Hungary is not my favorite country, I’m looking forward to Croatia and then to the countries I’ve never visited: Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. That’s not to say there haven’t been fun experiences in Hungary, just that I doubt I’ll choose to return.
Yesterday we spent the morning going down the river which was some of the downtime that it seemed everyone needed and docked in Kalocsa. Then all of the ship’s passengers did the same thing: went to a horse show and two museums before returning for dinner and moving again to near the Croatian border.
The horse show was interesting, but also a bit cruel to both the human and animal performers, and it was clearly designed for tourists, so it’s not clear how much of it was “real” vs “canned.”. The first “act” was four horse/rider pairs and a burro/rider pair who seemed to be for comic relief. Each rider had a whip that sounded like a shotgun when it snapped. At one point everyone dismounted and the burro rider was about a foot shorter than the other riders, which wasn’t obvious when they were riding but was painfully obvious when they were standing. During one of the “games” the riders used their whip to knock a brick off of a stone which seemed reasonable until one of the riders missed and the whip hip the horse’s legs. Another “game” involved giving a scarf to one rider (the burro) and the others tried to steal it from him, repeat until — as was obvious from the start — the burro rider finally got it back, the game ended, and “he got the girl”. There were demos of a peasant wagon pulled by three(!) horses, and an aristocrat’s wagon pulled by four. The final act involved ten horses and a rider: the horses were in two rows of 4 then a row of 2 with the rider standing on the back two horses. The audience was “treated” to wine (or raspberry juice) before the show, and apricot brandy (which I tasted but didn’t finish) and cheese scones (I took one for David but he only took a single bite of his own so mine was wasted). The highlight of the paprika museum was skipping it with David and 8 other cachers to find a nearby cache instead. I’m not sure there was a highlight to the paprika museum. All three “attractions” had extensive displays of souvenirs.
After we departed Kalocsa, there was a late afternoon gathering on the sun deck for Don’s 75th birthday celebration. He treated it like a Hobbit birthday, giving gift bags to each of us.
After the gathering, David and I stayed outside to photograph the spectacular sunset, which was one of the best things I’ve done in a long time. I look forward to seeing the sunset through his pictures, and to sharing mine with him.
Dave Lyon got to visit the bridge (where the ship captain sits to maneuver the ship) a few days ago. I’d tried in the morning to visit it but wasn’t successful. Dave has more chutzpah than I do and boldly knocked on the door gaining both of us entry. We got to talk with the assistant captain who didn’t allow me to touch anything but did let me sit in his chair while Dave took a couple of pictures. I then returned the favor.
David was still up on deck when we left the bridge. The three of us shared more photos, and Dave took one I really like of David and me looking away from the camper at the sunset. I hope there are more opportunities to view sunsets.
A gypsy band (I was surprised that the term gypsy was used instead of Roma) played last night and did not seem to be enjoying themselves at all; .
Today there were two tour options, neither of which sounded interesting, so I chose to do the adventure lab and cache in the town where we were docked (Mohacs). I’m not sure that was the right choice either, but sometimes when neither A nor B resonate, it’s time to choose C/none of the above.
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