Heat Wave!

The hottest day of the year in Hungary today at 40.2 degrees, and the second hottest day since 1902!
Steve Roly and I have spent the last week in the kitchen in front of an ancient old fan, glugging back gallons of water and doing as little as possible! Thank goodness for the internet.

My God its hot!!! 

At 8.00p.m its still 28-30 degrees, and my rolling lawn is getting browner and browner, I go outside at around six o clock and start watering, we have had no rain for at least a month now, and everything is dry as a bone in this heat. Because I am watering from the well with a pump that does not have good pressure, a sprinkler is useless, so I have taken to watering with my sprayer sitting in a garden chair, with vodka and a book and moving around as it takes me about two or three hours, and this is "just" keeping everything alive.

We are expecting visitors this weekend, luckily we finished the spare bedroom two weeks ago, it looks amazing! Steve did a fabulous job completing the window, plastering, doing the edging and putting in a window sill and some new blinds. We painted, changed electrical fittngs, and polished the parquet flooring which came up a beautiful honey colour, the room looks really good we are both really pleased with it.
(Pictures to follow).

I am on the down hill run with my teeth! The two implants have apparantly bedded into the bone nicely, they were "liberated" from my gum last week, and I have two strange metal plugs there now. Tomorrow, I will have the actual screws fitted, and then impressions will be taken of the top teeth for the final bridge! Yay!!
(Pictures to follow)

"A GRAND DAY OUT!"

We decided to have the day off on Friday! Why stress?? We were just a little bit hung over from the night before, as we had gone to the wine farm behind our house, and stocked up on 15 litres of merlot, and naturally it has to be taste tested doesn't it???

So the discussion over breakfast was, what to do with our precious day off?

Then we hit on the idea of trying out the buses.These run from the bottom of our street about 200metres away on the main Lake Balaton/Marcali road with some frequency. I wondered down to the bus stop, took a picture of the timetable on my phone and came home to mull over the bus times to Balatonmariafurdo, by the lake.
I asked an Hungarian friend of my to double check on the internet that I had the times right, and we caught the 1326hrs bus, it was a minute late!
The bus driver was freindly, and the journey cost us 250 florints each way, which is about 75 pence to go about 5 miles. Its well used by young and old, everyone getting on the bus greets everyone, there are no blaring ipods/phones, no hoodies, no bad, smelly dodgy people, no Indians, blacks, Pakistani's, bhurkas etc. Everyone is polite, well mannered and respectful.

It was a joy!

Steve and I wondered around the shops, had a great lunch, where we were both able to have some beers and vodka's, (no driver required!) we also managed to keep down a Palinka (Rocket fuel!) and caught the bus home again.

On the way home, the bus stopped at a designated stop in Balatonjulak, a female dashed over to the bus from her driveway with a bucket of peaches, these were loaded onto the bus, a chap got off, loaded another large tray of peaches onto the bus, there was much jabbering and chatting, then the bus driver, left the bus idling, got out the bus and went into this womans garden returning with another bucket of peaches, everyone, smiling laughing and joking all the while! No stress by anyone.....................

My son has always called the bus, "The Loser Cruiser!" referring to the service in the UK, but here its deffinately a winner!!!

June 2013 Phone Pictures!

Some Phone Pictures during June 2013.

This rose bush has been hack, ripped, cut, neglected and treated like a rubbish dump,
and look how beautiful it is! Like beauty and the beast....

Oregbaglas! Wine, delicious, for pennies!!! Its like being in paradise....

 Our bedroom fire! Winter isn't looking nearly as bleak!

A rainbow over the outside shitter! I ain't looking for the pot of gold there!

Those roses with my happy husband!

Pictures of the area we live in...

Here's a few pictures around where we live, enjoy...

View down our backyard

Rainbow over our back yard.

Pleasure ferry in Keszthely, few miles from us.

Town centre of  Keszthely, simply gorgeous!.

A farmhouse up the hill behind us, viewed from the wine farm, Oregbaglas ( see it on google

Enjoying a Giro in Pita with friends Greg and Monika...

Another Before and after in the Garden!

BEFORE! With all fences and posts still up.....

AFTER! Fences down and grass seed sown...........

Before and After!

Main bedroom when it was still a hairdressing salon!

Now! Roly thinks its okay....

It does not look like there was much work involved, however, it took Steve and Lotsi a week just to sort the floor out, after fifty odd years of hair washing the floor had so much damp that they had to rip up the very manky floorboards and dig up smelly sand, then throw a hard core and then concrete, the plaster began leaping off the walls when you so much as glanced at it, and ten bags of cement had to be added to the walls to keep them standing. What a job! What a mess!!!

Steve is not happy with the end result (perfectionist!) but Roly and I love our new huge bedroom....

Three Months

We have now been here for three months, its hard to believe as the time has flown. Remembering that for the first month we were basically snowed in and incommunicado as we had no internet or phone.

But once the sun came out, the work began.
Steve and a local lad Lotsi pulled out fences and posts, which chopped the property into small sections, a tractor came in and ploughed up the earth and we now have much more garden, I then started raking and sewing grass seed, I think our neighbours are convinced of our madness, as they have prolific vegetable patches and watch us growing useless and inedible grass, but the fruit and veg shop down the road sells the freshest produce around for a pitance so we are putting off the self-sufficency thing until next year, there is just too much to do in the house.

We are finally in the main bedroom, this was a huge undertaking as the floor had some damp, and had to be dug up and a new floor of concrete thrown.This was all done by my amazingly versatile husband and Lotsi. The walls were also a bit suspect, and 10 bags of cement went into keeping them upright.
Steve is not happy with the final product, but I love it, its bright and big and ours and who cares about the imperfections, its an old farmhouse and has character!!!

I had my final fitting of my bottom teeth on Monday, they look amazing, I finally have a full set of bottom pearly whites. I will have to wait until July for the top row to be fitted as the implants need 3 months to bed in, but hey I have patience, and told the dentist I wanted them all complete by my birthday on 1st September, so everyone is working towards that date.

Renovations have come to a bit of a halt! I think we can probably blame the weather which has turned a little chilly after the 25-30 degree days of the last month, there is a lot of rain in around, which is brilliant for the grass.
I notice my husband is doing a lot of thinking and a lot of research on the web.
The bathroom is the next big job, and by the sounds of it, its a big big bloody job, what with the water pipes, sewerage, floor and electrics and not forgetting that we are actually living here and can only go without washing for.....??? a day or two.
Plus we just are not able to get any professional help from any tradesmen here, they are all working in the UK, Germany, Belgium and Austria and anyone left behind is pretty useless and wants to charge a fortune.
But watch this space.................

Our socail life is pretty good.
We have joined the ex-pat community of Brits, they are a nice bunch (if a little older than us), they are all very sociable, plus we have an English couple living in the same village as us, and they are really nice decent people, and we found a pub run by an Englishman Stan not far from us, he is good fun and includes us in all his gatherings, so all in all actaully a better social life then we ever had in England, possibly because we could not afford to go out there as the price of a pint there can practically buy as both a meal here!!!

So after the three month milestone, I can say that both Steve and I are happier than we have been for a long time, we still love Hungary, as does Roly, the weather has been awesome, and we just love love our home!

We feel good and comfortable and safe in it and and have absolutely no regrets!!!

Sharon