Three weeks with the Mutt and all went well with the exception of losing two hubcaps…after our madcap hubcap adventure in New Zealand last year, it seemed a fitting continuance of the travel spirits guiding my life…I noticed one was missing on one morning as I was getting into the car and then on our last day with the car, I noticed the second one on the driver’s side was missing…stolen? Fell off? Aliens?....who knows what powers dictate the hubcap world. I’ve never lost a hubcap in 58 years of driving at home, but the last two trips have added mystery and amusement to our journey.
We finished our trip with a great family in Eger, Hungary…the kind of open minded, generous spirits that we meet through Servas connections. I had made contact with Boglarka through Emails and was told that they would be happy to host us. We coordinated tines for our arrival and I was told that the parents also spoke English in case “Bogi,” as the email was signed, was not hone when we arrived.
After getting lost, as per usual, we finally found the house and I knocked on the door. A happy smile on a college-aged female’s face greeted me with the opening of the door and I asked “Bogi’s house? Yes, came the answer…we went in and the mother was bustling around in the kitchen preparing a lovely meal and I asked what time “Bogi” would arrive…I was then told with laughter that our “host” was actually this college student…we had a good laugh all around at the miscommunication.
Bogi is a serious-minded young lady working on her Master’s degree in English who laughs easily and was our guide as well as host in Eger. Alice, the mom, is a math teacher who has to be told to come home because she is so dedicated to her work that she loses track of the time and a cell call starting “MOM, when are you coming home comes when the clock passes 7 pm. Atilla, a proud name in Hungary, is a Lawyer and practices in Budapest an hour and a half away. He is a thoughtful man whose opinions are shaped by his basic humanity…They have an apartment there where he, Bogi, and the bright-eyed sister, Dora all live as they split their time between home and work.
Dora studies chemical engineering but whose happy spirit would seem more attuned to lesser academic endeavors. She’s one of those individuals who livens up the room when she enters….The girls both did an exchange to Texas last year and were just 30 minutes apart.
They were really open and honest in their evaluations of the refugee situation, speaking of the fears and concerns that all in these four countries expressed, while empathizing with the human tragedy…there are no easy answers and they were very conflicted about being overwhelmed by huge numbers in their small country of 10 million people while agonizing over the plight of so many desperate people….We found this duality throughout our trip…There doesn’t seem to be any consensus on the issue. There are not any easy answers.
Bogi showed us around the sights and sounds of Eger and since Alice and Atilla had a previous engagement, Carol, Bogi and I had a lovely dinner in a traditional Hungarian restaurant before heading to Prague the following morning. It’s only fitting that we got lost once again after misunderstanding Atilla’s instructions and turning the wrong way on the freeway….the signs kept saying Slovakia and not Budapest, and the brain kept saying: “This isn’t right.” We finally got straightened out as we always do and dropped Bogi off at the Metro stop and made our way to Anna and Tibor’s house where we stayed three weeks earlier.
The banter and frivolity of the evening was crushed the following morning when Anna and I were walking Zeus, the dog. He sprinted away from Anna, and she called and called him…we were walking parallel to the 4 lane road and then I heard that unmistakable “Thud” followed by painful yipping and sure enough he had been hit by a car…there were so few cars on the road on a Sunday morning it seemed so illogical that he would be hit…I comforted him while Anna ran back to the house to get Tibor and the car….they took him to the vet, but he had such spinal injuries that they had to put him down…A total downer for everybody involved, including the visitors. We got out of their hair as soon as possible so that they could deal with their own grief as a family without distractions.
Turning in the rental car and making our way to our plush river boat where we will live for the next two weeks as we cruise to Amsterdam seemed a little other-worldly when we knew that our friends were hurting so badly.
With the end of the road behind us and the rivers ahead of us, it was time to shift gears and recalibrate. They had a free laundry and since we got on board early, we hustled down to get in before the rest of the passengers got there. That was a fabulous start for the 15 days…all clean clothes, and clothes that could be hung in a closet or put in a drawer…with a passenger list of 94 and a crew of 64 it’s a very different scene than the megaships where you have 3,000 of your nearest and dearest friends to be dealt with full time. So hello M.S. Maria Theresa, and good bye Mutt…., no more suitcases, no more schlepping them around, just clean sheets on a fabulous bed and a hot shower with heated floor in the bathroom…now that’s really over the top.
