Concerts, geocaching, orienteering and a lot of guests

Originally we were planning to stay in town between the two trips, but we had to go down to the village for the two day orienteering event held in nearby forests, because the majority of my clubmates, who were working at the event stayed with us overnight. But that still had given us a full week in town during which we could recuperate, get a few things done and prepare for the next trip.

David Fray

On Friday the 14th I had a concert at the Music  Academy where David Fray (who turned out to be French, not English) was the pianist. I saw Bozsa after a hiatus of several months and the concert itself was first class.

Roadside cross in Alsónémedi

On Saturday I decided to get up in the early hours (after practically no sleep due to jetlag) and catch a bus to a small town just outside BP to fetch two moving caches.  I was lucky, they were both still there and I logged that they will have to stay with me for a week, as I wanted to put them out in our county in the country.

On Saturday evening I went to see Billy Elliot the musical on my own, as this was one of the performances I missed on my subscription ticket earlier due to a clash with something else. I enjoyed it a great deal and thought the staging, direction, orchestra, singers and dancers were all excellent.

Monday I saw Zsófi, my homeopath who prescribed some new teas and vitamins, as my absorption rate is not good. In the late afternoon we had to take the laptop to be looked at, as it was playing silly buggers. Szabolcs suggested that we should have it cleared and started from scratch, which we will do later on in the year once we are home again.

Statue up on Gellert Hill between cache 1&2

Tuesday we spent a very pleasant hour and half with Abe Feinsod and his mother in a cafe. Abe is one of Roy's family history researching friends from the internet whom he had never before met. He was an absolute sweetie straight away, his mother was a bit more reserved, but thawed out once we started reminiscing about the old days when she and I were children. We had an invite to Mexico to go and see them, which we are not very likely to take them up on, but nice all the same.

And then on Wednesday I got fed up with being indoors too much and went geocaching on my own in town, picking up 6 caches plus 1 part of each of two multis. The most interesting and pleasant one was in the recently renovated Youth Park underneath the Royal Castle by the river.  That was very photogenic and I took some lovely photos.  Mind you, the camera is really dying, so it is a total lottery now when it is prepared to work and when it isn't. It's about time I picked up my new camera from Stephen's when we get there tomorrow.

Nikolai Lugansky

Thursday evening was another concert, this time Nikolai Lugansky, who was pretty good again. We have heard him before and he didn't disappoint this time either. He has such a soft, romantic way of playing even Bach, that I was amazed.

Where I placed the Crux Viator cache

And then came Friday, a day which turned out a complete washout in the weather sense, but pretty successful in others.  First of all we were supposed to take the 7am train to the village, but got to the station more than half an hour early, so we took the earlier train. Although I have never had serious problems with this particular line, this time there was delay upon delay, so we were seriously worried that even with the earlier train we would miss the connection with our bus.  As it happened, the driver waited for us, which was fortunate, because if he didn't we would have only missed it by about a couple of minutes, which is seriously aggravating.

Where I placed the GCTO cache

As we got home I got ready for a drive of nearly 100 miles to pick up another two moving caches, which also turned out very successful. On my way home I put out one of the ones from the previous week and one of the ones from that very morning.

In the afternoon two friends from Transylvania arrived for the orienteering, followed by several others from the organising team who have been working all day setting up.  They brought bad news of chaos in the assembly field due to the torrential rain all day and the need to retreat to the tarmac area several kilometres away for parking and assembly.  This, of course, made the walks to both starts and the finish very long indeed.

GCFA was placed at the foot of this beauty

In the evening we went to have dinner at Mill Court, which was delicious, as always, and Anna, the proprietor, had gained a few more admirers. We booked a long table for Saturday night, assuming that nobody would feel like cooking after a gruelling long day at the event.

So on Saturday we got going reasonably early, in order to put the remaining two moving caches out and then get to the Start where were detailed to work. Thankfully, we didn't have to walk all the way, as one of our friends gave us a lift.  The event had glorious sunshine and no rain at all and we all had a good time there. Roy managed to spend all his time there sitting, so that was a blessing. He was in charge of watching the starters dibbing in the start box, as if they forgot, they didn't get a time and would have been disqualified. Just the job for him and he looked very happy.

Roy at the orienteering Start

Once all the people have started we helped dismantle the start and scarpered to get home first. I logged all my cache placings and found that the ones from the day before have already been found and moved on.  In the evening we went to Mill Court again, this time it was 15 of us, and had a really, really good time.  There was even some dancing and we took with us Roy's birthday cake which was sitting in the freezer all the time we were in Toronto and which gave me some worries whether it survived without losing its taste.  Well, I can report that it was as good as on day 1 and everybody had a lovely nosh at the end. Plenty of beer, wine and palinka had gone down people's throats too, so even Roy said that while he is not normally very fond of birthday parties, this was really good.

Dinner at Mill Court

On Sunday we had a rest, then tidied up and cleaned up a bit, packed up and departed for town on the 6.15pm bus, after wrapping up the car in blankets and tarpaulins in the garage. We didn't watch the Austin GP, but apparently Lewis won it and reduced his deficit to Rosberg to 26 points, which means that he has to win the remaining 3 races and hope for some disaster to hit Rosberg at least once, if he wants to retain his title.

Finally, today we did some last minute shopping and started packing, which we will finish tomorrow morning before going to the airport. Wish us luck and I'll be back sometime next week or so with the next post.