very good Aperol Spritzes earlier on too.)
Timsformational 