Trip to Robert and Volker's

Andor, Roy and I finally managed a 3 day visit to Robert and Volker's after a hiatus of 2 years. We last saw the two of them at the wedding in May 2008, which seems a hell of a long time ago now. The weather was absolutely superb, it only rained on the way down and it stopped as soon as we got out of the car at Somlo. Before that we managed to see the Arboretum at Alcsut. It isn't very large or too well cared for, but it was still charming and very romantic. The house was bombed in the war, so there is only the front portico and a few other small parts left, but the park, even in its wild state is impressive. It is supposed to have been laid out in the English manner and there are some really ancient plane trees there. The frogs and toads in the central lake entertained us to a real concert, due to the amorous time they were having.

After a leisurely lunch at our usual restaurant, The Inn to the Two Owls in Varpalota, we arrived at the Somlo, one of the famous dead volcanos, called "witness mountains" just before 4pm. We managed to buy some wine at one of the vineries before they closed and then walked to the top of the volcano. The view was magnificent and even though the air was quite hazy, you could see the Badacsony, Szt. Gyorgy Hegy, Gulacs and a few other witness mountains in the hazy distance.

We arrived at our hosts just before 7pm, were treated to a delicious dinner and hit our beds after a pleasant chat and quite a few glasses of the product purchased earlier plus the local wine produced in our hosts' cellar.

On Wednesday the air was crystal clear and the sun shone with quite some heat. Our first visit took us to the Szentbekkalla "stone sea" as it is called here. You might think, looking at the pictures that it is a lime stone pavement, but this is sand stone mixed with silica due to volcanic activity at the time of the ancient sea that covered this area 8-10 million years ago. The rock formations were absolutely amazing and the middle slab of that high rock on which Andor and I were sitting was actually moving.

Then we went to see an ancient ruined two storey tower where we had our sandwiches. This was something that Andor was not satisfied with, so he rang a friend to give him directions to another set of ruins he remembered visiting some years ago. After getting lost a few times we finally found them in the middle of the forest and that was quite an experience. The only Hungarian monastic order, the Paulist monks, usually built their monasteries in the forest. They were teaching, nursing and even fighting monks, when the need arose and the order still exists after some persecution in the Stalinist days.

We went to a restaurant for our evening meal on Wednesday where I managed to put away a fairly large trout in breadcrumbs, with parsley potatoes and a salad, so my night's sleep was not the best, which did not surprise me.

On Thursday morning we took our leave after taking a few pictures of Robert and Volker's fantastic garden (see glorious tulip!) as well as partaking of their wine sitting in front of the cellar. First stop was at an unusual cemetery where some very interesting, 18th and 19th century heart shaped gravestones remained intact.

We had our picnic lunch in the park of the Chateau in Nadasdladany that we visited 2 years ago, noting with pleasure that finally they managed to get their EU money for restoration and are busy working on the exterior. The builders informed us that the money for the interior has still not been awarded, but they are living in hope.

This was a really fantastic outing in good company. We must do it again and mustn't leave it another 2 years.

Long time no blog

We have been too busy to blog lately plus I was waiting to get back to the country to be able to scan O maps for the blog. Then guess what? You've got it in one: I forgot to bring the maps down. So those will have to wait for the next time I am anywhere near a scanner.

It was the Postas Kupa last weekend where I entered quite a long course (for me at least), it was 4700m with quite a lot of climb. We were on sand dunes and you can see Andor in the great distance heading for his first control in the first picture.

The second and third pictures are from Roman Shore, where we went for an amble. It has changed a lot since my childhood, but the river is still as romantic as ever. Unfortunately the old wooden boathouses have all but disappeared and the only remaining one has an ugly advertising banner on it. Still, it was a nice walk.

We have also come across a rally of Harley Davidson bikes the other day, which made me realise what a variety of designs, colours and shapes motorbikes can be nowadays. The weather is getting nice and warm now and with the heat of their engines, it got very hot around them. The prices of these bikes make you a bit hot under the collar as well: you can buy a small car (or in some cases quite a big car) for the price of some of them.

The last picture is of a tank like Roller, which I have come across right in front of the Opera House a week or so ago. I have never seen one this big in my life. I know you can buy a house for the price of one of these and that makes me sick. On the other hand, the engineering genius that produces these monsters is awsome and demands some respect.

Normafa

Today we had an outing to the Buda hills to the above named place. Fa means tree and Norma is Bellini's opera which has a connection to an old tree at that place by having had opera singers sing the main arias from a variety of operas, including the one from Norma, just underneath it in the past. Unfortunately the old tree is long gone, opera singers do not trek to this hill for picnics any more, but the name remains.

The view down to the city is really spectacular, although it was a bit overcast, so conditions weren't perfect. On and around it the Budapest Orienteering Association organised a Festival of Navigating Sports, which included the Budapest Schools' Orienteering Championships plus a chance to try mountainbike orienteering, the variety of permanent courses on the hill, mobile-O, geocaching, Trail-O, competitive hiking with exercises and a few more activities besides. It was very successful and the rain didn't start until 3 minutes from the end of the results ceremony.

In the pictures you can see our brand new alloy wheels (we bought them earlier in the week), the view down the ski slope, one of the old villas in the woods below the top, a beautiful oak tree and a miniature punter much fascinated by a flag.

Easter Saturday

As you can see the weather was really lovely yesterday. We went up to the Matra and as I wasn't feeling well enough to race I just went for a hike with a friend who is still recovering from a broken leg from last autumn. We took Andor with us, so he went running, coming 4th in M65. Roy enjoyed the sunshine, the beer tent and seeing old friends.

The forest was really beautiful, if somewhat steep in most places. (see Andor climbing one steep wooded slope!) The Northern half of the map was full of the most amazing rock faces, most of which were too high to photograph. I have never seen rocks which look like they were man made, as the blocks of rock were together with other stuff, like it was mortar holding it together. We went near some which were about 30ft high, but in the distance we could see some which were 300ft high. Surreal, really!

Family History

Yesterday we went back to the old Jewish Cemetery in Salgotarjani ut because the caretaker there arranged for my great-great-grandmother's grave stone to be placed back on its plinth from which vandals some decades ago pushed it to the ground. Now, you can see how nice it looks and how substantial it is - made of Swedish granite.

Today, as the sun shone we went walkabouts and as Roy came too it had to be family history related. We live in the 7th district and the more downtown part of our district used to house the Jewish Ghetto and a couple of ancestors of mine lived quite close to the Synagogue. We intended to photograph those two blocks, but ended up on an interesting historical walk.

This area is being gentrified at the moment, but the process has slowed down due to the credit crunch. It has some very modern, new blocks of luxury apartments and hotels, mixed up with renovated lovely old buildings as well as near derelict, neglected and dilapidated ones.

There is an old set of blocks called "Gozsdu Court" named after the Romanian business man who promoted their erection over a 100 years ago. It was in a bad state and some developer decided to turn it into luxury apartments and shops. The idea was great, the timing less so. It is nicely done, but is very empty due to very few of the units having been sold. Still, I am glad it was not allowed to fall down.

In another place we found that after the last bit of the Ghetto wall was demolished in 2006, some conservationists have rebuilt it this year as a memorial to those that perished there. The contrast with the luxury block behind was disturbing.

The photos in order:

1. The grave stone

2. An ornamental door panel nearby

3. The main frontage of Gozsdu Court

4. The back of a slum visible from one of the fancy courtyards of Gozsdu Court

5. A memorial tablet in the Ghetto
6. The rebuilt bit of the Ghetto Wall

7. The map of the Ghetto

Definitely spring!!

Spring Cup (Hungarian style) on the sand dunes, amidst lots of ups and downs, vague vegetation boundaries, some juniper and generally good courses. As most people are building up to the extra long championships at the moment, all events have rather long courses. The oldest women's course was W50, so I was out for quite a while. As you can see, apart from the stupidity of the first control (mostly caused by the map being quite old), I did it quite well. Without that mistake I would have been 3rd, but even 4th is not bad considering that the first 3 were somewhere between 10-12 years younger than me and I was only 2 and half minutes from 3rd. The day otherwise was really lovely. The temperature was in the 20's, almost too warm to run around. We forgot the camping chairs so we had to lie around on the ground sunning ourselves.

Indoors in BP time was yet again spent getting extremely frustrated with computers. The one that expired is still dead, but now the one we brought in to replace it is also playing silly buggers. It has always been a very unstable machine, which I wrote down to the fact that it was an early Vista before the bugs (at least some of them) have been ironed out. I keep doing system restore on it, but it doesn't like updates, takes serious exception to a variety of peripherals and is useless on drivers. Either all the ones it has are corrupted or it cannot access them on the net. Who knows? Upshot of all this is that we can't use Skype on it for it will not accept either the Skype phone or the microphone we bought, neither can we use FreeCall for the same reason. It refuses to work with the existing printer and when we tried to download the driver the whole operating system went unstable. Aaaahhhhhhhhh!! May Microsoft and all its employees (especially the programmers) burn in eternal hellfire AMEN!!!!

Tomorrow's target is to get all the roses pruned. Something really peculiar happened to them this year. I know it was a cold winter, but we must have been very unlucky with icy winds or they were especially exposed, because a lot of them have gone completely dead and black. I hope I can cut them back to living parts, especially that I put big mounds of peat round their bases to protect them. We'll see!

Spring?

We're back in the village and had so far two gorgeous sunny days with temperatures around 20 degrees Celsius in the sun. As I could download my pictures from my phone here, there are a few attached to this post.

Stephen loves the big market and we had a really good shop there this time. He bought strange vegetables for Lucy, a few bottles of booze, honey and a few other goodies.

En route back home we came via Hatvan and met up with Nelly to do some market and Tesco shopping. We all bought some lovely pansies: Nelly for Szuszi's grave, we just to put them into boxes. I don't think I mentioned Szuszi's demise before. He was 11 and half, which is not a bad age for such a large dog. His grave shows how big he was, but now Nelly has a shrine, which should help her to overcome the grief.

The good news around here are that I managed to defrag the latest laptop, which I have never done before in its 2 years of life, therefore it took nearly 8 hours to do it. Now it is quite a lot faster and from now on I will remember to leave it on every Tuesday evening so that the scheduled defrag in the early hours of Wednesday morning can take place. On the other hand, the bad news is that we cannot find the XP CD that came with the oldest laptop, so that might not be revivable. It might turn up yet, but I am not upsetting myself over it. Currently the weather is so nice that I went out and read some Maureen Lipman on the bench outside in strong sunshine, which was lovely. We will probably go back to town tomorrow, but should be back sometime next week. Next post probably then.