Day 44 – May 29 Sunday

Another lazy start, caught up on some blogging, sorted some photos, then went to church at 9am.  Antal sings in the church choir & today was a special first communion day, his sister’s grandson was being confirmed in the old Hungarian Catholic Church so we went along & joined in the celebration.  The church was very crowded & the kids looked cute in their white outfits.  The church has some beautiful paintings on the ceiling & the very high arch work looks great.  After church I did some research on old violins.   Katalin was a violin teacher at the Kikinda music academy all her working life & accumulated a few old violins over that time.  One was built in 1765 with a label of a very famous violin maker inside.  The research revealed it was a very good copy, it had been built after the violin builder on the label had died (an original was sold in 2004 for three million dollars, unfortunately hers was a copy).  Another was labelled as a “Stainer” & was another German copy, this time from around 1900.  Another violin, the one she treasures the most, apparently it has the most amazing sound, doesn’t have any violin maker’s name visible, but we suspect it was made by a Hungarian luthier (violin maker) from the 1800s that didn’t brand his good violins.  It was very interesting researching the violins, there is so much information on the net available about violins, makers, copies, etc.

Watched the F1 Monaco Grand Prix with Antal on TV then late afternoon went for a long walk around town.  One of the interesting things we came across is a Suvaca, there are apparently only two of these left in Europe, one in Budapest & the other here in Kikinda, built in 1899.  At one time in 1847 there were 51 of these Suvaca in use.  For those of you that don’t know what a Suvaca is, its a horse driven stone mill for grinding corn & wheat into flour.  A lot of cherry trees are growing on the street, so you can reach up & pick a few to eat as you stroll along, the kids have eaten most of the low hanging ones.  Some of the houses are painted in eye catching colours, while others are tiled across the front walls.  A couple of big new houses are being built, with marble walls & multi stories, apparently by Gypsys.  You have to question where they get the money as usually you spot the dark skinned Gypsy ratting through the rubbish bins in dirty raggedy clothes.

We walked with some 10 litre empty plastic containers to the town fresh water fountain to collect some clean drinking water.  The water that comes out of the household reticulated taps smells bad, is coloured & apparently not fit for drinking.  It smells & feels like the artesian water that you get in outback Australia.