Aunt Velma's visit to Budapest

Some of my readers will say who is Aunt Velma? Carol doesn't have an aunt named Velma! Well....actually, I do. At Bettendorf Christian Church, there is a wonderful woman who is Aunt Velma to everyone who attends there. In Hungarian, they tell me that using the term "aunt" is used as term of respect and I do have some little children come into the library and address me as Aunt Carol. That same respect is paid to Velma by giving her that title within our home church group.

Aunt Velma was our first visitor from the U.S. to stay with us, at the library. She was on her way back to the U.S. following a BCC mission trip to Ukraine. She had spent two weeks in Ukraine helping with VBS and other jobs that were appropriate for her to do. She was with a team from BCC. She decided that Ukraine was close enough to Budapest to pay us a visit and we were thrilled. Aunt Velma arrived at 9:30 Saturday evening after spending most of the day traveling. When she arrived, she just one bag and we asked if she would mind taking public transportation back to the library, if Merrill would handle her bag. In her usual fashion, she said it would be no problem(she does not ask for special treatment, even though she just celebrated her 85th birthday in early June.) We caught a bus at the airport and began merrily chatting until we got to the subway stop. We did have to climb up a set of stairs and back down, but off we went and didn't chat quite as much on the subway because it was noisy. We got off the subway, climbed the stairs and caught the tram for the last leg of the trip to the library, arriving about 10:30 and the only thing she wanted was a drink of cold water.

Sunday we were off to church, by bus, of course and it seemed very much like our church service at BCC. We took the bus to the tram and went to a fine Hungarian restaurant for lunch and then took the scenic tram #2 along the Danube before returning to the library for rest! That evening we took a nice long walk so that Velma could see our neighborhood and treated her to some fine homemade ice cream near a park.

Monday I disappointed Velma because she wanted to work in the library, but we are closed on Monday, so we had to play tourist. We walked across the bridge over the Danube to the big market and looked at all the lovely fruits, vegetables and souvenirs, and then walked back to the library. For lunch, we decided to take her to a sidewalk cafe that is on a pedestrian street and treated her to some cold fruit soup, which she thought was quite nice. As we returned to the library, Velma told us that she knew how to get to the market and which way to go for ice cream. She is all set to return and "library sit" for us sometime in the future. What a delightful visitor!!