emiGrants: Another week or so, this time in the village

Andrea Vigh

Just to round off the last blog, the concert that I mentioned at the end was absolutely magical. It was all Mozart and as it is nearly the festive season, there were a few popular pieces there as well. However, the concert started with a fairly obscure piece, a Cassation in G major. I have never heard of a Cassation before, but looked it up and apparently it is a minor musical genre related to the serenade and divertimento. Judging by the low K number (63) it must have been an early piece by Mozart. It was charming and lovely to listen to. This was followed by a clariet concerto and after the interval Andrea Vigh, who is an excellent harpist as well as the director of the Music Academy, joined a flutist and the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra to play the Concerto for flute, harp and orchestra in C major, K. 299, which was also superb. This being the last concert of 2015 for me, it left not just me, but all three of us, Bozsa, Eszter and me, elated and very happy. We were definitely in the Christmas spirit after this concert.

The Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra

On Friday was the premiere of Star Wars VII, which I still haven't seen on account of having left for the village first thing that day. Never mind, hopefully I should be able to go and see it next week. The trip down took us to Tesco first, where we collected Nelly and then home. The weather was not at all wintery, rather mild, dark and miserable, but we were hoping for a bit of sunshine and/or snow later.

Xander concentrating

The cheeky grin that melts my heart

On Saturday Xander called on Skype and we watched him being cute, clever and all those attributes he has in such abundance. Elian wasn't in a good mood, so it was just our little Xander who entertained us.

On Sunday, having realised that the salmon wouldn't last until Christmas Day, we invited Nelly over for dinner, she and I had the salmon and Roy had a piece of fillet steak, like he always does. It was a pleasant meal with pink champagne and some cakes afterwards.

Roy and Nelly round an early Xmas table

Monday was supposed to have been the day we went to photograph a couple of old Jewish cemeteries, but the weather was so foul we chickened out. It was not only cold and miserable, but there was a thick fog which would have made photography close to impossible. During the day I called on Pali and agreed a date for him taking the cefre to the still and presented Monika with a couple of little toys for her new born twins. In fact, Monika was not around, so I gave them to Ildi, her mother.

Bercel Jewish cemetery

Vanyarc Jewish cemetery

On Tuesday, the sun miraculously came out and we tore off to Bercel and Vanyarc. The first one was the further one, but they must have had some EU money for restoring and securing the cemetery, as it looked properly fenced off with a locked gate and very tidy. Unfortunately, very few had legible names on, partly because they were all in Hebrew, which we don't read, partly because the condition of the stones was much weathered and the letters got barely legible. Still, we took photos and hoped that somebody somewhere might be able to decipher them.

Vanyarc cemetery was probably the most neglected and incomplete we have ever seen. You had to walk for about 10-15 minutes out of the village up a mountain into a forest before you got to it. It was together with another cemetery of another denomination, which must have been Christian, but I couldn't work out which. That part had more graves and in better condition than the Jewish part and I stood and thought about the past with sadness that it got to that state.

After we got back we had a lovely Skype call from Canada where Callum was opening his presents. He had to do it 3 days early as they were off to Bogota, Colombia for Christmas and he had to leave all his presents from friends and family in Canada behind. He was really lovely and we not only watched him opening and playing with his new toys, but we also played a couple of games of Transatlantic hangman.

On Wednesday we did the bit of cooking and baking we decided to do for Christmas, which was fun. Ros brought us some mincemeat, so we made ten mince pies. She also brought some marzipan, so I made petit fours with the marzipan cut out into little circles and topped off with molten bitter chocolate and either a half walnut or a Morello cherry. Finally, I also made some truffles, most rolled in bitter cocoa and some in chopped walnuts. I took some over for Nelly and she chomped away on a mince pie with a funny look on her face. Very nice, she said, but strange.

Mince pies

Truffles and petit fours

Finally Christmas Day arrived and we decided to make it an Indian one. We defrosted a large pack of tiger prawns and made a curry with them. They were delicious. We accidentally left the mango chutney in town, so we substituted Branston pickle for it. Strange but nice, was the typical comment. We also had mixed veg curry, boiled rice, pappadoms and dhal with it, yum yum!! We washed it down with another bottle of champers, this time a dry one and followed it with Morello cherry compote with whipped cream. Now I can hardly move, but feel all content.

Prawn curry

Dhal, pappadoms and the BB champers

Scalextric is fun

Xander with his hallmark cheeky smile

Is Daddy winning?

What's he up to?

In the meantime the Hassocks mob rang on Skype and we watched the little monsters play with the Scalextric that their parents got them with the money we sent for Christmas. Needless to say that Elian was so enamoured of it that Xander didn't get a lookin. No probs, he is a patient little soul and knows that sooner or later big brother will get fed up with it and then it'll be his turn. I managed to snap the entire family (Stephen, Lucy, Elian, Xander, Jenson, Matt, Emily and Helen) on Skype and here's a selection of the shots.