Day 60 Wednesday 20 July 2016

Church bells at 7am again for a gentle awakening then another great breakfast of fresh bread, Hungarian sausage, smoked pork, fresh tomatoes, capsicum & cucumber, I declined the hot chilli pepper. Katica went walking to the hospital again for more treatment & Tereza helped Antal prepare lunch. Cousin Evike with husband Radovan & their 2 sons (they have grown so much since last time) called around, they had just got back from a 2 week holiday in Greece & were all nicely tanned & refreshed. It was so great to see them all again & we spent a lot of time chatting as we went through their Greek holiday photos.

Lunch was sumptuous with delicious lecso (one of my favourite Hungarian food) & pork with lots of talking & laughter with all 8 of us squeezed around the small table. Desert was another of my Hungarian favourite, floating islands. I ate so much I could hardly move & they kept on wanting me to eat more, typical Hungarian hospitality. We spent all afternoon chatting with Evike before we walked back to her house late in the afternoon.

At Evike’s house Radovan had collected all the quail eggs & was busy preparing pancakes for us for an afternoon snack using 20 quail eggs. The kids were excited to show us some puzzles they had completed at home after they left us & to show us the cutest Siberian Husky puppy they had. Lots more talking & I helped out on the computer for them to show how to set some things up on Youtube. A little bit of a challenge with my language limitations, the kids are amazing, they speak Hungarian, Serbian also learning German & English, a lot better than me with my limited Hungarian. The eldest son, Mate is also teaching himself Russian, using English as the base language & already knows 100 words of Russian. He has an amazing ear for music, he hears a tune & he can play it, he is going to the music school (where his grandmother, Katica used to teach violin & his mum is teaching piano) where he is learning to play classical guitar & now he wants to finish a 4 year course learning clarinet in 2 years. He is very friendly, a real chatter box. Younger son, Victor is also learning classical guitar & flute, he is also very interested in computers.

We sat outside on the verandah chatting & eating pancakes when we were very rudely interrupted by a very loud aeroplane which flew very low overhead & then it returned several times spraying insecticide. They think they have a problem with mosquitoes in Kikinda. We grabbed our food & raced inside from the stinking pesticide.

All too soon it was time to go & after our sad goodbyes we walk back to Katica’s apartment around 8pm & had a light supper (not because we were hungry).

The last 2 days Ron has been busy working out on the computer a format to put grandfather’s side of the family tree into some sort of semblance of order, he is so patient, no wonder I love him.

Katica & I finished our grandmother’s side of our family tree with a lot of gaps but we reminisced a lot about our childhood together & a lot of the relatives. Tonight was our last night here & we wondered if we would ever meet again, it is sad that we are so far from each other. As nice as it all has been, it is time to go, we are really missing our family at home.

Another great day.