Bookings and Heart Bypasses

It’s a cold February evening in Melbourne (Australia)!  Sounds like science fiction but true. I am looking back on my listed goals, trying to assess what I have accomplished over the last two Months.

I have done well with the paperwork, the Hotel bookings, airline tickets, passport is organized, the budget is established. However, I still weigh in at 90kg, the same as two Months ago, so I have to give up my favorite supper, peanut butter and jam sandwich and road test carrots as a replacement. It doesn’t sound very exciting.

Epworth Hospital - Fun Times!

In 2011, a year after retirement, I had a heart attack followed by quadruple bypass. Never one to let an opportunity pass, I decided to give up cigarettes since I could not smoke in the Hospital anyway. It all worked out O/K and I haven’t smoked since but it is a straggle not to put on weight let alone lose the planed 10kgs.

My general recovery from the operation was erratic. The medication prescribed, Liptor 40mg, lowered my cholesterol to the appropriate level and I improved a lot in the first six Months.

Soon after, I started to stumble when walking and had severe muscle pain, apparently the side effects of the medication. I phoned the Doctor to inform him that I will stop taking the medication and will discuss it at my next visit. He convinced me to continue with a different formula, Crestor 10mg. It was certainly better than the original formula and I kept improving but only up to a point. I still stumbled on perfectly reasonable roads and fell over a couple of times so a year ago I stopped taking it.

Now I am not falling over and do not have muscle pains but it obviously takes me longer to get where I want to be. It must be old age. However, I am at 15 kilometers, with a 7kg bag and I still have two Months left.

It is getting late and I need my beauty sleep so goodbye and have a good day.

The Long Journey

Stick to a task, eventually it will get done. I finalized all my bookings 29 stop-overs in 56 days of tracking.

About half of them one night stop overs the rest 2-3 day visits.

When I left Hungary I was only familiar with Budapest my home town, my father’s village where I spent 1944-45 the worst of the war years and later some summer holidays. The Bukk Hills where we went with my school in 1955 for a ten day tracking holiday and most importantly, Csurgo, a small village 3 km from the Croatian border where my uncle and his wife lived. Csurgo was the perfect location for my purposes. It has shaped the rest of my life

In January, 1957 my family was able to obtain a travel permit to visit my uncle Joska for a family reunion.

Joshka and his Wife

One evening, I put on my jacket and went to the outside loo…  and then I just kept going.

I finished up a couple of hours later at the house of a Croatian farmer. They gave me a hot drink and a warm bed for the night. (I will never forget their kindness).

The next morning, the border Police took me to the refugee camp in Koprivnica.

I left Hungary alone and returned there for the first time in 1974, 18 years later, with a wife and two kids. We have been back a number of times over the years for one-two week holiday, visiting family, historical sights and natural beauty spots, always enjoyable and always in a rush. There are so many fantastic places in the World to see and so little free time to do it.

Me on the left and my two younger brothers.

Now retired I have plenty of free time and it is time I have a closer look at my Country of birth.