Culture, lovely weather and friends

A busy week, as usual. We finally took the bull by the horn and closed both the OTP and CIB bank accounts and shifted all our money to the Raiffeisen Bank. This was easy, the problem is shifting all the direct debits as well. I have done the paperwork with the Raiffeisen, but if past experience is anything to go by it will not be settled for at least a month or two. What seems like a straightforward operation in England is a complicated, long winded procedure taking months in Hungary. Still, I think we had to do it and will have to weather the chaos around the direct debits until they solve themselves.

We also had the the parquet guy laying the levelling compound in the Farmhouse in Bér last Tuesday, which didn't take him too long. He is due back sometime this coming week to start laying the parquet itself. What he had done so far looks very good, let us hope that the parquet will look just as nice.

The main event of the week was our weekend away with our friend Andor. (see him taking a picture in one of the piccies!). He is standing on top of the Rezi Castle ruins in the Keszthely mountains in the picture, but I am getting ahead of myself. We left BP on Friday morning and visited the Chateau at Nádasdladány en route. It is an impressive old building, which was built in the 1870's and is being restored at the moment. (see picture above). We found a really lovely restaurant in Várpalota, where we had a good lunch. We arrived at Robert and Volker's house in Révfülöp round 4pm, which was a bit early, but they welcomed us all the same.

The big hike on the Saturday was to Rezi Castle and just to make it special Roy joined us too. We walked up about 4km to the top of the mountain and found impressive ruins only to be outdone by the view, which was spectacular. After this Roy walked back down to the village the way we came, while Andor and I went on a GPS led ridge walk of indeterminate route with no paths, lots of undergrowth and steep climbs. I know ridges are not supposed to have steep climbs, but this one did! When we returned at exactly 4pm we found Roy happily snoozing in the car. He had done the pub, the church and the graveyard, which he found interesting.

The one disaster of the weekend hit us on Saturday night when the only restaurant open in the entire village had a private function and didn't let us in. After a somewhat fraught wild goose chase after a non-existent pizza joint we returned to the house and ate what we found in our bags, which wasn't much, but thankfully we could wash it down with copious bottles of beer purchased earlier in Tesco.

On Sunday we went to see the Hungarian equivalent of limestone pavement, except these stones are sandstone. They were formed at the bottom of the ancient Pannon see due to volcanic venting throwing up stuff that made the sand into stone. Then we visited an abandoned basalt quarry, which was magical. I only put in one picture, but I took dozens. The long organ pipes were fascinating and so was the view from the top. We could see all the way to the other side of the Balaton, although it was a bit hazy.

After an equally delicious lunch in the same place where we ate on Friday we returned tired, but very happy from our outdoor adventure mixed with seeing our good friends Robert and Volker. Must do it again!!!