I have been meaning to write a blog entry for a few days now, but this past week has been a bit of a whirlwind. In hindsight, I think I was jetlagged for two days after we arrived in Hungary. I was lethargic, achey, had headaches, couldn't sleep, etc. But then I "woke up" on Wednesday and I felt about a billion times better.
Awesome.
Or maybe not. By Wednesday afternoon both Daniel and I had developed very sore stomachs and we are still not feeling 100%. I won't go into details, but I'm just glad that our new house has two bathrooms. Enough said.
Anyway, since we arrived in Hungary we seem to have spent the majority of our time dealing with bureacracy - being a Hungarian citizen, I need to obtain an address card as well as an identity card. Apparently there was some kind of magic number missing from my Hungarian birth notice and the local government office here in Máriapócs was unable to issue my ID without it. So we had to travel into the main town Nyíregyháza on Wednesday to sort things out. All good. I was also supposed to get a tax file number. But we discovered that no one from the tax department works during the afternoon. Needless to say I am now desperately trying to secure employment in the Hungarian public service!
Our trip to Nyíregyháza on Wednesday also served another purpose as we met up with Gabriel - one of Daniel's colleagues - who helped us to buy a car. He took us to quite a few car yards and happily we think we found one that suits our needs. We're going back to Nyíregyháza later today to have it checked out by a mechanic and if it's all okay, we should be mobile by early next week. Yippee.
Of course, if Daniel has his way, we will be boycotting the car and travelling everywhere by bicycle instead. He has fallen in love with the ricketty old bikes that nearly everyone in small towns like Máriapócs seems to use to get around. I must admit that it's actually quite charming to walk out our front gate and see people rolling slowly by on their bicycles.
Also quite charming is the almost constant ringing of bells from the two churches that are nearby to our house. At least one of them chimes every 15 minutes between about 6am and 8pm. One chime for quarter past the hour, two at half past, three at quarter to and then four on the hour, plus another kind of chime to convey the exact time. So at 8am, there are four standard chimes, plus eight alternative chimes. So far, so good. But at 12pm the pattern seems to deviate and both churches go into some kind of smackdown mode and basically spend the next ten minutes trying to outdo each other. Oddly, this also happened yesterday at 4:17pm.
Hmm, I've just noticed that I can hear faint chanting. Yup, the churches are so close to our house that we can actually hear the singing/chanting from right here in our loungeroom.
Anyway, it's time to get ready to go to Nyíregyháza. Sure, it's early - only 8am - but we do need to be sure that we can catch the tax office staff while they're still at work!
Another entry soon - hopefully with pictures of our house and the town.
- Amanda
Awesome.
Or maybe not. By Wednesday afternoon both Daniel and I had developed very sore stomachs and we are still not feeling 100%. I won't go into details, but I'm just glad that our new house has two bathrooms. Enough said.
Anyway, since we arrived in Hungary we seem to have spent the majority of our time dealing with bureacracy - being a Hungarian citizen, I need to obtain an address card as well as an identity card. Apparently there was some kind of magic number missing from my Hungarian birth notice and the local government office here in Máriapócs was unable to issue my ID without it. So we had to travel into the main town Nyíregyháza on Wednesday to sort things out. All good. I was also supposed to get a tax file number. But we discovered that no one from the tax department works during the afternoon. Needless to say I am now desperately trying to secure employment in the Hungarian public service!
Our trip to Nyíregyháza on Wednesday also served another purpose as we met up with Gabriel - one of Daniel's colleagues - who helped us to buy a car. He took us to quite a few car yards and happily we think we found one that suits our needs. We're going back to Nyíregyháza later today to have it checked out by a mechanic and if it's all okay, we should be mobile by early next week. Yippee.
Of course, if Daniel has his way, we will be boycotting the car and travelling everywhere by bicycle instead. He has fallen in love with the ricketty old bikes that nearly everyone in small towns like Máriapócs seems to use to get around. I must admit that it's actually quite charming to walk out our front gate and see people rolling slowly by on their bicycles.
Also quite charming is the almost constant ringing of bells from the two churches that are nearby to our house. At least one of them chimes every 15 minutes between about 6am and 8pm. One chime for quarter past the hour, two at half past, three at quarter to and then four on the hour, plus another kind of chime to convey the exact time. So at 8am, there are four standard chimes, plus eight alternative chimes. So far, so good. But at 12pm the pattern seems to deviate and both churches go into some kind of smackdown mode and basically spend the next ten minutes trying to outdo each other. Oddly, this also happened yesterday at 4:17pm.
Hmm, I've just noticed that I can hear faint chanting. Yup, the churches are so close to our house that we can actually hear the singing/chanting from right here in our loungeroom.
Anyway, it's time to get ready to go to Nyíregyháza. Sure, it's early - only 8am - but we do need to be sure that we can catch the tax office staff while they're still at work!
Another entry soon - hopefully with pictures of our house and the town.
- Amanda
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