Near two weeks, full of action

Apologies for tardiness yet again, but I think we squeezed a minimum of 3 weeks into these last nearly two weeks. On Tuesday before last we had Heino come over and had a lovely time with him, drinking out in the Pavilion and chewing the fat. He was on his own, because Manet's ex-husband took a sudden turn for the worse and she had to fly back home. They are not very lucky this year with family problems, I do hope these will settle down and we'll see them more often and for longer in future.

Manet in an old photo

In the evening I participated in an online meeting of the leading comrades, discussing and organising the future structure of our Fáklya branch and preparing the following day's branch meeting. It is still a bit of a mess, but we will sort it. Levi agrees with my criticisms, but says that this is the price they are now paying for not setting up the correct structures and rules when they started. Typical teething problems, they are not the first suffering from them and won't be the last either. 

Wild flowers near the cache near the M2

On Wednesday we travelled in to BP and did a little bit of geocaching en route. Very close to the M2 there is a wild bit of terrain with an interesting hill, and that is where the cache was. My initially planned route was obliterated by a sand quarry, so we went a bit further to the right and I walked in from there.  

Fáklya logo

Later on in the day I took part in the Fáklya branch meeting online and which was a bit firy. Initially two and finally three comrades have resigned and the whole branch was a bit shocked. Personally, I was glad. A fledgling, quite new and still fairly green group needs willing, enthusiastic and ready to learn comrades. These three were nothing like that, so I was not heartbroken.

Lángos with garlic, sour cream and cheese

 

On Thursday Roy and I had run some errands: first we went to Nespresso to take back the used capsules and we also had a free coffee. We also bought a couple of sachets of machine cleaner, as both  coffee machines are in need of a good cleanout. We also made a recce of  a lángos place near the station, so we could take Stephen there when he came.

Brandi, my new teddybear

 

On Friday we finally went and bought some good sourdough bread from the Doktor és Pék bakery and fetched my belated present from Zsuzsa Hegedüs that was delivered to a FoxPost locker. It was a really cute little bear that she made herself.

Stephen enjoying his food in the Paprika

And after all this, Stephen arrived on Sunday evening on an amazingly on time Easyjet flight. He now has a bunch of keys, so can come and go as he pleases. Before we departed to Bér we took Stephen to the Paprika and had a lovely lunch with him. Typical sod's law: two different sets of visitors chose to arrive almost at the same time. Monday evening was the turn of Serena and Anne to land and they arrived quite promptly too. As we were taking them straight to Bér, we went to do a bit of food shopping in Vecsés Tesco and then waited for their message to come and fetch them from the pick up point in front of the airport. We even managed to do this within the 5 minute limit, so it was free.

Serena and Anne on the rhyolite tuff rocks

The following day the three of us went for a nice hike in Northern Nógrád, where I still had two geocaches to find. The distance was approximately 10 km, with a few hundred metres of climb, but the biggest challenge was the extremely high temperatures right through the day. By the hottest time in the afternoon, it was up to 33 degrees Celsius in the sun. Thankfully, we walked mostly in forest and only had strong sunshine towards the end of the hike.

Anne by a missing cache

It must have been the heat, but we couldn't find either cache, even though we navigated correctly to the hides. Both were old caches, which are not very well maintained, so it didn't surprise me. It was only shame that I couldn't show Serena and Anne what a cache box looks like, otherwise I am never upset at not finding them. I geocache for the adventure of hiking to an interesting and/or beautiful place, or finding out something I never knew before, or conquering a challenge. The manic looking for little boxes is not my cup of tea.

White Chair, the rhyolite tuff information board

The fascinating aspect of this walk was twofold: 1. the two amazing geological sites, which were definitely worth the effort to get to; 2. the lucky accident towards the end, more of which a bit later. First I need to explain what is rhyolite tuff. It is a volcanic rock, which is very rich in silica and therefore it comes to the surface by explosion, rather than in magma. Hungary is one of the places where there are several places where you can find it, but the most famous place for this is Cappadocia in Turkey. 

The rock wall with the sticking out rocks

I have been to both rhyolite places in my county, mostly because they are fascinating, but also because both have a geocache attached to them. Once we left that Moon-like terrain, we moved on and arrived at the bottom of a very steep hill, where we were looking for a rock with a big hole in it. These were probably also volcanic, but reminded me of another place in Nógrád, where I have myself placed a cache. Here, there were several different type of rocks in the same rockwall, and strange formations appeared where the softer rock eroded over the years, and the harder ones were sticking out.

Little red mushroom in the forest

 

The last few kilometres were a pain. We had to go on a wide country road, which had white chippings and it reflected the sun which mercilessly shone on us. I was praying for a lift and in spite of fact that I am an atheist, my prayer was answered. A guy, who normally hunts in the forests where we walked through, this time came to pick some mushrooms. His basket was full to the brim with giant porcini mushrooms, and he offered us a lift into Ivád, the nearest village. He even gave us 4 large mushrooms to make our tea out of.

Anne and Serena in the Ivád pub

In the village we spotted what first looked like a cafe offering ice cream, and which then turned out to be a pub. Ivád is no bigger than Bér, but it actually provides enough business for two pubs, which is amazing. Obviously, the citizens of Ivád are somewhat better off than those of Bér. Serena had a pint, Anne had two glasses of mineral water with ice and a diet Coke, while I only had one glass of mineral water with ice. This all came to the princely figure of £2.10. However, the real sensation were the citizens of Ivád. They were friendly, chatty and really welcoming. We had about an hour and a half to kill, as we missed the earlier bus, and had to wait for the next one.

A museum piece fire engine in Ivád

Rudi bácsi, (Uncle Rudolph in English), struck up a conversation with us and we really enjoyed everybody's company there. I have a feeling that a sort of bush telegraph was used to pass round the info about foreigners in the pub, as one after another guy turned up, until there were no more tables unoccupied on the terrace. I decided that I'll have to take Roy there sometime, as not just the price of beer, but the lovely people would make him very happy.

Serena with the cache box

 

As our hike was linear, we had to catch two buses back to the car. That worked like a clockwork, I will have to revise my opinion of country buses, based on that. After getting back to the car we drove home and I cooked a Hungarian chicken paprikash with dumplings for tea, which went down well. Wednesday we were planning to go back to Budapest after lunch, so we only had a little time in the village. In the morning I walked the girls round the village, we saw the church, the parsonage, the restored watermill and there I finally showed them what a geocache box looks like. This was my own near the mill, and they signed the logbook that they found it.

Serena and Anne eating lángos

 

Instead of leaving after lunch, we left just after midday and had a fantastic lángos for lunch along the A3, like we did with Alex a few weeks before. I am happy to report that they all went down pretty fast, yet another Hungarian food stuff that met with the girls' approval. Stephen was at home when we turned up and he was packing, as his flight was that evening. There was some drama, when he couldn't find his glasses and after looking several times, we couldn't find it either. Finally, it was Roy, while sitting on the loo that spotted it under my sponge bag, as his eyes were roughly level with the glasses. It must have fallen off the windowsill and slipped under my sponge bag.

The Fishermen's Bastion on Castle Hill

After Stephen's departure the four of us went up to the Castle District, which was a bit tiring, but very enjoyable. Initially we booked a table at the Paprika, but had to cancel that and book at the Vigadó instead. The Vigadó is at the bottom of Castle Hill, so we pootled downhill until we got there. Sat on the terrace and dinner was the girls' treat. On Thursday morning the girls went out on their own and manage to catch a Danube river cruise for an hour and a quarter. Once they got back we had lunch and after that we went with them to the 100E bus, which goes straight to the airport.  I tracked their departure, which unfortunately didn't happen until after 3 hours' waiting in the airport.

The Parliament at night with boat on the Danube

This week was thoroughly enjoyable, but it also made us realise that no way can we do something like this again. We are incapable to keep up this much activity day after day. It won't be easy, as we have been very active all our lives, but these 5 days were so tiring that we were in danger of doing harm to ourselves in traffic or in other situations. I call it either brain fade, or becoming brain dead. We are still not fully recovered and need rest.

The Matthias Rex, the girls' river boat

On Friday we came back down to the village, but the heat is so horrific, with over 40 deg C in the sun, that we have to hide indoors from the heat, and do what we need to do either before 7 am or after 8 pm. The two new little trees need watering every day, or even twice a day, while we are here. The weeds seem to be killing the grass, so they need to be cut, but again, when? Global warming is a man made suicide mission and we are suffering already. We are here until next Wednesday, when I have to chair a meeting and then there is not much point coming back to Bér, as I am off to Scotland with Laci on Sunday at the crack of dawn. Next week's post is going to be late again, but I'll try to write it before I go to Scotland.