A Saturday in Pecs

So what is a Saturday like in Pecs? This is what I did yesterday.

My flat owners took me along on the trip to what we would call the farmers' market in the States. Szusza helped me buy some chicken and then we shopped independently. I had observed that one took the egg carton along. Last time it was a trade. This time if I had not had an egg carton I wouldn't have been able to get the eggs, or I guess I could have put them loosely in my bag, probably not a good idea! The sign over the booth says House of Jam.

Before I came to Hungary, one person who had recently traveled to Budapest told me that in the winter there might be a shortage of food in Pecs. Well, the above photos should show that certainly is not true. The woman in the lower photo with the black coat and aqua buttons is my neighbor/landlady. It was a total accident that I got her in this photo. She just happened to walk into the view as I was snapping the shutter.

I came back to my flat and worked on composing a lecture for later in March. Then because the day looked so beautiful I decided to go out walking and exploring.

Each day I walk down to Szent Mor and turn left on my way to the office. This time I decided to see where turning right would take me. I found that in a couple of blocks walking up hill gets serious. In Pecs one always knows what direction is north and south. If it's uphill, it's north.

I turned left at the top of the hill and found this nice view of a school. I really enjoy Hungarian design.

Then I found the stairs. This looks like a better way to get up this hill when I want to come to this area in the future.

My wandering took me to the Dom Church. Much more about this another time.

The panels on the door intrigued me. They are bronze casts and very three-dimensional, a feature not often used.

The Dom sits at the bottom of U-shaped courtyard. On one of the side buildings, the "guy" was on a balcony. He attracted a  lot of attention. I don't think a person or group walked by without taking a photo. I have no explanation about this, but it surely is interesting.

Walking through the park I found trees with very white bark. The bark peeling off remineded me a bit of the gum trees in Hawaii. Anybody know what kind of tree this? (Update: See comment posted below. Once I had an idea of what this was I did a search. I found pictures of the seed from the plane tree and remembered seeing some of those on the ground.)

I had found many statues on this walk. This one really struck me. It had no sign to tell me anything about it, but yet it projects a very strong message.

A few more steps took me to a typical Pecs view. Here is the foundation for a Turkish bath and right behind it is the Franscican Church. Culture and history just pile upon each other here.

I continued on towards Szechenyi Ter. I began to meet people eating ice cream cones, and that became too tempting. I went into McDonalds and ordered a McFlurry. I went to the upper level and sat down at a counter-type table that has 8 stools, 4 on each side. Soon a Hungarian family came to sit on the other side. This family included two young children. Across from me was a little boy, perhaps two years old. When I was ready to leave, I started to put my coat on and dropped it on the floor, and was just generally clumsy. I heard the mom laughing quietly. I looked up and saw that the little boy had a very sad expression on his face and was waving bye-bye to me. This will go right onto the list of priceless moments.

Pecs is full of shops for doing handwork. This doesn't surprise me because I know the beautiful pieces that have come from the Transylvanian Church that has a sister relationship to my church in Saint Paul. I had noticed magazines that looked very familiar, so stopped to take a good look. We see these titles in the US, but these versions appear to be published in Germany. The cost for one magazine is right about $10.00!

In the evening I walked over to the Burns' flat, carrying a bottle of wine. We watched curling and cross-country skiing on Euro Sport. So, that's what one does on a Saturday in Pecs.