[dropcap custom_class=”whb”]This morning after eating breakfast, we took a taxi back into the city center of Zagreb. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the temperature was in the low 70’s. I wanted to visit the Museum of Broken Relationships. I thought it would be a different type of museum. People from all over the world have contributed something that represented their broken heart. They also wrote a narrative to go along with the item. The broken heart could be from a lover, a parent, a sibling, whoever. One of the ones that sticks out in my mine is the girl that was in love with a recovering heroin addict. She was warned by her friends not to fall in love with him, because once and addict always an addict. And sure enough he relapsed and started using again. She sent in the test kit she used to prove he was using heroin again. Another one was about a girl who became involved with someone. Some of the storie were sadder than other stories.
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After the museum we wandered around some more before we decided it was time to leave. We took a taxi, back to the hotel where we had left our car. Then off we went headed for Budapest, Hungary. At the border, we had to how our passports and get them stamped. They did not mention anything at the border about needing a vignette. As we got closer to Budapest, we kept seeing signs that we needed a vignette, so we stopped at a gas station. I asked the clerk if we needed one and she said we did. So with her broken English we managed to purchase a vignette. When we got to Budapest, we tried to locate our hotel, we drove down this narrow street and finally parked. I did not have any Hungarian money to buy parking disks, so we prayed that we would not get a ticket. We went on foot looking for the hotel, but could not find it. (We were very close to the hotel, if we had gone left instead of right we would have found it.) We went back to our car and started driving around again. We must have driven all over Budapest for an hour or two and still could not find the hotel. We finally went back to the same area we were in originally and parked the car again and once again we set out on foot. This time I had looked it up online and had vague directions. After walking up and down the street it was on we finally located the hotel and checked in. He said we could park in front of the hotel or park in a parking garage. We opted for the parking garage. He showed us on the map where the parking garage was. When we walked back to our car, we just had to make a right turn and keep going straight for several blocks until we came to the garage. You turn into the garage and get a ticket, then one of the doors open and you drive into it. There was a sign that said “stop” and then a bunch of Hungarian which did not understand. Jay and I could not figure out what to do next, until Jay got out of the car and walked back and saw the instructions in English. We were reading them when the attendant came walking over to see what the problem was. By then, we had figured out we needed to unload our stuff from the car. Then the attendant stuck the ticket in the machine and the door closed and our car was lifted into whatever spot it was assigned.
We carried our bags to our hotel and then went looking for someplace to eat. There were a bunch of restaurants in the area. Jay and I picked one that was very busy. I ordered the Goulash soup which was just like a vegetable beef soup and also a hamburger. Jay got a chicken burger. After dinner, we could not get our waitress to bring us a check. She kept ignoring us. Finally, another waitress brought us our check.
So far my impressions of Budapest is not good. Jay wants to do some exploring tomorrow, but we are going to have a very busy day.
