On the northern hemisphere

For Wednesday evening we planned the sunset walk, but Janka changed her mind. My guess is that my mother's anti-adventure campaign paid off. It is extremely dangerous walking on the hills in the light and cool evening breeze, while sitting and watching TV is perfectly safe. I disagree but I felt no need to start an open fight about this. I accepted the change of plans with a silent nod, knowing that Dzsoki (the puppy) is a faithful companion in exploration and he is not under the protective control of the establishment.

We got our reward, of course. The view of the older part of the village (>700years).

Sheep.

My favourite lonely tree with the gentle hills in the background.

A bone for Dzsoki. Endless entertainment.

Dzsoki is a perfect runner now. Actually he overpassed his master. I decided to walk at the final ascend. Dzsoki grabbed the lead, started dragging me an looked back: "Hey man! Run! Don't give up! Run! We are not far from home!" 

Eger (the town) is ~25km from Egercsehi (the village). I use public transport between them. The alternative would be cycling, but I was lazy to do the due maintenance of the bicycle.

Buses are frequent and reliable, so Simon Norton from Cambridge (genius in the basement) would be happy here. On the other hand the roads are, hm... they still exist. Mother Nature already started to reclaim the land.

Potholes are quite deep, but looking at the bright side, the traffic is slow and thus safe.

Crumbling bus stop, remnant of communist-era design. It gives shade and shelter from rain. Benches provided by locals (I guess), natural air-conditioning built-in.

Buses are new and clean.

In Eger I met Hajdú  Dani, who originally requested my hungarian down under blog. They are happy with the  3 months old baby, full with new business plans... Heartwarming to hear such good news.

Compulsory shots of Eger (more to come).

The old building of the college freshly renovated and painted with this neutral grey colour. I thought it was just the base paint then scaffoldings were removed. I worked at a different campus when I was with the college before going down under.

Looking at the other directions, the Bazilika. Every tourist has these two shots. Hm, time out of joint - I'm a tourist in my name-giving birthtown...

Due to the excess heat of continental summer I spend daytime hiding inside the house (mainly reading books). But since the diet is not exactly the slimming type I need to do some running as well. In the evening of course. Not before 7pm.

The puppy is slowly getting the idea of running. In the beginning he just sat down and watched me running away, then I stopped and called him so he did a 50m run. It is a bit slow to run a few kilometers keeping this pattern. On the way home the dog is capable of continuous running but why on earth does he try to occupy exactly the same piece of land I use with my feet. This results a few accidental kicks for the puppy and the occasional tripping over for me.

Yesterday I went to a nearby village to meet a friend. Szarvaskő is behind that rock. There used to be a castle on that cliff, but due to the stormy hungarian history almost no ruins remains.

The ruins looked like this from the village side. But today you can barely find a piece of wall in the shrubs.

And here is a hiking trail in the Hungarian "bush" with the trail signs I probably mentioned before.

Today with Janka we plan to do sunset walk (8:44pm), but before that I go to Eger to be a bit social and meet another friend.

I updated 4 computers to Precise Pangolin, the latest Ubuntu release. My mother's, my sister's, my niece's and my friend's (the history teacher who gave me accommodation before moving down under). These 4 computers I left behind to make sure that they can contact me easily. Therefore it is quite important to keep these machines in good working order.

I read a lot about the history of the demoscene. Now I know that the 6 hours long delay at Flashback was nothing compared to failures of other parties (e.g. 4 days power outage at a 5 days long party, one of the organizers took all the money and moved quickly abroad - this happened twice, and the best one, at a big Scandinavian party the organizers confiscated all the beer from my fellow Hungarians, who of course got a bit angry and formatted the drives containing the compo entries causing a 15 hours delay... "Don't mess with the Hungarian's beer!" - as the event is now remembered).

I've visited my host family (the aforementioned history teacher's). When I rang the doorbell I saw someone running towards the door - Oh dear, I thought, I don't like overenthusiastic welcome greetings (nor emotionally overcharged farewells), but the door opened and youngest kid shouted "Hey, hurry, hurry! Denmark scored if you are quick you can see the replay." then rushed back inside the house (the Euro Football Cup is on these days). So yes, my stay  continued there as if there was no 9 months absence. That is how I like it. I stayed overnight, but I will be there during the conference.

I left my violin at the violin repairer's workshop. The varnish is falling off where my neck touches the instrument.

So yes, somewhat reluctantly but I visited my birthtown, Eger.

A sunset shot of the main square and the castle. And I invited my sister and the two daughters to a restaurant. So here is a photo with the older niece.

Instead of 42 she has the firm belief that the meaning of life is continuous partying. Of course being a teenager this is not surprising and the earlier you start this the earlier you can realize that there is more to it. Then the real partying can begin...

Ok, it is getting late here, and enough of pop-philosophy for today... ;)

Just for reference.

June 11-12 Sydney-Singapore-London-Budapest. 

June 13-21 Eger(csehi). 

June 21 Debrecen  Visiting good old programmer and GO player friends. 

June 22-24 Hajdúszoboszló. Big family holiday. 

June 25-30 Eger. Fibonacci conference. No comment. Gigarulez!

July 1 Last Sunday lunch on the continent.

July 2. Budapest-London

July 2-15. Old Hatfield Staying at Lis' place. Working with Chrystopher. Semigroup fun.

July 16-18 London-Singapore-Sydney. Back to winter. :)

Since Suzanne sent a detailed menu of the Sunday family dinner, I think describing the Sunday lunch is due now.

Continuing the discussion in kitchen terminology, here is  vegetable soup you can really see through. ;)

Straight from the edible garden behind the house.

But before the lunch, drinking some spirit as aperitif is compulsory. 

The Hungarian version of this herbal infused spirit would be Unicum, but we don't have that now. They are both available at the Cross in the Czech restaurant.

The main course was something off the net. The great thing is the new potato.

And two types of desserts, both with cottage cheese. I missed the proper cottage cheese in England, in Finland and I don't think it exists in Australia...

And now a real hungaricum. The underskin fat of pork preserved by salt...

 ...put on a skewer and heated up over the embers of woodfire. Then dripping the fat on slice of bread and eat it with vegetables and onion.

Cheerful outdoor family gathering food, though it may not be encouraged by a health-conscious diet. Unless of course you work all day as a peasant on the fields.

Tonight I chose 'kefir' as a lighter option for dinner. That is basically rotten milk.

Here is the house of my parents, and where I spent my childhood.

This was renovated last year. By decay I meant that for each renovated house you get five completely abandoned or neglected ones, mainly due to lack of financial means to do the maintenance. Of course, there are no new buildings. 

That is true for the village, but not for the town, Eger. Here is the newly built house, where I was supposed to spend the rest of my life - according to 2010's plans.

and the neighbourhood, or hm.., the suburb.

The puppy needs exercise (he has way too much energy) and I like walking on the hills around the village. To great surprise my little niece joined us. Previously she considered me strange, or I don't know what, but almost never talked to me. So there is progress, now she answers questions. So here they are, Janka and her dog.

These hills used to have forest on them, but the coal mine needed timber, so they are naked now...

My appearance in the parents' house caused a sudden increase in entropy. I have the guest room which has relatively big open floor space. Ideal for scattering things.

This is a shot made on the first day. There are more things on the floor now. I may soon get kicked out...

Work in the morning. After the rejoinders to ARC were submitted I was looking for new challenges.

Still having the momentum from the weekend's demoscene party I felt the urge to find my good old Commodore 64 machine. This entailed unexpected obstacles. My parents completely ignorant about the value of the old computers simply stowed away  the retro hardware somewhere in the dusty attic. And the ladder had been  removed. My mother looked frightened when I announced my plans to organize a rescue expedition. Bringing down the dirt into the clean rooms. 

But I had no other choice. It took some time to recover everything, I got really dirty. The loot had to be taken outside as I was told clean the equipment before bringing them back inside.

And then came a bit of a surprise. I actually have two C64 machines. I was puzzled, then after searching through my memories it dawned on me. One machine is from an ex-girlfriend, and the other from another ex. I think the conclusion is sort of unavoidable. Women come and go but the C64 stays forever.