Holy Cow!

Two blog entries in two days! What a treat! Actually I've just got some time to kill before my train tomorrow afternoon to Ljubljana. It's going to be a nine hour ride that will basically crowd up both lunch and dinner (gasp!), so I hit the the Great Market Hall today and put together some provisions. I've got some crusty bread, some spicy Hungarian paprika sausage and other charcuterie, some grapes, figs, candied fruits for dessert, and of course a bottle of wine. All said and told it cost me around 3000 Forints, which is roughly 15 bucks. What a wonderful place. The best part was the fast food meal, Hungarian style, that I had after my shopping. In addition to all the produce, meats, veggies, spices and crap they sell in the hall, they've also got some food vendors. I got a roasted chicken leg stuffed with some kind of unidentifiable tasty gunk, a cabbage leaf filled with meat and sausage, and a stuffed Hungarian Pepper with a spicy tomato sauce. And of course everthing cost about 7 bucks. McDonalds is bullshit.

I also spent some time today at the 'House of Hungarian Wines'. It's a setup where you can plop down the equivalent of about 18 bucks, and then taste you way through the various wine regions in Hungary. I was able to taste 50 different pours, most all of which were good. However, none of them had serious wow factor. I'm kind of surprized--based on everything I've drank, I think I would actually have to give the Czech republic the nod for the best wine so far.

Went on a pub crawl tonight. Being Monday, I figured it would be slow and I'd need an arranged tour were I to have any hope of finding a good social scene. Unfortunately, I was the only person that showed up for the pub crawl and it was cancelled. The organizer gave me some tips on places to check out. I'm just down the street from one right now. I popped in earlier and it was fairly busy, but it seemed to be mostly a bunch of college aged kids sitting and chatting at tables. When I'm done on the computer here, I'll maybe pop back in to see if there's someone I can get into a conversation with on a topic other than what thier favorite class is or what the cool new ringtone they got thier thier phone is like. If that doesn't pan out, I'll maybe just head home and see what Maria and Istvan (my hosts) are up to. There's also Fred--the new guy from Kansas that moved into thier other room over the weekend. A very nice guy, if not the most charismatic person I've ever met.