Another concert, family history, geocaching, orienteering and an unexploded bomb

I know I have only posted 4 days ago, but so much happened since then that I thought I would try to be ahead of myself this week. I attended another concert in the Palace of the Arts last Wednesday, where a slightly off colour (obviously having the same lurgy as I had) Mitsuko Uchida entertained us with some superb piano playing. Both pieces were a bit new to me. First she played Schubert's Sonata in D major which was absolutely fantastic.  Somehow I managed to miss this sonata over all the years I attended classical concerts and it did not sound like a typical Schubert piece to me. Apparently it was out of favour with most pianists due to its length and technical difficulty.  Well Mitsuko Uchida managed it superbly and I enjoyed myself in the first half.  In the second half she played another piece I have never heard before, the Diabelli variations from Beethoven.  Now this I didn't like half as much as variations have a habit to end up sounding very samey in my view. 33 variations on a small simple tune, even with Beethoven's genius did not provide me with extreme enjoyment.  Still, all in all, we were quite impressed with Mitsuko Uchida, especially as she must have got out of her sickbed to come and play to us.

Mitsuko Uchida

On Thursday we went to the Jewish Record Office to do some research. We didn't find anything world shatteringly new, except an address for my grandmother in 1946, which confirmed our belief that she survived the war. Still, the place, date and time of her death and burial is unfortunately still a mystery.

And on Friday Andor and I got going to find 9 caches that we listed for the day.  We were going more or less parallel with the A3 hopping on and off the railway in the morning while doing the second half on foot, which was a bit unfortunate as that is when the rain started. Finally we managed to find 7, leaving the last two as we were both too tired and it started getting dark. The 7 included one in a park, one multi walking around in a nice garden suburb, the source of a pretty stream with big trees and sheep along it, a golgotha up on a hill, a stages of the cross on a forested hill and a few pretty views. This day was also a tryout for how strong I am for outdoor pursuits this weekend and whether my cold and cough would let me start orienteering again.  We covered something around 10 miles on foot plus the trips by train and while my toes, knees and hips were pretty painful by the evening I enjoyed myself.

The Golgotha on top of the hill

One of the large stream side trees

An Art Noveau villa in the garden suburb

The avenue of limes with Andor walking across

A chubby sheep making friends

Finally on Saturday I managed to get a lift and I departed for the first O event of the season. Roy, who has started to cough in the meantime, stayed at home. Having been unwell for most of the last three months I felt totally unprepared, but was still excited to go. Miraculously I came second on the first day and won on the second day plus overall. I suppose there were reasons for this: 1. some of my quality opposition ran up to W60 and 2. others only came on Saturday, but I still won overall, which is a brilliant beginning for the season.

1st day course with a few wiggles where I was at sea in the juniper jungle

2nd day which was slightly easier technically, but still very good

And now for the punchline: On Saturday I came home from the orienteering about 5pm and as I was getting out of my friend's car I saw a lot of police and fire people near the park on the corner and an ambulance arriving.  I completely forgot to tell Roy about it, but about 8pm we had a knock on the door and when we opened it we saw several young coppers who told us that we had a half hour to clear out. Apparently there was a wartime unexploded bomb in the park and we had to go either to a nearby school or to friends/family.  We chose one of our orienteering friends and spent the night there.  In the morning we found out that the bomb disposal guys found more that 20 explosives, which were not unexploded ordinance, but a cache of them probably hidden in either the Second World War or in the 1956 revolution.  They didn't actually say that, but Roy reckons that's what happened. It was finally at 2am when people could return to their flats, so we had a stroke of luck not to go to the school.  We are off back to the village either tomorrow or on Tuesday.

Postscript:

And when I was just about going to bed Callum rang.  He was playing silly buggers with his Star Wars electric toothbrush. He is a real clown and very funny! :-)