... A New Year in Another Place

I have managed to elude my captors to once again make a blog posting.

Since my last post I have spent many an hour indoors and have managed to knock off the two last books for the year. This brings me to a total of 27 - which is, of course artificially inflated by counting each of the six parts of The Green Mile as an individual book. So 22 books in reality. Still not too bad although not a single 5 star rating amongst them but six 4 star ratings still mean it was a good year.

Anyway you all probably want to hear more of my adventures in Svetlanaland. From small tales like my forgetting the word for burek at the bakery and having to ask for sir sir (cheese ... cheese); or perhaps my many dog walking conversations with the locals; or how possible over consumption of dumplings may have caused me to come within a hairs breadth of fainting later that evening while crammed into one of the smokiest little 'pubs' in existence.

The big one would have to be New Years Eve.
After dropping the dog at Svetlana's sisters place, and participating in the pizza part of their pajama & pizza party out of politeness, I headed off to the venue that Svetlana had chosen for us to see in the new year.
Well you have not really experienced a New Years Eve until you have spent it dancing until the early hours to Svetlana-ese pop songs in a Hemmingway themed bar while firecrackers are being constantly set off in the zero degree temperatures outside.
All that dancing also lead to a serious case of knee cramp which left me unable to follow the advice of Days of our Libraries commentary advice from my previous posting.

New Years Day dawned with actual sunlight at about 11 in the morning and I realised I hadn't actually seen the sun for about two weeks. However by the time we'd arrived at Svetlana's parents place for the traditional New Years feast it was all grey and fat snow again. The rest of that day was lost to post-feast napping.

Yesterday was my day for exploring the capital. Svetlana had to work and I was able to amble my way around the city. I walked through a park beside battlements; saw the inside of the famous cathedral; spent an interesting hour in the muzej of Naive Art (self-taught artists, many of whom painted on glass); found the local game store to be closed for inventura; explored the ethnografski muzej wondering at the collection of village costumery that Rugrat Twin had drooled over mere months ago; squeezed myself into the worlds smallest comic store and explored the byways of the old city. Eventually I returned to Svetlana's office and we zoomed home through the crazy traffic - oh sedate Punt Road I miss you - to a evening meal of scrumptious chevap chi chi.

The bad news is that illness has struck and Svetlana will probably be unable to drive us to Budapesht so we will have to tick that destination off the list some other time.

I'd better go now before they realise I'm gone.