The Places We Go

The past few days have been beautiful, and I've had the opportunity to walk more! Here are some of the things I've seen:

A giant snail! Well, I thought it was giant until I saw another one that was the same size.

My interpretation: if you have a bike, you must stay to the left. If you have a child or pig, you must stay to the right. Sometimes I have trouble reading these European signs!

A stream that runs through one of the parks. There are many, many parks in the city! Most of them have playgrounds. I think I've seen at least 8 parks with playgrounds so far, and I know there are more.

This statue was at one of the parks. I googled the name and discovered that this man was a famous Hungarian novelist. 

This church is St. Micheal's. Isn't it lovely?

Can you guess what this is? It's a milk vending machine! You bring your own bottle, and you can buy milk by the liter. It doesn't do me much good because I can't drink milk, but here in Hungary, people drink a lot of milk. On that note, yesterday I found a huge grocery store called Inter-Spar. They had a rice/almond milk substitute! It's a little different than the almond milk at home, but I can drink it! I've also been told to look at the large Tesco. I have yet to see it (though I've seen many mini-Tesco stores), but I wonder if they will have regular almond milk. There are many grocery stores here, but looking for certain foods can be an adventure!

I accidentally focused the picture on the gate instead of the truck, but I think the truck is pretty cute. :)

I've found a few cemeteries. Some people think it's morbid, but I've always enjoyed walking through cemeteries. They contain so many stories! Of course, I can't read these headstones, but I can look at the dates and imagine what life in Sopron would have been like during that person's lifetime. One evening, Eszter, Istvan, and I stayed up discussing Hungarian History. During the conversation, it occurred to me that Hungary was on the other side of the World Wars! I said as much because I wondered what the Hungarian perspective would be. Eszter told me that it was the Americans who bombed Sopron. That seemed so strange! It makes sense of course, but for the past week, I've been walking past buildings that survived the bombings and hearing about the buildings that did not. Never once did it occur to me that those beautiful buildings were destroyed by American pilots. On the other hand, the next picture is also extremely sobering.

This statue is a memorial to the Jews who were deported from Sopron by train. They were killed in extermination camps. Prior to WWII, Sopron had a small but significant Jewish population. During the Holocaust, the entire Jewish population was killed. No-one was left to return after the war. Apparently, some of the Jews in Budapest were rescued. Sopron, however, sits on the Austrian-Hungarian border, and it was one of the first (if not the first) Hungarian city to experience the deportation and massacre of its Jews.

On a much lighter note, here is one of the many bakeries I've passed. As I said before, you can find bakeries on every street. You can also find ice-cream shops just about everywhere. At one of the shops, Eszter even found lactose-free blueberry ice cream for me!

Maybe I'm just obsessed with color, but I thought that this house was darling. I would love to have a little European cottage with a window-box.

Below are some more pictures of daily life with the family:

Attila with his apa (father) Istvan. Istvan loves history and knows so much about Hungary.

Attila in his stroller. We were picking up Hanga from Kindergarten.

Trying to balance! It's so hard! The balance beam is set on springs. The small children at the park could walk it easily, but every time I tried, I fell off! Apparently, I need another semester of yoga.

Saci and me at the park. She found these little green seed pods (at least, that's what I think they were), and we stuck them on our noses. Why? Because we could. :)

I have more pictures and stories to share, but I'll save them for another post!