Samstag 🇦🇹 Szombat 🇭🇺

Neither of us had a good night's sleep. We went to bed early yesterday, but despite feeling exhausted after giving Ági a foot massage, my wee mind felt like being on a roller-coaster when she gave me a foot massage. I first felt this strong pull that something wanted to pull me down to the realm of dreams, but after twenty minutes, something happened. I felt increasingly awake, and it soon became evident that I was on the perfect wake-up wave. By the time Ági finished the massage, my eyes were wide open. I was rolling in bed for another thirty minutes but fell asleep eventually. We both woke up several times during the night, and the early morning alarm was the icing on the cake. With puffed eyes and disoriented steps, we went to the restaurant for breakfast, which was superb. Once we finished our last culinary revels, we returned to our room, packed our things, hauled the bags down to the car, and we hit the road. However, despite the caffeine, our thoughts lingered around our Austrian experiences, so no wonder we missed the right way on the road. That little mistake cost us another additional thirty minutes to the original road plan. Anyway, the navigation made us avoid driving through Vienna, but little did we know that it wanted us to take a completely different road. Instead of taking the usual itinerary from the "Ring" towards Parndorf and Hegyeshalom, it directed us to Sopron through Eisenstadt. We didn't mind taking the longer way, and soon after we reached the usual M1 highway, it became clear why the navigation app did what it did: today was the beginning of the Athletic World Championship in Hungary, hence the jam-packed roads. We stopped by at McDonald's to grab coffee and cheesecake, and we continued our trip. Ági called the dog sitter to check when to fetch Abby: it was 6 p.m. We arrived at Szentendre at 1 p.m., unloaded the car, unpacked the bags, and realised how empty the house was without Abby. We then had a light lunch, watched the Spanish series "La Cas del Papel", and after finishing the nosh, I gave Ági a foot massage. When she woke up from her usual coma-like slumber, it was already 4:20 p.m., so we tried to pull ourselves together. At 5 p.m., we drove to fetch Abby and, before that, to grab some staple foods from the supermarket. We arrived at the dog sitter at 5:55 p.m., where Abby was waiting for us excitedly. She was over the moon when she saw us, so we returned home after a short squirm seasoned with some whining and squeaking.

We are officially back. It feels good because we love our house and our town. However, the differences between Austria and Hungary - and I'm not only referring to the differences in wealth - are worth another entry in which I'll describe them. Suffice it to say we are still lagging behind the Western world, and the transient notion of belonging to the "high society" (i.e. the wealthier and more developed part of the world) is nothing but self-deceit for now. We all must work hard to achieve our goals to reach the much-coveted standard of living. Still, as I said before, I'll sacrifice another entry for this train of thought.