Christmas Day 2011

We managed to sleep late this morning, all the way to 6.30am. I know that's ridiculous, but that is a veritable lie-in for us nowadays. My cold is still with me, but other than a very blocked nose and a slightly sore throat I was ready for the events of the day.

First excitement included a large bowl of conflakes, pomegranates, blueberries, walnuts and ground wild millet with rice milk. I know it sounds peculiar, but I can assure you it was delicious. The wild millet is a recent addition, as I had it recommended by a fellow orienteer against joint pains. She said it helped her, so I'm having a go. As I had just two teaspoonfuls of it in that large bowlful I hardly noticed it.

The we fed the birds, lit the fire and went out into the sunshine. It was a beautiful day, above zero, no wind and lovely sunshine. The thin layer of snow started melting and it wasn't cold at all. Roy fetched a couple of wheelbarrowful of logs and I took some pictures and a video.

We also watched a bit of TV after which we were thinking of cooking our dinner when Alex called. They have just got up and Callum started unwrapping his presents. We sat with extreme delight watching him playing with the train set he got from us and then setting about unwrapping all the other presents too. He kept going back to the train set, he obviously loved it a lot.

Afterwards we quickly cooked and ate our Christmas dinner which consisted of: fillet steak for Roy, salmon with garlic. dill and lemon juice for me. The trimmings included potatoes, sprouts and beetroot as well as some of our home made garlic mayonnaise which had been a Grant family tradition for 30+ years. All this was washed down with champagne which I managed to mix with freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, it was truly scrumptious.

Later Stephen called and we had a nice chat with him and Lucy plus exchanged greetings with her mum Helen. Currently Roy is flaked out in front of the TV and I am soon to join him. Downton Abbey is tonight's treat, so there is still something to look forward to. Bye everybody!

The return of the tits for Christmas

We have been away for so long that it seemed as if our little birdies have forgotten that when in residence we always feed them. The last couple of days every time I looked at the feeder bowl, there were no birdies! :-( However, as we started to put out a lot of food, not only sunflower seeds but a large chunk of pork fat which we hung up over the bowl of seeds, they started to return. The fat, of course, is also useful in feeding them when we are away, as it takes them quite a while to peck all the fat clear off the skin.

We also paid Pali for the palinka, which turned out to be reasonably priced. Including all the labour, VAT and the still's fuel costs plus a carton of fags to Pali who wouldn't take any money for transport, it came in at about £4 a litre. Considering it is at around 51%-53% alcohol, I definitely call that reasonable. According to him the low volume was due to us using too much of a particularly juicy form of small plum, which is not considered useful for palinka production. Next year, hopefully we should be around to harvest our main blue plum crop, which are the mainstay of Pali's excellent palinka. This summer gone we were in Canada when that came into harvest and by the time we got home they were all shrivelled up on the ground. Another piece of advice we got yesterday related to the speed of drinking it. Apparently, like all alcoholic drinks it improves with age. Currently it is so strong it hits you in the chest, while if we allow it to mature a few months or possibly a whole year, it would mellow, the taste would improve and the harshness of the strength subside. We'll see! I promised Alex and Meaghan to make some walnut liqueur next summer using our own green walnuts and Roy's palinka. Let's hope it mellowed by then!

Yesterday I woke with a ghastly cold: headache, sore throat, sneezing, coughing, so I am not a particularly happy bunny at the minute. However, during the day I seem to cheer up, only by the end of it fading out completely. Yesterday we managed to get to Tesco's, so we are well set for the festive eating and drinking, even if the snows really come down and we get stuck in the village. Roy's fillet steak and my large chunk of fresh salmon will be our Christmas repast washed down with some excellent dry champagne. Cheers to you all and a Very Happy Christmas and New Year!

Palinka, theatre, concerts, party and Colin's book

Finally Pali delivered the palinka late on Thursday and Roy joined me on Friday. There was only about 18 litres of it, which is - I'm told - very close to the low yield figure. Depending on the sugar content and how juicy the fruit is, one vat usually produces somewhere between 15 and 30 litres. The former in a bad and latter in a good year. We thought 2011 was a good year, but as it is Roy's first effort, there may have been some deficiencies that we don't yet know about. I'll pay Pali tomorrow and find out if we did anything wrong. Mind you, the quantity may have been wanting, but the quality is pretty good. (so says my local tester!!)

In the meantime Roy designed a label for his Dragon Fuel, which we couldn't print earlier for want of ink. The picture above is of his liquor store in the garage minus 3 bottles that have been removed to other places. It still seems quite a lot, I hope he makes them last. The bottle in the second picture is complete with label, using the painting we have of our houses in the village and the little dragon whose fuel it is. Cheers!

Last week in town was pretty busy again, considering I went out every night. On Thursday I saw The Odd Couple with Eva, it was pretty good. It is so long since I saw the film, that it was a new experience for me. On Friday I attended the Carol Service at St. Columba's with the combined Anglican and Scottish Presbyterian congregation present as well as the Gabrieli choir whose concerts I oftend attend. It was lovely. Being an atheist some would say that it is rather hypocritical on my part attending church, but I love the music and in the case of some very ancient little village churches as well as the old gothic cathedrals I'm pretty fond of the architecture as well. So that's my excuse.

Saturday was the Hash Christmas party, which was not a patch on Jerry and Maggie's the week before, but still a nice interlude. We left just before midnight and walked home to the other side of the river in about 45 minutes. Nice cold, but brisk walk, looking at the Christmas lights all along the river, in shops and on buildings.

Sunday was another theatre visit with my friends Jutka and Ildi, preceded by a walk round one of the Christmas outdoor markets and drinking a nice big beaker of mulled wine. The play was Brian Clark's Whose Life is it Anyway? which in spite of its nearly 40 year history was new to me. It was a brilliant production, good acting, staging and great all round.

Monday saw me with the same friends in the Basilica at a concert given by a monastic choir singing psalms, prayers and hymns of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The music was atmospheric, almost putting you into a trance. There were only 16 of them, but when in full flow they sounded like 50. The accoustics of the Basilica helped, but their voices were powerful and hypnotic.

Finally, on Tuesday it was the turn of Petra Somlai, another of the Junior Prima winners, to delight us and she most certainly did. She is a fortepiano player of some note in spite of her tender years. However, that concert was not purely of musical pleasure, but of the personality of the artist. She was delightful, funny and very informative. We learnt a lot about her unique instrument, the composers (Mozart, Handel, Johann Christian Bach and Haydn) while listening to delightful music. A very enjoyable evening indeed.

The final pleasure of this past week was the arrival of Colin's book, A Country Full of Aliens - a Briton in Hungary in Hungarian. The translation was a communal effort, as a list of some 70 students and colleagues are listed on the inside cover as having assisted the official translator in one way or another. I have just started reading it, but it seems to have - so far - captured the style and spirit of Colin's brilliant original.

We plan to spend the next week in the village, weather permitting. On the bus today we had to wait nearly an hour at one point for the gritter and snow plough to clear the road, so perhaps we'll be here for longer than planned. As there is another party to attend in town on New Year's Eve, I hope not.

More geocaching and PALINKA!!!

We were debating whether to return on Monday or Tuesday, but finally we settled on Monday. Just as well, as Pali brought the palinka distilling day forward by 2 days, so it was fortuitous that we were around this morning when he disappeared with 4 large barrels of foul smelling liquid with a promise of returning with upwards of 35 litres of the lovely dragonfuel Roy so much loves tomorrow. We'll see! (said the blind man!!)

On our return we first went to Tesco's and did a fair size shopping. We used the one by the M2 which is not our normal route, but we thought to take in Vac for geocaching and this Tesco was right next to it. I loved it, we could find everything we wanted and they even had that Logitech webcam we have already given up on as we couldn't find it for 6 weeks, so we bought another one finally. As it happens, we bought another one of the type we like, so that we can swap it with the new one, which then becomes the spare. Anyway, after the shopping we went to Vac, where there were 5 or 6 caches, 4 of which we managed to find. The first one was a 7 parter, 6.5km on foot and even though we did it by car it took over an hour. Still, at the end of it we came to know Vac a lot better then beforehand, and after all, that is the purpose of geocaching.

We criss-crossed Vac so many times, that finally we got really fed up with the Basilica,(see middle picture!) which dominated the centre of the town. We also had a bit of a disaster, which we both still feel terribly guilty about. The last cache was a really funny, tricky one which I went prepared for. I worked it out from the blurb on the web site that you need to be able to understand Morse code, so I had written it out on a side of A4. The box was supposed to have a red button inside, which once pushed gave you the password in Morse code. However, we also had to find an invisible string on which hang the key with which to access the box. While looking for that we managed to wreck the whole contraption by pulling the thin cable between the button and the battery in another, smaller, box, out so once we could open the box and press the button, didn't work. The actual password was written down in the back of the logbook in Morse, so I could log a find, but the feeling that we wrecked such an imaginative, lovely cache, put together with love and care, was awful. I since have written to the owner of the box and explained what happened. He had graciously forgiven us and will go along at the weekend to mend it. I hope we didn't put him off the whole thing, as that is a really fun box. Once it is repaired, I think I will go back so that I can play with the button. :-)

We were planning to do the 4 in Vac and another 2 en route home. We just managed to do the 5th one in an interesting village where I had to hoof it up to the top of a bluff where you could see the entire village and its environs from. The hazy looking church picture was taken there, just before it went completely dark. This meant that we had to give up the final one, but it is not far from home, so we can do it any time in the future. I am at 41 with my caches and having a lot of fun too. Hopefully I should get to my required 50 soon and then start working out how, where and when I can place my first cache.

Roy is very excited about his palinka. He has cleaned all his bottles. Methinks he has not thrown a single whisky, palinka, brandy or rum bottle away for years and years. Now they are proving useful. He has also designed a label with the painting of our houses and the picture of a little dragon on. He calls palinka dragonfuel, you see, hence the little dragon!!

Must go now as the stove needs checking. Next post should have pictures of palinka bottles full of the stuff.

A very busy day, including geocaching, a violin concert, a party and the little monster (the following day)

On Saturday - after a not particularly good night's sleep - Roy and I had a very long, tiring, but very enjoyable day.

We did a few things, including answering e-mails etc. in the morning, then packed and left for town around 11.30am. We had plans to find 4 or 5 geocaches en route by taking the westerly route out of the village. This time the majority of the caches were virtual, which I like, as one does not have to hunt for a box, just find clues. I am of an opinion that geocaching is not about tricking the cachers as much as possible, so they can't find the cache, but about making them travel to places they wouldn't otherwise go, so that they can see something worth seeing: a beautiful view, lovely countryside, a natural beautyspot, or a cultural wonder, like a historic town, an old church, a lovely building or something unusual etc. So, virtuals achieve all this without the potential hassle of not finding the box. Obviously, if it is too easy that is an insult to one's intelligence, but when I can't find it, not because I am in the wrong place, but because the hiding of the cache is deliberately trying to catch me out, I hate those.

So, the first four, most of which were virtuals, went like a dream, we learnt about Rakoczi and his XVIIth century rebellion, saw the nut tree he (reputedly) planted, we saw several old palaces, churches etc. until we arrived in the last village where we had to find two clues, one on a waymarking post, the other in a hole in a tree. While the potentially much harder second part of the cache (a small coin hidden in a hole in a tree) I found quite easily, the first part was nowhere to be found. It was supposed to be on a DYMO tape on the waymarking post. We found the exact spot and post. We then searched it from top to bottom and on the entire post there was only two signs, both that of the Virgin Mary pilgrim's way sign, which is a lower case 'm' with a few extra bits and we could find nothing else. The post looked brand new and there was not even a sign of anything that may have been glued and or nailed/screwed to it and fallen off. Very frustrating. Personally I am really annoyed that the one and only advantage a virtual gives you: ie. nothing can fall off, disappear and/or get nicked was sacrificed for something as stupid as a piece of DYMO tape, which can very easily disappear.

I have requested that the owner of the cache accepts my request for having found it, but I can't get him on the phone and he has not yet answered my e-mail. He professes himself as one of those cachers that are not interested to get points at all costs for finding caches. That is an admirable sentiment, I hate the cache collectors too, who rush through, never read the info on the cache page, have no look at anything and drive to the tops of mountains, as I have seen someone do a few years back. On the other hand, I would like to have it acknowledged that I was there, although I am not going to lose sleep over it if he carries on ignoring me. As it happens, I am more than likely to go back there, because we had no chance to see inside the church due to a funeral taking place when we were there. It is very old and beautiful and I have read that there are some medieaval wall paintings inside. I will also have to keep an eye on the finders' reports on the page, just in case people will find the DYMO tape subsequent to my being there, in which case the only confirmation I need is a Certificate of Stupidity.

Once we got back to town we went to David's for a very late lunch and then I had to get ready for my concert. Another young titan gave us a performance that was brilliant. His choices included Shostakovich, Liszt, Tartini, Tchaikowski and Wieniawski amongst others. Roy came and joined me once the concert was over, we jumped in a taxi and went to our party. That was also fantastic, full of lovely people who were worth chatting to, good food and drink and a convivial atmosphere. It was especially lovely to see Roy enjoy himself, as he is not normally in such company and he was having a really good time. It was gone 1.30am the following morning when we got back and fell into bed.

Not strictly part of Saturday, but I had another lovely experience a bit later, when my little monster from overseas called on Skype and was in such a fantastic mood that he directly talked to me on the monitor, joked and chatted away constantly and finally disappeared downstairs to inspect the new part of their apartment, the converted basement.

Tomorrow we are off back to the village to prepare the 4 large barrels for transport to the still in a neighbouring village on Wednesday, after which we will be back again for another party and 3 more concerts next weekend.

Geocaching day

My sister Nelly needed to go to the hospital for a checkup on her leg, so I offered to drive her, provided I get a chance to do some geocaching while she is in there plus on the way back home.

Things didn't quite work out as well as planned, due to a sudden attack of some intestinal disturbances coupled with a total lack of public toilets, but a quick visit to Tesco solved that problem. The other was due to telephone miseries, dead batteries and network hassles, which I don't want to bore anyone with. Enough to say that I received a phonecall on the top of a mountain (albeit a small one thank goodness) that she had been waiting for hours for me to pick her up but can't reach me on the phone. Interesting how her son could, but we will not dwell on that. So I rushed back and fetched her, but first the story of the first two caches.

No. 1 was in a really interesting motorcycle museum, which was housed in a lovely old vaulted cellar and all I could think of while walking around, how much Roy would have enjoyed this. The cache was in the fire bucket on the floor in the petrol station display. Easy to find with the help of the owner.

No.2 consisted of two parts: the first was a virtual cache written behind a statue

the second a traditional one hidden in some really nasty thornbushes on top of a mountain on the outskirts of the town. It was there where I got the phonecall, but thankfully I had found it by then. The view from there was spectacular, albeit difficult to get a good picture of due to photographing into the sun.

Once I fetched Nelly we then drove to a couple more caches, one was also in 2 parts, one a date on a church, the second half up a steep forested hillside with the cache hidden in a hole in a tree, which was so well described on the website that I found it with no hassle. The next one was up another hill, hidden in a juniper bush behind a Virgin Mary statue. The views from there were also spectacular, but stupidly I left the camera down in the car and my phone was almost dead and thus not taking any pictures.

Finally we got home around 4pm after an unsuccessful attempt at visiting a museum which we have tried before, but it seems to be always closed. Tiring day (I got up at 6.30am) but a good crop of caches and a lovely day out.

Houston, we have SAUSAGE!!

Some of you are aware that Roy has been missing his beloved sausages and has made repeated requests for the odd pound of them when you came visiting. One person, namely Stephen, obviously got fed up with being nagged to travel with raw meat in his luggage and splashed out on a sausage and hamburger making machine with all the acoutrements plus a cookery book for Roy's last birthday. As it happened, initially we had trouble with getting the ingredients (don't ask!), then we spent very little time in the village, so it was not until this morning that we had a chance to have a go. And what fun we had! You should have seen the kitchen at the end: it resembled a bombsite, but I am glad to report that the experiment was successful, if not without mishap.

The first hiccup came when the pork fat would not mince. I suggested that we read the recipe and any other instructions available, but Roy, along with every male on the planet, just got on with it, fully confident that he knows how to do it. It wasn't until I read the recipe that we discovered that the fat should be cut into cubes and then partially frozen to make sure that it goes through the mincer. That occasioned a one and half hour delay. Once that was done we found that the sausage skins should have been soaking in water for about half an hour, so that was done quickly, in about 10 minutes as we were getting hungry. Finally, the moment of truth arrived with having to push the sausage skin up the spout of the machine and then turn it on. I was petrified that it will come out at high speed and go all over the place, but give the machine its due, it pushed the mixture out at a manageable pace.

As you can see we made several large sausages, 6 of which got put in a box and put aside in the freezer for later, while 2 of them will be either Roy's dinner tonight or his lunch tomorrow. The recipe suggested that they are not eaten immediately in order to give the flavours a chance to mingle. Once we ran out of the soaked skins we were still left with quite a lot of the mixture made of pork, smoked pork fat, spices and breadcrumbs, so we moved onto another little gadget Stephen sent Roy, the hamburger maker. That was probably not as impressive as the big machine, but just as useful, so the final tally of the morning was 8 giant sausages and 7 burgers. Roy had never had pork burgers before, but he will try them now.

While we were clearing up the machines, utensils etc., we found several small lumps of meat all over the place. Roy felt really sorry to waste them, so he made a little skinless sausage out of them and fried it up on the spot. It tasted absolutely delicious, so the plan now is that even when we run out of skins, one can just do skinless sausages, fry them and it will be just as good.

Currently I can't provide a picture of him feasting on his own sausages made with his fair hands, but as soon as that comes around, I will be there with the camera to record it for posterity and the photographic record will be posted here.

Postscript:

Roy enjoyed his sausages for lunch the following day with half a tomato, mashed potatoes, corn and home made chutney. Unfortunately we turned out to have no beans on the premises, hence the corn.