I also purchased a souvenir of Austria -- in a bookstore, I noticed that they were selling the DVD "Dinner for One" which is a very old movie that it is the tradition of all Germans and Austrians to watch on New Year's Eve. The movie is 18 minutes long and is in black and white. For some reason, the movie is entirely in English and it is very slap stick, but very funny to see. I have no idea why Germans and Austrians watch it every year, but I bought it for Ruth and me to see to celebrate the New Year. You can see it for free by clicking on
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9105942950207814319#
Note that the introduction is in German where the MC tells the German speaking audience what the movie is about but the movie itself is all in English. You should take a look at it!
We got to the train station in Salzburg one hour before our train was to leave and when I attempted to buy reserved seat tickets for our train, the salesman said that they were all sold out. He advised me to get on the train and ask the conductor where we could sit -- he said there would be no problem of taking that train -- only that we couldn't be sure as to where our seats are. The worst situation, he said, was that we would have to sit in the dining car.
Ruth and I boarded the train and walked down the aisle along with many others who were reserved seat "ticketless". We stopped in the aisle to stand as the train left the station. An elderly gentleman who was seated on the aisle next to a window seat without anyone sitting in it got up and moved to the seat across from him which was empty and told Ruth and me to sit in the two adjacent seats. How nice! We got to talking with the people all around us. The elderly gentleman was Austrian, the man next to him was an Austrian high school religion teacher; the couple across the aisle from us were from Denmark although the man was Chilean (father was English and mother Chilean -- he's now living in Denmark) with his girlfriend who is Austrian now living in Denmark. She was quite impressive speaking Arabic, Danish, Spanish, English, French, and German. The couple will be married next year and plan on raising their children in a multilingual family since her mother tongue is German and his is Spanish. So, you can see, we had great neighbors to talk with on our way back to Budapest.
Upon arrival in Budapest we decided to go downtown to my favorite restaurant for dinner. As usual, our meals were outstanding. After that we returned home to unpack and rest.
The next day (December 30th) I called a colleague at school who had expressed interest in meeting us during the vacation. She invited us to visit her at her house which is just outside Budapest. She gave directions on how to get there and they involved taking a bus, then a subway, then a tram, and then a bus. I did very well finding our way and called her on my phone as we got on the final bus. "Five or six minutes to the bus stop," she said as our bus left the station. To be on the safe side, I told the bus driver where we wanted to go and we sat just behind him as we drove through the countryside. However, the bus driver must have forgotten about us because we ended up going to the end of the bus route! My friend called asking where we were and I told her that we must have passed the stop. Other passengers on the bus told us that they would inform us when to get off the bus and it was a good thirty minutes later that we finally reacher our destination. Then we spent five minutes walking to her house which was at one time a manor which has since then, been divided into three apartments for three families. Her family's suite consisted of a large kitchen, a bathroom, and two bedrooms one with a giant loft. She and her husband sleep in the loft so that the bottom of their room can be used as a living room. The other room is shared by their two sons who are 10 and 15. She told me she plans on dividing the room into two separate rooms so that the boys could have their own private rooms. There certainly is enough space to do that -- in fact with the tall ceilings, she could almost build a second floor in that room. At any rate, we had a great time talking with her, her mother, and her sons. Eventually her husband returned home from work and took us to the tram station (so that we would not get lost again although that would have been impossible since the bus line ends at the tram station).
On the way home, I decided to take a slightly different route since I knew that the tram ended right where a tram going by the central market passes by. We got to the central market with just a little time for Ruth to look over the handcrafts just before the shops that sold them closed. However, she found nothing that she wanted to buy so we bought some food for dinner and returned home.
So ends another adventurous day living in Budapest.
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