My first ambulance ride was in Hungary.

Lauren and I spent this past weekend in Budapest and loved every minute of it! If you ever get a chance to go you should because it’s a fabulous town. It’s a good size town with half of the city, Buda, on one side of the Danube and the other half, Pest, on the other. They are completely different, with Buda extremely hilly and Pest completely flat.

Apparently, the ‘rich folks’ live on the Buda side and everyone else lives on the Pest side. In fact, they said a home with the same square feet on the Pest side selling for $300,000 dollars would sell for $600,000 on the Buda side. Although they had no explanation for this, I assumed it was because the views from the Buda side are much prettier than those from the Pest side. Not to mention, most of the prettiest buildings, like Parliament and Metthias Church are on the Pest side.

We had a great time touring the city on Saturday and learned a lot on our 3 hour tour! The castle district on the Buda side was great for many of the pictures and we even found some treasures while we were there!



I think I may have liked Budapest so much because I got to eat vegetables again! Woo hoo! I do love meat and potatoes, but it sure was nice to see veggies on the menu again and love every bite of them!

On Sunday as Lauren and I were getting off the bus to transfer to another that took us to the train station, Lauren slipped on one of the steps and fell out of the bus. At first I wanted to laugh because she fell in slow motion, but I quickly realized she was really hurt. But…Lauren is a trooper and didn’t even cry! She’s a better woman than me, I’m sure I would have been crying like a baby. Anyway, she fell out of the bus and the bus driver called an ambulance. Luckily Lauren and I bought the Budapest card, which supposedly came with insurance, but we’ll see when Lauren gets back to the U.S.

Anyway, the bus driver called an ambulance because Lauren’s ankle quickly swelled up to several times its normal size. When the ambulance arrived, the ‘paramedic’, if that’s what you call them in Hungary, looked at her foot, had her move it some and then said he was taking her to the hospital. So, they loaded her up in the ambulance and I sat in the back with her and off we went.

I wouldn’t say Hungarian hospitals are what you would call modern medicine. In fact, I think it was more like a hospital you’d see in a movie from the 40’s or 50’s and the whole time I was waiting for one of the nurses to appear with the hat on their heads! Ha! I mean, the orderlies all had on white short-sleeved button downs and white pants and everyone that worked there smoked. The best part was, not only did they smoke, but they just walked to the double doors where they wheel you in and smoked. They didn’t even bother to walk all the way outside the doors, but I think this may have been because they would have been standing in the sun and I guess that would be too much. Especially considering the guy smoking basically inside the waiting area had his shirt unbuttoned to his navel. Seriously, he was the epitome of a Hungarian, I just wish I could have taken a picture for y’all!

They were surprisingly quick with Lauren’s x-ray and diagnosis of a torn ligament. They told her the foot needed to be put in a cast and she’d have to stay in the hospital for 3 to 5 days. She said, no way that we had a train to catch. So, they bandaged her foot and off we went.