Day 51 Monday 11 July 2016

A lazy start this morning, last night’s late finish tired us out, so packing again then another great breakfast at 9am, they really do have a good & tasty selection of food. We would like to try them all but there is just so much variety. We set the tablet computer up with our destination address for today on Google Maps, it does make driving here so much easier, most of the road & street signs are in Serbian using the Cyrillic alphabet, not knowing either (but Tereza can still read it) it is a lot easier using Google.

There are two things notable about this morning’s driving in rural Serbia. Firstly the farming fields are flat & the seemingly endless crops of corn, sunflower & soya bean extend to the horizon in all directions, with an occasional outcrop of trees & the odd river. We cross the Tisza River, a large tributary of the Danube & it is muddy colour. The second is the absolutely crazy Serb drivers & overtaking in crazy places & so close to oncoming traffic, I was very surprised we didn’t see some serious accidents, most of them are so impatient. There were a few slow farm tractors at times & also a grass cutting machine stopped then later an excavator stopped, both taking up one lane & no warning signs at all, I can’t understand how we didn’t see an accident. Google map isn’t infallible, it did want to take me down a dirt road along the banks of a river to bypass the small city of Zrenjanin, a suggestion I declined & enjoyed the bitumen instead. The roads are reasonable, equal to any secondary roads in Australia, if not better. The rest of our trip is uneventful, aside some more crazy Serb drivers but they seemed to be thinning out a bit by the time we reached Kikinda around 11.30am & then found cousin Katica’s apartment.

We spent all afternoon chatting, more so Tereza (my Hungarian is not that good), catching up with cousin Katica & husband Antal, it is 5 years since we were here last time. Again more delicious Hungarian food, again more than you could possibly eat. I needed a haircut & beard trim so at 6pm we had an appointment with Emile, the master barber of Kikinda. Last time we were here I also used his barber skills then. His salon is very close & we sit in his tiny salon with Emile chatting away & joking with his customers in Serbian & me having no clue as to what they are saying. He is very good & pays a lot of attention too, (Emile charged 450 dinar & I insisted giving him 500 dinar for 2 haircuts & beard trim, 500 dinar equals to about $4 Australian dollars). Afterwards we walk down the street to cousin Evike’s house & while Tereza & Katica pick fruit I water the chooks & birds as Evike is away in Greece on holidays with her husband & 2 sons. Later that night we have a delicious supper of home smoked pork & home-made Hungarian sausage. Another great day.

Katica & I have so much to catch with we talk non-stop, we were so close as children & had such wonderful times as we were growing up (we left when I was 12 years old, but always kept up our correspondence with my cousins, Aunts & grandparents, that is why I can read, write & speak so well Hungarian). Poor Katica is so unwell she is very thin, she had a mastectomy & now her arm is so swollen, her fingers she can’t feel, she can’t use her hand at all. She was such a talented Violin player & a professor at the school of music, it is depressing for me to see her like this.

Poor Ron, he is so good, he doesn’t complain at all but he must be bored. His Hungarian is getting better. He tells me to spend all the time I can with my cousin. He & Anti watch movies. Tonight for example he watched Jacki Chan & the others in the cast talk in Hungarian – he finds this hilarious. It was a good day for me, more so than for Ron.

Today it was 37C. We complained about all the cold weather on our tour & now we are saying how lucky we were because we wouldn’t have been able to do all the walking in heat like this.