April was a wonderful month! Spring finally came and things started to green up. The countryside began to look beautiful again. The real highlight was that our son, Trevor, and his wife, Emy, came to visit us! I'm sorry if this month's blog looks a little like a report from some tourists, but for a while we enjoyed being tour guides for these special tourists who came to see us.
Their first night here, we took them to dinner in a nice restaurant near our apartment. They were much more jet-lagged than they look.
The next day we took them for a walking tour around Szeged. This is just a nice picture taken in downtown Szeged. I discretely stood in front of the word 'Pub' on the truck.
Here is proof that Spring has arrived. The Szeged city fathers did a great job seeing that flowers got planted all over town. It has really been very beautiful. Szeged has a few eye-sores but it is mostly a very beautiful place.
We took them to a large national historical/heritage park.
Emy got chosen to be part of a Hungarian horsemanship demonstration.
She loves horses and was a natural.
Later, as we looked at the typical early 1900's buildings in the park, Trevor and I posed with a World War 1 soldier.
On the next day, we went to a place where the three borders of Hungary, Romania, and Serbia come together. The spot is in a remote location, surrounded by farmers' fields. It used to be a patrolled area, but the day we were there, we were all alone.
We went up a deserted cold-war era watch tower. We took 'Flat Princess Jackie' with us as part of our granddaughter Jackie Bartell's school project. That is Serbia in the background.
Here is the tower with a bunker at the bottom.
On another day we took Flat Jackie to the Budapest National Opera House to show her where we would be seeing La Traviata in a few days.
Flat Jackie also wanted to see the huge public baths in Budapest but she didn't get in the water. Inside the building are a couple dozen hot and cold pools of various sizes and there are saunas and steam baths here too.
That night we had dinner on Castle Hill in Budapest. Emy requested Moon River. I must have been waiting for someone to say, "Smile!"
We called the next day "Castle Day" because we drove from place to place to see all the castle sites that we could fit in. Pictures from that day would fill up a large blog posting by themselves. We had a good time but had a hard time fitting everything in that we wanted to.
By the next day we had ended up in a different part of the country to see some more Hungarian horsemanship. Here's a pair of Storks (yes, on a chimney). Hungarian's take good care of their storks and there are nests everywhere. So, why is the Hungarian birthrate dropping?
This display of horse riding is a trademark of the Stud Farm that we visited in Hortobagy.
The thatched barn is full of black, curly horned sheep.
Trevor poses on a horse. Now you know how Hungarian Cowboys dressed.
Remember the Opera house in Budapest? Very ornate. Very European.
Can you believe that this was our first time attending an Opera? We used to be such cretans but now we are truly cultured.
We sent Trevor and Emy away to see Vienna. We stayed behind and took our own tour of a memorial park which features all of the Communist Era statues that were removed from Budapest. The Hungarians don't have much love for the Russians. We also went to a Museum covering the terrors of the
Fascist and Communist years in Hungary. A very bad time for the Hungarian people.
Everyone finally came back together and we returned to Szeged. Here we are in front of our branch house.
Here's Andrea, Trevor, and Emy in front of the branch house in Békescsaba with a faithful member of that little branch.
Just a note of family news: This month our son Trenton graduated from BYU with a BS in Chemistry. Now he just has to go do four years of Dental College.
We took our proud Zone leaders, Elder Moffett and Elder Beaumount, out to lunch as a reward for their hard work.
It's actually a Chinese restaurant and the food was, well, Chinese. That made us very happy because we had found that the Mexican food in a Mexican restaurant in town was not, well, very Mexican.
Later in the month we returned to Budapest for a Senior missionary conference. Here are all of the Senior Elders of Hungary. (weeds) (President Baughman is to the left of Tom)
And here are all of the Senior Sisters. (flowers) (Sister Baughman is to the right of Andrea)
So does it seem like all we did in the month of April was eat out?
The Seniors toured the Synagogue in Budapest.
Very beautiful.
This sculpture has the name of a Hungarian holocaust victim printed on each little metallic leaf.
Then, of course, we ate out.
Back home in Szeged, we did a BBQ for our young adults. I learned two things: Hungarian charcoal is not the same as the briquettes we use back home, and Hungarian young adults like their meat very well done.
For a FHE activity, the young adults took us to the woods along the river where we had a campfire and learned what Hungarians like to roast over the fire.--Bacon Fat--If we had marshmallows here, we would show them what quick gratification is really like, but alas!
It was a calm, beautiful, peaceful night along the Tisza River in Szeged Hungary.
