The Steussy Ranch

One thing about showing Budapest to visitors is you quickly find out how limited your knowledge is. I took Max and Charley on a walk down my jogging path and we look up one obviously important road and see large church. What is it? I don’t know. When I asked Gabi, she told me it was the Basilica which houses the remains of Saint Stephen, the first Christian ruler of the Magyars after they arrived in Hungary in the 900′s AD.

Yesterday was a beautiful day to jog, and I was feeling like lengthening my route a bit. On my return leg from Parliament, I decide to make a detour left to the Basilica.

Once I get to the Basilica, it seems silly not to go in and see it. The building is off our normal paths around Budapest, so I’m unlikely to see it again. I jog up the stairs and slow to a walk to go inside. After walking around to the back of the church, I find the chapel housing the mortal remains of St. Stephen.

This is St. Stephen’s right hand, the Holy Dexter. It is in a lighted, glass case at the back of the chapel. After looking at it for a couple of minutes with a throng of tourists, I walk to the entrance and continue my jog down Vaci Utca to home.

One of the highlights of Charley and Max’s trip was a visit to Gabi’s 86 year old Grandma in suburban Budapest. She lives in the same house that she has had for 60 years along with her daughter, Gabi’s Aunt Babi (pronounced “Bobby’). She made a full feast of a meal, served home-made palinka (moonshine) and everybody was happy. The kids played in the yard, adults took a siesta after the meal. In the photo above are Charley (holding a gift from Grandma), Grandma, Gabi and Max.

In this photo, Max and Grandma are in the same chairs, but Charley has moved and has Baby Aaron on her lap. Click on the photo to see the full-size version, and you see a very happy Baby Aaron. The backyard garden is full of flowers and plants; it is completely green from one side to the other.

Max and Charley left today, after some minor troubles delayed them. They missed going to Brussels and are instead headed directly to Dublin for their original flight home. Max is hoping to get a hotel room from the night, but by the time they’d left he had not yet gotten a booking.

We took Charley and Max to the Fisherman’s Bastion overlooking Budapest last night. Here’s Max threatening to throw Charley over the edge.

A great view of the Danube and Parliment from the Bastion.

Oops! Max drops Charley!

They made it! Here they are in Hero’s Square.

July is a big month for visits and visitors. We have people coming from the US and Russia to see us, as well as final visits with all of Gabi’s friends and families before we leave next month. Here are photos from just the past couple of days.

Tunde arrived on Sunday. She’ll be in town for almost a month.

This is a group of Gabi’s workmates from her flowershop in Budapest ten years ago. They all came to the apartment on Saturday and spent the day going through photos and catching up.

Yesterday, we went to visit Aunt Gabika, Gabi’s mother’s sister in northern Budapest. Gabika had collected an enormous number of documents related to the Dér side of the family. They’re birth cerificates, batisms, marriage certificates going back more than one hundred years. We digitized them using the camera, along with some old photos, and will add those to the documents Gabi has for her family.