Guus Bosman

We are back from our stay in Hungary.

Thursday, the first day we stayed together with Martijn at Erika and Daniel's place. It was very good to see everyone.

The second day Sasha and I went to Budapest. Unfortunately our plan to meet up with Daniel, Erika and Martijn on Friday didn't work out.

Budapest is beautiful! We stayed two nights and saw many things. We had a busy schedule and we saw all attractions that we wanted to see. I really like "The Palace", a monument of different building styles in Budapest. Pictures and stories, later.

We had a really good time in Hungary. Yesterday around 7.00 pm we arrived in Perushtitsa again, and we had a long dinner to share everyone's experiences.

From Perushtista, Bulgaria, we would like to wish our readers a very Merry Christmas!

Here is a nice Christmas song, make sure to have your sound on! (through Blips).

Yesterday I arrived in Bulgaria around 3.00 pm.

Milan and Sasha picked me up from the airport and we drove to Perushtitsa. I haven't seen Milan and Nadia for 3 years and it was great to see them again.

My luggage arrived fine, the tape I used was still on the bag. There is a good internet connection at home, via the cable.

The weather has been amazing the last couple of days. Yesterday the temperature reached 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celcius) -- incredible for December.

I had lunch outside yesterday, and on Sunday I sat with my laptop on the balcony, next to the Christmas lights.

Yesterday evening we went to the mall for some final preparations: Sasha is leaving today to Bulgaria. We'll spend the holidays there this year; I'm leaving in a couple of days.

This morning I went to wrap gifts for the "Wrapping Hopes and Dreams" event organized for children in the Methodist Children's Home. I heard about it the Sunny 939 radio station. They play 100% Christmas music these weeks and I listen to them every day in the car.

The event was in the Millenium hotel, which is near us. I walked to there in the morning, and arrived around 9.30 am. There was a large pile of donated presents that needed to be wrapped, fresh coffee and a band playing Christmas music.

Things went smoothly, and because there was such a large group of people we were done wrapping all presents at 10.15 am, a lot earlier than expected.

Our friends David and Milena were blessed with a baby girl last month: Irina Maria Wende was born on October 29, 2006.

Many congratulations from both of us!

Milena sent us a lot of pictures on Irina's first "1 month birthday", which were very nice to see.

The holiday season has started.

Last Friday was "Black Friday", the start of the frantic shopping preparations for Christmas, and this is the time that Christmas tree are being sold.

According to the Bulgarian and Dutch traditions it is too early to put a tree. The Dutch Christmas season doesn't start until Sinterklaas is over, on December 5th, and in Bulgaria it is customary to put up the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.

But when in Rome, do as the Romans, so today we got our tree and the website is in Holiday style.

Today was the last working day for this week, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

We did some shopping, and we prepared for a good long weekend. It's nice that Jonathan and Irena will be in North Carolina also; we haven't seen them for quite a while.

A week ago I celebrated my 28th birthday.

In the morning we had cake for breakfast (with birthday flowers in the background) and Sasha gave me a beautiful jacket as a present. It was a very nice morning and I enjoyed to look at my website early in the morning and see so many comments there already.

At work we had cake also and in the evening I invited my colleagues for drinks in the Flying Saucer in Raleigh. The weather was great so we were sitting outside. Sasha met my colleagues for the first time and we met a lot of their 'significant others' also which was very nice.

Thanks everybody for the congratulations, presents, cards, comments and everything!

As requested, here is more information on the interesting parking meter.

I took a picture of the backside of the pay box, as well as an action shot of somebody using the parking meter to pay for parking.

I didn't see any restrictions on how long you can park, so presumably you can park the whole day for $3.