We have had a quite significant snowfall, the first in two winters. I first noticed it while on my return Saturday from Hajdúszobószlo, where there was no snow at all, even though that area typically has the worst weather in Hungary. It must have been Cegléd when I looked out---well, I had to change trains there, for I had spoken to Anna and she had suggested that I come to Szeged and have dinner there; so instead of changing trains in Szolnok and taking the train to Hódmezővásárhely, I continued on to Cegléd and took the train there to Szeged. In Vásárhely it was even worse, for my car, which I had parked across the street from the main railroad station on Friday, was covered with snow and ice, which I could only partially remove, since I had only a hand ice-scraper. Today we go to the language club meeting at 3.30, then to the symphony at 7.30., then leave to take the minibus to the airport at 2.45 a.m., as there is a railway strike here and we must go to Vienna by bus to be on the safe side. the minibus, a flight-catcher sort of thing,. also goes to the main bus station from which the international buses leave, so it will be a quite simple matter of walking from one part of the terminal to another part.
JANUARY 3
We spent several days in Vienna as guests of relatives we did not even know until about two months ago. the girl is the daughter of Anna's cousin and her husband, who is Austrian, and they live in Vienna. Anna and I used to go to Vienna every year at Christmas time and spend a week or so, but then Anna went back to USA and I stopped going; when she returned to live in Hungary she went again, but I did not go with her. Her cousin, who lives in Budapest, I had met only once, when I first came to Hungary Christmas 1978; then, about a year or so ago, she and Anna started seeing each other and she and her husband and their son came to Szeged and I met them then. As for our visit, they live about two miles from Westbahnhof, one of the main railway stations of Vienna, in a good-sized flat. If you know Vienna, you can walk straight down her street and come to Schöenbrünn Palace. We had a great time with them. To be honest I was not all that enthusiastic about going, but felt it would be rude not to, so I went. They took us to parts of Vienna I had never been to, though I have been to the city at least ten times. While there Anna and I went to the Kunsthistoriches Museum, which is something we always do; and we also went to the Belvedere, to which I had been numerous times without ever going inside. Believe it or not, we walked from their flat down to Westbahnhof, and then to Belvedere, and it was coooooollllllldddddd! I would not do it again. I knew how to get there, but misjudged the distance, thinking it was only about four kilometers when it turned out to be more like twice that distance. We went to Vienna by bus because there was a railway strike in progress in Hungary at the time---we knew of it several weeks in advance----and we did not know if the international trains would operate (they did), so we did not wish to take chances. Returning, we arrived to the main bus station at 22.15 and had an hour-long wait; but the bus came promptly, though we had a long wait at the airport, which is where it goes to when it leaves the bus terminal. It was after 3.00 when we got home. I slept until 10.00; Anna got up at her usual time, about 5.15. Since then we have had a string of holiday parties, at some of which I drank rather more than I should have----an old Hungarian custom. Now I am about to leave for Spain for two weeks, until January 19. Here in Hungary we have snow. Lots of it. It would not be very much in Sullivan County, nor in Orange; and once it would not have been very much for here either. But it is as much as we have had in the past three winters combined. And we are just getting started, which is why I am happy to be leaving for Costa del Sol.
JANUARY 22
I am back from Spain now and Anna has left with friends to spend two weeks in a spa in the southwestern part of Hungary, only a few kilometers from Keszthely, a very lovely town on Lake Balaton to which we have gone on vacation several times.
I am presently in Szeged with her brother, who is looking after the cat for her. Spain was a bit cooler than usual, and it also rained a couple of times, which is unusual for this time of year; but it was still a great deal warmer than here in Hungary, usually about the low 60s, but sometimes as high as 70. My friends enjoyed it very much. They had not been to that part of Spain, and not to Spain at this time of year, so they really appreciated being able to walk on the beachfront and sun themselves on the veranda. For the most part everything went well. However, when we were in the process of moving from one timeshare to another the second week, the car we rented would not start. Why it did not came as no surprise. Because the rental agency did not have automatics, I rented a standard; but because I last drove a standard in 1970, I did not feel up to the task of learning anew how to coordinate the shifting of the gears and the manipulation of the clutch so as not to stall in first-gear, I decided to let my friends do the driving. there was something on the dashboard that was lit and would not turn off, and I suspect that that ran the battery down. I went to the timeshare office to find out if there was a service station I could call, and the receptionist told me I should instead call the rental agency, which I did. Within an hour and a half they had delivered a replacement car to me; the receptionist arranged for me to stay in the apartment until the car came, so there was no real discomfort or inconvenience involved. We got to the new place, which was only about six or seven minutes away, by noon and were settled in by one. While there we celebrated Julianna's birthday. She reminded me that I was also with them last year to celebrate her birthday, for at that time they came and spent the weekend in Szeged. They became so enthusiastic about Spain in January that I had to remind them that in January 2009 I shall be in Florida, for I have been promising Annette and Raphael for several years that I would come and now I am definitely committed to go to spend a few weeks with them.
Anna and I have been examining the possibilities of a trip to Syria and Jordan, or Iran, or possibly even Libya. There are spectacular Roman ruins in all of them, though not in Iran----the Parthians saw to it that the Roman legions did not get that far. We have received numerous travel brochures, thanks to Saci, Anna's cousin's daughter in Vienna; but the offer that interests me most was one that she got on the Internet and which is marketed here in Hungary by a firm up in Budapest. I shall try to get up there soon and check them out. Anna has been thinking in terms of March, but for my part I would prefer something in the Fall, as I have timeshare weeks that I must use soon or lose them, so I want to use one of them to go to Austria in late May or very early June, and another to go to a resort in a town in Hungary on the Slovene border the end of September. My other resorts are in points---if you are RCI, then you know what I am talking about; if not, then none of this is likely to make much sense to you and it is a drawn-out explanation. First, you buy a fixed week at a resort; it means that you own that apartment for that week either for a definite period of time, say, 50 years, or forever. You may sell or deed it to whomever you wish. You pay an annual maintenance charge. If you do not wish to come to the same place at the same time every year, you may join an exchange society, the largest of which is RCI; this will enable you to exchange your week for a week in a similar time-period---high for high, middle for middle, low for low, or any time period lower than your own, but not higher---of comparable or smaller size, at any resort in their system, which consists of about four thousand resorts all over the world, but mainly in the USA, Caribbean, Europe, and North Africa. You pay a fee of about 130 USD for each such exchange. You do not exchange directly with a person, so you do not have to find someone who owns the accommodation you want and is willing to go to the place that you own; that is the job of RCI. You simply deposit your week and find a place you wish to go to that conforms to the parameters I have laid out above. That is the Weeks System. The Points System works like money. A point-value is assigned to your property based upon its relevant characteristics: time period, size, quality of the resort. Thus your "week" might be worth two or even three weeks depending upon when and where you choose to use them. To give an example: I own(ed) a week at Miraflores in Malaga, Spain, which was worth 20,000 pts. But if I had not owned it, and had been willing to make a reservation forty-five days or less before my arrival date, I could have gotten that same week via exchange for only 7500 pts. As with money, you may spend your points howsoever you choose, not on a barter basis as is the case with Weeks. Does it make sense to you at all now?
I am pleased to see new winners of the Australian Open instead of the same faces year after year. I think it is good for the game when there are a number of genuine contenders rather than just one real contender with a handful of challengers. To be sure it was not that way with the women, who were far more competitive than the men. But except for Nadal, who does not win except on clay, Federer never had a genuine challenger during his reign. Sampras had his Lendl, his Agassi, his Becker, and even McEnroe and Connors at the end of their careers; but Federer had no real challenger.
I am going to close this now. Remember my e-mail address is alex@lewisbrooks.net, and my address is Dr. Brooks Louis Alexander, Petö F. u. 4,
Hódmezővásárhely 6800, HUNGARY.
