Day 56 Saturday 16 July 2016

Still raining this morning at 6am when the alarm woke us, it must have rained all night as there are huge puddles of water in the carparks behind the apartment buildings. Another delicious Hungarian breakfast finished off with a few cold Gombocs, they really are tasty. Today we are off to visit cousin Bela in Subotica & taking Katica & Antal with us. It is still raining when we leave which makes dodging the potholes in the road that much harder as there is water on the road in a lot of places. Thankfully there are not too many other cars on the road this morning nor too many people about riding bicycles on the road or walking in the small towns we pass through, it is early & it is raining so that helps. I’m starting to get used to driving on the other side of the road now, I’m not trying to change gears with the door handle any more. Again we pass more endless fields of corn & sunflower with a little soya bean growing, here there is more empty fields where wheat has recently been harvested. Antal said that it is so lucky the wheat has been harvested because the rain would have destroyed the crop but it is great for the corn as the ears are only developing. We pass also a special nature reserve meadows area for the bird called a Great Bustard, we didn’t see any of those but we did see a few storks. On our way we also cross the Tisa River again, slightly in flood & muddy brown from all the rain, it is a fairly large river & joins the Danube River below Novi Sad. We reach Subotica in around 1 ½ hours & the GPS on our tablet guides us to Bela’s house, thankfully.

It was great to see the 3 cousins catch up & Bela’s wife Gyorgyi has been busy preparing another delicious Hungarian feast. I take the opportunity to use Bela’s WiFi to catch up on emails, Facebook & load some blogs with photos to get up to date with our travels. Before lunch Bela has to go & see a friend who is distilling some Palinka (Hungarian fruit whisky) for him from apricots & we drive just out of town to the small farm where his friend has a still in a large shed. It is legal in Serbia to own a still & produce Palinka. When we arrive Bela’s friend produces a bottle out of the fridge, it is his special brew & he offers us a taste. It is very nice tasting & very smooth, not like most Palinka that is firewater. I have no idea what the fruit was that it was made from after we were offered to guess what it is, mulberry it turns out & he was very proud of it. He shows us around his backyard operation & there must be hundreds of litres of Palinka he has produced in large plastic barrels stacked in the shed all made from a small copper still that perhaps holds 200 litres. There are another two Serbian men helping him out & taking shots of Palinka every now & then, they must be totally gone by the end of the day. We all talk, their broken English is a lot better than my non-existent Serb & they are very interested that I am from Australia & wondering why I would leave there & come to visit a place like Serbia. They tell me about kangaroos they have seen on TV & the internet, they are very interested in how big they are & how fierce & strong the big ones can be – I find it fascinating. Business complete it is back to Bela’s for lunch.

Lunch is an all afternoon affair, starting with soup (soup is something that is on every main meal) followed by roast turkey, chicken, roast potatoes & salad, delicious & more than we can possibly eat. There is much merriment, laughter, jokes, story-telling & reminiscing, everyone is having a good time all the while listening to some nice Hungarian music. Poor Ron only gets snippets of the conversation & my occasional translation but he likes the music & his body is swaying to it. He comments on how different Hungarian behaviour is at a gathering to the Australian, to greet each other, men, women kiss each other on the cheek 3 times, Palinka is drank, good food piled on the table, homemade wine is flowing, jokes, laughter & singing nonstop. We break from lunch around 5pm & retire to the lounge for some shots of Palinka (I refrained – driving) & more talking, joking & laughing, it really is nice to see everyone enjoying themselves. We depart around 5.30pm & thankfully the rain has stopped & the water has mostly drained from the roads so dodging the potholes is a little easier. Around halfway back to Kikinda I get a low tyre pressure warning on the dash & stop in the next town to check. The left rear looks slightly under-inflated & I decide to keep driving to see how it travels, the maximum speed limit is only 80km/hr. We reach Kikinda at 7pm & I check the tyre again when we stop at Evike’s house for a chook check, it doesn’t seem to have lost much more air if any, however on Monday I will take it in & get it looked at.

After such a big lunch none of us are all that hungry so supper is very light tonight thankfully, I had a couple of delicious cold Gombocs. Another great day.