A weekend in Verõce and in the Börzsöny

28 of us went on a lovely hike in the Börzsöny last Saturday. It is a long time since I have been in the Börzsöny and forgot how steep it was. We only did about 12.5km, but the climb, which was in the region of 500-600 metres, was the killer. We had some sunshine, but not as much as the previous few days had. We also managed to celebrate the 60th birthday of one of the hikers with cake and champagne in the middle of the forest. Once back at base Andor's gulyas soup was a success again, not to mention the myriad of cakes and beer and wine which we polished off after dinner.

There is a budding artist in the family

From these masterpieces you might have guessed the budding artist is Callum. I am amazed at the bravery of the staff at his nursery (aka daycare) getting the paints out. They must have a reasonable child adult ratio, or all the walls would be blue, yellow and red by now. Or perhaps they are but the paints are washable. Who knows?

Hungarian Orienteering Championship weekend and other news

Amazingly I ended up with a bronze medal yet again, this time in the long distance in a technical and physically really hard forest. My course was only 2.8km with 70m climb, but it was plenty enough. En route to control 2 I was huffing and puffing like an asthmatic goat up that steep mountainside. Still, I didn't mind, as this type of terrain slows the fast runners down and works in my favour. I knew that I was in no condition to get anywhere near Agika and Aletta, but I was hoping that I would still be the best of the rest and my target was achieved!! Perusing the map will reveal that I had a bit of a brain fade before control 7, but corrected soon enough. About 2 and half minutes went on that, but it would not have made any difference to my 3rd place. I think the course was good: I was lucky not to have too many of the roller coaster ride type controls many others complained of. I must admit there is not much joy in having to climb down into the depth of a steep valley only to have to climb straight back up the other side, often to a control that was visible from the last one.

As this event was about 3 hours' driving away we went down on the Saturday and stayed in the hostel with the others. The usual situation of no tables booked and all restaurants being full ensued, but Roy and I were crafty. We opted out of the forced frogmarch into downtown Veszprem and returned to the first restaurant near the accommodation which turned us away when there were 9 of us. We were lucky, two people could be accommodated and we had one of the loveliest Italian meals in ages. I had spaghetti with garlic, olive oil and chillies, Roy had a King Prawn risotto and we shared a large mixed salad. It was gorgeous.

Now we are back in the village where we are likely to stay for quite a while as we have two consecutive weekends near here. First we are off to some friends of friends who have been our guests a few times now for hiking weekends and this time decided to return the compliment; followed by an orienteering event in the Southern foothills of the Bukk East of here the weekend after.

Next week I have an Opera ticket for the Tuesday and a theatre visit on the Wednesday, so I will be popping into BP on my own, while Roy is staying behind minding the 'estate'.

Oh, and amongst several lovely things that happened last week was one theatre visit to see the Graduate which was very good and another one to a marvellous organ concert where we were treated to transcriptions of orchestral pieces (several movements from several Beethoven Symphonies amongst others) played on a 5 manual glorious organ expertly by the guy who did the transcriptions.

Finally, one last item of interesting news: I found, while browsing in a bookshop a few weeks ago, a funny sounding book published in Hungary but in English called 'A Country Full of Aliens' by Colin Swatridge. It turned out to be a hilarious if occasionally forthright account of the manifold frustrations you suffer when trying to travel by public transport or have anything to do with officialdom in Hungary. The writer is an extremely perceptive guy, who while very fond of the country, was not always pulling his punches in exposing its peculiarities. I was so delighted with my read that I was desperate to write to him to thank him for hours of pleasure he gave me with his book. Unfortunately, to find an e-mail address for him required a certain measure of detective work. Most web sites selling his books do not give any contact detail, not even of his publisher, never mind for him. Finally we found an e-mail address quoted on a University website which was incorrect as the mail came back. It was then that I applied a bit of guesswork to why it came back: I thought it could be the same address, just not with the .com, but with the .co.uk ending. I was right and today I had a lovely reply from him. Unfortunately he is close to going home, so we will have to wait to see him until his visit next March.

Must go now as my stomach thinks my throat has been cut. I am hungry!!!!

A domestic day

At the last visit to that lovely chocolate shop I bought some drops which she suggested would do very good base for cooking with. I finally received the recipe from Sheila for the chocolate mousse, but it called for 70% chocolate and the drops turned out to contain only 53% cocoa mass, so I decided to postpone the mousse. The next plan was to crack some more walnuts and melt down the drops to coat them in chocolate. I did these today and Roy says they taste lovely. I have so far been a very good girl and restricted myself to a lick my fingers which got rather covered in chocolate and I licked the bowl clean too.

The sun shone today beautifully so we inspected the garden to see if we needed to harvest anything. I hoped to make another rhubarb crumble and put the rest into bottles with my special sugar, but then we realised that we only have a small amount of my sugar out here, so we put that off for a while as well. In fact, Roy recalled also that I promised a rhubarb crumble to some of my visitors last month and as we are going to spend a weekend with them on 23rd/24th I will make it just before that and take it.

So we turned our attention to our marvellous crop of mint, which needed to be turned into mint sauce. It was a lot of work, but as you can see in the photo, we ended up with three jars of the stuff. The other two jars in the picture are the chocolate coated walnut pieces.

We are off to BP tomorrow as I am going to the theatre in the evening. Shame to have to go as the weather has been fantastic this week, but when you have a ticket you have a ticket.

Yet another hike in the Matra

The Hash had a weekend planned an hour away from here in the Matra and I joined them for just one day on Saturday. Got there around 9.20am, but we didn't get going until about a couple of hours later. The B&B Nata found was brilliant: comfortable, friendly and very cheap. We walked to Galyateto about 3.5km away. This included some climbs and a few beatiful views. The weather was gorgeous, lovely and sunny, although a bit windy to start with. Once the crowd parked their rear ends in the pub, it was rather difficult to unlodge them. Thankfully Peter (aka Trigamist), who was setting the hash for Sunday morning wanted to leave earlier than the rest and I returned to base with him. Nice, laid back, friendly guy - it was very nice to chat to him and scramble down the steep forest with him. While neither of us had a map we both had a good feel for the lie of the land and the general direction. We got back before the rest of them even though we covered a lot more ground. I drove back in an hour to arrive home at 6pm. Roy had a lazy day, which was good as he was due one.

Sheila's gone

Monday was first spent with a long phonecall to Tom Tom during which I fell in love with Andre. He had a cute accent, he was funny, kind, patient and very good at explaining everything. He managed to convince me that there is still hope for the silly little machine and finally I managed to download the requisite map and updated software. Mind you, ever since then it is still full of hiccups, but what is new? Anything that needs an update is cursed. I should have realised that before coughing up 60 quid for map updates!

On Tuesday the skies have opened and it poured non stop all day, so we stayed indoors, spent time reading, watching TV, being on the Internet and Sheila did some of her needlework.

The weather cheered up for Wednesday and we got back to the chocolate shop, the photo shop and picked up some more theatre tickets, this time for the Radnoti Theatre. The way things are going this autumn, I will beat my all time record for theatre, opera and concert visits within 3-4 months.

In the evening Sheila took us out for a farewell meal to the Cat in the Bag which was really nice. The food, the drink and the service is good there and Roy made friends with a large group of people on a coach tour, so we all had a good time. I even had a small amount of Sauvignon Blanc, which was excellent. The picture above was taken by one of the guys from the tour group and I think we all look happy.

Finally, today we took Sheila to the airport where we had a large helping of the lousiness of Ferihegy Airport made even worse by the average Hungarian attitude to people in wheelchairs. God knows how Sheila would have managed on her own? On the way back we nearly got completely stuck behind a broken down truck on the express way just a few metres before the exit. Traffic is getting appalling to and from the airport, that's for sure.

After we managed to travel right cross town to return the wheelchair we popped out to Roman Shore to visit the boathouse for a word with the guy there. We drove up along the shore, found a brilliant Greek buffet/restaurant and a possible future storage place for the boat.

The flat is really quiet now Sheila is gone and we are off in the morning to the village for a pleasant weekend. A hike in the Matra and 2 episodes of Downton Abbey await.

Booze!!

I thought I might mention one totally unexpected present Roy had on his birthday last month. He didn't know about it at the time, but since then I came across the news that the new conservative government has decreed on 27th September 2010 that you can now make palinka (strong fruit based spirit) at home up to 50 litres a year. Now that did definitely cheered him up, although I am not sure that I feel quite happy about him starting to distill his own booze at home. All those years ago when the then government introduced a legal still into every village the purpose was mostly to take revenue from the process, but also to stop people blowing themselves up.

Since then, I have also thought, does this now mean that the quantity you can have distilled for yourself (only recently restricted to 50 litres a year per household) will now go up with the first 50l revenue free and the rest payable? Who knows, you never get proper detailed information in the newspapers in this country, but we will find out in due course, no doubt.

Sheila's second week

The weather has been OK, but not brilliant since we have come into BP. The organ concert was fantastic. The instrument in the Bartok Bela Concert hall is superb and the two artists did themselves proud. I liked the second one especially, as he played some composers I have never heard before. The organ there has two consoles, one built into the pipes which works mechanically and is usually used for the baroque pieces and the large mobile console which works electronically down on the stage and is used for the more modern and the romantic pieces. It was also nice to reconnect with some of Klari's friends who were there, especially Bozsena, who is a darling.

Sometime during last week I have discovered through Facebook a fantastic chocolate shop and we went to visit it. Their web site got me really keen as they mentioned the healthy aspects of chocolate and assured all customers of personal attention and the use of a lot less unhealthy sort of sugar in their handmade chocolates. Well, that visit was a triumph. Both Sheila and myself bought lots of stuff and we will be going back there before she goes home on Thursday. I am very happy in my fairly strict diet as I am fond of fruits, nuts, pulses, vegetables, cereals etc, but the lack of sweet things have recently been getting to me. So these chocolates have been a lifesaver. My allowance is one piece a day at the moment and I am monitoring its affect closely!!

After the choc shop we went to the big multistory shopping centre to buy a few things in an electronics shop and had lunch in there. This is the first time we have ever ventured to eat in a place like this and it was a pleasant surprise. The prices were a bit high, that was to be expected, but the quality of both the service and the food was pretty good. (see Sheila with the bar behind her!)

On Saturday I stayed at home, but Roy and Sheila went out to lunch followed by a visit to the Transport Museum. About two thirds of the museum was accessible to wheelchair users, so Sheila saw most of the old trains and other interesting exhibits there.

On Sunday we decided that the weather, while not brilliant, was good enough to visit the Statue Park. This is a unique place where the statues of the old communist era are exhibited. (see piccies!) After some hassle getting charged the full rate for entrance, which was later refunded, we had a good time there. Roy and I have been before, but it was the first time we discovered that in a reconstructed hut from the Recsk labour camp they were showing old secret service training films, which were a revelation. Roy didn't realise that the spying on ordinary citizens was so widespread that everybody had to be careful all the time about what they said and to whom. Sinister, but fascinating.

Stalin's chopped off boots (see above!) were the centre of attraction in that hut along with the history of the 1956 revolution and the fall of the Stalinist regime in Hungary. The park itself is unfortunately getting very neglected. God knows what they do with all that money they take off the hundreds of thousands of visitors year in year out? My favourite is still the young worker with the flag (see above!) commemorating the 1919 commune. Impressive sculpture whatever you think of the message it conveys.

After leaving the Statue Park we intended to have lunch in a nice place that I have passed many times in the past, but didn't have time to drop into before. Unfortunately we got lost, due to the fact that our Tom Tom has been playing silly buggers with us for days now and the old paper map we had didn't have any of the new roads around Erd. As we were thinking of going for a little drive anyway, we enjoyed our perambulations in the countryside, although when the tarmac ran out in one place it was rather annoying to have to retrace our steps for about 5 miles. Finally we arrived at the Rokusfalvy Fogado in the village of Etyek (www.rokusfalvyfogado.hu) which was surely one of the most delightful restaurants we have seen for ages. The owner was in evidence on entrance, showing concern that we had to wait a bit for a table and assuring us of his best attentions. This is such a simple and easy thing to do, I am amazed how few bother. This set the tone and more and more lovely things followed. The service was attentive, the food glorious and beautifully presented and the environment just right. They have established this place about 8 years ago in an old long house which has been recently redecorated to luxury standards, but still retaining all the old features. They also own a wine cellar and extensive vineyards, so Sheila tried their Chardonnay which was pronounced to be very good. I was so busy stuffing my face that I have forgotten to take pictures, so when I go again (which I most certainly will) I'll have to make sure that I use my camera extensively. Oh, and they have many interesting entries in their Guest Book: you can read on their website comments by the likes of Jeremy Irons and lots of showbiz and political dignitaries. I suppose the fame of the Etyek Valley wines and the nearby film studios of Andy Vajna explain that, not only the justifiably excellent reputation of the place.

Now I have to go and have breakfast as it is getting late. Further reports later on in the week.

The Telegraph article with no comment from me

Comedian wins legal battle to joke about divorce
A stand-up comedian is finally allowed to joke about his ex-wife on stage after winning a bitter legal dispute in which she tried to gag him.

By Caroline Gammell
Published: 7:00AM BST 01 Oct 2010

Stephen Grant spent two years fighting for a settlement with his wife Anneliese before receiving a letter from her lawyers insisting he not refer to their break up during his routine.
Solicitors on his behalf were forced to invoke the Human Rights Act and the right to freedom of speech before the request was withdrawn.
More than a year after the divorce was finally resolved, Grant is finally using “ex-wife related red mist” as material for his work.
Grant, 37, from Brighton said last night that he was still nervous about using the material, in case he slandered his former wife.
“My solicitor said ‘if you are going to say anything, make sure it’s true because otherwise it is slander’.
“After 14 years of stand-up, the issue of my divorce is the most honest work I have done.
“I am quite nervous – if I get this wrong, it is not just unfunny, it might be slanderous.”
Grant, who has performed alongside Alan Carr, Jonathan Ross and Harry Hill, met Anneliese Holland in 1999 while out with fellow comedian Steve Coogan in Brighton.
The couple married in September 2005 and he said they separated in April 2007 after he discovered she was having a relationship with another man
“I was gutted that we couldn't work it out,” he said.
“We were so in love and she seemed to love my sense of humour back then but she very quickly lost it in the divorce.”
The couple spent two years involved in divorce proceedings before reaching a settlement.
In April 2009, Miss Holland’s law firm Martin Cray & Co sent Grant’s lawyers a letter demanding an undertaking not to disclose any information relating to the divorce.
It said: “Our client is concerned that your client may inadvertently include material in his routine which could cause her professional embarrassment, and this additional protection is therefore reasonably requested.”
Grant’s lawyers, Griffith Smith Farrington Webb, swiftly replied.
“The court has to have regard to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms 1950 and the Human Rights Act of 1988.
“We submit at this very late stage to seek to introduce a potentially complex area of law and an entirely fresh requirement is inappropriate.”
The matter was taken no further and the divorce became absolute in June 2009.
Grant said: “I’ve been absolutely dying to talk about the whole divorce on stage for over two years.
"It's like she took out the 10 Commandments, missed the not and took it as a ‘to do’ list.
"But I had to wait until a year after our divorce as she came at me with legal action.
"I think people who go out with comedians are well aware that is where a lot of material can come from.
“People who see me do stand up know that I talk about stuff that goes on in my private life all the time.
“The whole divorce procedure she put me through was so ridiculous that you have to see the funny side of it. It makes great material.”
Grant, who married his second wife Lucy three weeks ago, is due to include his divorce in his performance at the Brighton Comedy Festival later this month.
Last night Miss Holland said: "It appears that this is a publicity stunt used to try to publicise his show and no more."
Jokes:
- “I’m still surprised at what she did, with her being a Christian. Maybe she didn’t see the ‘not’ part of the 10 commandments and thought it was a to-do list.”
- “This was a woman so two faced it took ages to upload facebook pictures of her because I had to tag her twice.”
- “When I finally got the house back, the only thing she left was a broomstick, which was odd, because I thought she might have needed it for transport.”