Day 50 Sunday 10 July 2016

Up at 7am, some blog writing, a really great breakfast, comparable to the best we have had anywhere in Europe, some photo sorting then off at 10.20am for the half hour walk to Klaras. Near our hotel there is a large park so we walk through that, very pleasant with lots of parents out with their children playing in the park. There are lots of large trees with some good formed paths & the shade is welcoming. The temperature in Novi Sad (Hungarian name Uj Videk) is around 28C & a lot warmer than we have been used to in the rest of Europe so we start to get hot by the time we get to Klara’s & have to walk in the sun a bit.

This morning we drive with Klara & Zoli to visit the cemetery & the grave of Tereza’s cousin Gizika & her husband Kosta. When we were in Novi Sad 5 years ago we stayed a week with them & had a wonderful time enjoying their company. It is so difficult to believe that just 2 years after that they had both succumbed to illness & passed away within 2 months of each other. We placed some flowers & remembered the good times, it was very sad that two such nice people have left us.

Back at Klara & Zoli’s we chatted more & they prepared a delicious lunch, soup followed by baked rainbow trout, truly delightful, then superb floating island they had cooked to make sure our tummies were bursting. Later that afternoon another cousin, Dejan, came & picked us up & we went back to his apartment & spent some pleasant hours chatting with his wife Aleksandra & him plus meeting their 2 sons again, they have both grown so much in 5 years. They have enlarged their apartment & put in a new kitchen since our last visit & it looks great. Some more delicious gibenica (a Serbian speciality) with coffee before Dejan took us back to Klara’s where we spent the evening chatting further, some more food, as if we need it, but delicious sausages, speck, smoked pork & other delicious tidbits. Then the final of the European Cup football was on so we watched that until the end, then Zoli & Klara kindly delivered us back to our hotel at 11.30pm where we fell into bed. A very tiring but great day.

It has been so wonderful to see our young cousins they are all grown up with teenage children, it is such a shame we are not closer so that we could spend time with them all.

We are in Serbia but it used to be Hungary, my cousins & their children are so clever they speak Hungarian, Serb, German & English very fluently but they are fiercely Hungarian.

Our Hotel & the food I would class as one of the best we have been in so far. Everything is spotless & tastefully decorated & the food is delicious.

Tomorrow we will be driving to Kikinda, an even more remote & Hungarian place & my cousins (they are my age) will have very limited English, Ron will really have to learn more Hungarian, actually he has a reasonable vocabulary already (my clever sweetheart). Internet most likely will be non-existent. I am so looking forward to seeing my lovely cousin Katica & her family.