So when we last left our adventuring duo they had gotten their place in Sopron for the evening. But, there was more to that day’s adventure that needed completion the following morning. Which was one reason we ended up staying the night in Sopron rather than moving onward towards Budapest. Their luck with rogue parking ran out, which meant a trip to the Posta Office in the morning to pay off the local szaru.
Sopron is a pretty busy city and the Roman/medieval/renaissance part that we were there to visit had limited car access, so we needed to park and walk in. We enjoyed our walk down the cobbled lane past old houses with amazing decorations, some with the layers of history still visible. The bombings or the war had exposed some amazing old Roman city walls that had been covered over and repurposed by the preceding generations.
Some observations of the previous days
Meeting up with little girls in Girl Scout like outfits.
While on out morning walk though Ceskey Budiovic we were approached by some little girls, maybe 10-11 year olds who were carrying a can with a plastic top with a slit in the top for collecting any coins they might talk you into parting with. Just like the ones you would see at home that the kids use to collect money for sports equipment or school supplies.
When asked if they knew any english one looked at the other back at us and one girl smiled and using her thumb and forefinger created the universal hand sign for little bit while saying the words. Then she had enough english to inform us that they were collecting money for an African village. So we pulled out some euro coins, they gave us really big smiles as we dropped them in coin collector, which produced a very satisfying musical clangling. They walked away smiling and full of confidence.
Late Lunch Cafe Musings
While eating our lunch in the very quit historic square we did notice people occasionally passing by. In particular were the manner in which couples walked arm and arm. We first noticed this in an aged couple, walking slowly are in arm, walking in measured steps in complete synchronization. No step out of time two bodies moving as one, four legs moving as two slowly moving along the cobbled paved square and up the lane between the buildings until the disappeared out of sight. We saw this again and again with walkers with arms locked. The pace changed with the age of the couples but the perfect timing of steps were always the same.
Flowers, every city, town and remote village seems to have at least one place and usually more to get fresh flowers, both the cut and live varieties. You see people buying these, sometimes in very large quantities and carrying them off to decorate their homes and garden. We noticed this on the last trip to Europe as well.
