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After about a week of riding from Belgrade, we arrived in Budapest yesterday afternoon after a short day of 30km. We biked in straight to the center of town (on the Pest side), ate a leisurely lunch in a park along the Danube River, and then sought out the pedistrian street to perform our music on. We were blessed with a warm response despite being asked to move locations once by a neighbor who doesnt seem to like harmonious noise close to her apartment.

Trying something new, we are staying with a new friend, Anna, a Budapest local, whom we found on-line at www.hospitalityclub.org, which is a free database of people willing to host travelers for free at their homes - a most excellent use of the internet. Besides Anna who sounded eager in her message to host us, another young man offered to house us for our 2-3 days in Hungary`s capital. Anna met us in a park down town, showed us on a map how to get to her apartment, and gave us an extra key to her place. She went to meet up with a friend while we walked with Robert and Agem (two amazingly nice young people who became fans during and friends after we played music) to her apartment…an hour away by foot it turned out. We cooked ourselves a pasta dinner and made ourselves at home, with Anna joining soon joining us with her boyfriend.

Anna`s immidiate trust and warm welcome reminds me of Bilge and Asli Kőprűlű in Istanbul, Turkey, amazing me how trusting new friends (some may say perfect strangers) can be. Imagine if we all were a little more trusting and giving, would it not make life more pleasant? What is it that holds us back? What makes us suspicious first, holding a guilty until proved innocent attitude toward a new person instead of the opposite? Some precautions are of course necissary - we have to have a profile with our passport number and photo on the Hospitality Club for example - but perhaps we could all benefit by reaching out in faith and fellowship just a little more.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Pete's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.