I asked, what would you like me to say about you and your family? She thought for a while...."I always knew I have to come to Europe and it took me a long time, like about 25 years...but what I want to say is that you have to follow your heart, your heart knows best"...and that is what you did, my friend, and the reward has been huge!!!

Italy

Well, it took longer than expected but I am finally back!

10 years ago we did such a wonderful trip to Italy, a very dreamed trip. 5 weeks by car all over Italy. I said to Hector at that time that I feel that I needed to go back and live there for at least 1 year. Such was the impact of that country on me...and even though is not going to be for a year (at least not this time) I am so excited!

Italy is the place where I feel freer, at my best self. Here I can be tall, big, loud, fat, expressive, passionate....here I can be me. For all the rawness in this place, for all their hurried nature, their somehow aggressiveness, their sometimes indifference or contempt, here I can be me and being me is OK. I can dance in the piazza, "talk" in Italian, tell the waitress how bella she is, laugh with the kids in the playground, sunbake on my undies....

We met R&K for a week of travelling. They come all over Germany to spend time with us, we are so moved by their friendship. I
am sick with the flu and soon after Hector follows; but still we can enjoy our time together: pizza, grappa, gelato, limoncello, a glorious night at the edge of the water on Lago di Garda; sharing our stories and our wishes. Being with friends is so good for us, for our soul but then it take a few days for the emptiness to go away :(

We continue our trip around the lake, which is huge- 50km long- and stop and stay in the small villages. We totally love the markets; it tell us so much about the culture of the place the kind of things that people sell!...and we always buy fresh vegetables and fruits and here salamis and cheeses!

Some days I get worry. Well, a lot of days actually. I am worry about the future, about how are we going to live when we come back. Get jobs? All that looks scary to me, and I can't think how that is going to be possible. Hector remains calm and confident and think that we will manage. We are so grateful about this possibility right now, and we are so sure that we did the right thing and at the right time. All over the world we met people that keep saying to us that we are living their dreams!

Hungary

24 to 27 September- (yes, not enough time....we will come back....just that we are meeting Rolf Karina in north Italy!)

I have a positive vibe as we arrived in Hungary. Very hard to explain, but I could breathe again. As full of nature as Slovakia was, the mountains around and the amount of people/monoblocks in the cities, made me feel a tad claustrophobic. So I welcome the open field of this country as we were driving through and the cleanliness of the villages.

We stopped at Gyor just for a bike ride in our way to Budapest and we found out that the inventor of the soda water was from this town! (a brilliant man in my books)

How could you not fall in love with Budapest? It is classy, spacious, elegant and oh so full of old buildings. Every time you hit a corner there is a church or a museum or just a block of apartments from the 14 century. They told us that the city has received an special grant from UNESCO to paint/maintain/repair/restore all the buildings here... a job that will take about 20 years.

The Jewish quarter is our first destination, there are many monuments here as a memory of the holocaust.

There is a long and public controversy going on here. A strong group who claim that the Hungarian government should take responsibility for their role in WW2 jews massacre and the government who insist to be seen as vulnerable and victims of the Nazis. This ongoing fight is reflected in different monuments- the "official" voice and the "counter" voice".

We attended the ceremony of Rosh Hashanah in the old synagogue. It is a very luxurious synagogue with gold ornaments and a pulpit in the middle were the rabbi gives a speech. It is really big and tonight is full. The ceremony is in Hungarian but doesn't matter that much. It is nice to sit and hear the familiar Hebrew songs and prayers.
Before going "home" we rode all through the city, our night tour! All the buildings and the bridges are illuminated. The view of the Parliament (the biggest in the world) across the Danube is particularly impressive.

Inside the huge Market Hall we bought "Hungarian salami",  Challah and some cheese for lunch before getting inside the parliament for a visit.... which is very much like a castle.... even though we also visit the "castle" which is not a castle anymore but several museums all part of a city on a hill, a city inside a city. The city of Budapest shines from there. It is a magnificent view. I am loving this place, so full of life and happening. Plenty of restaurants, coffee shops, bars.....so many quirky places, very "arty" feel. A long mall with expensive shops and a night organ concert with a tenor signing Ave Maria at the St Stephens's Basilica....all part of our time here!

There is so much to see and do here! I said to Hector that I could live here for a few months....just to be able to visit all the old buildings that we are seeing, or to go to all the museums and art galleries. The Danube here is particularly wide so again I feel a sense of space. And so far, with very little communication; we found the people very interesting.

And if all Budapest has to offer wasn't enough, we just found out that this is the spa capital of the world! There are so many thermal spas with swimming pools, steam baths; that we could easily do a "spa crawl" over here!

Inside the Parliament