Yet another insanely busy week (are there any other kind?)

After my last post - Tuesday was a day of rest. The outing to the Matra was fun, but I was rather wrecked, especially by the bus trip home. The rest was also in aid of setting me up for a few days in town, as I had to go in for a couple of concert/opera outings as well as a few things to sort.

My trusty old Nokia Lumia 800

Roy stayed behind and as the weather was pretty freezing, he mostly stayed indoors. As soon as I got to town my first job was to find someone to have a look at my mobile. There was this little place not too far from the flat and I thought I would start with that.  Good decision!! The little fella inside took the cover off and then showed me where the SIM card resides.  Not having had any trouble with this phone before, I had no idea where it was.  He pulled it out and put it back. The phone worked perfectly after that.  Funnily enough, I knew that should have been tried before, but had no idea where the SIM card slot was. Mistakenly, I thought you can't remove it, which is, of course, seriously silly, as that should always be independent of the phone's innards.  I got myself confused with the battery, which is definitely not removable from this phone, so when that goes, I will have to buy a new phone.

My old camera, now repaired

The second job was to get to the other end of the city to fetch my old camera from the repairers. It cost a bit over £40 and it is now the fall-back camera, rather than having a second battery for the new one. In fact, I think I still prefer the old one, as it is just that fraction smaller and fits into my pocket better.

The new one just that bit too big for small pockets

En route home I popped into my favourite health food shop and bought some more vitamin C capsules and another big box of my probiotic, BIO KULT, so that I won't run out of them for a while. I also tried to get my Eliquis in the corner pharmacy near the flat, but they not only didn't have it in (that's quite common), but told me they couldn't get it in from the wholesalers as they didn't have it either.  How pathetic! So I went on a bit of a detour to another one, where I always had very good service, friendly, helpful and knowledgeable pharmacists behind the counter and got it straight away. I suspect that they now stock just one box, as we have purchased this quite often there and they think that the risk of it going old on them no longer exists.

Andrea Vígh

The concert in the evening was very good indeed. Both Bozsa and I looked totally done in, but we both managed to stay awake and enjoy the superb harp and cello music on offer. Andrea Vígh and István Várdai are amongst my absolute favourites and all the music was Saint Saens, which made it that much better.

István Várdai

Thursday brought even colder weather, so when I departed to the hills West of the city I was wrapped up looking like the Michelin man. I was after a couple of caches, one en route to the top and the other at the top. The one half way up was actually the very first geocache placed in the country back in 2001. It certainly looked as if not many people found it since, as it took me ages to locate it. The view from there was superb and I took lots of lovely photos in the sparkling sunshine.

Not far from the first cache

I climbed up to the top of the lookout tower at the summit and saw amazing countryside all round.  It was your classical 360 degree view, but this time all the fog and cloud was in the valleys, with the tops of mountains peering out through it. Fascinating indeed!

As the weather persevered sunny and it didn't get any colder on Friday, I managed a little hike with my friend Zsuzsi to some interesting looking limestone rocks and to a fake castle which was built nearly 50 years ago as a film set. We also visited the nearest village to the rocks, which didnát have a particularly nice feel to it, but still had an old baroque church and some old gravestones.

In the afternoon I managed to collect one more cache, which was in town, at the reception of the newly opened Pinball Museum. I never liked pinball machines sufficiently to spend more that a few inutes on them, so my focus was to get the cache and get out.  I was in a hurry, as my opera that night started at 6pm and I didn't want to be late.

The lookout tower

Looking down from the top of the lookout tower

It was a performance of Don Giovanni, and it was excellent. Erwin Schrott sang the title role and a selection of performers, whom I was not familiar with, were also first class.  Especially the one in the role of Leporello, Miklós Sebestyén whose smooth, soft and beautiful bass-baritone was magical and his acting very good too. Schrott was also a very good actor, lots of bravado, fun and talking to the audience vowed everyone. He was definitely larger than life, obviously enjoying the role and a very good looking guy too. I hope he comes our way often in future!!

Erwin Schrott

Miklós Sebestyén

It was also the first time I was actually sitting in the seat written on my subscription ticket. I managed to miss the first 3 performances on this ticket through being ill, the performance clashing with something else or being abroad. I have already gone to see the first and the third since and have a ticket for the second, but this time I had my normal seat, which I must admit is very good. I think I will definitely renew my First Night subscription ticket for next year, as this seat is worth hanging onto.

Rocks in the forest

The camel rock

The phoney castle

And then, after some shopping, I was picked up on Saturday morning by Laci and Márti, our friends who were coming down to the village for the weekend. What a treat not to have to be bumped about for 2 hours plus on the bus! We were both very pleased that they decided to come down and spend time with us, even though the choice of the weekend stopped us attending an apparently excellent Hash Christmas party.

We had lots of lovely chat, food and drink together during the weekend, we had Saturday dinner at the Mill and they have gone on a couple of walks just the two of them, first around the village and on Sunday to the andesite rocks a half an hour away. We really enjoyed their company and we might get together over Christmas in town.

The only other, and somewhat worrying, event during the weekend was a possible plumbing disaster which Roy managed to catch in time. He suspected that there might be a frozen plug in one of the pipes in the back room of the Bunkhouse, due to him having forgotten to drain the pipe after our visitors last week. Thankfully, he caught it in good time, fuffed around with it for ages, but managed to unfreeze the two ice blockages he eventually found, before they got big enough to break the pipe. We decided to raise the temperature in the Bunkhouse from 5 degrees Celsius to 10, as this winter seems a lot colder than the last few.

I had very little time watching TV last week, but still managed to catch Who Do You Think You Are on the BBC, which is one of our absolute favourites and I have been watching my usual US cop shows and thrillers, which keep me entertained on cold days.

Now I have to log off, due to a proofreading assignment, which I took on and as it has to be done by the end of the year, I'd better get on with it!