An energetic weekend with a bit of family history research

Saturday Andor, Roy and I went to the next orienteering training event in the Vertes. This part is quite technical and very steep in places. As I haven't really run for 2 months I decided to take it easy. I jogged some of it, but otherwise walked round. This made the navigation slightly easier, although as you can see I was somewhat perplexed at control no 119. The nominal length of this was 4.6km with appr. 175m of climb and it took me 80 minutes. I felt surprisingly well afterwards, which was a good sign. During the last few weeks I felt really grotty after any physical exertion, so feeling reasonably OK on the way home cheered me up.

After Andor dropped us at our car we went to Farkasret cemetery to see if we can find Arpad Czettel's grave, who we knew was buried there in the second half of the 1930's. Unfortunately the office was closed, so a return visit would have to be made sometime in the future. This little cemetery is really nice, on a hill side with lovely views, but it seems so jam packed with graves and with each grave having 4-5 people in it, that there was no point to look for him, even though the area was quite small.

On Sunday morning Andor rang, as agreed, and I found myself on a training run in the Buda hills with him. As the sun shone and it was quite mild for January I risked a 6.5k run and even though I am sure he would have preferred his usual 9.2k circuit, he stayed with me. I felt quite sluggish, but managed to keep up with him until about 1.5k from the end. My joints started getting very painful in the last couple of kilometres, but that is OK, because while orienteering I do not normally do more than 4k anyway. En route home I suddenly decided that there was still time to look in on the Budapest Hash, which I have been planning to run with for months, but flu and very cold temperatures prevented me until now. After hanging around for a good while we finally started to make our way to the start point, which - WAIT FOR IT! - was by the Farkasret Cemetery. Small world, isn't it? There were about 23 of us, 14 of them Hungarians, which upset some expats sufficiently as making a point of announcing the figures. I found some familiar faces: Ian the UK taxman, aka Sextax (Hash name), his wife Ros, Cedric and a few others I remembered from he fish and chips dinner back in December. Their habits differ quite a lot from the bunch I used to run with in Brighton, but the idea is about the same. The run was totally uphill as the start was by the cemetery and the finish on top of Szechenyi hill. Circle time at the end is not necessarily my cup of tea, especially hanging around in the cold wind with an overheated, sweaty body, drinking cold beer. However, they seem a nice bunch (with a few exceptions) and I will be back. Next Sunday is in Erd, just South of Budapest on the Buda side. Let us hope there will be less climb there. I tried to measure the route on Google Maps and ended up with about 3.5-4km, but the climb was at least 200m, if not more.

I got home by 4pm, had a shower, a little rest and was off to the theatre. Ostrovsky's Wolves and Lambs is a brilliant social study of PB country folk in late Czarist Russia. I went to primary school with one of the actresses on stage, but she didn't have time to have a chat afterwards. Must ring her next week.

On Monday morning we returned to the cemetery and while the office was now open, our search produced no results. Due to the cramped conditions of this cemetery, they clear graves quite often and especially when nobody looks after them any more. Arpad's grave was cleared in 1967 and even his bones have now been disposed of. No mention of his brother Gyula or his widow Gizella either, so they must have been buried somewhere else anyway.

Now we are back in Ber and I am trying to catch up on correspondence and carry on with my translation work.