Yet another seriously busy week

Monday started with a visit to a variety of shops, including the Central Market and our favourite toyshop. After about a couple of hours we felt that we have bought all the presents that we wanted to. Callum's was duly posted and the rest will be presented personally in a week or so's time. Once we popped all the shopping home I managed to get a quick appointment to have my ears syringed, which restored my hearing so sorely missed in the last week or so. In the evening I went to the theatre for a poetry reading interspersed with songs - a novel idea that was very well done. Tuesday I visited a friend who works in a path lab to have a special test done to see if I managed to get rid of my Lyme's Disease.  The results will be a few weeks yet and I am not optimistic, as this disease is - I'm told - hellishly difficult to eradicate.  We'll see! In the evening we had a couple of friends for dinner: Roy cooked a fantastic curry and we all had a lovely chat and a good few drinks afterwards.

And this weird looking chicken takes us to Wednesday.  I went geocaching in town with my friend Klari. I listed 8 caches and we actually managed to do 7 of them.  The last one got benighted and we left it. Having started on the left bank of the river we then got to the island where we got two caches.  There was a little zoo near the first one on the island, full of weird little feathered things, like this one above.

After the island we crossed over to the right bank where we found this medieaval looking steep street leading us to the grave and statue of a Turkish soldier from the XVIth century.  It was like travelling back in time.

 Gul Baba's statue

 One of the decorative mosaics on the wall by the grave

 The Grave from the outside

Gul Baba's grave inside the small building

On Thursday we went to the Bank partly to get some money and partly to set up a direct debit for the water bill. We also tried to get a book of paintings I forgot to buy some weeks before, but having travelled all the way to the Gallery, they told me it was sold out. :-( However, in the evening the play I went to with another friend was excellent.  A slightly weird version of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire started a bit slowly, but got into its stride by the second half with some superb performances from the principals.

Friday was also devoted to geocaching, this time with my friend Jutka and slightly further out of town than on Wednesday. The second cache was 3 metres up in a tree, which was unclimbable.  Well, at least by me, as I decided that a few more years on this planet was probably more important than getting the cache. If you look at the picture: I would have had to climb out to the second bump on the tree on the left.  No chance, said I and retreated. Otherwise it was a rather religious caching day with quite a few of them being near churches, chapels, stages of the cross and other religious places.

These three pictures were taken high up on a big rocky hill above the town, so the views would have been gorgeous had there not been fog and slight drizzle about.  Still, the whole place was quite spectacular, even without the views.

This little chapel was in the old German cemetery, which seemed to have uniformed graves and very neat walkways.

Stages of the cross up another hill in a spiral with the cross, Virgin Mary and a to me unknown saint on the top.

We took public transport back to the car and I was at home in time to have a quick shower, change and be off to our favourite Thai restaurant for a meal with yet another good friend visiting town. That Thai chef is so superb that I am yet to have a dish that is just good, not absolutely brilliant, like my glass noodles with king prawns, egg and vegetables was that night. With a crisp large glass of dry white wine I was a very happy bunny indeed. We decided to come back to the village a day early, but there is yet some more gardening to be done as in the garden centre, where we went for grass seed, we spotted some cherry trees at half price.  We bought two, so there's some digging and planting that will be happening on Tuesday with Sanyi's help. On Wednesday we are off back to town and then on Friday we depart for communing with family and especially with latest grandson.