Spring on its way

The whole of the last week was pretty cold with deep frosts in the night. We finally managed to get the flat reasonably warm in spite of having no heated spaces anywhere around it. We have the cellar under us, an unoccupied flat above us, the unheated back staircase to the left of us, the next block behind us and mostly unheated rooms to the right of us as well. So heating it through is never easy. The exercise classes are still going, but my back is not getting much better. Still, I keep going living in hope that things might improve eventually.

On Tuesday Ros and I went to see Livia, who lives in a typical overfurnished old fashioned apartment on the hill near Ros. She enjoyed it, Ros and I endured it, so we both have done our good deed for the week. Wednesday we spent an hour with Robert in the cafe opposite the Opera having cakes, coffee and a good chat. Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades was not exactly to my taste, so I'm afraid I've absconded half way through. And then we went down to the village for a couple of days. We returned today, but today needs more elaboration.

Roy is still refusing the use the car due to the bad roads and the winter conditions, so the plan was to use the bus which was due to leave at 10am. Somehow we managed to run out of time getting to the bus stop, which is quite unlike us as we are normally there at least 10-15 minutes early, but today we left it really tight, only to find that the driver drove off 2 minutes early. We retreated into the house to think through what we could do. I was just about to look up on the internet what other, if any, buses might go later when Roy told me that Andris has arrived to visit Nelly. That gave us the marvellous chance to beg for a lift, which we got. The only proviso was that Andris and Maria were going geocaching en route home and we had to join in. That's no bother, I said, I love geocaching myself, so we were off just after 3pm.

Today has proved that some accidents can turn out for the better. Instead of a boring, potentially cold and/or uncomfortable bus ride, we had a pleasant drive with nice people and had some fun geocaching and having a little outing. The pictures show the church and a nice manor house in Erdõtarcsa, one of the geocache locations. And just to explain the title of this post, examining the photographs will tell you that it was today that the long awaited thaw arrived. In fact, after the initial trip down towards the bus stop, when we missed the bus, being on crunching snow and ice, by the time I took these pictures the sun was out and very little snow remained. The forecast was for springlike weather by the weekend and it turned out to be true.

Next Tuesday I am off to Brighton and if I get a chance I will post from there.