Budapest has several outdoors ice rinks, the biggest and nicest is Műjégpálya at the city park. The artificial ice rink and the main building have recently been fully renovated. It is open every day in the morning and in the afternoon (closed at lunch time) and you can rent skates or sign up for classes. I prefer weekday mornings, it is a lot more relaxed when the teenage kids are at school and not playing tag at 90 miles/hour. You will notice some elderly people doing pro dance moves, these pensioners are a delight to watch, but the music leaves a lot to be desired.

By prepchik07

You can find several other smaller rinks in the city and many schools turn their football pitch to an ice rink for a few weeks. We visited Lake Omszk this morning, it is a few kilometres north of Budapest, a former gravel pit turned into a recreational area. The lake is totally frozen and there were lots of happy people skating, playing hockey or just sliding around. Lots of happy doggies too! Can you see the dad with the pushchair in the middle of the lake? You can see James and our toddler there too.

If you fancy skiing you just need to get over to the Buda hills and bus no. 21 will take you to Normafa, where you can find 7 ski slopes! Not exactly the Alps, but very convenient.  Most people will sledge down, then take the bus up again, drink some mulled wine, or pálinka, have a rétes and off again! Great fun!

by Zsolt Bugarszki

Sledging you can do almost anywhere on the Buda side, there are hills everywhere! The best slopes are around the Normafa, Sas Hegy and the Hármashatárhegy. Wheeeee!

Ganges

The Ganga Vega Cafe has a big brother now, a restaurant close to Octogon. They offer delicious vegetarian food, Indian menus, and healthy options. They offer home delivery too.
1064 Budapest Vörösmarty utca 31.
gangesetterem@gmail.com
+36.30.5306368; +36.70.6338981
www.ganges.hu
Open M-Saturday 12- 8 pm

Bharata

Bharata Cultural Centre is the new home of Indian culture and cuisine: it offers yoga, ayurvedic medicine, meditation, dance and music courses,  and soon cooking classes! The cafe has special offers at the moment with really friendly prices. All food is lacto vegetarian. There are set menus, special offers for students, lassis and sweets. Can’t wait to try!
Budapest 1074. Almássy tér – Tivadar u. 3.
Open: Monday-Friday:  12:00-8.pm; Saturday 6pm-9pm, Sunday closed

Hummus Bar

There is a new vegetarian hummus bar just a few minutes from the budaveg vegetarian B&B, at  Hollán Ernő utca 6. James had a Falafel plate and was very pleased with it.
Open: Monday-Friday 10-10pm Saturday Sunday: 12-10 pm
Tel: 06 70 932 8284

Mannatural 

This lovely vegan raw food restaurant has moved! Just a few minutes from the previous location to 1054 Budapest, Garibaldi u. 5. They also offer an “all you can eat buffet” lunch for 3000 HUF and dinner for 5000 HUF on weekdays. Please call or email to reserve for dinner: 06-20-776-9843, info@mannatural.hu, just pop in for lunch.

This means we have now 22 vegetarian restaurants and cafes in Budapest, pretty amazing! I have just updated the restaurants page and our ebook accordingly, which you can get by subscribing to our mailing list. We hardly ever send out any emails, and you can safely unsubscribe any time.

And here is the werkfilm too:

If you are still unsure about the buildings pop over to Balázs’s blog, there is a map with a possible jogging route and he identified all the buildings! It is indeed in Hungarian, but it is easy to understand!

Still want more Hugh Jackman? He shot another Lipton ad at Hármashatárhegy, my favourite hiking place from my childhood in the 3rd district. This is quite funny:

We found out that James’s health problems are caused by heavy metal poisoning from his amalgam fillings so in the past few weeks we spent all our time googling the net and at dentists and health practitioner’s surgery. We went from normal dentists to holistic ones and ended up at a “biological dentist” who is an expert at safe amalgam removal and does a lot of additional therapy. It also costs an arm and a leg (rather a second hand car) but still it is 6 times cheaper than in the UK, so we can actually pay for it without re-mortgaging the house, yupee!

Obviously I am going to blog about dentists now, dental tourism is massive in Hungary, and perhaps others can benefit from my recently gained knowledge. I am not going to link any or do any advertising, unless we have personally tried them.

Also we have been looking into raw food diets and met a couple of expert and committed raw foodist, I am planning on running a series on raw food movements in Hungary starting with no other than Mr Bicsérdy himself, our own frutarian celebrity from 1900, then Gitta and Aniko fronm Raw Food Academy and Agnes from Life Kitchen.

And to finish on a happy note we offer a 10% discount for any bookings made in February (you can book any dates in 2012) if you write “heavy metal” in the booking request- just to raise some money for James’s dentist, lol.

Ah yes, and here is my bottom right wisdom tooth operated out last Friday, cute, right? Our kids love playing with it. The young lady in the picture is also teething like hell by the way. I could also post a picture of my swollen face too, but that is not so pretty.Luckily I didn’t have to take antibiotics and I think homoeopathy really helped in my quick recovery.   One more wisdom tooth to go…

Our friends kindly took the kids and we decided to be hopeful and went to the surgery instead. We had to wait a good half an hour (there were 4 people waiting) but the receptionist said if he had any difficulty breathing we should just walk in the surgery.  He was seen by a young doctor who spoke very good English. She confirmed the GP’s fear and sent us to the hospital, James wasn’t to keen on going to hospital at all, but she told us that if it is an abscess it can be fatal as the pus can get in the lungs and he needs hospital care asap.

So we went to the hospital in duty which was Szent Janos a short drive from Moszkva/Szell Kalman ter. At the ward we met a young friendly doctor who spoke excellent English, and soon we found out that he was in fact French! I found it deeply ironic that we meet a French doctor working here when so many local doctors are leaving the country. He examined James and later called his colleague, they have decided that even though they were not sure if there was an abscess or not, James need further examinations and perhaps a CT.  They both ensured me that it is a minor thing and the biggest difficulty is to process the EHIC in the system. Since they both spoke excellent English I was of no use and went home to put the kids to bed, who were very mixed up already.

James had further tests and a CT but couldn’t confirm for sure if there was an abscess or not and in the morning a couple more doctors looked at him and in the end they have decided to perform a surgical incision just to play it safe. Also he was put on antibiotics, but since he is allergic to penicillin and a couple of other antibiotics- and had no record of which on him- they had to find a suitable one and watch him closely. The operation was awful as you can imagine- being stabbed in the throat, but after a day he was much better and could eat, talk and after two nights he could come home.

He picked the right time to go to hospital- it was empty he had the whole ward for himself! We were really pleasantly surprised that all doctors spoke English and he could easily communicate with all. Hospitals in Hungary are shabby and understaffed but I have to admit, we only met kind and smiling people there. To our delight most of the meals were vegetarian, so James could actually eat there, once he was given a split pea soup, the next day some bread with cheese spread (körözött), spring onions and a kiwi fruit. Again the EU card worked and he was covered by his UK health insurance.

When we got his medicine from the pharmacy we experienced the first problem with the EHIC, as the first pharmacy we waltzed into just couldn’t process it and wanted us to pay for the medicine. We just went to another pharmacy, where they could process it (having the card on hand really helps as doctors have terrible handwriting in this country!) and James got his medicine on NHS so only needed to pay for part of the sum.

So before you come to Hungary get your EHIC or health insurance and the system actually works!

Pots and containers are pretty common everywhere for flowers but we experimented with growing edible stuff- and hey they are pretty too! Our tomatoes did really well in the simple flower pots, we really only needed to keep them safe from the dog, but otherwise were easy plants. This year we planted some in the garden and they did amazingly well, we had yellow tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes as well, my favourites are the yellow ones, fantastic taste, really sweet!

I planted strawberries too, but they didn’t give a lot of fruit at all- we had like 20 berries from 10 plants- a plain waste of money…

James built a fantastic pergola to have some shade in the hot summer days, and also to have a place for the kid’s swings. I planted pink roses on one side and kiwis on the other at the posts, and runner beans in between. I planted normal runner beans and these special long green beans I discovered at the local market a year ago. The runner beans did really well, and I picked enough beans for 3 soups in the middle of the summer. Then just before the second harvest hundreds of shield bugs appeared on the beans, but they didn’t seem to harm them. I consulted Aron again and he said that they would suck the beans dry- and he was right, we lost the second harvest. Luckily there was a third batch right in October because we had an amazingly warm and sunny autumn. Look at these beans, I am in love with the colours!

I also planted these long green beans called “Turkish beans”. They like to run up to four meters and weren’t too happy with the mere two meters I provided them, still we had a few beans, enough to steam as a side dish.

Finally a trick I learnt from Aron; before the frost came I had to pick all our tomatoes and I was so upset about the green ones, but he advised me to put them on a tray with a few apples, put a tea towel on the top and they would ripen. And they did! They taste like store tomatoes, so not as good as the sun ripened ones, but at least they are organic.

Honestly I don’t think we saved any money on growing our own food, plants and potting mix are not cheap-but quality local veg is. However it was fun, very satisfying to pick warm sun kissed food and I think it is good to show your children, after all they learn by example.

We spent the afternoon making cinnamon rolls- snails and ladybirds- to leave next to those tiny boots for St. Nicholas and I am certain that he will be delighted!

So will the kids with these red sacks: they contain two raisin-apple muffins, a small packet of chocolate covered currants, a golden walnut, a red apple and a tiny wooden car.

Budapest is also getting ready for the celebrations, the lovely decorations are up, Christmas trees, lights and the Christmas tram started running too! It is the good old number 2 that runs along the river on the Pest side, check out this short video and see the amazing ride with all the sights along the Danube lit up!

And of course don’t forget to check out the Christmas fair at Vörösmarty square! There are quality crafts, hot wine, great toys and gifts, live music and entertainment for all ages.  And Santa from Finland is at the grotto tomorrow.

If you prefer cutting edge design, then the Museum of applied Arts is the place next weekend, on the 10th-11th from 10 am till 8 pm there is a contemporary design market, and guess what! Napfényes patisserie will be there too with vegan delights!

• 200 grams flour
• 100 grams brown sugar (I use birch sugar)
• 5 tbs of sunflower seed oil
• 3 tbs cocoa powder
• 1 cup water/ rice milk/ soy milk (I use vanilla soy milk)
• 1tbs apple cider vinegar
• a few drops of vanilla extract or satchel of vanilla sugar (I omit this, there is already vanilla in the soy milk)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 200 grams frozen, pitted sour cherries

I simply mix everything together for a short time (but it is better to sieve the flour and the other dry ingredients together if you have time!) , then add the cherries and mix them in with a spoon- and then spoon the batter into silicone muffin trays- this batch makes 12 muffins. I bake them at 160 C with the fan on for about 30 minutes.

Vegan & Gluten Free Cookery Workshop The Salt’n'Pepper cooking school organizes workshops where the chef of Napfényes Étterem is teaching culinary skills. Unfortunately info is only in Hungarian on their website, but email them for info if you are interested.
saltnpepper@t-online.hu
06 30 950 6422 1055
Budapest, Balassi Bálint utca 19
http://www.saltnpepper.hu/home

Vegan rawfood classes organised by Mannanatural restaurant: 3 hour classes taught at their restaurant in a specially built teaching and dining are upstairs, after “cooking” the students are enjoying a healthy dinner.  For details and times check their website.
 1054 Budapest, Hold u. 13. 
+36-20-7769843 
info@mannatural.hu
http://www.mannatural.net/index.php?oldal=fooldal

Lacto vegetarian classes: are organised by 108.hu which seems to be part of the Hare Krishna church. They offer a big range of classes from Indian to Hungarian vegetarian, special Christmas menus, ginger bread making with children and so on.  Courses are taught by Hémangi dévi dászi populag vegetarian gastro blogger of http://www.vegavarazs.hu. The 108 school is only a short walk from budaveg vegetarian B&B!
info@108.hu
06-30-464 77601137.
Budapest, Szent István krt 6. III/12. 27-es csengő (Jászai Mari tér)
http://108.hu/fozotanfolyam  

Isteni Ízek Főzőtanfolyam/ Divine tastes cooking course also organised by the Hare Krishna Church at the Indian cultural centre. The TV chef Mahadzsan dász is teaching the course, which is planning to start 15th February 2012
Bp.1039 Lehel u. 15.-17
06 30 872 1995
mahadzsan@freemail.hu

Raw vegan gourmand dinners Finally if you don’t want to cook but still want to fill your belly with vegan raw delights than Életkonyha/ Lifekitchen is your place. They offer themed vegan raw gourmand dinners in their home for small groups. These girls also make amazing raw “sweets” and cakes, have a look at Sületlenségek website.
003670-70-28187, or 003630-399-4912
info@eletkonyha.hu

https://www.facebook.com/EletKonyha.LifeKitchen

Are there more? If so let me know happy to add to our blog!

We would have had a lovely time if our children hadn’t run amok in the restaurant; they were running up and down in and out of the kitchen screaming with delight. So much for lethargic veggie kids! Luckily the staff not only put up with it but even gave them some coloured pencils and paper and played with them to give us a breather and a chance to eat our delicious meals. Taking pictures is not my forte especially when I have to run after my kids. This is the only moment they actually sat on their bums.

James chose vegan breaded cheese with rice and peas, and tartar sauce, Lita chose “Fried Pancakes Filled with Vegetable Cream served with Mashed Potatoes and Onions”, Chiara and I went for the vegan Brassói with Lecsó, which is called “Ratatouille Seitan Cutlets” on the menu, and the kids got half portions each of yesterday’s special: Mixed Vegetable Pakora with Mashed Potatoes. The vegan Brassói with Lecsó is my favourite dish: lots of chips and seitan in a great spicy sauce! Here is a close up of the table:

The prices are great, mains are between 1500-2000 Hufs. We had a lovely time, but probably won’t go there (or any other restaurant) till they are at least ten, or go without them. So please it is your turn to dine out in style at a lovely vegan restaurant!
I’d like to thank the staff again for being so super nice!

Address: Rózsa u 39, District VII Tram: 4/6 at Király utca and walk, or 76 trolley bus.
Open: every day 9am-10pm
Vegan, non smoking, no alcohol, sells health food too
English menu, English spoken.
http://www.napfenyesetterem.hu/