Day 53 – June 7 Tuesday

The Kikinda church bells seem to me to have a random pattern of ringing – we are near the centre of town & close to all the churches.  Sometimes the bells compete with each other, sometimes they are accompanied by their friends & sometimes they are by themselves.  I have noticed one pattern, every day, one set of bells rings at 6.50am, 7.10 am, 7.20am, 7.40am, etc.  Another bell (different ones) rings at 7am.  One thing for sure, they certainly are loud & the deep resonating sound carries very well.  This is something we don’t get in Australia.  I am told all these sets of bells are electronically controlled & rung mechanically – I was wondering how they could support full time bell ringers.

Other than the bells, this morning was fairly quiet, Antal took me to the nearby barber shop of his friend Emil & I had a much needed haircut & trim – apparently I look a lot more respectable now.  I spent the rest of the morning checking the flight bookings & some research on Budapest whilst Tereza was working busily with Katalin pitting a lot of the sour cherries that we had picked.  Late afternoon we walked down to the school where Viktor & his kindergarten class put on an end of school play – as always, very cute, children acting, singing, dancing, speaking & actually reciting poetry. We were very impressed that all this is in both Hungarian & Serbian (these kids in kindergarten speak two languages already!!!).  Victor & his brother, Mate attend private English classes in addition (I am sure a lot of the others do the same).  Education, languages & music are a very big part of this family & the kids seem to thrive on it all (the home work they get is unbelievable & they only have a couple of days left before the Summer holidays).  We looked on attentively with the other proud families, however, a drawback was the room being very crowded & very hot.  Afterwards we walked the short distance back to town where Evike shouted the boys & us an ice-cream at one of the many specialist ice-cream shops that dot the centre of Kikinda.  We lounged on some very comfortable cushioned chairs under some large yellow flowering trees fanned by a lovely cooling breeze, chatting & relaxing.  Another great afternoon.  Evike & family spent all their free time with us because we are all feeling that our inevitable departure is here & it will most probably be years before we see them again.

Evike & the boys joined us for dinner & chatted until it was bedtime for the boys.  Its sad that we will be leaving Kikinda tomorrow & these lovely families.