20240813 Viking European Sojourn River Cruise Day 12/27 - Kalocsa, Hungary - Horsing around in Hungary

Viking European Sojourn River Cruise Day 12/27 - Kalocsa, Hungary

Magyarország. What is that, you ask? It is "Hungary" in Hungarian. English speakers take for granted that how we say everything is correct, but as we saw with Croatia and now Hungary, the name we know the country by is very different than how they pronounce their country name.

Speaking of odd language, I found this funny. Here is a packet of white sugar and brown sugar.

White sugar = White sugar; Brown sugar - Sugar brown - weird

Enough about language. Today, we docked in Kalosca, Hungary - our 69th country visited. It was another 100F day. We sailed up the Danube all morning until about 12:30 when we docked. We have been in Hungarian waters as the Danube no longer forms a border between countries. We're sailing up the middle of Hungary.

There was one available tour today - a bus tour through Kalosca to a cathedral for an organ concert followed by a visit to a farm for a horse show.

We got off the ship a little after 1:00 P.M. and set foot in our 69th country. 

Our bus arrived and headed to the St. Mary Cathedral for an organ concert.

St. Mary Cathedral

The yellow color was supposed to evoke gold and royalty

A statue of the Holy Trinity - our second in two days

World War I memorial

The organ had 4,668 pipes - the sound was amazing - we were treated to a concert of several songs - it was terrific and Arlona got goosebumps

The pink shades inside the church represented innocence

We departed the church and headed to Bakodpuszta - the Bakod Horse Farm. We watched a horse show, demonstrating the skills of the local Hungarian horsemen.

These bales greeted us as we arrived at the farm

A peasant wagon pulled by Hungarian cattle

They were strong, but they were not fast

The horsemen were up next.

All rode horses except the shepherd on the left who rode a donkey

They did a lot of whip-cracking

We had never seen this - the horses went down on their side with the horsemen still mounted

They were able to strategically stand on specific bones to not injure the horse

Another new pose

They did a skills demonstration, knocking a target off a block with their whip

Another peasant wagon

They raced this carriage around the arena at breakneck speeds

The passenger had to lean out to keep the carriage wheels on the ground

This horseman rode standing on a ten-horse team

He was incredibly skilled 

Controlling ten horses as they charged past at great speed

After the show, we walked past the gift shop area where they had paprika drying.

Then, we make the 15-minute ride back to the ship.

It was a good afternoon and we saw some very skilled horsemen and amazing animals.

Tomorrow marks the end of this portion of this journey. About half of the passengers will be leaving us tomorrow in Budapest and an equal number of new guests will be arriving. We will take a panoramic tour of Budapest tomorrow and determine how we will spend the next day in Budapest.