New (old) phone, New book to read at reading group and winter arrived

You will be pleased the hear that finally, after two whole weeks, I got my phone back. While on the day when I took it to Samsung to have it repaired I spoke to a  lovely guy, this time I got the biggest, rudest and most ignorant moron on the planet. To cut a long and frustrating story short, the phone was OK, but I still had to go back to Yettel, my service provider, to have everything sorted with the SIM cards and a few allied problems.

Beautiful red sunset

The Yettel guy was a gem. Patient, helpful and very efficient. Obviously, I will have lots of work with the phone yet, as it came back totally cleared to how it came out of the factory. I am slowly setting it up, today I got as far as putting a lovely screen saver on it. I pinched it from one of Alex's FB posts, where he photographed a setting sun sinking into a red Lake Ontario. It is very nice and I love it.

Volker and Robert, back in 2017

 

But, to get back to last week, We did have a really delightful lunch with Robert in the Regős. We liked the food, we had a really good chinwag and decided that we ought to meet a bit more often than once a year. He has done a lot of travelling last year, so it is no wonder that it was difficult to catch up with him. He told us about a lovely place in Portugal, up in the mountains, where he spent 2 months in the summer, and where the temperature was never above 25 degrees Celsius. While all that time Roy and I were melting in the 40+ degrees of heat that stopped us going anywhere in the hottest months.

The big birthday cake for the 5000th cache

On Friday we came home to Bér, as I had something to do in the Mátra again, but this time the weather was absolutely gorgeous. It came to pass that geocaching.hu had arrived at its 5000th geocache, which we got together to find and then have a little celebration. Viktor was there too and I drove up on my own from Bér. The sun shone, which was aggravating, considering that the two previous Saturdays, (one for the hike and the other for caching with Viktor in the Mátra), the weather was either torrential rain or freezing temperatures, followed by flooding.

Fazék, the President addresses the crowd

 

We all enjoyed ourselves. There were around 100 cachers there and by the end of the day we could log 4 geocaches, which was good going. There was the 5000th, then it was the event cache, and finally there were two moving ones, that people brought, so we could find and log them. Unfortunately, while hunting these, I managed to miss the cake, which was very large, but still not big enough to feed 100 people.

Samsung

 

Monday was spent with preparing for the week's reading group and branch meeting, as well as dealing with some stuff in the village. I finally managed to catch up with Pali, who told me that the cefre will not go to the still until mid-December the earliest. Phoning the Samsung sevice centre was a totally futile exercise, so we decided we must pop into BP, so that we could chase the phone, as well as then we can offer the flat for the week's branch meeting.

I also went to the reading group in person, and we had a good time starting to discuss Engels's The Origins of the family, private property and the state. Good discussions and a few interesting new people added to the meeting. The branch was back at the flat on Wednesday, the leadoff was on Marxism and Anarchism by Seba. We are also having problems with the Auróra, where we are holding the fortnightly reading group and were trying to get a room for a Marxmas Party in December. I don't know whether management is just absolutely chaotic and the right hand doesn't know what the left hand does, or there is a tendency in trying to get rid of us out of there, but we were pushed from pillar to post on Tuesday and told there were no free times in the cellar for our party at all.

Today, I heard from Zsófi that after all there are some free dates, and now it looks we'll be there on Tuesday on 19th December. I hope they will not suddenly have second thoughts, dressed up as a hiccup in the diary. Call me cynical, but I can't believe they are this badly organised. We'll see! - said the blind man.

The branch meeting went off quite well, Seba's leadoff was a bit tentative, but very good. The finances are a bit chaotic, but we have about £1500, which is thanks to the London Revolution Festival income out of T-shirts and badges, supplemented by donations as well. My next leadoff is scheduled for the first or second week of January, and is on the Permanent Revolution. I have already started on it, with the help of a Jordi video I found on the topic and which is absolutely brilliant, as he is usually that good.

Good old Dusty under snow

And finally, the main topic of the recent days is the arrival of the winter. It snowed, we had a really touch and go drive down to the village today, as the roads were quite full of snow, with not a snow plough anywhere in sight. We saw lots of cars in ditches, as the average Hungarian driver usually thinks he is Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen moulded into one. When you combine this foolish habit with summer and/or bald tyres, just a finish in the ditch is quite a successful result. Thankfully, most of the slipped cars seemed to have had their drivers and passangers still alive and moving around their vehicle.

The Bér road, looking like winter wonderland

We are supposed to go to Pásztó for EHIC cards tomorrow, but it is still subject to the weather and how clear the roads are by tomorrow morning. If it doesn't look right, we'll do it sometime next week. In the meantime Stephen had a lightning visit to BP to have an interview, or more like an audition, but didn't have time to come and see us. He panicked about road conditions and the taxi being held up so much that he misses his flight, so we didn't see him. I hope he gets the job, then I can go and visit him while he is making it in the Vajna Studios above the Rőkusfalvy Winery and Restaurant. I like that place and it is not only famous for its food and wine, but the possibility of seeing famous film stars eating there alongside your good self.