My apologies for the very long delay in writing a new post. It has been a very fun, but stressful couple of weeks since my last post, and to be honest, my mind has been far from updating this blog.

We left Bulgaria for Budapest very early on the morning of June 13th with Marta’s brother Lubo and his wife Petia. Upon arriving, we almost immediately began four pretty long days of hard touring, trying to show them as much of the city as we could manage to see before they left on the 17th. In between the touring, we managed to squeeze in a couple of great dinners and a few long nights of drinking with my brother. Marta and I returned to the States on June 19 and had just two days to recover before getting in the car and driving to Greensboro for the Eastern Music Festival.

Budapest is a great city and one that has undergone a remarkable transformation since the first time I visited in 1996. Though Hungary was never a hard-line Communist satellite like Bulgaria, it still suffered under Socialism and just a decade ago there was still a sense of dilapidation that I’ve experienced on numerous occasions during my travels throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe. Now, the city is almost completely rebuilt and polished to the point that it compares favorably with Vienna and other “Western” European capitals.