Simón Visit

The highlight of our trip to Budapest was our visit with the Simón family. We befriended them when we lived in Budapest in 2003-04. At the time Emily and Rachel were 10 and 8. Peter and Nadinka had 4 daughters Berni, Vicki, Zsofi, and Nadinka ranging from about 1 to about 12 years old. When we told them we were going to visit Budapest, Peter and Nadinka invited us to their home for lunch today. Nadinka (daughter) and her fiance Balazs picked us up at our hotel downtown:

and drove us to Peter and Nadinka's house in the outskirts of Budapest. To literally no one's surprise, Nadinka made a lot of food. We started with some potato soup and sliced ham. We then moved to beef stew with the classic Hungarian noodles (spaetzel):

We finished with dessert (or desserts in this case). Cheese cake-like bars, a dense chocolate cake (in the shape of a sheep, which Peter is killing in this photo):

 Some cookies, and various other sweet breads. We were stuffed! Too soon, it was time to go to the airport with our usual chauffeurs, Nadinka (daughter and Balazs). We did manage to get a good photo before departing:

 (From left to right: Albert, Laura, Peter, Bruno, Nadinka, Vicki, Berni, Nadinka) Zsofi, married with two children of her own now, understandably didn't make it. I also snapped this photo of the three Simón children still living at home, Berni, Bruno and Vicki:

The family update as of this writing is Bruno, the youngest is an altar boy and still in primary school. He gamely tried out his English language skills on us. Berni, a senior in high school, is studying for her university exams. She wants to go to the medical school in Budapest and, not surprisingly, it's quite competitive. Vicki is in her junior year of university in a bio engineering program. Zsofi is married with two children about 7 and 19 months of age. Finally, Nadinka is engaged to Balazs, whom we also met, and will be married on July 20th. Their wedding invitations are awesome (far better than the photograph quality):

Since their wedding happens to fall on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, they have a space/moon landing theme to their wedding. The graphics on the invitations are awesome!

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I think Laura and I both got what we had hoped for from the visit. My only regret is that we didn't manage to get Emily and Rachel along. I think we'll have to come back with them next summer if we can swing it.