End of dentist, Robert, the old Jewish cemetery, walnuts, marzipan and a spot of proofreading

When I wrote the "End of dentist" above, I didn't mean the departure of Vivien. It just meant that finally I had my two crowns fitted and thus the end of 7 months' dental visits arrived. Correction: I still have to go  back in January for the hygienist, but otherwise I hope I can forget about the considerable pain in my mouth and in my pocket for 6 months, until the next checkup.

Robert at Volker's memorial

On Tuesday Robert came to lunch and we had such a marvellous time with him. Roy and I cooked the meal together. Roy was in charge mostly, but I did the sweet entirely on my own. First course was cream of vegetable soup with roasted pumpkin seeds, the main course was roast pork with all the trimmings, including apple sauce made with our own apples, followed by chocolate ganache cup with nuts and whipped cream.

Roy, Ros and Ian at the Jewish cemetery

Robert is amazingly good company and as he is a theatrical director and impressario, (now partially retired) and Roy used to be on the stage in his youth, they had plenty to reminisce about. He seems to be coping well with being alone, or perhaps he is just good at hiding his pain. I will see him later on this week when I'm taking two good friends to the theatre and he will be there too.

Old crypts in the Jewish cemetery

Wednesday we visited the old Jewish cemetery with Ros and Ian, as they have never been before and we wanted to see it, because we heard that they have started renovating it and making it safe for visitors. We were both afraid that having it tidied up by amateurs might make it lose its romantic atmosphere, where the dereliction of an old, neglected cemetery was one of its best features.

A Roman looking crypt and memorial in the Jewish cemetery

Well, we were both happy and not so happy.  True, it is now much safer to move about there and some areas have now been cleared of the overgrown vegetation so much so that you can see the monuments clearly, when before you didn't even know they were there. This was good. However, I was a bit upset, as the romantic air was mostly gone, and that is a shame.

The lost family grave is found again

We managed to get into parts of the cemetery we have never been into before, partly because they were impassable and partly because we didn't actually get that far. The upshot of visiting one of these parts was the discovery of one more Czettel grave, that of Gyula Czettel, my great-grandfather's brother, and his wife. Roy never even knew that they were there. His information source is a database, which we think only contains the burials prior to 1900, when the cemetery officially closed. As Gyula and his wife were buried in 1922 and 1938 respectively, there must have been further burials after that time, but perhaps those didn't make it into this database.

Roy and Ian eating pizza

Ros and her pizza

After our visit to the cemetery, we all went to Bocanova, our newly discovered Italian restaurant in the XIVth district for lunch. We all had pizzas, which were superb, especially that they were the traditional thin crust variety, which is harder and harder to find in restaurants nowadays.

Finally, on Thursday we travelled down to Bér, shopping en route, although we didn't make it to Tesco, as we were only going down there for 5 or 6 days, so a roadside greengrocer and Penny Market in Aszód sufficed. The main event of our stay this time was the appearance of Roy's pálinka, all 33 litres of it. Nowadays with fuel costs rising, tax and excise duty going sky high, the price is now 2 or 3 times more than when we started having pálinka distilled from our fruit about 7 years ago. And we still love it, because it is still about half the cost of buying it in the shops and tastes about a 100 times better.

My enormous side salad at the Bocanova

The house was OK, the little birds were making noises most mornings, suggesting that we start filling their winter time feeding bowls and we settled down to a quiet week, after much activity in town and elsewhere.  I was asked to proofread Lenin's Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism for my comrades in London, so I set about doing that. It is hard work, but it makes me re-read the classics of Marxism, which I should do more often anyway. And, of course, volunteering to do it helps to keep costs down prior to publication. The deadline is early January, so I have to get a move on with it through the holidays.

Roy's 33 litres of pálinka in seven 5-litre demijohns

I also started on cracking walnuts, as my nut stock was much diminished in Bér and also, I should crack them all and put them into the freezer before they dry up in their shells.  Frozen nuts stay fresh for years and years and defrost in a few minutes after removal from the freezer.  I never knew this until an old lady in the village told me. She not only cracks but also grinds down her walnuts in October, after harvesting them, and when she wants to make a walnut cake, just takes it all ready from the freezer for as long as her stocks last.

One box of pálinka in bottles

The other two boxes of pálinka in bottles

Ros, when they arrived a couple of weeks ago, brought me a slab of marzipan and I set about making petit fours. I used to make these very often, but somehow I have not bothered for quite a few years now. They are dead easy to make: you roll out the marzipan, dust it with icing sugar, so it won't stick and then use a small round cutter (I used an old film box) to make the base. Then I melted some high fat cocoa butter dark chocolate and tempered it on the marble slab I have. The little round marzipan bits then got covered with this chocolate and either half a walnut or some cherries were stuck into the molten chocolate.  Then they were put into the fridge to go hard and voila, marvellous little presents for friends in the festive season.

Petit fours ready to go into boxes

Then on Tuesday this week we came back into town. I had a concert at the Palace of the Arts, Piotr Anderszewski was playing Bach's Voltemperiertes Klavier and Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, which were very good indeed. He is a nice young man from Poland, with a Hungarian grandmother, so he gets many invitations to play. I was feeling very tired last night, barely able to stay awake during the concert and not because I didn't enjoy the music. The cold I have been nursing for weeks, suddenly decided to go for me in a big way.  So much so, that when I woke up this morning I could barely get out of bed.

So, unfortunately, today's hike with Ros and Ian got cancelled, mostly because I wasn't really up to it, although I had a feeling that Ian wasn't particularly keen on climbing rocks on steel ladders in a ravine in December.  Whatever was the case, we didn't go, but are having a treat from those two, in the form of coffee with one or two Portugese tarts next Monday in a coffe house near their flat as a good-bye before the holidays. Mind you, Roy is concerned whether he is up to having two tarts all in one go, but we'll make sure he is only offered one.

The ravine we didn't go hiking in today

It looks as if we are staying in town until next Wednesday now, as Monday is now taken up with that outing with Ros and Ian and Tuesday the shop where we are planning to buy our next bagful of bird seed en route home, is usually closed, so it'll have to be Wednesday.  I'll write next after that.