Trekkin

Day 44 – May 29 Sunday

Another lazy start, caught up on some blogging, sorted some photos, then went to church at 9am.  Antal sings in the church choir & today was a special first communion day, his sister’s grandson was being confirmed in the old Hungarian Catholic Church so we went along & joined in the celebration.  The church was very crowded & the kids looked cute in their white outfits.  The church has some beautiful paintings on the ceiling & the very high arch work looks great.  After church I did some research on old violins.   Katalin was a violin teacher at the Kikinda music academy all her working life & accumulated a few old violins over that time.  One was built in 1765 with a label of a very famous violin maker inside.  The research revealed it was a very good copy, it had been built after the violin builder on the label had died (an original was sold in 2004 for three million dollars, unfortunately hers was a copy).  Another was labelled as a “Stainer” & was another German copy, this time from around 1900.  Another violin, the one she treasures the most, apparently it has the most amazing sound, doesn’t have any violin maker’s name visible, but we suspect it was made by a Hungarian luthier (violin maker) from the 1800s that didn’t brand his good violins.  It was very interesting researching the violins, there is so much information on the net available about violins, makers, copies, etc.

Watched the F1 Monaco Grand Prix with Antal on TV then late afternoon went for a long walk around town.  One of the interesting things we came across is a Suvaca, there are apparently only two of these left in Europe, one in Budapest & the other here in Kikinda, built in 1899.  At one time in 1847 there were 51 of these Suvaca in use.  For those of you that don’t know what a Suvaca is, its a horse driven stone mill for grinding corn & wheat into flour.  A lot of cherry trees are growing on the street, so you can reach up & pick a few to eat as you stroll along, the kids have eaten most of the low hanging ones.  Some of the houses are painted in eye catching colours, while others are tiled across the front walls.  A couple of big new houses are being built, with marble walls & multi stories, apparently by Gypsys.  You have to question where they get the money as usually you spot the dark skinned Gypsy ratting through the rubbish bins in dirty raggedy clothes.

We walked with some 10 litre empty plastic containers to the town fresh water fountain to collect some clean drinking water.  The water that comes out of the household reticulated taps smells bad, is coloured & apparently not fit for drinking.  It smells & feels like the artesian water that you get in outback Australia.

Day 43 – May 28 Saturday

Another lazy start, up by 6.15am (the sun is up at 5.30am), another great Hungarian breakfast, then off to the town farm, about 4km away.  This is a small farm, around 4 acres, narrow & long on very fertile soil, with a very small farmhouse on it – a weekender.  The cherries were all just about ripe, the sour cherries a while yet, with about a dozen huge cherry trees you can eat cherries to your heart’s content.  The apples, pears, plums, peaches all have new fruit on them & will be well laden by autumn.  They also have a few very large walnut trees, covered in huge green nuts, again autumn will have plenty of walnuts.  The strawberry patches were also full of fat, ripe & very sweet strawberries, so we picked around 8 kilos of them, plus a lot in the tummy as well, they are so, so sweet, its different to the ones we buy in Canberra.  The real good news is that Tereza’s strawberry allergy hasn’t surfaced, so it must be something they put on the strawberries in Australia that affect her so badly.

While we were picking, Antal was cooking some meat on the BBQ, so by the time we cleaned up the strawberries, lunch was ready.  Evike, Radovan & her two sons, Mate & Viktor arrive, the boys driving really neat peddle cars that Radovan built – he is really handy & has done a great job on them, they look good & perform well, most importantly, the kids love them.  We talked for hours, ate more strawberries & cherries while the kids wore themselves out running around, playing & exploring & having a great time.  Packed up & back to the apartment late afternoon.  Surprise – cherries & strawberries for dinner – as well as left-over meat, etc.  We are so full.

Day 42 – May 27 Friday

Up early this morning & repacked our bags before breakfast.  Dejan arrived at 9am & drove Gizella & us to the city of Zrenjanin, where Gizella’s other son, Dusan, lives.  It was also great to see him again after so many years & he remembered so much of our visit with James when we stayed with him a few days.  Gizella was also visiting for her 50 year school reunion to be held on the weekend, so we drove into the CBD to see the old school & churches.

Zrenjanin is also the city that Tereza spent the first 12 years of her life before leaving for Australia, went to school, went to church, shopped, went for walks.  There were so many recalled memories for Tereza & Gizella walking together again through the Zrenjanin streets, comparing memories & stories, changes & not.  It was great to see them laugh & smile & talk constantly.  The local school kids were also celebrating their last day of school & had a noisy procession through the main street from the nearby school, closely flanked by a few police.  Tereza even found her favourite treat, a cake slice called Shaum pite, in the same location, in the same shop, where she had this treat more than fifty years ago, amazing.  Some things never change.  Another really smooth ice cream with Dejan & we went back to the house, dropped off Gizella, said our farewells to Dusan & continued our journey.

The drive through the countryside is very beautiful, the green of all the new crops growing on the flat & fertile plains of the Vojvodina region, passing through a small village now & again, seeing other small villages in the distance, marked by their church spires.  We reached Kikinda at 2pm to spend some time with Tereza’s other cousin, Katalin (Gizella’s sister) & her husband Antal.  We were greeted very warmly, along with their daughter Evika (Klara’s sister) & were treated to another fantastic Hungarian meal, as always, way too much to eat, but all very, very nice.  We are made so welcome, it is really good.  We sat & talked for ages, before Evika had to go back to work & Dejan back home to Novi Sad.  We went for a walk around Kikinda in the late evening & went to hear the practice of the choir that Evika is conducting & taking to Istanbul for a competition in July.

Evike’s family came to pick her up after choir practice & we got to meet her two sons for the first time, Mate & Viktor, they are both very cute & handsome boys, along with her husband, Radovan. (again they were young people courting & now settled down with 2 big boys, time seems to have stood still for me until I see their children now. We had another long walk around town before we went back to the apartment after choir practice.  It was a lovely night & there were lots of other people out walking.  We got back around 9.30pm, late, great dinner & bed.

Day 41 – May 26 Thursday

This morning Kosta took us by bus into the CBD of Novi Sad.  It has improved so much since we were here 14 years ago, the centre has been closed to traffic & is now a large pedestrian mall.  There are cafe’s everywhere with footpath tables & umbrellas, the shopfronts have been tidied up & there is so much clean space.  It was a pleasure to walk around & look at all the beautiful old buildings in peace.  We went into the large Catholic church & had a look at the huge stained glass windows & the rest of the artwork inside, another very nice church.  This church was built by the Hungarians when Novi Sad was part of Hungary & all of the old writing on the walls is in Hungarian.  We walked into the park with an ice cream & checked out the white swans in the pond & all the red faced tortoises. We felt that this city square is as good or better than some of the famous ones we have seen in other countries.  Back by bus, its a good way to travel around the city, they are frequent & cover the city well, the city is reasonably compact for so many people, most live in 5 or 6 story apartment buildings, so the population density is fairly high.

In the afternoon we walked down to Zoltan & Klara’s apartment with Gizella & got there at 5pm to meet their daughter Dorika, who was away in Italy competing successfully (1^st place) in a jazz ballet competition when we visited them last time.  We had another great chat, went through some family photos, then had another great meal while the two kids went off to their respective English & violin lessons.  After the kids returned we had a special treat, Dorika played the violin for us (she wins 1^st place every time in violin competitions, very talented girl), then David played his violin for us.  They are both very good, it was really great to hear them play.  Zoltan kindly drove us back, he thought it was too dark for us to walk safely back.

Day 40 – May 25 Wednesday

A lazy day, watched a bit of the French Open tennis, the Serbian players only (of course), then a bit of reading & photo sorting in the afternoon while a storm passed over & dumped a lot of rain.  During the day I also sat on the verandah & watched all the swifts (birds) flying around & was surprised when a few came straight for me, then stopped at a crack in the wall between the two buildings, folded their wings back & crawled into the crack.  The swifts are nesting in the small gap between the two five story buildings, the gap is only about 8cm wide & there are lots of swifts in there.

We went for a walk after the storm passed, dodging all the huge puddles of water laying around, the playgrounds are swimming pools now.  The roads are not much better, there is a lot of water covering the roads, closing them in places & slowing the traffic right down.  We took about 20 minutes to walk to Dejan & Alexandra’s apartment with Kosta & Gizella to visit them & their two children, Nikola & Jovan.  They have a lovely place on the fourth floor & have fitted it out very nicely.  We spent a few hours with them & I looked over the plans for a new kitchen & living room they are planning – it will make a big difference to their lives having so much more space.  They walked us half way back in the dusk, the water had mostly cleared & traffic was flowing again. The last time we saw them they were both busy studying to be doctors & now they are married & they have big children, they both speak English well & all the young kids are learning English, German plus they speak Serbian & Hungarian (they speak it well too).  Another lovely day.

Day 39 – May 24 Tuesday

Another quiet morning, Tereza & I went for a short walk, visited a post office & got some postcards away, then back after an hour.  Gizella was very worried we wouldn’t find our way back & we would get lost.  She prepared a fabulous Hungarian goulash for lunch for us, it was so good & so much – we are being fed so much food, it’s all so tasty.  Late afternoon we went for a long walk & got back around dark.  I think we wore out Kosta & Gizella (we laughed so much so I am not sure if it was the laughter or the walk that was so exhausting).  An early night to bed at 9.30 pm.

Day 38 – May 23 Monday

A fairly quiet day, we talked most of the morning, then went for a long walk in the afternoon, changed a bit of Euro into Dinar, the Serbian currency & finished the day off with another superb meal.  Then putting more & more nice food in front of us & then in no time it’s afternoon tea & cake – we are always so full.  A storm nearly missed us, only a little bit of rain, thunder & lightning.

Day 37 – May 22 Sunday

We woke at 6am, Kosta & I went for a walk to buy the Sunday paper & Kosta bought a bunch of flowers for Tereza.  We had breakfast, typical Hungarian of meats, cheese, bread & herbal tea – delicious & a great change after all the hotel food.  We were picked up by Klara & her husband Zoltan with their son David for a tour of a nearby ancient historic town, Sremski Karlovci.  They had planned to take us to see the Cathedral & the Patriarch Residence (the Patriarch is equivalent to the Pope in the Serbian Orthodox religion), however, there was a big crowd & TV cameras & security.  A huge religious ceremony was going on, the bones of Saint Nicholas were being moved (the patron saint) & this was the massive religious ceremony for that event.  Needless to say, we didn’t get in to see inside that church, however, there are a few other very old places in town that we visited.

First up was the nearby religious school that specialised in teaching languages.  A young student showed us around & explained in good English (even though she specialises in French) the different important people, events & parts of the school.  The main hall was beautifully painted & decorated, with busts of the men that were principal in the foundation of the language school.  Of special interest were two freestanding large heaters at either end of the hall, I hadn’t seen any like them before.  Languages taught were Latin, Greek, English, French & Chinese.  Next was the library, with over 18,000 old books.  Open on display were some books dating from the 1500s & 1600s, one written in the Cyrillic alphabet in 1562, another in Latin from 1544, still in remarkable condition.

Walking along the street amongst many old buildings, one old inn had a sign indicating it was established in 1620.  A number of other old stone buildings we walked past were in need of a little tender care to bring them up to scratch, a bit of time & money.  The next old church we visited had an extraordinary colourful wall of religious icons at the altar, plus an amazing fresco on the dome ceiling.  The walls were also covered with religious frescoes, depicting many scenes from the bibles.  We walked past a few other churches that were closed due to the religious festival so headed back to the car & drove a little further to the Chapel of Peace where a peace treaty was signed in 1699 between the Turks, Austro-Hungarians, Venetians & Polish, with the English & Dutch presiding as the peacemakers.  This round church has four entrances, built for each of the negotiating parties to enter (the Turkish door was sealed so they could not come back & only a few years ago was opened again)   The treaty was signed at a round table, so that all parties were treated as equals.  The church is slowly being restored, but apparently the foreign money for the restoration keeps disappearing in the bureaucracy that apparently has an amount of corruption.

Next we drove to the Fruska Gora National Park & visited one of the more than 20 monasteries that were built in the forest to try & escape persecution during the communist regime, when a lot of the Orthodox churches were destroyed by the communists.  The crimson gateway building to the monastery looks a relatively recent addition, around 200 metres from the main building (maybe its just the recent paint job).  The church was full with a busload of kids when we arrived & a bit noisy as a result.  The fresco’s are dark in here from all the candle smoke, all the walls & ceilings are totally covered with frescos & in places you can see where new paintings have been painted over old different paintings.  The icon wall in front of the altar is again impressive, with all the gold frames & gold paint on the icons shining brightly. It’s a real shame that these wonderful frescoes aren’t restored.  The outside wall of the church had an unusual sundial on the walls of this stylish old church with twin bell towers.

It was a warm 29C, too hot for a spring day.  On the way back to Novi Sad we stopped at a natural spring for a refreshing face wash & drink, then stopped at another church that was also closed due to the religious festival.  It was built to celebrate the defeat of the Turks & had a Turkish half moon under the cross on the spire.  We went back to Klara & Zoltan’s lovely apartment where they whipped up really nice Hungarian style lunch, we sat & chatted for a while until Zoli took David off to a friend’s birthday party. We then went off with Klara to see the old fort of Petrovaradin, built between 1692 & 1780 on the banks of the Danube River, covering an area of over 100 hectares.  The old clock tower was built in 1837 & has the distinguishing unusual feature that the large hand on the clock faces points to the hour, instead of the minute as per the usual case.  Apparently the hour was more important to the seamen that sailed up & down the Danube River.   It was such lovely balmy weather as we wondered around & watched a few barges being pushed & pulled along the river & as we were leaving a Danube passenger riverboat, the “Mozart”, left it’s dock on the Novi Sad riverbank & continued its journey upstream. (the Danube is not blue, it is a dirty brown colour).

It was getting late so Klara took us back to her place, again gave us a great Hungarian meal & when Zoltan & David returned from a birthday party, laden with balloons, we were driven back to Kosta & Gizella’s apartment where the feeding, drinking & talking continued into the night. We had such an enjoyable day.

Day 36 – May 21 Saturday

A lazy start this morning, breakfast at 7.30am where we had a last catch up with a few remaining members of the tour group that didn’t leave on the bus to the airport at 6.30am.  Back to the room & a long chat on Skype with both of the kids, paying some bills & catching up on some email.  A repack of the bags (I put on a very bright pink blouse so that my relatives could pick me out of the crowd) & we checked out around midday & waited a bit for the hotel shuttle bus to the Rome airport.  Check-in was a breeze, it took a while to get through security & passports with the crowd, then out to our departure terminal by monorail train.  We found one of the few seats & waited around until our flight was called, on time & surprisingly we were in Belgrade 25 minutes before schedule at 5.15pm.  Passports & customs was very straightforward & we saw Klara (who knows us from talking on Skype) & Dejan, the children of Tereza’s Hungarian cousins, waving & smiling at us as we walked out of the customs gate.  It was so good to see them again after all this time.

Dejan drove us to Novi Sad where his parents, Kosta & Gizella live.  The drive took around an hour & a half.  Gizella is Tereza’s cousin & the welcome we received when we arrived at their apartment was very heart warming.  It was wonderful to see them again, it is fourteen years since we were here last time.  Gizella had a great Hungarian meal prepared for us, too much as is the Hungarian way, delicious as always.  Tereza & I had a great chat (me not as much) into the night catching up with old times.  Dejan left to go home to his wife & two children & we talked until past bed time.

Day 35 – May 20 Friday

I’m getting to like these late starts, up at 6am, breakfast at 7am & away at 8am, very relaxed this morning for our short journey from Sorrento to Pompeii.  The Bay of Naples had a couple of low cloud layers & the visibility was hazy, with the broody Mt Vesuvius standing menacing in the background.  A few fishing boats were trying their luck & a couple of ferry boats already scurrying across the still & flat sea.  The traffic out of Sorrento was a little busy so it took us about half an hour to reach Pompeii, just south of Naples & again, we were amongst the first tour groups there & it was thankfully still nice & cool.

Pompeii is amazing, it is now located around 3km from the sea, but when Vesuvius buried the Roman city in 79AD, the sea was lapping against it’s walls & the wharfs at the seaport gate.  I had always been interested in Pompeii & read a fair bit about it, but never realised how big the city is, it’s huge.  We wandered up & around the paved streets, still with wheel ruts from the Roman carts worn deeply into the stones.  The Romans were remarkably advanced, multiple bakers, hospital, doctors, sliding doors, running water, upstairs inside toilets, bars, brothels, multiple temples, gladiator school & theatres.  It is interesting to note that one of the theatres was built by the Greeks around 300 years before the Romans built Pompeii.  Before the Greeks, evidence of Etruscan habitation has been found at the site & before them the Osci from central Italy in the 6^th-7^th century BC.

Pompeii started to get busier as more & more tour groups piled in & the day became very warm, I’m glad we’re not here in summer.  The main drinking fountain in Pompeii had worn down where the Romans had placed their hands to lean in to drink, that is a lot of hands over a lot of years.  There was a collection of storage jars, mostly broken, a few plaster casts of bodies of people plus a dog frozen in time from when they had died.  Pompeii is remarkably preserved, there has been some reconstruction of a few components to show what a building looked like before the weight of the ash collapsed the roofs.  There are the remains of a few frescoes scattered around the city, most of the frescoes have been removed & taken to museums for display over the years since the excavations began.  Around one third of Pompeii is still buried, our local guide told us that will remain for future generations to uncover.  There are houses & other buildings sitting on top of the still buried city.  As we left Pompeii through the old port area an influx of more tour groups were pouring in, it was starting to get hot & we were glad to stand in the shade waiting for our bus.

Off back towards Rome & we stopped at Cassino, the site of a Commonwealth War Grave from the 2^nd world war where over 4,000 servicemen are buried, mostly Canadian & New Zealand.  It is very tidy & sombre, the graves of so many young men, such a terrible waste of young lives.

We drove only a few more minutes to our last destination – Rome.  The Sheraton hotel is so enormous, it’s located south of the city area closer to the airport as most in the group is flying out tomorrow.  We had a farewell dinner at the Papa Rex Restaurant, it was once again a wonderful feast with a piano accordion & tambourine played by a young woman with a most wonderful voice singing.  We had the last supper so back to the hotel where we had our last farewell – it was a great group & made some good friends.  These Italian bus drivers have all been amazing & they can have their jobs.  Our last tour guide was an Italian who was a lot more “C’est la vie” but a very charming likeable man.  Tomorrow we are off to visit the Hungarian relatives, I am starting to get very excited as I haven’t seen them for 15 years.