Angst essen Seele auf

Fear Eats the Soul

The title of this, rather tardy, post refers to a fantastic play I have just seen a couple of days ago in the theatre. It is based on a 1974 film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, but which has an amazingly relevant topic for today. The love between an old German woman and a young Moroccan man in 1970's West Germany brings up the question of migration, refugees, racism, discrimination and a lot else besides, issues that still plague us today. I never saw the film at the time, but the play was riveting. Definitely something that was worth going to see.

Miklós Perényi

Apologies for the lateness of this post, but the last nearly two weeks were rather full of stuff, as well as illness. On Saturday, 6th we departed for town as I had a couple of concerts that weekend. Saturday's was a last minute affair, as my friends, Eszter and Gábor had two tickets for sale due to illness of their friends. I bought one of them and they brought Marci, their son with the other, so we sat together up in the balcony at the Music Academy. I always liked Miklós Perényi and he didn't disappoint this time either.

Sunday night's, however, was a scheduled concert on one of my subscription tickets with Bozsa, but the pianist was new, at least to me. He is Andrei Korobeinikov and he has great promise.  Apparently he was a wunderkind, winning lots of awards while extremely young, and we could understand why. Should any of you come across him anywhere, he is to be recommended!

By the river where we couldn't reach the cache

Earlier on the Sunday, Roy and I went to the Buda hills to place a moving cache that was picked up back at the beginning of the month. Unfortunately, the park of the chateau we were hoping to find an ancient tree in could not be reached due to the building being renovated and everything else behind a high fence. While returning to town we called on our friends Nata and Colin to deliver the leftover lanyards, badges and the money I took back at the beginning of July from the visiting hashers for their purchases.  Nata didn't seem to worry about them sitting in a box in my sideboard, but as they live very close to the place we went to, this was a good opportunity to deliver them. Nata was out, but Colin was in and we had a lovely chat with our tea and coffee. They have done wonders with the house, it is very stylish and comfortable for the two of them.

In the quarry by the face rock

We stayed in town for a couple of days after the concerts, partly because we needed a rest, but also because I was going geocaching with Gyuri on Wednesday.  On Tuesday we had a visit from a fellow geocacher who delivered his own moving cache which travels along the routes of hiking competitions. I always try to promote the County of Nógrád and having made a suggestion to him about a route in that county, he agreed and brought the box which we then planned to place en route home on Thursday. It was nice to meet him for the first time, as most of my fellow geocachers I have not yet met. I like this guy in particular as he seems well educated, sensible, friendly and helpful. He assisted me on many occasions when I got stuck with caches in the last few years.

Gyuri photographing the quarry

On Wednesday I fetched Gyuri from the station and off we went to a few places South of Buda, none of them too far. He assured me that the forecast was for sun and no rain. Needless to say that was most certainly not the case, although the morning, while overcast, was at least dry. We started with a cache that we seemed to have overlooked the last time we went to Csepel Island and that was pretty easy. There was a multi nearby, but we didn't feel like it, so that was scrapped. Then we left the island, crossed the river to the Buda side and tried to reach a cache that is difficult to get to when the river is high.  However, when I looked up the river authority's website, they were advising that the level is reasonably low, so that should be OK.

A long straight stream before it started raining

Oh no, it wasn't!!! The alternatives were between swinging from trees like Tarzan, due to the very thick jungle below, or getting our feet wet on the bank. We scrapped this one too, although later Gyuri managed to get the password for logging it from somebody else, so that was OK. After this episode came one of the best caches of the day. It was hidden behind a very thorny bush in a crevice of the crag that went quite a few feet up to the top of the quarry all around us.  It was a bit hairy to teeter on several precipices, but it was fun and we both managed it. Unfortunately by then it was very misty, so the panorama, which otherwise would have been spectacular, was shrouded in mist.

The Ravine

The next one was by an interesting looking ravine but first we approached from the wrong direction, so we had to get back into the car, drive round the bottom end the ravine and try again.  We were also chased by loose dogs, which is not one of my favourite activities, but thankfully we ran faster than them and they lost the urge to have us for lunch.

Believe it or not, this is a church

After these first few caches we drove across to another town and started on their caches. First there was one by an outdoor skanzen type place, which unfortunately was closed, but we still peered in and the cache was outside anyway. Then we had one just outside the museum, which looked nice, followed by a couple of 5-parter multis, which were not much fun. First of all it has started raining quite hard by then, and some of the locations were pretty iffy which I wouldn't hang  around, not even in good weather. We scrapped those too as well as abandoning the rest of the day, due to getting soaked.

St. Stephen aka Batman

All in all, as far as caching was concerned, this day was not very good, but the company was excellent, so I am not complaining.  Needless to say, Gyuri with his secret contacts (I reckon he is hacking into the geocaching.hu database), he sent me the passwords of both multis, so the total logged wasn't too shabby.

A giant Rubik cube in the centre of Batta

The following morning we departed in the direction of the village, making a detour to where the hiking cache was supposed to start. I had to climb a big hill, because I wasn't sure if I was on the right path, but looking around at the top confirmed that I was, so I placed it there and hightailed it back to Roy in the car at the bottom of the hill. It was awfully misty again, so the photographs were nothing to write home about.

In the Nógrád hills on a dull day

The main event of the week since we arrived in the village has to be the firing up of the pottery stove. You may recall me moaning about it not wanting to light and I was terribly worried that there might have been a blockage in the chimney or a collapse inside the stove.  Roy got his brushes out and swept the chimney, reporting that he had found no blockage, so the day after we arrived back we decided to have another go at lighting a fire in the stove. The day was pretty cold and windy, so I thought if it doesn't light again or goes out after lighting, we'll have no option but call the guy who built it.

The stove back in commission

Well, I am happy to report that it lit up like a bonfire and is still going, so hopefully the problem, whatever it was, has gone. Unfortunately, when we go back to town on Saturday, we'll be away for nearly a fortnight, so the lighting up palaver will have to be repeated again. Let's hope it'll be easier this time.

James Norton

A sprinkling of snow thia week

This week so far has been spent on the computer, Roy doing family history research, me watching TV, carrying on with the password database and transcribing registers. One of my favourites currently on the box is McMafia, which I gather is having a lot of bad comments for the subtitles being too  small and disappearing too quickly and the plot being too complicated, slow and boring.  Well, I think these comments are a reflection of the quality of British television viewers, not of the series. The only one I would allow in a small way, is the complicated story-line, which you really have to concentrate on if you want to understand where the whole thing is going, but otherwise I think in its own genre it is very good and I especially love James Norton.

This is where we watch the birds

I am glad that a good few of my favourites are back or coming back soon, including Vera, Silent Witness and Doctor Who. Unfortunately my eyes are beginning to complain when I sit in front of the computer monitor for too long, but just watching programs is not so hard on one's eyes, as reading and typing.

Two of our little darlings who eat all day not to freeze

I will have to dart into town again tomorrow, as the Music Academy has a Mitsuko Uchida concert, which cannot be missed. I'll be back home the following morning, although my favourite bus from Aszód now leaves a half hour earlier than before, so I will have to work out another route to it, possibly by train. If not, I might have to catch an earlier bus, which I think leaves before 6am. Brrrrr, not in this winter I think, so the most likely outcome will be that I'll stick to the afternoon bus, which hopefully still goes at 13:35 and goes directly to Bér.

I promise not to leave it this long again, but who knows, I might be too busy again right through January.