Croatia, Day 2
The night before, after dropping Tomas and Zsofi off at Mohacs, Tomas' hometown, we crossed the border to Croatia. The border guard was surprisingly friendly, perhaps because it was a rather small border crossing and it was late at night...he took a big breath after saying my full name and Jen turned into "Jennifer Lopez." We stayed the night at the guesthouse/pastor's house of the Lutheran (used to be shared with the Reformed church) church in Osijek (Eszter in Croatian, I think). I guessed from that point on that the "hiking" that Janos had written about in his email was a no-go. The seminarian student (away in a village, works for more tha two congreagations) living there was not there, and Janos said that when he or other Ars Longa people come, they would stay here. We slept in comfortable beds that night.
The next day, we went around to different villages and saw how the town was shelled completely during the Serb-Croat war in the early 1990s. The Croatian neighborhood were completely destroyed by the Serbs and vice versa. There was a Croat settlement right next to a Serb one and both were shelled by the opposing party. It was awful. Almost all the houses had to be rebuilt from scratch, so the whole housing area looked like it was under construction, or else had houses looking entirely new. Red bricks, cement, sand, machinery. The fields along the road we drove by had mine-field warnings. Farmers lost their land to that, and also to those who moved in when they fled. We visited shelled churches and houses. On our way up towards the border, which was where we were going to stay for the 2nd night, we passed thru the national park. The road were zigged zagged at long strectches. Janos said it was because in times before, the roads were build to reach the houses/villages that were scattered througout the area, before it was turned into a park. The exsistence of those houses are hardly detectable and the whole area just looks like a dried-up swampland. Fields of wheat-like plants grow and trees with heavy roots. It was rather amusing, if not for my splitting headache. And we reached Janos' collegues' place, the "young pastor's house, who also owns a big car and is very good-looking and single and is intelligent and speaks many languages." We were well fed, constantly given food, perhaps it is a worldwide custom to give your guest ever flowing food, after all, this does keep them occupied and have some kinda activity going on. They had an article about Croatia's Reformed Church's history, to translate from Hungarian that was to be published in one of the church's magazine. It was jolly good time of finding the right words adn now, I know alot of the history. Geza loosened up, or rather we did, and saw the urban youth Geza. He has a rather sarcastic taste in music, introduced us to Beautiful South, a UK band. But he is a pastor now and I suppose the Hungarian style on ministry is rather different, influenced by the wider culture itself. We had a little Unicum, the traditional herbal remedy of Hungarians. Heard it tasted bad, but it was actually pretty good, like sweet herbs, with 40%.

Day 3
We stayed in Pastor Geza's apartment, which was connected to the church. We slept in a room right next to the church's altar. It was rather funny to see the door open to a church. We had a gas heater, which heated up the room real fast, but it get real cold when turned off. I have a lot of respect for Geza, a Budapestan. Big city to small village. We attended the service led by Geza, it was really a difference (and amusing to me) to see him dress up so well, suit and all and black grab and the pastor's robes. The service was a lot of hymn singing, reciting, sitting and standing and of course, the sermon. It was 45 minutes long very short in my mind. But it was the first worship service I attended in Hungarian, interesting. After picture taking and goodbyes, we went to the lookout point where we could see Hungary and Serbia from Croatia, all separated by a river. It was the place in 1944, where the German soldiers shot at and basically massacred Russians in Serbia who were trying to build a ponton across the river to Croatia. Only one bridge survived from an American bombing further in history, in this area. And then, it was the journey back to Budapest.