Day 10 + 11 - Miskolc, Lillafured and Eger

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(I just got into Presov Slovakia today, but I'll group today with tomorrow since I'm backlogged here. Praise, I finally have working wifi.)

Day 10 - Miskolc and Lillafured

Well today was a fun language day. English is hit or miss in Budapest so I knew the smaller towns would be worse in that regard. Sure enough Miskolc continues that trend. For the life of me I could not figure out where to buy a tram ticket lol - I tried asking like 5 people and it went nowhere so I'm like ok... this is dumb. I pulled out a tram ticket from Budapest and went to the train ticket hall thinking that the international trains office would have someone who could speak English. Or not. 5min of charades later she went onto the concourse and yelled something lolololol. Then this random like 10yr old comes up to me and showed me where to get a ticket lol. Bless you child.

I finally made it to the little forest train that I wanted and of course... no English. Good. The info guy was so sweet though - he asked if I knew Deutsch... nein. I decided to take a shot and ask francais? "Oui mademoiselle! Oui le francais!" Score! Take that students that tell me french doesn't help anywhere outside of France lol. So I got my ticket and we chatted a bit since no one else was in line. He noted I didn't sound French lol... non le Canada, merci bien. Which of course led to him asking if I was from Quebec. (insert disgruntled Franco-Ontarien face here) A few minutes later some other guy shows up to actually SELL the tickets and he spoke enough English to sell the ticket so that worked for me.

The forest train is super cute - it has 3 "big" wagons and the seats are just regular benches but zigzagged throughout the carriage so that you can easily walk from one end to the other. The ride through town was super loud as he blared the horn every two minutes lol but it was calm and peaceful once we hit the forest. Truly beautiful. I was so focused on the trees that the ticket guy gave me a heart attack - he walks along the outside to collect tickets and he came up behind me - def jumped a foot off my bench lol.

Anyway, I took the forest train to Lillafured which is in the middle of nowhere... in a forest. Recurring themes on my adventures 😊. There is a castle/cave thing so I wandered around that for awhile which brought me to some nice waterfalls. On my ~30 min walk there I saw 3 different sets of wedding pics being done. Aw. After that I made my way towards the little lake they have - it has a proper walking trail thank you very much (ie not a promenade) so I enjoyed making my way deep into the forest. You could rent a boat so there were a lot of them/people at the beginning of the walk, but after about 15min it was just me and the birds and whatever their rodents are (they looked like mice mixed with chipmunks?) So relaxing. With the boats out of the picture the water was calm as could be too which made for some beautiful shots.

As I got back to the train it started to rain - the ride back to Miskolc was colllllllld. I was supposed to catch a later train, but I didn't much feel like further exploring Miskolc in the rain, so I opted for a milk run back to Eger via Fuzesabony. Milk run trains have not caught up with the modern world... there were some interesting clientele let's just say. But I made it to Fuz in one piece where I could switch to the subway thing for Eger.

Day 11 - Eger pt. 2

Today was pretty relax. I didn't feel like going back to Miskolc (train station is a bit of a pain to get to) so I bummed around Eger. They have a giant park in the middle of town, so I explored that for the better part of the day. There was some kind of flea market and culture fair going on, so that was fascinating to walk through the stalls. Such a nice change of pace - since it's not a tourist thing/place, people aren't yelling at you to buy things. Ah, so peaceful. There were a lot of cool old things (war medals, super old medical supply things, wood carvings, traditional dress, etc.) and a bunch of random food most of which I had no idea what it was. I seemed to have missed the dancing (darn). Other than that I did some reading and that was about it. Oh, and of course grabbed an ice cream 😊

Random thought - all I hear is English music everywhere I go. It was the same in Revfulop. It's all the kind of stuff you would hear on Hot 89.9 or Magic 100. I find that so interesting that it's so omnipresent wherever you go... I can't have a conversation in English here but I can sing a long to DNCE or Katy Perry lol.

Speaking of language. Spoke with someone in French again today. And again the "oh Quebec?" thing. I get it in North America, or in France, or the UK that people associate French Canada = Quebec. Again, I'm fascinated by the idea that this notion is so entrenched in the world's understanding of Canada.

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Comments

[Irene]

Enchanted Forest
You have a knack for finding enchanted forests whenever you travel! Very beautiful, great pics!