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Tofino

It’s been a while since we’ve been there. And it’s a drive–even for us. But golly is the trip worth it. Even from our part of the Island the drive is over one hundred and fifty kilometres or roughly two hours west. There are winding roads, a few passing lanes and the odd rest stop. There is also the ongoing construction where single lane traffic is a right of passage.

At present the scale of roadwork is nothing short of extreme. All sorts of grading, blasting, reinforcing, et cetera happening at one of the last mountain passes before you hit Kennedy Lake and the junction toward T-town.

The Pacific Rim

There is no feeling like entering the stretch of roadway through Pacific Rim National Park. This is truly a special place. The passage through old growth forest next to the ocean is magic. The air feels charged with calm energy. Negative ions, I’m sure, abound here.

On this trip out we never made it to town. We stopped at Oceanside Break plaza housing the killer Tofitian cafe and the original Live to Surf surf shop. We dropped some coin on Tacofino’s Crispy Chicken burritos, a Tofitian espresso and soaked up the vibes.

We had to check a flat before driving further. We found a filling station just up the road, filled up and pulled a major u-turn near Tofino Brewing Co. back to the beach.

The beach

Long Beach and Incinerator Rock–you heard that right. This time of year you’re lucky to find a parking spot even with the travel restrictions in place. We did, paid for parking (make sure you do, or you’ll get ticketed) and unloaded our beach bum stuff. The vibes! The ocean!

The spray was lifting off the water and slowly floating up the beach. Green Point seemed unreal as if air brushed into the distance. Time was standing still here. Each tick of the wristwatch replaced by the wave action nearby.

This is surf territory

A few hours on the beach and we were ready to sleep the day away like so many lazing around us. We were mesmerised by the sound of surf, surfers, others lounging and, well, just chilling.

When you’re enjoying the beach here, appreciating nature and respecting the environment, you belong. It is disappointing when you look at the clock and see time slipping away. You realise: (1.) that you’re not local, and (B.) how long the drive back home is. We did make sure to dip our toes into the icy pacific before leaving though. . .

Hello, ocean

I’m not sorry we went. Nor am I sorry for the long drive. The stretch of highway is just a little bit steeper and curvier and longer than I’m used to. Not too many straight shots cutting through the mountainous center of Vancouver Island.

It truly is a special place. Maybe it’s even a secret place as not too many are willing to make the trek to the edge of the salty B.C. coast. But one thing for certain: if you have a bit of time and you’re patient, if you follow the posted speed limits and respect the local culture (and the devastatingly beautiful nature here) you may never want to leave. You may just end up leaving everything behind and

sleeping on the beach,

breathing in the surf and realising

just how beautiful this part of the world can be.

I know I’ll be back

–if I can only find the time . . .

Change

Not all stories have a happy ending.

They don’t have to.

I can’t tell you that everything is wonderful. It both is and it isn’t. I can tell you what happened instead.

We decided to leave Hungary. We decided to return to Canada. In total we spent six months in that lovely country. We took time to settle, find work, connect with family and make a life for ourselves.

What changed? Well, we had a parent pass away. This loss was unexpected and hard. Faced with this reality we hit rock bottom. We had to reassess. We took another look at where we were and what we were doing. With one parent gone, we had unfinished business in Canada. And after much deliberation and discussion, we knew we had to go back.

I’ve had the pleasure of writing this blog and sharing what I’ve seen and experienced. I suppose that has not changed. With our need to return, we know in time we will find a new normal. We will step back in to a life that we know. One thing is for certain, however . . .


–we are richer.

We have seen and tasted, tried and experienced so many things. We are richer for it. Our hearts are filled with gratitude toward all who helped and guided us. We are so grateful.

We join the ranks of those that have lost loved ones. We are no longer ignorant. We have grown and have, as family put it, had to mature ahead of our time. I know the journey ahead won’t be easy, but it will be okay. In time it will be okay.


We have our memories, and will cherish them all.

Hoping that your days are bright. Goodness knows that we are searching for the sunlight in our world. And we’re finding it every day.

Viszontlátásra. I’ll be seeing you again–soon.

– Dalton.

December.

It’s pretty cold and grey outside. In our apartment we have good old, and somewhat updated, radiators under most windows. It has been a hoot trying to figure our how this heating system works. There is a wireless remote control that activates the boiler in the pantry that circulates hot water through the radiators. Each radiator has a dial on it so you can choose its heating intensity. Not bad, but a little different than central heating.

The windows? Different story. Dated single panel turn-to-shut bronzed latches on the inner and outer casings. There’s a nice wide sill in the space between the panes. They are beautiful windows, and the apartment is charming with its high ceilings and tall doors. Heating this space, however, takes technique. Fortunately, we can close and open doors to our four rooms to keep the desired space warm. We even bought ‘window pillows’ to catch the draft that might creep in from outside.

We have our small Christmas tree too. It is a lovely four foot tall golden larch. Christmas is coming! In town there are no Christmas markets allowed. One shop has smartly rented its balcony to a small stall that sells freshly toasted funnel cakes legally ‘above’ and not at street level. People, it seems, still find ways to make it cozy and bright. We’ve found our favourite spot for mulled wine in Oroszlán utca. They make the drink with a heavy Portugieser wine. We still stop in at Hatos Rétes for a quick bite of sugary poppyseed rétes. We’re making the season work despite the continued requirement for mask wearing while outside–and the eight p.m. to five a.m. curfew. The promise is that it may change January 11th. That’s our new date.

And what about Christmas? Well, we hope that during the upcoming break from work we might find iceskating, wintry strolls, gingerbread and other toasty delights despite current restrictions. But nevertheless, with paper snowflakes pasted to our windows and some warm LED Christmas lights adorning the frames, Christmas will come all the same. We’re looking forward to it.

Hoping that wherever you are, you are keeping warm and bright!

Oh, and keep up a steady stream of coffee and/or tea. It helps!

Happy December!

Something.

I sit on a bus stop bench waiting to transit to work. To my right across the street a low green tiled roof bank building. It looks oddly Japanese with its wide roof and high peaks.

I am in Hungary.

There are a few ten-storey apartments that crowd the roadway. Panel houses, they are called. I’ve just crossed the street and visited one of the tiny, dusty vendors at ground level. One hundred-twenty forint for a dull, robusta bean espresso. The click and buzz of the machine, the taste of powdery coffee was just what I needed. Something warm to wash down a few bites of egg washed sugar-and-walnut pastry. The perfect morning.

I had just come from a local transit office. I’d forgot my transit pass and was fined nine hundred forint. This is the hum of life these days. Coffee, pastry, transit, work. It’s a good rhythm.

We continue to wear masks when we are out. And we have our curfew: home from 8 p.m. till 5 a.m. Then there are the Christmas decorations downtown. The lights are strung up. We are waiting for them to be illuminated.

These days we sit and wait. We watch. I think like so many we watch and wait to see what will happen next. But we have our simple pleasures. The baking, coffee, routines, work and the hope of Christmas. The lights are slated to be illuminated on Friday. We need that.

Life is good. We have so much, and, I think, we are grateful.

Here’s to your day. To being together and with the ones you love. Have a cuppa joe, your favourite tea or pékség (baked delight) and smile.

It’s all worth it, you see. Life is good.

Cooler.

Things have… changed. That would be the weather, to say the least. We have at last entered November. The cool and the grey have begun to surround Szeged. I don’t mind it so much. At some point it cools off and you notice the chill. Then winter sets in. I won’t soon forget the minus thirties (or more) in Sapporo, Japan when I lived out there . . . Cold is just cold. You get used to it.

Here in Szeged, I look out the rear windows of our apartment and see the courtyard below. I see bricks. Bricks seem to have their own language here. They come in different shapes and sizes. I bet some are much older than me. Some of these bricks make up the back wall of our courtyard. On the right side is a low row of outdoor storage units. They are made of dark wood. They are capped off by a roof of red clay tiles. To the left, the single story semi-detached units that make up the ground level. Then there’s our wall of apartments making up the street-facing side of our dated 1950s housing complex. There is history everywhere. I love it.

These days we also wear masks. Whenever we step outside we mask up. Also, these days after 8 p.m. in the city we have a curfew and have to be home. The cold, the buildings and the history (and the curfew) are simply a part of life. We don’t mind. In fact I support the preventative measures in hopes that things will change–if not tomorrow, but soon. There will also be no Christmas market at Szeged Dóm tér church this year. But that too is okay. The local shopping mall has made room for various indoor vendors. Things change and people adapt. I like that.

The outside cold continues to creep. We ended up buying a radiator for our tiled bathroom. It’s been like a refrigerator in there otherwise. It’s toasty now. We’ve bought a string of warm coloured LED Christmas lights and strung them up around our street side windows. We’ve even cut out some paper snowflakes. The season is upon us and we’re enjoying the festivities maybe just a little early, but we’re having fun nonetheless.

Another week, and another day. We settle, listen to some vintage Christmas music and keep brewing tea. Tis’ the season, it’s almost time to say . . . but it may be a little more fitting to say so after American Thanksgiving.

Hoping you’re keeping warm, reading lots and trying all sorts of new coffee and tea. Grab your favourite blanket and cozy up. You never know when you’ll have to head outside for some unexpected errand. And if you do, remember, warm is best.

Wishing you an otherwise toasty November Monday.

Salve!

P.s. Hope you enjoy the website refresh!

Pécs

It was autumn break, and we decided to go to Pécs.

It’s pronounced Paych, like if you combined ‘pay’ and ‘ch’ into one smooth syllable.

We don’t presently have a car, so we opted on rail travel instead. And we love trains–something we didn’t really have back in Canada.

We taxied in the morning to the station, took two trains, one bus and walked a whole lot of kilometres (about four or five) to get to our destination. In all, six hours by rail. But the view, oh the view of Hungary from the train was magic. Flat, cultivated farmlands with clumps of trees or bushes here or there. A bit of forest, and a lot of open spaces. Just lovely. And the autumn colours . . . Our taxi chauffeur put it well. He said fall is a second spring for trees: leaves become flowers for a second time. What a thought!

Back to Pécs. We knew we had arrived because as we neared the medieval heart of the city we hit cobblestones. We climbed up the sloping streets toward Szent István tér / plaza and wandered about until we found our hotel on király utca. The Palatinus Grand Hotel. A three-star wonder built in 1913 and opened to guests in 1915. It was the site of a historic residence and factory before that. If the majestic mouldings on the ceiling and tasteful marble work didn’t work their magic, the hotel’s history certainly did. We had a lovely stay–which included breakfast. I’ve never seen so many scrambled eggs in a buffet. The real deal, no less. No milk or additives to fluff up the scramble here.

But the sights of Pécs? We had a list of to-dos from two guidebooks. What Hungarians visiting Pécs should see, the book said. I must admit, though, that wandering here is enough. Winding streets, cobble here, buildings of the Romantic era there. Uneven, curving winding narrow roadways, and a great variety of windows framed with all sorts of detailed stonework. Walking about for two days filled our hearts and minds with wonder. How can such history exist right before our eyes? You can see and touch stones from medieval gates. We soaked it all up. See the Instagram snaps at page bottom. They barely do the views justice.

Now back to Szeged with the weekend to go and we’re back to work. We had painted an autumn to-do list and pasted it on our wall. We’ve done nearly everything on it, including tasting mulled wine, jumping in leaves and waking up early to walk the foggy streets. Hoping that your autumn is warm and welcoming, and leaves you feeling cozy like a sip of rich cocoa from a classic Swiss-owned cukrászda. Thank you, Caflisch of Pécs (est. 1789).

Keep warm, and until next time–

Go walk in some autumn leaves! (And look at the linked pictures at the bottom of the webpage!)

Drenched

Picture a face.

It’s sporting a distant gaze, and is situated between two shutters.

You see it for only a moment as you pass by.

It was a dreary, rainy Tuesday. I stepped off the bus at the busy roadside Mars tér stop. There was drizzle, more or less rain. Bodies this way and that – mostly students, young folk standing here and there. Some were smoking, others drinking coffee from the vendors littering the roadside in front of the busy open-air depot. I started to walk. I passed the baked goods vendor and spied the sweet milk challah-like bread that I bought a few weeks ago.

No, not today, I thought.

Then I saw it, just for a moment. That sad face seated, probably on a stool, in a newsprint and magazine kiosk, like an oversized green phone booth. That face. Staring a who knows what, thinking who knows what, but there it was. It was so sad, and so perfect. It was one of those moments where if I had a proper camera and was unseen, I could imagine a black and white snap: framed between the shutters with the drizzle about and all those thoughts within.

Next time, perhaps.

The days are growing cold. There is a hum and a rhythm to daily life and work now. We’re settling. A bit of pay in the bank, and the chance to buy this and that, or the things we need. We still visit the piac here at Mars tér on Saturdays. We get up early, walk out the two kilometres to the market and shop. Apples, squash, preservative-free kraut, eggs, maybe some bread. The flavours, the food, the prices and, again, the faces are all different.

Better?

Different. All these flavours, views and features colour our days, and–we like it.

A week or more and we’ll have an autumn break from work. I love that word autumn. It almost sounds like the season. We’ll be off to see Pécs, a beautiful, historic city that boasts the Zsolnay district, a name famous for Hungarian porcelain, tiles and stoneware. We’ll be out at last to see some more of this beautiful country. And we look forward to it. For now, time for another bite of roasted sutőtök or roasted squash, a sip of some room-temperature red chai and a read of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss in Hungarian.

Autumn and all its favourites are here. Hope you have some time for a good book, a good bite and a cup of your favourite tea.

Egészségedre.

Roads

What an excellent span of days and weeks it has been!

We are settling in as we approach our second month in Szeged, Hungary. Work is humming along, and the weather is taking a turn from hot days to cooler afternoons. There is even the promise of rain this week . . .

Regarding daily life, we have met most neighbours in our building–including the furry ones. There are two cats that greet us when we enter and depart– when we check the mailbox for flyers. Speaking of flyers, we have come to enjoy perusing flyers to SPAR, ALDI or TESCO. Our favourite is ALDI, a German grocery chain that is clean, well-stocked and uplifting to shop in. Unlike the other two shops ALDI doesn’t provide a points card, just good deals if you’re willing to look.

Besides shopping, walking to the bus on the way to work proves challenging–especially if we are walking the sidewalks on days off. The roads, or more particularly, the sidewalks here are a real workout for our stroller. So in the case you sport a walker, wheelchair, stroller or other wheeled form of sidewalk transport: beware!

Not sure if the photos does it justice, but these roadways are giving our stroller a workout!

Sidewalks, at least in our part of town in Szeged, are uneven and bumpy. Consisting of different paved-together bits, they have splits and cracks and are reducing the longevity of our stroller. See above!

The good news is that these pedestrian roadways are the least of our worries. If you don’t rush, are willing to weave about as you transit, it’s not all that bad. It is, let’s just say, different from what we’re used to. The good news is that there are plenty of doors, benches, sights, buildings, windows, etc. that are more beautiful and distracting. Why look down when you can look up?

For fresh eyes, like ours here in Hungary, almost everything we see is unique and beautiful. Just look at our Instagram!

What is more, there are more delicious things to consider than sidewalks and buildings . Things like burek. Burek, or börek, in this region is a commonly Serbian or Balkan savoury thick and flaky pancake. It is about as thick as your hand, baked and browned delightfully crispy and filled with a variety of fillings. Our favourite is túró or a dry cottage cheese. This snack is served at pastry or bread shops and is a hearty slice, usually about as big as a quarter of a small pizza. Yum! I don’t have a picture because we usually eat it before we can snap a photo!

Regardless, roads, beautiful buildings or crumbling sidewalks, there is beauty in every direction. No matter if it seems mundane to some, to us, something as simple as burek, is beautiful. Life is beautiful, and we are enjoying all the small pleasures we can. Coffee, too! (Though we now make ours at home with our second-hand Philips 2000 Series Super Automatic Espresso Machine. We bought it used, cleaned it up and it works like a charm!)

That’s all for now. Hoping that your weekend was restful, and that the following week will be grand! We have the Szent Gellért Classical Music Festival to look forward to this week, and maybe a free Cuban Salsa Class if we’re lucky! May your week be equally as tasty, fun and eventful–or more so !

Szia!

Internet

We have been delayed.

Delayed in posting, that is. Since we’ve arrived we’ve enjoyed a few weeks of holidays here in Hungary. We had internet at our temporary accommodation–and then we moved.

We had been without internet for nearly two weeks!

Not that there is anything wrong without being connected. In fact we rather enjoyed the freedom being web-free provided. Just the other morning Telekom came before our appointed set-up time and poof! Internet is here.

We are now settling into our new long term accommodation, and have much to tell.

A few other recent highlights include:

  • How complicated it can be to find and secure an apartment
  • Travelling to Budapest so we could visit IKEA to outfit out new home (we spent a whole day there! By the way they have an IKEA cafe inside and many other neat offerings–we’ll be back, no doubt!)
  • Finding the ‘best’ cukrászda in our part of town
  • Going to the Eötvös 100 year anniversary circus in Szeged – we saw Patagonian Sea Lions (never knew such amazing creatures existed!)
  • Braving forty degree celsius heat–and eating lots of amazing ice cream.

More to follow as we settle in to our new home.

Hope your September is a comfortable one! Stay tuned!

Piano upstairs at A Cappella Cukrászda és Kávéház in Klauzál tér, Szeged.

Instagram

Having hopped on to the social media pipeline not long ago, I’ve added an Instagram account for your (and my) enjoyment.

The view of a lovely building from the entrance of the colonial style Tisza Hotel Szeged! (est. 1885)

It would appear there are too many photos to share post by post. If you’re interested, have a look at what we’re snapping day to day in our part of the world!

Don’t forget to have fun out there. More updates coming soon! (Things like starting work, and settling in to life abroad–with young kids!) But for now–

Szia!