Breakdowns

Sheila and Mike's holiday is coming to an end, but we have still managed to cram quite a few outings into the last few days. The first picture is of the one remaining battle scarred building up in the Castle District (note the bullet holes!) where we were waiting for the bus after an unsuccessful second attempt at seeing the old musical instruments in the museum up there. Silly people, why do they put on the Internet incorrect information about what is on show in their Museum? The bullet scarred building is just the ground floor of the last remnant from the war, I wonder why that has not been either cleared or rebuilt yet?

The picture of all the ethnic pots has a funny story behind it. Next door has started to clear her flat in readiness for the builders to move in. She put all those pots outside and I fell upon them with great gusto wanting them for the cottages in Ber. She gave them up for $1.50 which I gladly paid.

Finally yesterday we drove out to Szentendre, a beautiful small town about half an hour from Budapest and visited the Open Air Ethnographic Museum there. It is a bit like Singleton in Sussex and many other Skanzen type exhibitions the world over. Lots of lovely old peasant houses, churches, tanneries, inns, bakeries etc. rescued from demolition and rebuilt there. Unfortunately Sheila and Mike found it very hard walking too much in the heat, but we managed to hop on a horse and cart, which took us round in about 25 minutes. After that we had a light lunch and visited some of the buildings inside as well, which was very interesting.

Now, if you have been wondering why the title of this post was "Breakdowns", here comes the explanation. I started sneezing in the morning and by half way round I was feeling really rough. However, the more serious breakdown was threatening from the car, which was making loud, nasty noises from the gearbox, although it did get us home. It has now been parked up by the Park, but Roy reckons we should be lucky to get it to the mechanic, who is about 6-7 miles away. I can't do anything as I am barely alive with this flu and Roy is taking Sheila and Mike to the airport by taxi this afternoon. The entire weekend of rest and orienteering in Sopron had to be cancelled, but we are thanking our good luck that all this waited until the wedding and all visitors (bar one day) have been over.

Next post after my recovery (whenever that is!)