Dentist x 2, 11 published caches, Italian food and a geocaching weekend

This post is about yet another hectic week. I am beginning to give up hope that we will ever be able to cut down on activities. Still, I am only doing all this because I love it, so as long as it gives me pleasure, even if it tires me out, I am not likely to give it up.

A spring dedicated to the Virgin Mary

The main event of the beginning of the week was that finally, after 8 months' hard graft my 11 caches at 11 Nógrád springs were published. I was really worried about them, but now that every single one of them was found at least 4 times, and many a lot more times than that, I can be calm and enjoy watching the number of hits rise every day. I am not at all sure that if I knew in February what I know now, whether I would have started it at all. However, now that the pain is over, I am looking forward to the pleasure side of it.

Another spring, this time called after a communist partisan

You may recall that I had to find a dermatologist to investigate my genetic disorder that the ophthalmologist thought he saw at the back of my eyes. I had to study lists of doctors to try and find a dermatologist who is also into genetics, and finally I found two. One of them has consulting hours at the hospital Roy had his operation, so I am going to see her tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed that she doesn't find anything too bad!

Alex speaking on Ontario history in the 1990's

I also managed to finish Alex's transcription, which was heavy going and sent it to him to check, edit and then publish. It is always hard to know what to leave out or change when listening to a speech. The style is totally different between oral and written language in most people, but it is a fine line you have to tread when there is a risk that the speaker had something else in mind from the transcriber. The first half did not flow as well as the second one, which is not surprising. The time period covered started in 1995 and finished in 1999. The closer you get to the present time, Alex knew more and more about his subject matter. He had to read up books and many articles, essays etc. for the period he didn't live in Canada and was not as familiar with as the time since he arrived.The last 10 minutes of the video was vintage Alex, but the earlier parts were a bit disjointed at times and as I know very little about Canadian politics, I often couldn't guess what he was on about.  Still, I am glad I have done it, as I have learnt a lot, as well as saved Alex some work.

A Procera implant

I had two visits to the dentist recently, both on Mondays. Last week she did a two faced and a simple filling and that cost about £120. Considering her excellent skill I think that was very cheap. Then yesterday I had a three faced filling, which was only £50, which was even better.  Unfortunately the next lot of work she is doing is going to be £800 by the time she finished, but for that I will get two big Procera crowns and a pin in one of the teeth, made out of fibre glass, to support it. Dental technology has come a hell of a way since my poor old mum worked as an assistant in a shop supplying dentists. It is a price, but the stuff lasts longer and saves you visits to the dentist later.  This Procera brand is from the US, where they have large machines that make porcelain crowns from computerised imprints. Amazing, and if you think that my crowns will come all the way from the US, the price suddenly doesn't seem too expensive. I might also need implants in the future, although annoyingly the two places where I would need them are unsuitable for implantation. One because the undescended tooth is above it and you can only fix implants into bone, and the other because my actual tooth from that space has only recently been extracted and it may be that I am too old to grow enough bone to fix an implant into. We'll see how it goes!

Restaurant on the right, patisserie on the left

Another interesting discovery was made when we went for a lovely lunch on Wednesday in an Italian restaurant called Bocanova. We park the car out at the terminus of the trolley bus that stops in front of our block, as there are no parking restrictions (yet) in that district. En route to and from on the trolley bus we often commented on that restaurant and as we are always after new places to visit, this week was the one when we tried it.  And what a discovery that was! That place is probably the only genuine, high quality Italian place in the entire city. We will go again, that's for sure, and probably take others there to discover this very well kept secret.

Linguini aglio olio e peperoncino

I had my favourite pasta dish, the name of which I never know how to spell, but it is plain durum pasta, cooked al dente and mixed with lots of sliced fresh garlic and olive oil infused with chilies. Roy had also pasta, but his had calamari with it and both of us were absolutely delighted. The next time, I think I am having the fish plate, which has shark in it, a complete novelty for me and Roy will probably go for some meat dish, as there were quite a few exciting ones on the menu.

Transylvanian gate and my friend Feri

And then the main event of the week arrived in the shape of a geocaching weekend away with Roy. These are not very frequent, but he felt like coming this time, as he didn't know the area I was going to. We had a couple of nights in a very nice hotel, which was right next to some medicinal thermal baths, the waters of which, unfortunately, we didn't have the time to try. That was a shame, as the price of our room included free passes to the baths. We will have to return and try the baths then.

A 10km route all over Komárom with Roy. Hotel in NE corner

This time we decided to use our free travel passes and went by train. As the hotel was quite a distance from the train station we invested the princely figure of £2.50 in a taxi ride and arrived in good spirit. One of my geocaching friends, Feri, was due to arrive in the same hotel in the evening, but before that Roy and I decided to go and discover the town of Komárom on foot and find a couple of multi-caches in the process. The weather was glorious, the town quite interesting in places and we did find all cache locations bar three. More about this later!

Courtyard view of one of the forts

Town multis are absolutely perfect for getting to know the attractions of a place.  Komárom's attractions included, the Danube bank, several 18th-19th century military forts, some lovely old buildings, lots of memorials, churches, statues, parks, lakes, barracks and a few besides. We were out for about 5 hours, 1 hour of which was a nice little cafe where we had drinks and surreptitiously ate our sandwiches. This makes for an average of a mile and a half per hour as my hiking map tells me that we walked 10km a.k.a. 6 miles. Roy's feet were hurting by the end of it and my knees were also complaining, but this was very enjoyable indeed.

Down by the Danube

Down on the Danube bank we met a really chatty bloke who was taking the air with his mate. I have to say, that being a very chatty person myself, I never thought I would ever meet anyone who can out-talk me. He certainly did, but that was also part of the charm of the place. It was just before this meeting that we decided that the missing 3 parts of one of the multis would not be visited.  Partially because they were on the other side of the river in Slovakia, partly because Roy managed to get round the need for going there, but how, that should stay our secret.

The boat mill

After Feri arrived in the evening we agreed to go to breakfast at 7am the following morning and start our caching trip in Slovakia as early as we could. We had 10 caches on the list, to which Feri added one more that he failed to spot on the map originally. We got going about 8am or just a bit earlier and got back just after 6pm. Feri drove us in a zig-zag pattern starting to veer towards the NW and then back East, followed by South and finally back West. He ended up driving 300km and the cache total was 10. We had to leave one out at the end, as it was getting dark.

The covered bridge

Some caches were great, some others awful, the sights were variable.  The town of Leva was interesting, with a lovely old castle, the other great place was a monastery with a massive big church and high stone walls.  The latter was a bit stupid cache-wise as we found out later that the coordinates were crap. No wonder we took a while to find it. The star attraction for probably all of us was a gloriously restored boat-mill where they were getting ready for a cooking competition and you crossed the river on a long covered bridge, which was also very pretty.

Gyuri and other caches at the festival

In the evening we discovered the restaurant right across from the hotel was open, so had dinner there. Poor old Feri was so exhausted that he went to bed early after eating very little. Still, he was up early the following morning when we departed to the Gerecse mountains to visit lots of geocachers who were gathering for a festival and competition there.  Feri and I never compete, but it is nice to go and meet up with fellow cachers, some of whom you have probably not seen since the last such event in the spring.

The monastery church at Garamszentbenedek

I picked up my lovely T-shirt, which the club gave to everybody who had found at least 3 of the event caches that were paid for by the National Tourism Agency over the summer. I have visited and found precisely 3: one in Szeged, one in Sátoraljaújhely and the first one in Békéscsaba when visiting my good friend Gyuri for some additional caching in July. I also bought a nice, frosted glass tankard with the geocaching logo on it for Roy at one of the stalls at the festival. He is so difficult to buy anything for, but he was pleased with this one.

A massive rock on the last day

Musicians on top of the rockface

After lots of chatting and socialising, we left the others and started on our return to town, picking up a couple of caches en route. They were both on top of mountains, but unfortunately I left both my phone and my camera in the car for the first one, so no photos from that. The second, also the very last of the weekend was at the end of a not too long hike with some climb, but nothing too serious.  The rocks at the end, however, were. Gorgeous, exposed limestone rocks, the top of which was full of people, including about 5 singers and musicians with drums and recorders. The music could be heard from quite a distance and made the whole affair a bit spooky.

The view

The kids' group on top of the rock

The cache up there was also one that should be published for new cache owners for copying. The coordinates were spot on, the hide was witty, safe and not too difficult to find, due to an excellent and perfect description of it on the cache page. I had to do some lovely scrambling to get to it, which I loved, but at no time did I have the fear of falling, as it was in the forest with trees to hang onto.  The weekend finished on a high, which was really nice.