Our Friends and Family

As you know we have been in Budapest over the last 8 months and we have been up to all sorts of great stuff, but I felt we needed to mention all the visitors that have been over and shared some of the fantastic experiences with us. my great old friend Hilde was the first to arrive closely followed by Beate. Victoria made a hasty decision on the Wednesday and literally dropped everything and came the following day. My baby brother TM and his girlfriend Camilla came for a week at the same time as my dear Sarah. Then Beate and Hilde decided they wanted a second go and came for a fab girlie weekend together (Girls.....lets not forget our "Pink Cadillac"). Then we had aunti Neni (Janine) and Sheelagh and Peter. And our great friends and Jack's godparents Rune and Catharina. And up and coming is Nick followed by my baby sister Steffi and Hans. So a great Thank you to you all for coming and being with us and reminding us of our life's back home. Please note pictures will follow of the fab events........so watch this space

Vienna November 2006

This Posting is so belated, but I felt I had to include our trip to Vienna just for the memory. We went down late November and it rained the whole time. But it was still a really nice trip and it was a stunning city. We went down with the train and it was supposed to take 3 hours......Unfortunately we got stuck in this place called Goyr in Hungary for ages as our connecting train was so late. It was so frustrating to be stuck in this place and not know what was going on,we could not find anyone that spoke English or German until some beggars came along and asked us in Hungarian for money,Gareth explained we where English and suddenly they switched over to perfect English asking for money. So, how is it that the homeless speak better English than the so called "educated"..........Due to being so late we got there several hours later than planned and all the shops where shut. Mummy was not happy. We eventually found our hotel which was central Vienna, and I found Starbucks (hurraaaaay). The following morning we got up and found a tram that took us around Vienna great compensation for the normal costly tourist buses and a great escape from the rain. Jack was in his usual "happy" mood and only threw 4-5 rock star tantrums. They where busy turning the town hall into one massive Christmas advent Calender and all the Christmas market stalls where being put up, and you really did get that Christmas feeling. At least I got to eat Sacher cake (sachertorte) in Vienna, one of the million things listed to do before I am 50......... The Sunday was spent looking for Christmas ornaments as me and Gareth have this little family "tradition". Whenever we go places we try and find something from that place to hang on our Christmas tree, but it is not that straight forward as I am a freak for needing things to match. So it can only be white,silver or dark blue........but I found something and was eventually satisfied with my trip to Vienna. It was also nice to be a place where I actually understood the language and I could communicate with my little German, I was really surprised how much I actually remembered from my school days 10 years ago. It was nice to go and me and Jack have been back a couple of times since. Going home we managed to change our train to a direct one.

My pictures

For anyone that would like to see pictures from our every day,please check out my flickr link. It is a great web site where you can upload about 50 pictures for free each month. And it is a safe place to keep copies if they where to get lost from your computer. Yet another great feature Elin taught me. So just click on the link below and it should automatically take you to my photo album.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tracytracey/
I try and update them as often as I can, but I have not been as good as I should have.......Anyway enjoy.

Polen 6-9 April

Me and Jack in the old town, Jack went for a snooze........ He was very snug in his pram,whilst me and Gareth was somewhat very cold

Pictures from Polen.
I really love the picture of the old door so I had to include it on my blog.....

This is a picture of the old town that had to be rebuilt after the second WW. Also our hotel we stayed on the 25Th floor (great view)

I have been really lazy with updating the blog, but have finally got around to uploading my pictures. So we went to Warsaw Easter weekend, it was a really nice trip and we stayed in a gorgeous hotel. The Polish people are so friendly and helpful and they all speak English which was refreshing.......Due to the history and the capital getting completely wiped out about 3 times, the buildings are fairly new. After the second world war they had to rebuild the city, but it was done on a replica basis. The old town was gorgeous with lots of colorful buildings and so much character. Dizzy me though managed to fall over in the middle of the town, for no reason what so ever and I cut my knee really badly and for those of you that know me "You, know I can not handle blood" So I was feeling terrible sorry for myself. And my gorgeous little boy was giving me plenty of sympathy. Talking of Jack, he was so hilarious in the hotel room we had to shout at him for something, so we got down on his level and looked him in the eyes as we where explaining to him that what he had done was wrong he replies back "Don't shout at me, I am only little and I can't handle it anymore. You need timeout" We where wetting ourselves with laughter but had to keep a serious face and take it in turns to talk with him as we had to walk off to the bathroom to laugh. On Easter Sunday we went for a brunch at the hotel and it was great. Jack as well had a fab time as there was a children section with clowns and face painting and their own little buffet and it was soooo posh. The one thing we were not aware of was how cold it would be. We just assumed that it would be as warm as Budapest. We where sooooo wrong. We only brought very little luggage and warm clothing was not one of them,so thank god for H&M. It was freezing, but Jack was snug as a bug in his little pram.The strangest thing was on the Sunday I met an old classmate from Junior High school that I hadn't seen for 15 years in the hotel breakfast room, I can only say "it's a small,small world after all" We had a great time and it was such a nice experience to see Poland. Hopefully next time we get to go to Krakow.

Budapest Teddy Bear sanctuary-Amazing

This great yellow bear was so yummy,and I think he looks just like Winnie the Pooh

This Teddy Bear was just chilling, look at the size of his paws. On the above picture it looks like the bear really would like some of Jack's sweeties. Jack really got into feeding the teddies honey. This bear was just a cub and he was so playful he was running after other cubs when he wasn't licking honey

I picked up the Budapest Times the other day, and in there was an article on a park were poor little cuddly teddy bears were being looked after, after years of torture or use as Circus attractions. This Bear sanctuary was looking after them in a several acre enclosed park, and for 200Huf (50p) you could visit the 42 bears. It was one of the best outing days I have had in ages. I don't particular believe in keeping animals captured but these bears were having the time of their life with people coming feeding them Honey on large wooden spoons and getting lots of apples and carrots. Jack loved it and desperately wanted to cuddle them and even go for a ride on them......uhm.....maybe not the best idea. Although they where gorgeous I was seriously glad there was a rather tall fence between them and us. Even Gareth was amazed with how well they where looked after. They had tons of space and there was woods for them to hide and man made ponds for them to go swimming in. I so recomend anyone to go. You also get to borrow wooden spoons and you can feed them honey, and they love it.

What are the chances........?

So last week my dad decides to join a football match to play against my brother and only 5 minutes into the match, he keels over in agony and it turns out that he has snapped his Achilles. Off he gets sent to hospital and has to have an operation. He is now hopping along on crutches and will be for the at least the next 10 weeks with his leg in plaster. Yesterday I come back from a weekend in the UK to several missed calls and loads of text messages from my family. My mom is in hospital after our 200 pound family dog Cesar decides to play hide and seek whilst my mom is still holding his leed. Cesar gets a bit beyond excited and decides to run off with my mom. She goes up in the air spins 360 degrees and lands on the floor. As she regains from pain she looks down at her legs only to see her right ankle lying next to her leg (nice....) It was a seriously nasty brake and my mom has 18 pins to hold it together...... again plastered for at least 10 weeks. So with this I would just like to say "I really do feel sorry for you guys and hope you both get on your feet soon" But what the hell are the chances?