The first week of our new flat, farmers and wrinkly bathers....

Too much stuuuuufff!!!
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London to Budapest

Arriving in Budapest was surprisingly hassle-free, thanks to an A&O sponsored cab all the way to the airport and the luxury of a real airline with real baggae allowance! It still ended up in the inevitbale frantic re-packing at the airport, much to the amusement of bystanders...baggage allowance was 32kg on BA, but I managed to pack 39 into the hugest suitcase in the world. Luckily we had decided to bring a snowboard bag - the ultimate ticket to taking excess luggage: no-one ever weighs them!! So the BA lady was really nice, just waved us to one side and told us to repack to get our weight down...which we did by stuffing everything we could into the snowboard bag and happily wheeling it off to the oversized luggage belt! :) We also just managed to excape the evil lady measureing carry-on luggage and got away with using my backpack (which contained all of my worldy possessions for 8 months while travelling!) as hand luggage! Scooooore!!

The baths!
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Hurdle Number 1: finding our flat!

In Budapest a cab was waiting for us and already our mouths dropped open as we whizzed past one stunning building after the other. And our cab driver was an absloute life saver. The security people in our building, who had our keys did not speak a word of English! But that was all fine, we got the key and merrily took the lift up.... only to arrive on the 7th flor very confused. All the rooms were there...701, 702 etc etc, up to 708. But where was 709??? We scratched our heads a bit, went up a floor, down a floor, all the way downstairs to check for another wing...nothing. Eventually we tried all the doors on the ground floor and of course there is another wing. Duh, ofcourse it would be through the non-descript white door that looks identical to the door to the electricty rooms and the garage, and for that matter the smelly rubbish room!! But we got there eventually and jumped up and down in joy at our new palace of a home. It feels very weird to suddenly be living in a grwon-up, sophisticated (beige!) home....!

The Parliament
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Exploring the hood... and the wrinkly bathers

Our little neighbourhood is sliggghty grotty, I've told most of you that we are surrounded by shops selling cheap farmers, which still makes me laugh - farmers being jeans! But we have everything you could dream of, loads of little corner shops selling German goodies run by little old ladies who don't speak English and best of all the Sechenyi baths right at the end of the road. They're the biggest thermal baths in Europe and are in this enormous yellow house that is just stunning. So as I don't start work until 10 on a Friday (unfortunately(!) the office weekly team meeting is held in Hungarian so I start later) I decided to check it out before work. It's so fun. I of course didn't use the main entrance (not that I realised) so I got another little lady who didn't speak English. She of course sold me the most expensive ticket, which includes use of a cabin. I had no idea what this meant...turns out there are rows and rows of little yellow wooden ornate changing room cabins that you get to use and keep yuour stuff in. They have little curtains over the window and everything and there's a lady in charge of the key for you. She comes and writes your number in chalk on a little blackboard and then off you go to one of the milllions of hot pools. I actually went for a swim outside in the big pool, heated to a nice warm temperature while it's still cold outside...., bliss! And of course becuase it's a weekday and early in the morning it's not overrun by tourists yet, in fact everyone there seemed to be over the age of 70. It was clearly like a pensioners' social hang out. What made me laugh was when I saw them doing "water aerobics" in a small indoor pool. It really was small, and all of them were skipping around in a little circle together, so cute! Slightly less cute was the little old man quite happily floatinig inthe pool...a bit too obviously happy! I know now why no-one seemed to be wearing goggles to swim...maybe you don't want to see what's going on!! :)