Saturday: Pecs, Hungary
Today we drove from Gyor to the city of Pecs, in the center of Hungary. Pecs has a 2,000 year history and is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is a city filled with many cultures and it is a wonderful place to walk around with lots to see and do.
Like other ancient cities we have visited, the very large city square allows for limited car traffic. It is similar to a massive pedestrian mall.
We walked around all afternoon, stopping for lunch at a tavern, then coffee and dessert at a cute coffee shop run by a very nice and friendly English-speaking man and his much quieter wife.
I like to check out the English books section in bookstores we come across, so I did that. Most bookstores have at least a few shelves of books in English, and my biggest fear is not having a book to read (This won’t happen. My suitcase is full of them.)
Our little hotel has a decent gym in its medieval cellar, so I will spend some time there in the early morning.
photos: Pretty Pecs; the delicious reasons I need to hit the gym; city government building
Trieste is a beautiful seaport city with a complicated history. It is just 12 miles from Slovenia, and has a wide mix of cultures. Trieste became an important music and literature center in the 19th century. Many writers, poets, and otherwise well known people have lived in Trieste: Italo Svavo and James Joyce among the more interesting.With all that said, it is a very cool, non-touristy place with excellent restaurants, bakeries, bookstores, and an arts scene that won’t really get underway for a few more weeks – late November.We had read about the osmisa, a tradition unique to the Trieste area. Osmisas are gathering places in a person’s home. Each day of the week, some of them are open. Anyone can go.We checked the osimisa website to see that of about 15 total, five of them were open near (30 minutes away) us today. We chose the one that sounded the most interesting (the owner makes honey, cheese, and salami) and set out. Like most, its open hours were pretty much all day: 9am-midnight.The osimisa was not easy to find, even with GPS. There are dirt roads, narrow passages, and unmarked roads, and then finally a small sign.We walked into the home sort of timidly. No problem – they welcomed us and the owner went to get his wife once he realized we spoke English.We ordered red wine (they make it), cheese and salami. We sat by the fireplace and it was a very interesting, very unique experience. People stopped in every few minutes for a quick glass of wine, or to sit and eat.We enjoyed our wine and snack (which turned out to be lunch) for about 45 minutes. I wished I had brought my book in from the car since it was a perfect reading setup. We left after paying €9.30 (about $12) for all we had.A traveling group of folk singers randomly stops in at osimisas during the week – in the early evening – and it would be fun to be in one when they showed up.
photos: the center of the city at night; at the osimisa; interesting windows we walked past
Still Carrying On 