Travelling to Hungary with Sørkedalen brass

Sørkedalen Brass is celebrating it’s 20th year and we went to Budapest, Hungary for a few day. A great trip to nice place.

Our trip was arranged by Musik-Land Travel Agency. Musik-Land is a small travel agency in Hungary that is specializing in arranging trips to Hungary from Brass and Wind bands as well as choirs.

We left Oslo around ten and arrived in Budapest around 1300, where we were greeted by Károly and our interpreter Réka at the airport and lead to the waiting bus. Having someone who speaks the local language and in our case Norwegian is great.

We were driven to our hotel, hotel Berlin, a few km from the centre of Budapest. At first I thought it would be a little to far from town, but we made it work very well.

After having lunch at the hotel, the first of four meals consisting of Goulash soup, Schnitzel and some kind of cake for dessert, we drove into the “Puszta” (Hungarian farmland )

There we were greeted with Hungarian horsemen and schnapps. We took a ride in a horse drawn cart and got to see a horse show with some spectacular riding. At the end of the show some of us got to try using a whip to topple a bottle of a pole. It looked easy when the local did it but it wasn’t. Still there were two in the group who managed and a few who came very close.

After the show we got some time to have a look around in the barn before we went for dinner. And dinner was of course Goulash soup, Schnitzel and some pastry.  And plenty of wine and beer.

After eating we took the hour long trip back to the city of Budapest and up onto Gellért Hill for a view of the city by night. I think our stay at Gellért Hill was way to short since I was hoping for some good night time shots of the city, with some lightening since there was a storm brewing.

We got back to the hotel about eleven and that was way to early for most of us to go to bed, and it was still warm in the air so we ended up sitting at the stairs outside the hotel entrance drinking beer into the night.

The thunderstorm came with windy gusts and pouring rain, but it only lasted for an hour or so. After a hot humid day it was actually very refreshing.