That time of the year.

Hi Everyone,

This post will be about a very fresh experience, the Christmas light switch on. :)

One thing I really miss from Budapest (apart from the friends of course) the Advent period, namely that time of the year when the city is covered in Christmas lights. Here, only the main road is lit (tho now I noticed some Christmas light along the sides of 1 road and on the couple of buildings, oh what an improvement) and the people make the Christmas light switch on a family event with music, costumes and a 'real' Santa on a 'real' sleigh.

First video: a very modern kind of reindeer, and the band. Oh by the way, the lights are switched on as the band move along on the road, so here, it is already lit. (unfortunately I cannot upload more videos, because they are bigger in size than the limit. :( )

 

Here a picture when the lights were still switched off. You can see all the families, and people who gathered together to see this big event.

 In the next couple of pictures are, hopefully, give an idea about how serious this event was. That big szaloncukor-like guys are actually Christmas crackers, very popular in the UK, consist of a segmented cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper with a prize in the central chamber. (Thank you Wikipedia for the information :) )

 But there were many children dressed as Christmas present, there were these bright spinning thingies, Christmas tree and snowman too.

I didn't make any picture about  Santa on his sleigh unfortunately. I thought I just upload the video and that's it. I tried to make a photo out of the video, so maybe.. But, try to imagine it: Santa, sitting on his sleigh, in front of him, there are his reindeer, so far so good, right? Now imagine that these reindeer are made out of plastic and lit, of course. Artificial snow is snowing.  Now imagine all of these onto an open truck, and there you go, our Santa :) 

In the background of the santa-picture, there some butterfly-like thingies, who look like they just escaped from the power rangers. Here they are in bigger. They were lucky, because there was almost no wind tonight.

And of course, at the end, the imperturbable guards of the order, the police. Maybe it is not visible in this picture, but on the front of the motorbikes there are these soft deer antlers, make the whole appearance funny and festive (I guess).

Edited: The extra picture of the Christmas lights

With lots of Sunshine :)

Hi Everyone, :)

While I was walking home today, it just came to mind that until yesterday, we rarely had rainy days. As surprising as it may sound to even me, the sun was mostly shining, even tho the days were cold, but at least shiny. Yesterday, the winter season finally reached this grey city, and the era of rainy days have begun. 

As I said, during my walk home, I remembered those beautiful sunsets and sunrises we had here. I think, I have to mention, that now, the sun rises around 7.30 am and sets around 4.30pm, and it is still only November..  I may sound depressing (and believe me, sometimes it is), however, it has a very, I would say, rather pleasant side of having a late sunrise. And it is, of course, the view.

I don't know how you feel about it, but when I see a stunning sunrise like this:

  or this (after the hurricane):

It just makes my whole day. :)

Or when I see a sunset like this:

or this:

I always think this is a worthy end of the day, and all is well if its ending is good. :)

The other natural phenomena I like here is the rainbows. You often can see them :D

There was a light storm on the sea which avoided the city tho, but made this beauty:

 

And this was over the city centre. just after a light rain.. Because the sun is always shining over the clouds..

The days of long walk #2

Hi everyone :)

Sorry for disappearing. Maxim is kinda busy nowadays, so I gonna write into the blog for a while. He is better in this writing stuff, I don't have any writing skills at all and also, my English sucks, so please bear with me. :)

In this post, I gonna guide you to Stonehaven, one of my favorite places in Scotland.

It is just 45 mins bus ride from where we live, and is like a little gem here.

 

The city itself (that tiny bunch of houses in this picture) is not particularly interesting, just the usual small fishing village, the type you can find here. But the environment is beautiful, and not to mention the nearby Dunottar  castle :P
This nice path, which runs outside the city, leads to the castle. The north sea occupies one side of the road and farm lands the other.

 This is the beach of Stonehaven, we had low tide, and a sunny weather. Or at least it seemed like that, because when I turned the camera to the left, suddenly...

Yeah, lots of clouds, and there goes our sunny day. But we didn't panic, because 'they are just clouds..' Uhum... 'just clouds'.. 5 minutes later we were soaked.

  

 It wouldn't be Scotland if we were not caught in rain. Here just a picture of the clouds.It can be seen, that on the very left of the picture and on the sea it's still raining.

Again just the for the view.. It is so peaceful.

This is the castle itself. I know it is not impressive or anything, but the view certainly is. Just the endless sea, and the sounds of the wind and waves.

We shoot this photo on our way back to the village. this is the bay between the castle and a hill.

Somebody said that this looks like a scene from Guild wars tho, I have never played with it, so i can't confirm that.

This is just a nice boat.
This looks like a  2 hours walk, but in reality it took us half a day. :D Yeah, obviously we stopped a couple of times, but still. it was a nice walk, included raining, sunshine and nice scenes. We were pleasantly tired by the end of the day and couldn't wait to go home and sleep :D