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.