Chutney, family history and other disasters

Back in Ber we had to get back to country type pursuits, like cutting grass, harvesting produce etc. The tomato plants are still going barmy, so this time (having filled both freezers with tons of lecso before) I opted for making chutney. It finally filled 10 1 litre bottles. Roy busied himself with putting up the lovely pottery we got from our Budapest neighbour (see piccies!) and I carried on with correspondence etc. on the computer.

I wrote to our Transylvanian friends apologising for the extreme bad manners of our so called friends in abandoning their event. They seemed pleased about this. The bombshell came in the middle of the week when our WTOC2009 mapmaker resigned leaving us high and dry without a map on which to plan. It is my lady-like upbringing which is stopping me to comment on this one. Dick's visit next week will be fun and games, but be devoid of courses, obviously.

We went to Paszto to do some shopping and visit the market. I have never tasted peaches like I got there, in my life. Nice to see that there are still some Hungarian farmers who grow nice fruit. Considering that the entire apple growing community of Szabolcs county is blockading apple processing plants at the dumping of Chinese apple concentrate, the state of Hungarian fruit growing is in a bad way.

Yesterday we went to photograph some old family graves in the Jewish cemeteries of Abony and Cegled, which went quite well. We found two quite neglected, old cemeteries, where most of the graves were overgrown with ivy and we could have done with a machete to get about. We only found two Czettel graves on our list, but found a load more that were not. I fastidiously took photographs of all of them, wich I managed to accidentally erase from the chip in my camera this morning. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! No further comment due to good manners.

We are off to the Gigasprint this morning, which should cheer me up, I hope. This is one of those events where you have lots of very technical controls in close proximity on sandy ground with no contour detail. Like forested sand dunes, but with indistinct vegetation and not a lot of forest. Get it? Fun!!!! I think I have 33 controls in about 3.6km. Mind you, my O shoes have given up, so the list of disasters is continuing. I tried to mend them with tape this morning, but if they fall apart mid-course, this is not going to be a good day either.

Finally, just to finish on a good note: yesterday on our way back to BP we discovered an absolutely delightful restaurant/cafe called Zila Kavehaz. They have a gorgeous menu, including interesting vegetarian dishes, oldie worldie atmosphere and manners, great food and fantastic service. Not every day you find one of these in Hungary, so I suppose the week was not a total right off after all.