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Half a day off - with adventures
Since our visit to Baby Emma has been cancelled, I persuaded Mum that we should go out a bit anyway. We've been snowed in in redecorating hell for weeks by now, we needed a break.
She agreed, and so we decided to go to the Hungarian National Bank first, since that is the only place you can exchange money that no longer is valid for valid one. A small side effect of the painting insanity was that we've found some old money pieces in the bottom of the one or other drawer, like these, these and these.
Being the thorough kind of person that I am, I checked on the Internet how we can get to the bank. The route planner offered me four different versions. I chose the one with the least walking, since Mum has a rheumatic knee, and off we marched. We took the bus, which needed almost three quarters of an hour for a route it usually makes in 20 minutes. I don't think there were any red lights on our way that we wouldn't have caught.
Anyway, we took off and started looking for the other bus that was supposed to take us directly to the bank. The temporary bus stop the internet route planner suggested apparently no longer exists. So we had to walk a frigging long stretch to find the permanent bus stop. Only that it was out of service, too, for some or other street repair project or whatnot. Unfortunately, we only realized that after having waited for twenty minutes or so.
By that time we were both royally pissed and decided not to go to the bank, but take the tram homewards and collect on our way my favourite handbag that was getting new lining (the old one had been in shreds). After that, we intended to go to Stühmer's Café, for some much-needed comfort delicacies.
We got my handbag and chatted a bit with the lady in the repair shop (she's an old acquaintance, and we are frequent customers). When she saw the money we wanted to change, she asked if we would sell her a piece of each, because they were old pieces and in really good shape - Mum usually kept them in books or whatnot, so they remained crispy and pretty. (The money in use now is much uglier. Jus' sayin'...) We said yes, of course, and in the next moment another customer came in and also wanted a piece of each. They were so happy that they actually paid slightly more than what we'd have got from the bank, so it was a lucky turn of events. Of course, we still have some of it, so we might go to the bank one day, after all, but for today, Mum was happy.
After that, we went to Stühmer's Café indeed, where we had our respective favourite coffees (cappuccino for me, long espresso for Mum) and ate something called "Strawberry Brownies". I can't really tell you what it is, just that it was a pink half globe on a small piece of rich chocolate cake, filled with strawberry cream of some sort. Delicious! But also pricely. We usually only have coffee there because the cakes are very expensive, but today we felt that we deserved something extravagant. *g*
The... thing was so filling that we opted out of a cooked lunch and only ate some cheesy buns with a lager (for the non-Germans: beer with lemon juice) for our midday meal. Then I collected all my nonexistent willpower and put the stuff back onto my only functioning bookshelf. And we're talking about the respective 7 seasons of ST:TNG and ST:Voyager here, on video tapes - two episodes per tape, and considering that each season consisted of 26 episodes (well, except Season 2 of TNG, I think), that was a lot of tapes!
I also put back the audio cassettes into their raster - those I decided to keep anyway. I threw out about a third of them, putting little knick-knacks into the empty places. The raster now looks like a somewhat magical place with all the little people peeking out from between the audio tapes. *g*
By then I was really done in, so I decided that the rest could wait. One has to solve some crossword puzzles, too, after all, to keep the little grey cells active, right?
She agreed, and so we decided to go to the Hungarian National Bank first, since that is the only place you can exchange money that no longer is valid for valid one. A small side effect of the painting insanity was that we've found some old money pieces in the bottom of the one or other drawer, like these, these and these.
Being the thorough kind of person that I am, I checked on the Internet how we can get to the bank. The route planner offered me four different versions. I chose the one with the least walking, since Mum has a rheumatic knee, and off we marched. We took the bus, which needed almost three quarters of an hour for a route it usually makes in 20 minutes. I don't think there were any red lights on our way that we wouldn't have caught.
Anyway, we took off and started looking for the other bus that was supposed to take us directly to the bank. The temporary bus stop the internet route planner suggested apparently no longer exists. So we had to walk a frigging long stretch to find the permanent bus stop. Only that it was out of service, too, for some or other street repair project or whatnot. Unfortunately, we only realized that after having waited for twenty minutes or so.
By that time we were both royally pissed and decided not to go to the bank, but take the tram homewards and collect on our way my favourite handbag that was getting new lining (the old one had been in shreds). After that, we intended to go to Stühmer's Café, for some much-needed comfort delicacies.
We got my handbag and chatted a bit with the lady in the repair shop (she's an old acquaintance, and we are frequent customers). When she saw the money we wanted to change, she asked if we would sell her a piece of each, because they were old pieces and in really good shape - Mum usually kept them in books or whatnot, so they remained crispy and pretty. (The money in use now is much uglier. Jus' sayin'...) We said yes, of course, and in the next moment another customer came in and also wanted a piece of each. They were so happy that they actually paid slightly more than what we'd have got from the bank, so it was a lucky turn of events. Of course, we still have some of it, so we might go to the bank one day, after all, but for today, Mum was happy.
After that, we went to Stühmer's Café indeed, where we had our respective favourite coffees (cappuccino for me, long espresso for Mum) and ate something called "Strawberry Brownies". I can't really tell you what it is, just that it was a pink half globe on a small piece of rich chocolate cake, filled with strawberry cream of some sort. Delicious! But also pricely. We usually only have coffee there because the cakes are very expensive, but today we felt that we deserved something extravagant. *g*
The... thing was so filling that we opted out of a cooked lunch and only ate some cheesy buns with a lager (for the non-Germans: beer with lemon juice) for our midday meal. Then I collected all my nonexistent willpower and put the stuff back onto my only functioning bookshelf. And we're talking about the respective 7 seasons of ST:TNG and ST:Voyager here, on video tapes - two episodes per tape, and considering that each season consisted of 26 episodes (well, except Season 2 of TNG, I think), that was a lot of tapes!
I also put back the audio cassettes into their raster - those I decided to keep anyway. I threw out about a third of them, putting little knick-knacks into the empty places. The raster now looks like a somewhat magical place with all the little people peeking out from between the audio tapes. *g*
By then I was really done in, so I decided that the rest could wait. One has to solve some crossword puzzles, too, after all, to keep the little grey cells active, right?
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What an interesting story about the handbag-repair lady and one of her customers wanting the old money! The Strawberry Brownies sounded lovely, too.
I also like the idea of little people peeking out around the audio cassettes. :-)
I loved taking the tram in Budapest. There was a station near our B&B, so we took it a lot. We also took the bus, the subway, and the suburban train (out to the Roman ruins in Obuda). The town I live in has no public transportation at all.
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That would be awesome!
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The "cake" you had at the cafe sounds very nice!
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Stühmer's Café is a treat you both deserved, and the strawberry brownies sound delicious. Hope the chaos will be over soon and you can relax in comfort and quiet.
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Comfort and quiet would be nice indeed; I've been waiting for a moment of it since early December. *sigh*
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