2013

A Moving Visit

On our last day in Hungary we had the opportunity to visit the Synagogue in Budapest. It is a magnificent building that has been completely restored. It had been destroyed during WWII when the Jewish area of Budapest was walled up as a ghetto. And then towards the end of the war even though Hungarian […]

The Gypsies of Bodvalenka

When you visit a country, particularly a former Eastern Bloc country like Hungary you have to be prepared to discover that not all of its beauty and history has a nice story behind it. Such is the case of the Gypsies of Hungary.   When the Eastern Bloc crumbled there were many people who benefited […]

Budapest By Trabant

(Who Was The Tourist Attraction?) One of the things that was arranged for us was a tour of the city in a Trabant. This East German made car was also known as “the small smelly” and “the paper jaguar” In actuality the Trabant was made with a steel frame and the rest of it made […]

Welcome To Budapest

On the day before we left Berlin for Hungary we were tuned into CNN and learned that the Danube, the river running through Budapest, would hit its highest level in decades. We did not know if we could get in the city or what would be in store for us, but we knew it would […]