Not today, but yesterday and the day before I was on my first trip without mom or dad. I woke up at 7 a.m. and got into the bus. Mom was there to see me off. Then I, my teacher, and 22 of my colleagues went to Budapest. I hated sitting down in the bus for so many hours.
On the way there, we stopped three times: first, to eat from our backpacks. I baked my own crackers and sour cherry cakes the day before, and mama made 4 sandwiches. I also had cucumbers and apples. I only ate the cucumbers, a sandwich, and a few crackers and cakes. Everyone was surprised that I can bake my own food. In truth, mom helped me with the dough. She picked the sour cherries from our tree and selected the recipe, but I mixed the ingredients together. I also flattened the dough with my blow pipe (could not find the cookie roller although it's somewhere in the house), and the cut it and rolled it into triangles the way David rolls paper around match-heads to make it smoke and burn as much as he can. Grandma said they were the best sour cherry cookies she has ever tasted, and she is 70. After eating two more than he was supposed to (I told everyone to eat one, and leave the rest for me to take on the trip), David said they are so-and-so and not quite sweet enough. The sour cherries in our yard are very sour, but mother had put a bit of sugar on them to make up for that. The second time we stopped to go the toilet, since the teacher insisted we drank lots of water. For the third stop, we went to eat at a restaurant. Then we arrived at the hotel.
After we checked in and dropped our bags, we went to the tropicarium. I saw sharks. Some were bigger and others were smaller than me. They also had other kinds of fish and some terrapins that looked just like Otto and Fifi. They were ice-sliders from Canada. All children could go through a narrow underwater tunnel to take pictures. When I went, a huge manta ray tried to eat me, but could not because she hit glass. After the tropicarium, we took a boat across the Danube. We stopped a few meters off the other shore. We saw a bunch of bridges including the Chain Bridge between Buda and Pest. Our guide explained it was build by Count Széchenyi. The road was hanged on chains, but it was destroyed in the first world war. Our guide said the count rebuilt the bridge using pylons. When I got home mama said Count Istvan was long dead by the time the first world war came. So, perhaps it was the next Count or somebody else.
Our guide was a lady of about grandma's age who was wearing very nice clothes. Her back was straight for her age. She spoke Hungarian, but not German, and her explanations were in Romanian. During the whole trip she smoke one cigar although she had time to smoke several packs had she wanted to.
In the evening we went to the hotel. The next day we saw the Buda Castle. It had a big cross and lots of steps. There were big crosses in other places as well. It was a sign that was said to protect. We were lucky to come up a street where we had fewer steps to climb. In front of the entrance to the castle there was a statue of King Stefan. He looked big. I thought he was Romanian because of his name -- I think Istvan and Stefan are the same name -- but he was not. Since King Stefan died more than 1000 years ago, several other kings lived there after him. Our guide said more names, but I they were too many to remember.
We then went to the zoo. We saw rhinoceros, camels, and field mice. The field mice were most impressive. They were eating and climbing on sticks. I've never seen mice in a zoo before. They also had polar bears and giraffes. The giraffes were hanging around a bridge where people could pay to buy food to feed them. They would eat from people's hand. Then there was an animal that looked like a combination between a pig and a lion or more like a lion without a mane. Then there was weasel-like creature with a zebra coloured fur called mangusta (mongoose), and five sleeping gorillas. One gorilla woke up when the group of screaming people came by. The others kept sleeping. They must have been used to the noise by now. I would hate to be a zoo exhibit myself, and I am sure they are pretty unhappy even in the nice zoos like this one. They also had antelopes with babies. All were young, and one of the babies looked just like Mocha Latte.
We had lunch where our teacher ordered for us. My favourite part was the desert. I had crepes with chocolate. We had to pay for it, and several children forgot their wallet. So, I acted as a bank, and lent them each 1000 Forint. They paid me back once we reached the bus. I also had 50 lei with me, but I think one child from the fourth grade took it because in the beginning he told us he had one 50 lei bill and when we returned he bragged he had two. I was not certain how it happened that he got my money, and so I thought it best not to complain.
After lunch we went to a souvenir shop. I bought a swiss army knife with a flash light. I also got some two toys for James: a fish and manta ray. He likes to eat them. I wished he had grown out of this phase by now.
We arrived back in Lugoj passed 10 p.m. Mama and James picked me up by car. They came a little later than the other parents because my phone battery ran out and I could not call home to tell the time. For this reason, I was upset, but when we returned home we saw several frogs. They made me feel better. We took one and put it in a jar. We released it the next day in the garden next to the terrapin pond. The left-over sandwiches went to the chicken, but it took us two days to eat the crackers and sour cherry triangles I had packed.
