Caching, Szombathely, English friends and the Debussy/Ravel marathon

The first geocaching trip of 2019 was a rip-roaring success. We got going a bit late, so the first day's caching was restricted to the afternoon. The highlight of that day was a cute little village with a pretty row of wine cellars. The weather was great, bright and sunny, albeit a bit cold, and we arrived at our destination about 5:30pm.

Festetich Chateau Hotel, Szeleste

We had a lovely, comfortable and well heated attic bedroom in a beautifully renovated old Esterházy chateau in Szeleste. We have been here before, as about 18 or 20 months ago, when we were returning from Kőszeg, we dropped in to the arboretum next to the chateau for the cache there. I remember trying to peep through the bushes to see the chateau and not seeing much. I think they had a wedding on and I didn't want to intrude.

Massive wine barrel by on of the cellars we visited

One of the fancy cellars and winery centres

The staff and the food were fine, although my digestion complained a bit for eating meat two nights in a row. The middle day of our 3 days away was spent in Szombathely, which is the county town of Vas county and which I have only been at once before and not under very fortunate circumstances.  On the last day of the very last orienteering event I have ever competed in I managed to whack my head against a rock and had to go for a head CT at Szombathely hospital. That experience summed up the state of Hungary's health service perfectly, so I better not go into too much detail.

This time round, however, the town afforded much more fun. Starting with running into two good geocaching friends, completely by fluke, who were also spending that day in Szombathely  caching. I immediately suggested that they join us and off we went, all four of us, all round the town and just outside it, to pick up every cache that there was.

Pápa cathedral

Pápa chateau

The centre of the town had traffic restrictions, so we parked up and walked about on the traffic-less streets, seeing the sights and picking up a thousand points for the myriad of multi-caches there.  Normally I hate multis, but this time having the guys there plus the town was quite interesting too, we had a good time. "We" means Roy as well, because he decided to join us and that was quite a treat.

James Joyce's bronze statue in Szombathely

Main Square in Szombathely

Talking of which, the guys treated us to cakes, tea, coffee and hot chocolate, in lieu of lunch, so the day went off great. We visited many places, including churches, a synagogue, lots of statues and memorials, an incredible, enormous mural, which represented the history of the town, including Roman times. We followed St. Martin's trail, saw a lovely lake, a cute old choo-choo train, and even replaced a tatty old box with a nice new one by a look-out tower.

Feri, Karesz and Roy in Szombathely

Szombathely synagogue

At the end of the day we put the guys on the train back to BP and returned to Szeleste, to our lovely chateau. Attached to the hotel was a spa, but unfortunately we couldn't make use of it as we both have a cold and Roy is not that keen on spas anyway.

Weöres Sándor and Feri, passing the time

On the last day we had our breakfast early, paid our bill and departed for the trip home. We got a bit lost en route, as our Tom Tom is a bit ancient and the signposting was awful, but recovered the route and saw some more amazing sights again. Two old chateaus were on the list, one of which felt like you could film a horror film at, the other one was a lot better restored and the park round it tidier. We visited a weird village where the houses were painted by hippies in the nineties, but a few of the paintings still survive and looked crazy.

Spooky, empty chateau

Roy propping up two enormous plane trees

Unfortunately, there were multies that day as well, but we put up with them with good grace and even enjoyed the sights occasionally. The list included a cute little chapel in the middle of nowhere, a lovely lonely fishing lake which was totally abandoned for the winter, another chateau, where the park had some 200 and 300 year old trees and finally, the most dramatic site gave us a feel for what it must have been like over 8 years ago, when toxic waste engulfed a village, killed 10 people, maimed dozens more and demolished 3/4 of the village.

Old photo of the inundation

This disaster was totally man-made. The nearby aluminium smelting plant stored its toxic waste right above the village on a hill and failed to carry out any inspections or maintenance of it.  No wonder that it gave way and emptied itself all over several villages. I went to the memorial park, where there was one original house left in its hulk form, that it obtained during the disaster.  Inside there was an exhibition of photographs and a very telling memorial tablet. Yes, human negligence and greed was responsible for all of it, and I am sorry to have to say that nobody has actually been punished for it to this day.

Amadinda

We bought a motorway pass once we got close to the motorway, as we couldn't face normal roads after 3 days and were very anxious to get home. It was about 7pm when we got in and I actually had fallen over like a felled tree by 8:30pm, straight into bed.

Indian lunch

All of us round the table at the Punjab Tandoori

On Friday, we had a gathering with some friends (Ros, Nata, Ian and Colin), to have a chat at Ros and Ian's flat first, followed by lunch at the Punjab Tandoori, our favourite Indian Restaurant. The food was delicious, the mango lassi even more so. We had a lovely time, as usual. We also agreed to go out to dinner again, all six of us, in the spring and I suggested the Rosenstein Restaurant, near Keleti Station, as I have heard very good reports of it. They all said yes, so it'll probably happen in May, when Ros and Ian are back again.

The Palace of the Arts from the second floor

Debussy and Ravel

Finally, yesterday I attended the Debussy/Ravel marathon at the Palace of the Arts with my old friend Vera, and that was very special indeed. One of the great discoveries for me was the Amadinda group that is a team of 4 percussionists, who play mostly transcriptions, and, when they get the chance, some pieces that are especially written for percussion instruments. They also played some gamelean music from Java and Bali, which was a revelation. We heard that they are having a full concert in May to celebrate their 35th anniversary and bought tickets there and then.

Now I am catching up on the computer and later have an appointment back at the genetics clinic to have the specialist explain to me their findings about my pseudoxanthoma elasticum (or hopefully not), followed by fetching my laptop, which has apparently been repaired for the princely sum of £80. I will probably pop into the opticians too, as they have promised my new reading/computer glasses for today, just in case it's ready. We are off to the village tomorrow, so it would be nice if it was.

Next post now from the village next week!


PS: Glasses arrived and they are great. I am wearing them as I type this.  They are for reading and especially for staring into a computer monitor, of which I do a fair amount nowadays.

The laptop was done and while it is just as slow as before, at least you can turn it on and off again, which constitutes a great improvement.

I have seen the geneticist lady and she told me that they could find no evidence of the condition with the long Latin name, but that doesn't mean that I don't have it.  ISN'T GENETICS WONDERFUL? However, she reckoned that unless I am really anxious to get rid of another £600 or £700 for a further sequencing exercise, I should first see someone about the symptoms. I told her that I also thought that was a sensible thing to do, but  could not find anyone who was any good. Then she told me that she found some in Debrecen who had written her PhD thesis on Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum and she'll find out for me how I can contact her.  Mind you, if she is as good as it seems she is, it is highly unlikely that she is still in this country. The brain drain is alive and well in these parts too. We'll see$ Currently I am a bit sick of doctors, even absolutely lovely ones like today's lady was, so I am having a break and we'll see what happens in the spring.