More than a week since my last entry - doesn't time fly when you are enjoying yourself? Well, not quite. The last week has gone past in a whirl. We had a Trail-O Committee meeting on Monday evening, which was useful from the point of view of sorting out an EU financed project, starting this September and ending next summer. There are 5 or 6 Trail-O events in it, spread across Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and possibly even Austria and Croatia. The less enjoyable part was the reluctance of the committee to support my ideas on how to deal with interference in next year's WTOC by someone who is not even a member of the IOF Trail-O Comission, but more about this later.
We came back to Ber on Tuesday and started sorting the garden etc. - the usual tasks we are always faced with when returning after being away. See a couple more of my glorious roses above! There was a plan to go to Bratislava to do the planning for the Slovakian Trail-O event on Friday, but a friend and his cousin announced that they are coming to stay for a couple of days, so we put that off to the following Monday. Andor appeared with Agi, who lives in France, brought his laptop with nearly 400 beautifully edited wedding photographs, which were a joy to watch. See a group photo and myself making my speech during dinner, as a sample above! Apropos wedding: the Sulyan family were busy putting together the DVD and I had to assist with English translation, choosing music, layout and a fair number of other details, so that it could be posted to Canada soon. When they delivered the first half, all of us watched it on Andor's laptop and enjoyed it a lot. We also had a couple of hikes (without Roy, of course): one to the andesite rocks the other just around the village visiting the increasingly ruinous watermill and the row of ancient wine cellars up the other side of the valley.
I waited all week for the Committee to produce a response to our "friend" who chose to interfere in WTOC2009 without having been asked, but nothing arrived. Then I responded on a personal basis, which produced a flurry of correspondence in the following few days. Will not bore anyone with detail, but suffice to say I stood my ground, refused to be bullied and therefore I am now definitely not flavour of the month with the powers that are the leadership of the IOF Trail-O Commission.
After Andor and Agi left I felt quite ill, which turned out to be a summer cold/flu doing the rounds in the village, so I spent the whole of Saturday in bed watching the 3rd series of House on DVD. Well, about 10 hours of it, which was great. This was the long lost birthday present from Stephen that finally arrived just at the right time. Sulyan Andras came over on Sunday afternoon with the second half of the wedding DVD and the copies we asked them to cut, after which we departed for BP. The first thing we did after our arrival in BP was to watch the second half, which turned out to be an absolute hoot. The first part, which has the ceremony and the taking of the photographs mostly, did drag a bit, but the second half was pure entertainment. It included all the speeches and the dancing to the gypsy band. The star was Komar ldi, who was the life and soul of the party, as usual. The way she got the entire Canadian contingent try the csardas and other Hungarian dances was definitely a joy to watch.
Monday was spent in Bratislava, doing the planning for the Trail-O event on 13th September. It is held in a very interesting park, which was expertly mapped by a Ukranian. It only needed minimal tweaking, so we finished in about 3 and half hours. With a round trip of 400km to drive it was a long day and now I have to draw the course and do all the things necessary to prepare the event.
On Tuesday we took the car in for its 1000 km service, posted the CD's and DVD's to Canada, did some food shopping and returned to Ber. By the way, the discs did not go by DHL, as originally planned as a fee of about 80+ quid for a smallish envelope with some discs in it seemed exhorbitant to me. There is still 10-11 days for them to get to Toronto, so let us hope they make it. If not, I am positive the party will go off just as well without them. It would be a shame, but definitely not the end of the world.
Must go now as Roy is looking hungry and it is well past breakfast time.
We came back to Ber on Tuesday and started sorting the garden etc. - the usual tasks we are always faced with when returning after being away. See a couple more of my glorious roses above! There was a plan to go to Bratislava to do the planning for the Slovakian Trail-O event on Friday, but a friend and his cousin announced that they are coming to stay for a couple of days, so we put that off to the following Monday. Andor appeared with Agi, who lives in France, brought his laptop with nearly 400 beautifully edited wedding photographs, which were a joy to watch. See a group photo and myself making my speech during dinner, as a sample above! Apropos wedding: the Sulyan family were busy putting together the DVD and I had to assist with English translation, choosing music, layout and a fair number of other details, so that it could be posted to Canada soon. When they delivered the first half, all of us watched it on Andor's laptop and enjoyed it a lot. We also had a couple of hikes (without Roy, of course): one to the andesite rocks the other just around the village visiting the increasingly ruinous watermill and the row of ancient wine cellars up the other side of the valley.
I waited all week for the Committee to produce a response to our "friend" who chose to interfere in WTOC2009 without having been asked, but nothing arrived. Then I responded on a personal basis, which produced a flurry of correspondence in the following few days. Will not bore anyone with detail, but suffice to say I stood my ground, refused to be bullied and therefore I am now definitely not flavour of the month with the powers that are the leadership of the IOF Trail-O Commission.
After Andor and Agi left I felt quite ill, which turned out to be a summer cold/flu doing the rounds in the village, so I spent the whole of Saturday in bed watching the 3rd series of House on DVD. Well, about 10 hours of it, which was great. This was the long lost birthday present from Stephen that finally arrived just at the right time. Sulyan Andras came over on Sunday afternoon with the second half of the wedding DVD and the copies we asked them to cut, after which we departed for BP. The first thing we did after our arrival in BP was to watch the second half, which turned out to be an absolute hoot. The first part, which has the ceremony and the taking of the photographs mostly, did drag a bit, but the second half was pure entertainment. It included all the speeches and the dancing to the gypsy band. The star was Komar ldi, who was the life and soul of the party, as usual. The way she got the entire Canadian contingent try the csardas and other Hungarian dances was definitely a joy to watch.
Monday was spent in Bratislava, doing the planning for the Trail-O event on 13th September. It is held in a very interesting park, which was expertly mapped by a Ukranian. It only needed minimal tweaking, so we finished in about 3 and half hours. With a round trip of 400km to drive it was a long day and now I have to draw the course and do all the things necessary to prepare the event.
On Tuesday we took the car in for its 1000 km service, posted the CD's and DVD's to Canada, did some food shopping and returned to Ber. By the way, the discs did not go by DHL, as originally planned as a fee of about 80+ quid for a smallish envelope with some discs in it seemed exhorbitant to me. There is still 10-11 days for them to get to Toronto, so let us hope they make it. If not, I am positive the party will go off just as well without them. It would be a shame, but definitely not the end of the world.
Must go now as Roy is looking hungry and it is well past breakfast time.
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