The hundred and thirtyseventh week of the pandemic

Last Thursday we both went to the hygienist. I was in for an hour, Roy for only half an hour. Obviously he is not as prone to plaque as I am. The good news was, that Betty, my hygienist, told me that Vivien is back from Italy. She gave me her telephone number and I am going to ring her about returning to her. She is working in another surgery, which is half the distance from home, compared with our current one, so just that should be adequate reason to change. But, of course, I would make the change even if she went to the other end of the city. Vivien is the kindest, nicest and most talented dentist I have ever had. I mourned her departure last year and I am celebrating her return.

Dr. Vivien Sebők

After the dentist we ran round town to do a few things that have been hanging around for ages. We visited a branch of our bank, the Raiffeisen, to set up a direct debit for our landline, TV and internet from Vodafone in the village. So far I have been paying monthly via the internet, but it was time to set this up. The situation in BP was even more chaotic. After the takeover of UPC by Vodafone last year in the city, there has been a complete mess and chaos ruling the entire service. The last big upheaval was in the accounts department, so much so that my direct debit had disappeared and I was getting reminders of paying my bill three different ways. First I received a letter by post, then by SMS and finally by e-mail. Quite a few times I ended up paying it twice, as I got confused and thought I haven't paid it yet. Recently, I rang the accounts department and they confirmed that I have a credit of over 20,000 Ft, which, hopefully, will go towards my next two months' payment.

Finally, I managed to buy a 2023 diary, which currently I can't find, so probably it was left behind in BP when we came down to the village yesterday. I can't think that I would have lost it while on the trolleybus and then the coach, so it must have left it in the flat. I have already entered some appointments and events in there, so I hope it is not lost. It cost almost 2000 Ft, which is just over £7, so I hope it isn't.

Azura in all its magnificence

Talking of events in 2023, we have in the last week booked a cruise again, after not that much deliberation, as both of us have felt for a while now that we should really go. I was first thinking of going to see the Northern Lights in Norway's fjords, but Roy vetoed it. "To cold, too choppy, I don't want to go there!" - was his reaction. So I started looking in the Med and found a lovely fortnight's afloat in Azuria, our of Valletta, first week to Greece and a few islands, second week along the coast of Croatia. It does go to a few places we have been before, (Valletta, Dubrovnik, Rovinj), but most of the ports it calls at are going to be new to us. Mykonos I have always wanted to see, the same with Athens or Split.

Németbánya

And after all this, I managed to actually get prepared to spend the weekend with my friend Edit, who lives in Veszprém and with whom we usually go geocaching. I had to prepare the cache list, which wasn't too easy, as I don't know the area at all. Edit suggested Pápa as a destination, so I had written down the details of 15 caches for the weekend. As it happened, we actually deleted 3, but replaced them with 4 more, 3 of which we found.

The first day we travelled from Veszprém to Pápa and picked up 8 caches along the way. They included an old, abandoned mine's big lake, a spring, two beautiful fishing lakes, the mausoleum and church of the Eszterházy aristocratic family, a castle ruin, an old religious retreat and the city of Pápa. I think of all these there is a toss up for favourite between the fishing lake and the castle. The city of Pápa, especially its historic centre, was also delightful. We got home about 5pm, rather tired, but happy.

On Sunday we made our way towards the city of Ajka, which used to be a mining and industrial centre. In fact, there is still industry, but the mining is now all gone. We started with an adventure park, which was a dreadful cache. The description was all incorrect and several important details were missing. Eventually I rang my friend Wilka, who told me the password. Then we went to the ruin of an old watermill, which was terribly overgrown, but the cache was quite well hidden. The next one was an 18th century calvary, with lovely stages of the cross and a church at both the bottom and the top of it. The vies from the top were gorgeous.

 

Esterházy mauzóleum és templom, Ganna

The next one took us to get another fishing lake, I loved taking pictures there with the sun reflecting of the surface of the water. We had real good luck with the weather. No rain and plenty of sunshine. In the next village we first found a strange but very touching memorial to the casualties of the First World War, while the second part of this was in the old cemetery, where very few headstones have survived.

The real sensations and definitely the highlights of the day, possibly the entire weekend, came at the very end of Sunday. They were both concerned with rocks. At the first one we had to have a little walk into the hills and woods to find some enormous rock walls, while the second one was a whole area of ancient karst cliffs, basically under the surface of the surrounding ground, like in a quarry. Except that th
ese were all natural formations. Absolutely breath taking, I thought, and I was really grateful to geocaching for taking us there.

Magyarpolány

This time we were back at Edit's earlier, perhaps 4:15 pm, so that we could eat something and then Edit took me to the station to catch the 5:32 express train to BP. It was about a quarter of an hour late, but once on board it was quite nice and it only stopped at 4 places. Roy was pleased to see me again, and so was I to see him. Earlier that day I had a bit of a fright, when he wouldn't answer the phone around 3:45 pm. I suspected that he was fast asleep in the lounge with the TV blaring, but other possible causes also haunted me, like he had a funny turn again, or had a fall, or anything else dreadful. Thankfully, after I was just about to ring Éva, who has keys to the flat, to go over and check up on him, he finally picked up the phone. He was asleep with the TV set on and did not hear the phone ring. Phewww!!

Lőrintei-tó, Ajka

And then on Monday we travelled by bus back to Bér. We couldn't shop for food, so we had to go shopping today. In the meantime we ran into the census enumerator lady as we were getting out of the bus in Bér and she promised that she would call on us today. Needless to say, she didn't. Folk around here can be very unreliable. I think I will walk down to the Mayor's office and ask after the Notary. I read online that once you missed filling out your form online and the enumerator has missed you too, you can ask the Notary in your town or village to provide you with a form and help you fill it in, should you need help. I'll think I will do that tomorrow.

Padragkúti sziklák

On the coming Thursday, we are due to go to the doctor's in the village for our flu shots. I do hope we will not have a nasty reaction to this one either, having had 4 lots of Covid jabs with no reaction whatsoever. I was trying to count how many month would have gone past by the time we are due to go on the cruise. As there is now a Pfizer vaccine that give you some immunity to all the Covid variants too, we would like to get that about a month or so before we go. We both had jab 4 in July, so that should be OK, if we got it early March. That would make 8 months, so that's OK, I think.

Úrkúti Őskarszt

Must go now, as I am yawning like I want to swallow the house. Next post roughly in a week, all things being well.