In the middle of nowhere

or,

an entertaining short story of a lovely couple who walked far beyond the city boundary for a Wii..

A couple of weeks ago I accidentally started a (for us still) huge spending for home entertaining systems. It all started when I also accidentally came across with an Xbox 360 with a kinect in one of the charity shops nearby. My little brother had once, and I wanted one too for being able to play with this dance central game. It is very amusing, and help with my daily exercise, unlike the other very similar dancing game. Every day I passed by it, and I always thought, ok, today I will talk about it with Maxim. One evening when we walked home from the station, I showed it to him, saying, its still available and he replied, if it is a good price for it, then buy it, we can buy a TV later. So, I bought it. 

A week passed by and nothing happened, until I saw a very nice big TV in this facebook wanting-buying group. I showed the TV to Maxim, asking about his opinion with my big grey eyes.. We wrote to the seller, it was still available, but the location was about an hour walk from home.. OK. no problem, we could manage. We did, we walked there, got the TV, came back home, and now I had more or less everything I could entertain myself for literally forever. 

However, on the way back home Maxim was a bit (too) quiet, like when he is thinking about something serious. He asked me to invite him into this Facebook group.  Then , he sat down in front of his computer and started browsing the ads. 

When we started dating, he showed me his collection of games he wanted to play, he even mentioned a couple of times that he would like to buy a PS3 because of this games.. (not PS4 because the games he selected are not compatible with PS4 or something similar..) 

I honestly should have known.. But from that point, there was no turning back, I got mine, and there was no reason why he should not got his.. So, he scanned through the fb group, and found a PS3. Guess what we have now? Yep, we got a PS3 too, 4 days after we got the TV. He was soo elated at being able to play with his precious games.. Who could possibly thought his happiness isn't complete? 

Of course it was not, because still there were 2 (two!) games which were not operating on either Xbox nor PS platform.. These were Zelda games (yey) only available through Wii.........

He found a Wii too (on the same day), about circa 1 hour walk from home.. So, one day after we got the PS, we were on our way to get the Wii too. (Un)fortunately, when we were about 15 mins away from the seller, she wrote, apologized, but her partner was unwell, and now they are in the hospital. Maxim thought it is a heavenly sign to NOT buying (this) Wii. I thought he could let the this Wii idea go, we had already spent too much.. I was more or less right. 1 week after our missed meeting, on a beautiful, sunny Sunday, after having breakfast, he saw another Wii. 

You can imagine what happened after right? We contacted the seller. The address what he gave to us was hmm.. a bit farther to the north.. 1.5 hours of walk. The weather was nice, like a true spring day in February, so we decided to take a walk instead of the bus.

Even now when I write it down, it seems nothing. one and a half hour.. it is just a number, and  we are walking faster than what google predicts anyway.. I wasn't really aware of the rough terrain or what that 90 mins of walking really means, so I foolishly thought I could manage this 'easy' walk in high heels. (When I said this to one of my friends she replied I went crazy.. she was right) 

We literally went outside the city boundary and we crossed every hill this city possibly has.. The scenery was amazing though, but still, not meant for high heels. 

We passed a couple of footpath too, and made a note that we will come back here later and in appropriate clothing. :D 

Our adventure doesn't end here, on our way back, we thought about getting some lunch from Lidl, and tried a 'shorter' route, what was suggested by google.. 

Long story short, it did not work out very well, we spent about 30 mins in a woody area just to notice that the shortcut was a dead end, and the pathway was not continuing beyond a lovely bridge. So, we ought to go back on the way we came, unless we didn't, we chose the other side of the woods, which turned out to be steeper than what we originally came. 

At the end of the adventure, we managed to get back to the concrete road, and we haven't tried out any new shortcuts. :D 

Even my feet and high heels were survived, Maxim got his thingy (and now very happy I believe).

And all lived happily ever after. <3
The journey in pictures:

Winter is here, or is it?

Hi Everyone :)

You may think, it is already the end of December, you should have experienced winter season here. Yep, we did, tho not  the way as Maxim wanted to (white Christmas way :P).

It was snowing the first week of December, and the weather was really cold, - degrees even during daylight. The streets and buildings were covered with snow.

This is the view of the back yard.

Still snowing :)

On the way to work..

God, Maxim was so excited like a little boy :P

The town also in white.

And that was it.. From mid December, the weather started to warm up. Just a couple of days back, there were 14 degrees, no snow, not even rain. Yesterday there was a slight cooling regarding the temperature, now it is around 7-8 degrees, which is still very warm considering it is December..

Maxim's mother send us a heartwarming Christmas Parcel with full of szaloncukor and‎ kolbász (and other things, but these were the most important :P )
So, we are going to eat these 2 in the next couple of months :D

Again, thank you very much for the box Olga <3

Do you want to build a snowman?

Not ours, I just took a picture, and unfortunately a couple of days later, they have already started to melt. :(

Santa Claus on his name day left us a nice snicker ice cream surprise accompanied with a letter to Maxim, because he was a good boy :P . It was delicious, don't hesitate to try it when you come across this one.

Sent out a couple of post cards..

Baked beigli.. Last year I made the same amount and it did not manage to get Maxim's appreciation. But what can a year does to you.. this year it didn't last 24 hours..

Dressed up our Christmas tree.
Lighted up candles on each Advent's Sunday, tho I didn't take any picture of that.
We found (or it found us) a nice foxy Christmas tree decoration, and from now on, every year he will sit on the branches of our Christmas tree.

Christmas presents with Guardian Bears who swore an oath to not let anyone come close to the presents and open them before the time comes.

We hope you all  had a Merry Christmas and a Happy new year :) (even if 1 week later, but still :P)

Winter is coming..

Hi Everyone,

As the time passed on, the weather become colder (no surprise here..), but with that, our little trips are become less and less frequent. Mostly just around the town, or to the sea.. 

After we managed to get all the necessary papers for Maxim (took us a month), our life adapted some sort of routine, grew into a less chaotic, calmer and more peaceful. We finally settled down here (for a while).

I saw a quote from GOT on a toilet door: 'Brace yourself, winter is coming.' and a comment: 'It has never really gone..' and I thought whoever wrote that comment was absolutely right.. In my memory, from September to May the weather was always cold and rainy, but it seems this year the weather changed its mind and turned into a very warm autumn (the credit goes to that 2 hurricanes what brought warm, dry air from desert) and a relatively warm winter (so far).

But before winter, we visited a couple of places :D

There is a woodland near Persley Walled Garden, (upper stream of river Don) which leads back to Seaton Park if you follow the river. It is a nice and easy walk, but do not come here after rain..

There is a sidewalk near the bridge which leads you to a hiking trail. This is how the bridge looks like. The river is wide and calm..

.. until this point.

Dirt road guides you through the woods. I don't know what  happens here, but I rarely meet any people in places like this.. Maybe the people here don't like to go to explore the nature of this city..
I hope that some of you who are here, and haven't been in these places yet, get the taste of these and visit them.

A lonely bench here, providing excellent view to the river and flora around it.

Signpost guarantees you won't get lost :P

We don't know what it is. It looked abandoned, but the lawn was cut around it, so it should be maintained for a reason..

We crossed some weird places like this one.. and to be honest i wouldn't dare coming here alone.

A lovely footbridge, unfortunately closed down. :(

From this point forward the dirt road turned into a modern concrete-wood road.

The Donside Hydro.

Still under construction.. it promises to create clean, renewable electricity.

more information: https://vimeo.com/178159832

Following the trail leads back to Seaton Park.

This is already the Park.

Aaand yes, that is a deer. It has a mate for sure, maybe offspring too.

We used to see them (the 2 bigger ones) on the way from lidl through Seaton Park around dusk. Even saw a fox for a couple of time, tho it was far to take a normal picture of it, and on the other times it was too dark to take any pictures.

The days of long walk #3.5

Good evening Everyone :)

The title this time is a bit misleading, because we did go outside, but we did that by bicycle. Here the travelogue of our first and apparently the last bicycle ride in Scotland in 2017.  

We chose a destination close to our home, being this is our first bicycle ride in traffic etc. The importance of this village we were about to visit is that it has a nice sandy beach, also a nature reserve, like no other places.

So we prepared some lunch, packed bottled water and off we go.. :)

The ride there was surprisingly easy (that 4 month prior in Budapest cycling to work made its job :P) and quiet, true it was on a weekday morning. There were some clouds on the sky, but the air was still warm, making it a perfect day for biking.

We stopped twice before we reached the beach, first time something was wrong with my bike, (the guys tried to fix my breaks a couple of day back and actually forgot to tighten a screw... ¬.¬

But while Maxim was fixing my bike, I took a couple of pictures :D

This is also taken on the top of the hill  and you can see the sea from here. (like Scotland made up only from hills and sea :D ) 

 And from where we came :) All green, and there were a lot of Angus cows (future burgers) on the way. :)

We hold a break for the second time  to eat blackberries. We almost reached the nature reserve, when Maxim stops, leaves the bicycle on the side of the road (The whole village seemed to be empty) and goes to the nearest green bush. HE FOUND BLACKBERRIES (It is sooo him..) so we ate all the blackberries. :D I didn't take any picture, was too focused on eating :D

So we finally manage to reach the nature reserve. The whole park is like this. Sandy and green :)

Again, there were a lot of hills we had to climb, but the view worth it.

After the hill, there's the sea :)

I really like that whoever refurbished the park, he thought about the elderly, the disabled and mothers with buggies.. there are these wooden roads across the park, make it easier to reach the beach and walking around the park.

Had our lunch on the beach :) <3

A burrow where a fox resides maybe.. :)

 

When we came home we chose a different way. To be honest I saw a small loch on the map near us, and I wanted to see it. We actually lost in the middle of nowhere, take almost 2 hours of detour, but finally found it. Aaaand didn't worth it. Imagine something like Naplas to in Budapest... :/ But, the view.. still amazes me.

Every time I go to the shire I am astonished by the landscape..

We found sheep (haha Misa, I hope you read the blog :P ) and again a blackberry field.