1st week in Hassocks

We arrived in such good time that we were there hours before expected. Norwegian, you have my vote forever!! No queueing in the cattle shed, on time, curteous staff, docked near centre, normal daytime hours and the most amazing: check-in opened a full 30 minutes early.

Daddy's daddy with Xander on the settee

Little monsters have grown and are prattling away 16 to the dozen. They still fight, but also easier to reason with. We babysat quite a lot, but they seem no bother with us, responding to matter of fact handling. I suppose grandparents have very little previous, so they are operating in a baggage-free environment.

The bike gang

On Wednesday we went to Hove Lagoon with Charlie and all their bikes. It was a brilliant day, if a bit cold and windy. Afterwards we fetched their toys from Argos which was followed by civil war over the new cars. They also got their new T-shirts, which fitted perfectly.

Only in Brighton

On Thursday Roy and I went on the bus to Brighton. That's now more expensive than the train, but it gets you into the centre of Brighton. We sorted all our banking queries, although we will have to go back next Monday to see an advisor.

In the Basketmakers

We met Ruth and Ian in the Basketmakers, which was pleasant. They never change, not even looking older. Unfair!!! We walked to the pub from Churchill Square and I took some good pictures of some quirky Brighton exteriors.

On Friday Roy and I walked to Keymer to the Greyhound for lunch. Took some pretty pictures along the way. The weather is nice most days, but there is a cutting wind which cuts right through your clothing. Shouldn't have forgotten my down jacket!

Pete in The Yellow Book

Saturday I met up with Pete for lunch, a walkabout and the Kristof Barati concert! All of it was fantastic! Took some more interesting photos, had some lovely food and drink, the concert was excellent and went back stage to present Kristof with a couple of T-shirts, one saying Welcome to Brighton! in Hungarian.

The foyer of The Brightom Dome

Stephen is returning tonight from 4 days away working, Lucy's birthday is next Tuesday and I'll post again just before we leave for home.

Some caching and getting ready for our trip

The 4 days in the village were spent mostly indoors as the weather was ghastly, but also because we had to do a lot of stuff prior to getting into town and then to Hassocks.  I had some paperwork, I wrote an article for marxist.com about the Hungarian Teachers' Revolt, I arranged for a lift and some accomodation for the Lipica Open orienteering event in Slovenia which is the weekend after we return from the kids. Roy didn't want to come, so I am having a lift from a fellow orienteer, booked my hotel and entered the event.  I didn't pay, as the transfer charges would double the cost of entry, so I'm hoping they will let me pay there.I am only running (after a fashion) the Open courses and we are staying for only 3 days, so that should be OK.

Sample of Lipica's fiendishly hard karst terrain

I also managed to take a short video of the environment in the village and sent it to Katherine Arkay in Canada, so that she could see I am using the lovey Flip camera she so kindly got me. Click on the link for viewing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g517gYU7GDA
On Friday we came in some unearthly hour to experiment with another way of getting into town.  We still caught the bus, but the one that left at 5.40am. We got off in the third village and caught another bus that went partially on the motorway, while in town we caught a trolley bus which got us to the flat door all in all in less than 2 hours. All buses were caught at the same stop we got off, so no luggage dragging either.

A snowy hillside

As most of Friday was still available for shopping etc, we ran around to do chores (Post Office, Pharmacy, photo printing shop), at the latter we also bought a cute little bag for the Flip camera and then went home in the pouring rain. Buying a new pair of hiking boots (the old one had disintegrated) and some more clothes at Bella Mode will have to wait until after we have returned from Hassocks.

A hunting lodge in the woods

As the weather forecast was much better for Saturday than Sunday Zsuzsi, Koxi and I went geocaching on Saturday.  This made me rather sleepy for my cinema visit at 7pm, but about that later. We started at the highest point and there was snow on the ground and on the trees.  Melting caused the latter to drop on us from on high, which was not very comfortable when it got you in the neck. Later the sun came out and I could take a few good pictures.  We even found a moving cache by accident, although I later found out that there were three moving caches which we could have got, as they were right next to the ones we were going for.  Unfortunately by the time I was told, we were past the first one, found the second one anyway and never knew about the third one which was next to one that we never got, due to running out of time for me to get back for my cinema.

Zsuzsi and me on a steep rocky mountain

Talking of which, Benedict Cumberbatch was a joy to watch, even though in the 2 hour long first act he lost me once or twice in the very deep phylosophical bits. And I was also very tired and sleepy.  I sort of got my second wind for the second act, which was thankfully only 1 hr 20 minutes long. This was also the performance where he came out at the end with the appeal for the victims of war and the refugee crisis.  I do love that man, actor, decent human being and funny man. He would be great in comedy, I'm sure. Probably the hardest bit of acting you have to do is making people laugh and he is such a genius, that I'm sure he would do it brilliantly.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet

On Sunday we went out to place the moving cache that I found and brought home. The name of that particular moving cache is "Our favourite places", so I decided to place it at one of our favourite restaurants, the Zila Coffee House - Krisztina Cake Shop and Restaurant. It has been a long time since we ate there, so we had Sunday lunch and asked the Manager if she would look after the cache for us. Both were very successful: Roy had a Gypsy Roast, which he said was delicious and I had two courses, pumpkin soup with beetroot to start and a beautifully prepared piece of salmon. The cache is now resident in the Manager's office and she will hand it over to anyone who asks for it, either to log it and hand it back or log it and take it away.  I mentioned to her that I am thinking of placing a permanent cache at the restaurant later on in the year and she was not averse to the idea.  I'll revisit it in the spring or early summer, after I have done some more research on the history of the building and the story of the district and the restaurant itself.

Just one small showcase of the Zila's choice of cakes

Yesterday we went to Tesco's with the primary aim to buy some toys for our little monsters, but found nothing worthy of purchase.  So we just bought a few items of food for ourselves and for the trip, while this morning I managed to reserve some really nice stuff on the Argos web site, so tomorrow we will have to drive over to Burgess Hill to pick them up. It is really interesting, how habits of a lifetime are difficult to shake. Roy and I practically live on line and for two oldies, like us, we are pretty internet savvy.  And still, when shopping for toys or clothes, we still first think of a shop, as we have done for a very long time. Never mind, we'll get used to buying everything on line soon, althugh I would not like to be like Stephen, who probably had not seen the inside of a shop for ages, as his first reaction is definitely to buy it in the virtual, not the real world.  Still, he is a busy man, so I suppose that is understandable.

Must  go now to finish my packing and we're off in about 6 hours.

5 days in town on my own

On Wednesday I caught the 9:05am bus and arrived in the flat at 11.45am. This is about the earliest I got there and this is undoubtedly due to a new route I have recently started using. At the bus station I now catch the no. 75 trolleybus, insted of the Metro. This is good, as instead of a long walk up and down stairs, the trolleybus stop is about 20 metres from the drop off point in the bus station. Then, 3 stops later, I get off and change trolleybuses, but staying at the same stop, therefore walking 0 metres.  And when the no. 74 trolleybus comes I then go another 5 stops with the trolleybus stopping right outside (about 5 metres from) the front door of my block. This way is particularly appreciated when one carries heavy luggage, although the other way it is not as simple as this, due to one way streets, so instead of catching it outside the block, you have to either catch one stop on another trolleybus to the next street (which is one way the other way) or walk it.

Wednesday I went to a concert with Bozsa, and it was pretty good. Vadym Kholodenko, a young Ukranian pianist still in his twenties, entertained us with Schumann and Skryabin. He had a confident, proficient approach and his performance went down a treat.

Vadym Kholodenko

I was anxiously awaiting the weather forecast for Thursday, as I wanted to go out to do some geocaching in a town about an hour or so away by train.  It didn't look very warm or sunny in the morning, but it wasn't raining, so I got going.  And then I had a rather exhausting, but thoroughly enjoyable day in Esztergom.  It contains the equivalent of Canterbury Cathedral, as it has a Basilica that is the seat of the Primate of Hungary. On one side flows the Danube, the other side is providing glorious views of mountains. I ended up walking about 7 miles and saw most of what the town had to offer.

The Basilica

I started with a nice circular church, then walked up a hill to the end of 14 stages of the cross to see the Calvary Chapel. The next port of call was at the summer villa of a famous writer, which unfortunately was closed.  Still, the view from there was lovely. Then I went back down to the centre of town and started my big walk to pick up 9 different points of a multi cache. Thankfully, two more caches could be combined with the multi, as they were each quite close to one or other of the points of the multi.  Finally, I managed to collect 6 caches and with the sun making an appearance mid-afternoon, also took some amazing photos. Most of my joints and all of my bones and muscles were aching by the end but it was a very happy bunny who took the train home half-asleep.

The Maria Valeria bridge across to Slovakia

And then, muggins went geocaching all over again the following day, but this time in the hills and mountains above the same town. My friend Andor came with me on Friday, but due to aching joints from the day before, I paid for a taxi to take us up to the high look-out point above the town in the hills to start the hike from.  This saved about 2 miles and an hour's walking, which proved very useful at the other end of our day by getting us back in time for catching a bus home just before it got dark.

Andor photographing the panorama by the cross

The distance covered this day was 6 miles, but the climb was a bit more than on Thursday. The cache count was 6 again, including panoramic views all over the place, a couple of springs, a pretty set of lakes, and at the end a steep climb to the top of a rock wall to see an 19th century Christ on the cross. The views down to the river and across to Slovakia on the other side were breath taking from the cross. I got home feeling in even more pain, but happy as larry.

Tens of thousands in Parliament Square in the rain

Saturday dawned with torrential rain, which did not surprise me, as that day I was due at the big protest rally in front of Parliament about the state of education and a few issues beside. The turnout was spectacular, especially that the rain did not let up. Tens of thousands filled the square and all side streets beyond. The atmosphere was very good in the crowd and very angry on the platform. Speaker after speaker outlined the sorry state of our schools and the conditions of work the teachers have to endure. The government is not listening, so I expect the discontent will carry on. I am glad I went and supported an important movement. Let's hope their struggle is successful!
 
Sunday I had two places to go to and I found the choice a bit hard.  I could have gone to the Hash run, as it was Valentine's Day and they usually make a bit of an effort to set a good run.  On the other hand, my friend Zsuzsi wanted to go out into the hills, so I planned a hike to pick up a couple of hard caches en route, which needed a fair amount of walking. She brought her car to get us out into the hills and we hiked about 8 and half miles in what was an overcast, but dry day.  It did finally start raining, but thankfully by then we were on our way back and only 20 minutes from the car.

Zsuzsi and me in that glorious forest

 https://youtu.be/iqONR9NLplY
The hike was planned to be only about 6 miles, but due to the torrential rain of the day before, all streams and rivers were in spate and our final cache could be only reached by going round and adding a couple of extra miles to our hike. The actual crossing of a stream, which looked like a ford, and which normally is no hassle to cross, was such a torrent we didn't dare risk it. Damn annoying, as the cache was only about 400 yards on the other side.  We did get lucky on the detour round, that all streams that we had to cross had bridges over them. It was a really nice, enjoyable day in good company, and it looks as if we are doing it again next Sunday.

And finally, this morning I caught a bus to the nearby Tesco, where Roy awaited, we did our weekly shopping and arrived home in time for lunch.

Another busy week

Since my last post life had been quite fun, but a bit too busy. No matter how hard I try to slow down, so far I am having real difficulties in succeeding. Prior to my trip into town I was trying to get some overdue stuff done, especially that we were expecting two days of power cuts.  As it happened, they failed to explain that the Northern half of the village was having the outage on Wednesday with the Southern half on Thursday.  We live in the Southern part, so I needn't have rushed.

A pensive Callum

I bought the plane tickets for our Thanksgiving visit to Canada in October, which I am already looking forward to. Callum is 7 this August, I can't believe how fast time goes with children. We saw a bit of him on Skype the other day and he was his usual anarchic self. The two little ones in Hassocks, whom we will see soon, were in a little video which Lucy sent on, playing hopping rabbits in bed.  Sweet!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEb1CddoSs

I managed to finish an interesting, if somewhat weird, Hungarian novel this past week and while the topic matter was fascinating, the author's rendering of it left me nonplussed.  I only bought the book to see if my previous opinion of never buying contemporary fiction was still valid.  Yes, it is!! I can see the relevance of personal angst to the state of the world and I also appreciate that literature doesn't necessarily have to offer a way out of the abyss, its role is more often than not, to point out the contradictions and the agony of life.  Still, I'm a political animal and really have no truck with the agony without a proposal of at least one solution, even if I don't agree with it. So, I am not likely to purchase any more like this book was for quite a while, which is just a well, as the pile of books on the shelf awaiting to be read is too long as it is.

Part 2 of the mining trilogy: Mine Blindness

On Thursday I had a totally uneventful bus journey to town, followed by a hairdresser's appointment giving me a very short back and sides, just as I like it. In the evening my friend Jutka and I went to see part 2 of the mining trilogy, which was definitely a better play than part 1. It combined humour with the sarcasm and hopelessness of the characters to such good effect that the entire audience laughed aloud most of the time, even in the face of tragedy, both human and historical. While there, I purchased some more tickets for some of their March performances, as I have definitely fallen in love with this little, alternative theatre.

Paart 3: Mine Water

On Friday I visited Ros and Ian and had a lovely couple of hours drinking tea and chatting away. Their flat is an absolutely lovely space, not very big, but it is furnished with such taste and flair, that you wouldn't believe how reasonable the costs were for many of the items. I suppose when you have good taste and style with some considerable flair, it is not that difficult. I loved the new French crystal chandelier, which came from an auction in a dreadful state needing restoration, costing about £80, but after cleaning, some DIY repairs and rewiring, it looked a million dollars. Hopefully I should be able to go to the hash this coming Sunday, otherwise I will not see them for months now.  They are off to the US for 5 weeks and will not be back until probably May.

Ros and Ian's chandelier was similar to this

Finally I had all the details I needed to post the two books to Briony and Jamel in Ockley, so I did so. Jamel never sent me his office address, so I sent both copies to Briony and then he should arrange with her to fetch it or have it sent.

On Friday evening part 3 of the mining drama was pretty good, but I still think part 2 was the best. On Saturday I caught the early bus and was at home by 9.15am. The sun was shining gloriously, but it was too late to go caching by the time I thought of it.  So we went on Sunday and it was a lovely day out. We left about 9am and go home at about 5pm. We managed to walk about in a nearbly town, getting to know its history and buildings, followed by a variety of visits to the hills and forests above said town and some quirky places in neighbouring villages and on the outskirts of the town.

Franciscan parish church and monastery

We saw churches, palaces, museums, water towers, lookout towers, forest springs, an old Russian airplane and a little Zoo. All in all I collected 6 caches, which was not an unduly large number, mostly due to a couple of bloody long multi parter caches: one had 4 parts and another 6 parts.

The forest en route to part 6 of the town multicache

Still, the last bit of the 6 parter was up in the forest North of the town and a really nice little hike did me the world of good in the sparkling sunshine. We had lunch in a restaurant that we liked to eat in a couple of years ago, when there was a 5-day orienteering event in the area. I had the most delicious and beautifully prepared trout that I ever had.  Roy's gypsy roast was equally delicious.

The old Antonov AN2

Today it rained, so we stayed indoors, watching TV, reading, sleeping and generally taking it easy. I am off again to town on Wednesday and will not be back until Monday.

A small chapel a few miles from town up amongst the vineyards

A week in town

Monday was spent watching TV, fetching my medicines, getting some theatre tickets and starting the re-moderation process for one of my own geocaches which became broken, possibly vandalised and in need of a revamp. In the evening I went to the theatre with Jutka, to see part 1 of Székely Csaba's Transylvanian trilogy, Bányavirág. That translates to Mineflower. It's set in a poor, deprived area of closed mines and often closed minds too. It was put on in the Cellar Theatre which was new to me  and it really was down a cellar. I liked it and look forward to parts 2 and 3, which we will see later on this week.

Mineflower

Tuesday was the day I went to see Son of Saul, which turned out to be a very powerful film, but which didn't seem to really go anywhere.  Perhaps that is also a message from Nemes Jeles László, that tragedy doesn't always come with a message, it just happens.  Inevitably, like in Auschwitz.

The dummy birdbox to hide the cache in

On Wednesday the moderation went through with flying colours and we caught the train to Piliscsaba to place the two new caches, as I changed it to a multi cache with two new parts. The trip on the brand new line was quite fun, taking about an hour. The first part of the cache was by the Nagybaczoni villa, the other roughly at the same place where it has always been (only about 7.5m adrift), but in a new, phoney bird box 6 foot high up.  Nobody has so far found it, but I hope it'll be successful and while now it is harder to find, it should also be safer.

The Nagybaczoni villa

The best and most fantastic event of that day (and possibly the entire week) was that as we were heading towards the place where I was planning to put part 1, a very nice looking lady came along the street towards us with some post in her hand. I asked her if she knew for sure where the Nagybaczoni villa was and with a bright smile she just told us to follow her. She turned out to be one of the grandchildren of Nagybaczoni Nagy Vilmos, and she invited us in, showed us around the villa and we stayed with her for about an hour. With all the effort I put in 18 months ago, when I first placed the cache, trying to find any friendly, co-operating descendants of the great man or at least anyone with any information about the villa, and found nothing. Now, just in the last possible minute we ran into Hajnalka, who is absolutely delightful, full of real insider's stories from her childhood with her grandfather and the rest of the family.

Portrait of Zelma Nagybaczoni in oils

She invited us to visit them in the summer, when they live out there in the villa and the garden is lovely. I hope that will happen, as I would love to meet all of them.

Thursday I went to the Urania cinema to watch Judy Dench and Kenneth Branagh in A Winter's Tale.  It was pretty good, although I have just realised that I have never seen A Winter's Tale before on stage or in the cinema. While there, I bought myself a ticket for Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch, which will be on on the 20th, so we will have to come back to town a bit earlier than planned prior to the trip to Hassocks on the 23rd.

Judy Dench and Kenneth Branagh

Friday had a full program with a book launch/conference in the afternoon and then a clash of Falstaff at the Opera with a concert at the Music Academy in the evening.  I gave the Opera tickets to Ros and Ian and went to Dénes Várjon's concert, which was superb.  As it happens, Ros and Ian had a fantastic time too, partly because the production was excellent, but also because they had an offer of swapping their seats up in the gods with the front stalls. The Opera management do this sometimes, when having failed to sell those expensive tickets they want to fill them to avoid embarrassment vis a vis the guest singers who see nothing but empty seats in front of them. I asked if Nata and Colin turned up, but as they were worried about Colin's health being endangered by being up at ceiling level, passed their tickets to some friends from the Brit Club, who then followed Ros and Ian to the front stalls. That called for a quiet giggle from me, wicked old woman I am.

Excellent cover for the book

Earlier in the day I attended the book launch, presenting the history of Hungarian Orienteering part 1. Most of the book was about Henrik Ripszám, who introduced the sport to Hungary in the 1920's and who then departed to England where he married a rich heiress and lived happily ever after until his death in 1976. Roy and I did most of the research for his life in England and the conference itself was really enjoyable. I had a copy of the book, which turned out really nice, with lots of interesting facts about the early days of Hungarian orienteering.

On Saturday I thought it was time to pick up correspondence with a guy who is organising an exhibition of pictures by 15 Hungarian artists in Harrogate in 2018. Henrik Ripszám is one of them and he is coming to visit Hungary in April, so we should be able to meet up with him. Hopefully, he had more luck in tracking down some of Henrik's art work, as we had very little success in that department.

Roy and I agreed the dates of our visit to Toronto and St. Catharines in September/October and now I have to buy the tickets, assuming they are available. Alex reckons that they might drop in price later, but I am not sure, so I think I will buy them this week.

Kelemen Barnabás, Kokas Judit and Fenyő László

And now we come to the highlight of the week.  On Sunday there was the Mendelssohn/Schumann Marathon in the Palace of the Arts and stupendous it was too. I bought 4 tickets for 4 of the 11 concerts, mostly going by not what was on, but on who was playing.  I love both composers, so I didn't care about the pieces, but I definitely did about the artists. We started with Kristóf in the morning, followed by Kelemen, Kokas, Fenyő, then in the later afternoon we had Dénes Várjon and his wife playing superb piano, mostly from Mendelssohn.  The last concert was the real culmination of the whole day, with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer playing The Midsummer Night's Dream with singers and players and with lots of fun and games and superb musical artistry, as always. I was trying to get rid of the 4th ticket, that was not needed, and didn't manage it in the first two concerts, but did in the third and then I bought 3 extra tickets for Ian, Ros and me for the 4th one, and thus freeing up another ticket to go with the superfluous 4th one, which was bought by Rabies and his missus, who seemed a very nice lady. Ros and Ian brought Roy's suet, but the pummice stone is still in the post. They had a fantastic time both at the Opera and in the Palace of the Arts, so this was a really superb artistic weekend for them.

Várjon Dénes és Simon Izabella

And finally we came back down to the village today after a mammoth Tesco shop where we not only bought food, but yet another jumper for Roy as well as a few T-shirts for the grandchildren. The weather is quite mild, but today there was brilliant sunshine in the morning and early afternoon.  If it stays mild and sunny, we might go caching one day this week.  On Thursday I will be back in town for a couple of nights of heavy social drama, parts 2 and 3 of the Transylvanian trilogy, part 1 of which we saw on Monday.

The best thing, however, was the phonecall I got from a neighbour when she noticed that we were back. She had a little parcel delivered to her in our absence and I went to fetch it.  It was my new (old) Flip camera which only took about a week to arrive from Canada. This is a long story, but the short version is that ever since October 2014, when we were robbed, I had no Flip camera.  I loved it and missed it probably the most of the things that were stolen. Unfortunately they don't make them any more and the few I have seen advertised on Amazon or Ebay were far too expensive, even though some were second hand.  Last summer somebody mentioned Kijiji in Ottawa, which is a bit like Ebay, but friendlier. Roy recently helped somebody in Ottawa searching her family history and the lady was so grateful that she was anxious to return the compliment.  I mentioned Kijiji and Flip - the end result being that now I have one again. I am very pleased and in a few weeks, when we are staying with the little monsters in Hassocks, I will certainly try it out.

My old Flip camera was black, the new one is white with a picture

Must go now to check on the stove, followed by getting everything done on the computer as we are having two days without electricity, starting tomorrow.  Why can't they do maintenance without turning the damn thing off, that's what I want to know!!