Great tits, ancestors and other interesting pursuits

The suspended speck fat did its job and our little tits did not starve while we were away. I put large handfuls of sunflower seeds into the wooden bowl as well since, so they are happy.

I have written about the difficulties of finding great grandfather Daniel Czettel's grave before, due to overgrown vegetation and vandalised gravestones. Eventually we did find it, but as I forgot to take the cable with me I couldn't download the pictures I took. Now that we are back home I did and here they are. The very short, obviously truncated dark grey grave is that of Daniel, the other lighter one has one of his brothers, Ödön and his wife in it. That is almost legible, although we needed real jungle hacking skills to get to it.

The puzzle is what on earth had happened to the main gravestone on Daniel's grave? In fact, Daniel is altogether a mysterious character. Why was he buried away from his first wife? Well, I suppose he was already married for a second time when he died, so his widow didn't want him buried with this first wife. But then why was his name registered in the burial records as David? Thankfully the proper civil register had his correct name, but once we identified his grave the main stone was missing. In most cases the missing stone is lying just on top of the grave, or next to it, or sometimes some distance from it in the nearby row on another grave. But his stone is nowhere. We searched for it in vain. These granite and marble stones usually weigh about 400-500kg, so who on earth would just pick one up and run away with it? If anyone has any suggestions they would be gratefully received. As you can see, it is not only missing, but the rest, that is there, is at an angle. There are no inscriptions on it, presumably those were on the missing bit, but we know that is the right one because we managed to identify the graves on either side and they tallied with those in the register on either side of his entry. So that was that!

This morning we had another snow flurry, but it has all but melted again since. 20 people are coming for 3 days tomorrow, so we were cleaning and lighting up fires next door. Three big hikes are planned, so I hope the weather cheers up. Today the fog was pretty thick, but as I had my brand new TomTom, there was no danger of getting lost.

Must go now as I haven't had any dinner yet. Roy has cooked for himself and left me out! :-( I better go and fix myself something.