Pentecost Monday

May seems to be the month of holidays.  Today, May 20, is Pentecost Monday, which celebrates the birthday of the church.  (see Acts 2:38)  In Hungary, and perhaps other eastern European countries, the day after the holiday which occurs on Sunday the becomes a holiday, hence, Easter Monday and now Pentecost Monday.  I said to Merrill that we are just one week early for Memorial Day as we would celebrate in the US.

The library is officially closed on Monday, so we decided to use the time to do some sight seeing, a day trip.  We went by suburban railway to a city about 30 km from Budapest.  The name of the town is Godollo - except, I can't spell it in Hungarian, because I can't add the appropriate markings over the vowels.  Phonetically it is "goo-doo-lu", sort of.  It was a beautiful spring day and I was especially looking forward to seeing some open land, maybe even a farm field.  (You can take the girl away from the farm, but...)

Merrill loves telling about all the modes of travel that we use, so today, we walked, rode the bus, rode the suburban railway(HEV) and the metro(subway).  We arrived in Godollo about 1 pm and found the palace, which is the main attraction.  It was built by Antal Grasselkovich I, and was later used as the summer palace for the Hapsburgs, when they were in Budapest.  At this point in the Austro-Hungarian empire, they had palaces in both Vienna and Budapest and also had summer palaces in nearby areas of both cities.

The palace has been restored after World War II and the communist occupation.  There are audio tours that give more information than the brief description of the room and how it was used.  I love touring these places but come away with a feeling of overwhelming opulence.

I especially enjoy the outdoor areas that were used for the family.  It was fun to walk the path, see children playing in the grass and name plants that are familiar to me from nature walks or garden walks in Iowa.  The one thing we didn't see very much of was open fields.  The underbrush along the railway was pretty dense - lots of elderberry bushes and locust trees, many in full bloom.  We did see an area of vineyards and Hungary is known for wine production.  We saw a hay field and what I think is probably winter wheat, because the grain is already headed out.

I also saw wanted to post a few flower pictures that I was familiar with from my own gardening or nature walks.  Unfortunately, my computer is not cooperating in uploading them this evening.  I thought I had that detail worked out when I was able to post the pictures of the palace, but I'm unable to upload the flowers.