Last Wednesday, as Stephen and Valéria left in the early hours of the morning, we travelled in to BP at our leisure later in the day. The plan was that we should do some shopping for sandwich ingredients, plus visit our computer engineer to help me sort the problem with the downloading of photos. And, if we felt like it, we could also go the Decathlon for a cycling helmet and air pump for me and my e-bike.
Well, the weather was so dreadful that we didn’t do any of the shopping, bar buying stuff for sandwiches. Thankfully, the reason for why we didn’t go to the computer guy was a positive development. You may recall, I mentioned that the problem with the download appeared after major updates for my computer’s operating system and for my phone. This was too much of a coincidence, I thought, plus there was an error message on the phone’s little screen, which mentioned something, which I didn’t know how to do.
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| The Polish chapel on St. John's Mound |
Out of sheer frustration I Googled the problem and lo and behold it gave me a perfect solution, which doesn’t happen very often. The error message was about “USB notifications”, which I have never heard of and after half an hour of studying the operating system on my phone, could not find. However, the AI generated answer, later extended by other methods, like YouTube videos and showing me where to find the required function, solved the problem. Honestly, somebody among the guys who do the updates must have the brief of making new functions as user unfriendly as possible. Anyway, I now know what to do, so photo downloads are no longer a problem, thus no need to go out to the computer guy.
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| The derelict hermit's lair |
And then, on Thursday we got going South, hoping that the weather forecast was wrong. Well, it wasn’t. Thankfully, Thursday’s weather while rainy, at least wasn’t too cold. That came on Friday, but more about that later. I managed to finish a long multi that I started earlier in the year, when passing, so we only needed to get to two more and that was done. I was very sad that one old chapel, where a hermit lived in the past, is allowed to fall down completely. When I was there last time a few years ago, it was in bad nick but not like now. Shame.
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| The ancient church ruin |
The next cache was a drive-in, and the rain stopped temporarily with the sun almost shining. It was a nicely maintained church ruin from many centuries ago and the clever hide for the cache was in clear sight not far from it. Thankfully, due to the dreadful weather, there was nobody lurking around, so I could take the box back to the car nearby and log there.
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| The lookout tower from the meadow below |
Next, we had a bit of a longer drive to the cache, plus the old GPS took us all over the place before I could navigate to the parking place. It was in the forest, where a large meadow looked lovely. I could imagine the families, kids, cyclists etc. picnicking there in the summer. This was a two-parter, but with the lookout tower still closed, I didn’t have to go too far.
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| The big rock over the valley |
The fourth cache was also a bit further along our route and Roy very kindly drove me up to the end of the metalled road, from where the cache was only about 700 metres away. By then the rain returned, but what bothered me was more the thick fog, which completely obliterated the gorgeous views I was looking forward to photographing from the massive rock face at the top. The rock is just about visible on my photographs, but the massive valley behind it isn’t.
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| Our room in the B&B |
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| My bed in the B&B |
The room was large, the beds extremely comfortable, everything spotlessly clean and nice. We even had a big fancy TV on the wall with very good quality screen and a variety of, unfortunately only Hungarian, programs. If I have any criticism, that concerns the TV, it was its super-duper remote control, use of which neither of us could fathom.
We left for
the concert very early, as I didn’t know what was the chance of finding a
parking space close by the concert hall and we also had to find a place for Roy
to spend the time while I was at the concert. Both worked out beautifully, we
found a parking space right opposite the hall and as we arrived bang on 6 pm,
didn’t even have to pay for it. We also found a great little bar/café 3 minutes’
walk away, where Roy spent a good couple of hours drinking beer and eating
pizza.
The Concert Hall, aka the old Synagogue
The concert
was great. Kristóf has aged and got a bit pudgy, but his brilliance with Lady
Harmsworth, built in 1703 by Stradivarius, is still as superb as ever. He was playing the Mendelssohn
violin concerto in E minor op. 64, and he also was the conductor, which was also great. I met up
with Ica, a geocaching friend, who was sitting not too far from me and had a
chat in the interval.
The Lady Harmsworth
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| Tight deep road in the forest |
Our second
day of geocaching went quite well at the start, as this one was also a big
multi that I had only 2 parts to do that morning, but by the time I did that I
was soaked to the skin, feeling a bit cold and in considerable pain with my
joints, that obviously were not enjoying the cold wind and the rain. I took one
look at Roy, who while nice and cosy in the car, also didn’t look very happy
and he looked at me. Before we could say anything we both decided that this was
the time to scratch the rest of the trip and go home. 
The Red Cat B&B in Szentkirályszabadja
En route home I phoned the guy in the second B&B, named after a "Red Cat" and apologised for not turning up. He understood, as he’s known us for years and by looking outside it was obvious why we wanted to go home. We’ll see him next time, when we are going that way. The harder thing to cancel was Edit, so I wrote to her on Messenger. She understood it too, and if I am honest, the main reason why I decided to cancel the rest of the trip, was that the second B&B was quite expensive and I felt that having stayed and coughed up that much, I definitely didn’t want Edit cancel the hike on Saturday. We might as well put it off, I wrote, and she agreed when she answered it later.
We decided that we needed a day of rest, before returning home to Bér, I was also hoping that we might get a call from the distillery and then could go and fetch Roy’s pálinka on Sunday as well. The distiller didn’t call in time for us to make a detour to his place en route home, but once we were at home and had something to eat, the phone went and we departed in the direction of his still straight away.
400 litres
of mash finally gave us 31.4 litres of pure gorgeous 50% proof pálinka, which
Roy was quite happy with. All in all, the whole process cost us about £230, which
included the 100 kilos of plums we were short of, the transport cost of taking
the mash to the still and the cost of the distiller’s work, + his fuel, tax and
excise duty. I did my maths and it comes out at £7.30 per litre of some heavenly
hooch, 50% strong and which we know what exactly it was made of. Totally
natural process with no chemicals and heavenly taste. It’ll take about 3 months
to rest, after which we can start drinking it. Roy tasted a few drops yesterday
and confirmed that it is gorgeous
already.
6 x 5 litres of the heavenly hooch waiting to be bottled
Yesterday we
both worked hard on putting the 31,4 litres into 57 bottles. Most of the
bottles were 0.7 litre capacity, but he did find at least one that took a full
litre, some were half litres and about 15 little bottles, some of which took a
third of a litre, others a quarter of a litre. These small ones are for
travelling with and occasionally are given as presents.
57 bottles of all sizes with the heavenly brew inside
Talking of presents, I have come up with a great idea what to give as Christmas present to our best friends, the Rázga and the Nemesházi families. Last year I used this idea as a Christmas present for Ági and David, and they seemed happy with it. I used an old presentation basket that we had at home and filled it with almost completely with our own produce. There were jars of compote and jam, a small bottle of pálinka, some fruit from our garden, some sweets, mostly marzipan with chocolate and nuts, as well as homemade truffles. I wrapped it in cellophane and put a big red bow on it. I hope I can get two baskets, that this time I will have to buy, while the rest of it is already made, except the sweets. I love making those, it’s fun both to make them and eat them.
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| Glorious French truffles |
Yesterday I had a very long list of things to do, organise, arrange and watch. I had to do some washing, of which I have done 2 loads in BP before we left, but I had a load here too. Then I had to pay our credit cards, which is always my job, and I am happy to report that I had no internet related hassles this time. Funny to write that, as not too long after I finished with the bank all the electricity went. We definitely live in third world conditions now, that’s for sure.
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| The first paragraph of the Xmas message |
Then I put together my usual Christmas Newsletter and sent it to an ever diminishing number of contacts. It is sad when one comes back and I never know whether they have changed their e-mail address and didn’t tell me, or died. Every year I have a few, but to be honest, I like to make it, because if just one person writes back and we can keep in contact, it has been worth it.
I also
managed to catch up with Alex’s expenses account, which I haven’t looked at for
about 6 or 7 weeks. As his season now finished, I was hoping there weren’t too
many items, but found that I still had to type up 20 of them, most of them for
petrol. This is excruciatingly boring, which always reminds me why he doesn’t
like doing it himself. Being bored is the one state my dear younger son detests
most. I fully understand why. But I like to help, so I do it faithfully and
with love.
The birthday present tent in the accounts
Talking of Alex, he did ring me on Saturday when he was en route to Lovesick to stash the truck for the winter. He did his Level 3 course a month ago and is happy now to start organising his courses for next summer. His birthday present from us was a winter tent, which is basically and ordinary tent with a hole for a chimney in. He sent me a photo of it, and it is a bell shaped nice sturdy tent, and he already used it successfully when he went camping in the snow recently.
Talking of
presents and my sons, Stephen left a delightful present behind for us when he
spent a few days in the BP flat. It is a lovely little drone, which apparently
follows you after you showed it what you looked like. I saw videos where he was
cycling along and the drone really followed him. What science cannot do nowadays,
is probably not worth doing.
My lovely little drone
After I finished
all my chores yesterday, I retired to bed, put the laptop on my lap (where
else?) and watched all my US procedurals I have got rather way behind with.
That was fun. I have got fed up with two of them, which started boring me, but
the remaining 8 is just about OK, most of them are cop shows, one is about a
guy that looks for missing people, and one is about firefighters, which I always
like a lot. 
Justin Hartley, the heartthrob
Roy has just gone off for a nap, for which I really envy him a lot. No matter how tired I am, I cannot sleep during the day. On the very rare occasion when I manage to drop off to sleep during the day, I am either really ill, or so exhausted that even after several hours I wake up completely zombified.
Must go now, see if the washing is getting dry and perhaps to hang Roy’s jeans on the radiators. Next post on Wednesday of next week, by which time we’ll be back in BP. Running up to Christmas we are always very busy in town. This time I have an Opera performance on Thursday, then we are invited to a memorial hash on the Sunday, organised by David, and remembering a few of our fellow hashers that left us. Then I am off to the Mecsek for a geocaching/hiking weekend with friends, followed by a weekend spent with friends in Csobánka. The rest of the time is our own.
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