Day 47 – June 1 Wednesday

8.15am – the shutters on the window kept the room very dark – what a sleep-in.  After breakfast we went for a walk along the street to the end & visited the cemetery.  Since we were here last a few improvements have been made, there is now a building with an outside shelter to hold services.  They used to park the coffin under the shade of some big trees outside a house & hold the service outside the front of this poor bloke’s house.  He cut the trees down & planted a new small forest & apparently that prompted the locals to build the chapel, etc.  The track off the road up to the cemetery itself has rows of trees planted either side & looks very pretty with the trunks painted white.  The new part of the cemetery is kept clean & neat – the old part is overgrown with bushes & trees – no relatives left to care – you can spot a few graves & headstones in the thick scrub.  We found Tereza’s grandparents headstone after about 10 minutes, then shortly after her uncle & aunt.  We also spotted headstones belong to other cousins & people she knew.   We looked around for a little longer then headed back out into the street & took the long way home, back past a few more distant relative’s houses & houses of people she knew, as well as the grandparent’s former house.  We said hello’s to a few curious townfolk & walked past a fair number of abandoned houses (the old people had died & no-one cares for the house) in varying stages of decay & destruction.  Most of the house construction is mud brick & once the rain gets through some broken or lost roof tiles the decay starts.  Not to mention the effect that rising damp has on mud brick.

Late afternoon we went back to the cemetery with Katalin & took some silk flowers with us to put on the headstones of the close relatives, with more recognition of headstones of relatives & people they knew.  We also took a slow walk back & called in at the house of one of Katalin’s cousins & were shown through.  The house is very well kept & the farmyard is immaculate, with the garden looking very colourful with all the flowers in bloom.

We watched a storm starting in the distance & wandered back home, but the storm only put on a fantastic light show in the distance with rumbles of thunder rolling through now & again.  There are lots of frogs croaking & calling of a night, there is a pond near the front of the house absolutely filled with frogs of all sizes, plus a snake that must be feeding on them.  (No harmful snakes here).