I'm was very fortunate to spend a weekend in Sopron courtesy of Adam and Gina (Friend's I've made in Hungary). We spend the weekend at Adam's grandparents place, and it was the first time I got to experience Hungarian hospitality and eat home cooked Hungarian food! (This part was the best part of my weekend :P)

But some facts about Sopron first. Hungarians call Sopron the faithful city because at the end of WW1, the town held a plebiscite to decide if they wanted to be part of Hungary or Austria and the majority of the town chose Hungary as their country. Situated close to the Austrian border and the Alps, the temperature in Sopron is considerably cooler than that of Budapest (though I must say that I had pretty good windless weather that weekend) and many people from Austria come over to Sopron to shop, do their glasses, hair, spa etc etc. So some of the street names have their german counterpart below them too. Interestingly, it was the first town to open up its borders to western europe (Austria) and was the site of the 1989 European picnic.

It's like a 3 hour drive to Sopron. We left on a saturday morning and I remember dozing off coz I had been out late the night before. When I woke up sometime later, I was astounded to fine the area around us very foggy and misty... it was like omg... like I was in the another place altogether. The weather had been fine when we left Budapest and within 90 mins, it had changed drastically. Once we put our things down at Adam's grandparents place, we went out for a walk around the town...

Cold expressions....

One thing you notice immediately about Sopron is that it is clean!! The streets are so much cleaner than Budapest... hardly a bottle/bag lying somewhere on the street. Must be my Singaporean instincts.

Old castle walls of Sopron.




According to Adam, this is where the old castle gates used to be. The clues are from the street name and the plaque below... (I'll have to get a translation of that again).


Behind us is the lookout/Firewatch tower (I think).

Right picture: Gate of Loyalty

City Hall


Benedictine Church



Stopping for a teatime break... Mr and Mrs Gerencsér...

This was an interesting experience for me. That weekend we went was the weekend of All Saints Day and All Souls day, and so it is customary for catholics to go to the cemetery and light a candle for those who have passed away. Ok, so in Asia cemeteries are scary places to us. No way would you find me going to the cemetery in the middle of the night and lighting a candle and saying a prayer. But here, going to a cemetery, the atmosphere is different. It has a more serene, respectful and possibly "friendly" feeling. We went with Adam's grandparents, who I must say knew everyone and everyone. As we walked, Adam's grandmother, who spoke some english would occasionally point out the grave of a friend, family friend, family friend's friend... and all this is in the dark... so you get a sense of how familiar they are with the place.

Looking all around, you see red and white candle holders popping up everywhere. Graves are nicely tidied, fresh flowers put around the graves. Tiny whispers float around you as people say their prayers for the dead and remember them. It is definitely an experience that I would not have gotten back home, a sense of tradition and faith that has carried all through the centuries.

A memorial to those who do not have a proper grave. People light candles for them here (E.g. Parents who have lost children in the war)

The church where funeral services are held. There is an old and new cemetery in Sopron and the church is in the middle of them.

Memorial in the old cemetery with the many candles strewed all over it.

And now we come to the best part... Eating... I was very well fed that weekend, and I've come to love certain bits of Hungarian food as a result of it. Let's start with my favourite: Stuffed Paprikas. Basically it's just peppers stuffed with meat served with potatoes and tomato sauce. But it's soooo good! I actually asked Adam's grandmother if I could have it for supper and more helpings even hahaha...

My new favourite dessert: Chestnut puree cake... so as you can see, it's a layer of cake, topped by chestnut puree, cream and chocolate shavings...

Tea time snacks.... it's hard to describe this... it's made from very ripe pears into a "xiang zha" kinda thing but it's not xiang zha.... Gina and I kept picking at this on the table....

Pastries with fruit homemade by Adam's grandmother! We actually nearly finished the whole bowl....

Biscuit sticks

Baked pumpkin

Paprika chicken with pasta noodles.

Picture of Adam's grandmother and I....

I should probably also mentioned that we went to Adam's uncle place and I tried peach and pear palinka there too, which was nice! But I must say that after this trip, I've become so spoilt for GOOD hungarian food now..... Everytime I try something hungarian in Budapest, I start to compare it to Sopron, which unfortunately is nowhere near what I had... oh well.....

I got my new travel pass for November today and I was thinking to myself, wow... we're already at November.... where did October go? Did I make full use of October? Anyhow, this is what I remember:

1. Made Tau Suan with Gina. Hooray for making your own local dishes when you can't get them overseas. I might add that we had to make a trip back to the dodgy Chinese market to buy the 油条. I even tried out the chap chye hawker stall this time, which was just like eating at a hawker centre back home. Don't look at your surroundings and at the kitchen, just pay and eat. hahahaha. I brought some back home for my landlady to try and she practically picked at it. But the next day, when I made fried wontons, she GOBBLED the whole thing up and left only two in the tupperware....

2. Hot wine nights with Aimee
Even since the very very noticeable change in weather, Aimee and I have made a point in scouting out the cafes/bars in Raday Utca area for hot wine. I must say that our favourite hang out has become Clavo on Raday Utca, which sells hot wine for 400 forints for 2dl. It also sells delicious French Onion soup and fries btw though Aimee was able to get garlic mustard sauce from them.

3. Went to Bulgaria. (Blogged about that already).

4. Came back from Bulgaria to find the sink stacked with unwashed dishes courtesy of my landlady who is very habitual about this. I was sooooo wth... (which in my opinion is understandable because I left the apartment with an empty sink) that I whipped out my camera for photographic evidence. And just to clarify, this unwashed dishes thingy, happens almost every day.

5. Said goodbye to Delaney. I think that it's always sad to see someone go and move on. Delaney, has been my colleague at Selti for the past 6 months and is now movin to Senegal to engage in humanitarian work with her boyfriend... which is oh so sweet, but we still miss her heaps anyway. She had her farewell party the night I came back from Sofia, and we had pizza at Paris Texas on Raday Utca. It was good to have a big group, coz we got to try many different types.

Funny intense pic of my boss and his 500ml beer glass.

6. Finished a teaching course. Come to think of it, it was probably the first teaching course I had that ran its full course, so it was the first time I had to say a goodbye speech to a student, and it was hard because I did like this student, and I enjoyed teaching her at 7.30am IN THE MORNING. I tried to hint to her to extend, but of course she said that the end of year is always a terror for her so she could only resume next year (by which there is a high possibility that I wouldn't be able to teach her anymore).

7. Saw David Tan drunk for the first time. Met david at church and we've become good friends during these few months. His girlfriend was visiting him from malaysia and we decided to go out for dinner. First time I saw him maybe a little trashed. I guess the wine made him braver as he went out trashing my beautiful lovely country (in a funny way) and he made me laugh till my mouth literally ached...... haha fun times...

Drinking previously in the summer in Morrisons.

8. Went to Sopron. Had such a fun time here. Pictures up in next post! I don't have all of them yet.

During the drive to Rila Monastery, our driver suddenly stopped on the opposite side of the road and said, "Paranomic view... take picture?" I was a little stunned how he just suddenly stopped. As you can see, he just parked his car on the road... so oncoming cars literally had to move to the next lane to keep on moving.... As a result, we did get a honked at a few times while taking pictures.

Enroute, he stopped at an old church, which has literally been abandoned but used to belong to the monastery.

Once again... if only I knew what this said...

Walking around inside... obviously no one has been here for a while, judging from the amount of the undergrowth.

Frescoes from inside the chapel


Once again, I don't know why the doors were so short then!

The drive along the mountains was really quite breathtaking... love the autumn colours. Trust me, I took more than just these few pictures.

Before the Monastery we went to visit this cave where the 1st monk of Rila Monastery was said to live at. Bulgarians have a saying that if you can climb out of the cave, your wish will come through. It was about a 20 mins hike up. Not too strenuous, but I guess we took longer than usual coz the two HK ladies kept stopping to take pictures along the way.

A small chapel beside the cave

Entrance to the cave and in between the layers of rock, you can see the little prayers that people have written on pieces of paper and stuck them in between.


Altar inside the cave. I will say that the exit of the cave at the top is extremely narrow, and I knew that if I wiggled and squeezed my way through I probably could have made it out, but looking at all the dirt around it, I decided that it wasn't really worth it, much to amusement of our driver (who btw was a big sized man) who kept asking to go through the cave, go through the cave!!!!!!!

Inside the small chapel beside the cave.

haha... notice the bottles of beer on the table....