I was glad not to be hungover on Thursday morning, because I wanted to go on another excursion. Only a little one this time, which mercifully didn’t involve getting on a coach I hadn’t realised before I went on holiday that Szombathely (or, at least, the Roman town which used to stand on the same site) was the birthplace of Saint Martin of Tours (he who gave his cloak to the beggar). Generally my family spend a lot of time praying to various Saint Martins, on account of the fact that that was my grandfather’s Christian name, and so I found the prospect of visiting his birthplace rather exciting.

The excursion had been advertised on the listing of the day’s events as departing from outside one of the student homes at 10am. A small group of us gathered there, but nothing appeared to happen. Not too concerned, I took the opportunity to have a crafty coffee out of the machine. After about twenty minutes, one of the organisers turned up in a rather flustered state and explained that the local man who was supposed to be taking us to the museum had overslept on account of being hungover! Not to worry – his house was en route so we could collect him on the way.l

Right, okay. We set off on a quick march across Szombathely and before long had managed to locate our guide. He was a very friendly man, but I am unable to decide whether he is absolutely crazy, or whether I have just never seen him sober. Certainly, the guided tour which he proceeded to give us was a bit haphazard – the information boards inside the Saint Martin museum were displayed in a numerical order which indicated the order in which one should read them, yet on several occasions he had to be prevented from skipping from 6 to 13 or some such, just because the fancy took him. He spoke Esperanto, but in a rather frenetic sort of way and halfway through the experience he decided it would be easier just to speak in Hungarian. That was fine for the majority of the group, who by happy coincidence seemed to speak Hungarian, but slightly less interesting for me and one other German guy.

The Saint Martin church is very pretty, and allegedly built over the house where Saint Martin was born. Inside there is a museum which tells you a bit about his life history and various details about life in Szombathely through the ages. My slightly hazy grasp of Central European history, combined with the lack of an explanation from the tour guide in a language I stood a chance of understanding, meant that I didn’t quite grasp all the points, but apparently such importance was placed on Szombathely that under some empire or other in the Middle Ages, the inhabitants were exempt from paying tax

A treat was in store for us once we had finished with the museum. A friend of the guide had been standing outside the church, demonstrating to a group of children how to make Roman coins, and we were all told that we would be able to have a go too. There were various moulds on the table which we could pick from – some of them were coins, some of them were model soldiers, some of them were weird and wonderful things I couldn’t even begin to guess the purpose of. We were each allowed to pick one, and then watch whilst the man melted lead in a little saucepan and helped us to pour it into the mould. In no time at all, the items had set and after a quick dunk in a bucket of cold water were ours to take home.

Of course, I didn’t quite understand this process because it was explained to me in Hungarian, so I just sort of stood around in an aimless sort of manner and watched everyone else do it. The man with the lead didn’t speak any Esperanto, but at one point the guide took pity on my lack of Hungarian and they both started talking to me in English. It turned out that the guide had a brother in law who had come to the Black Country thirty years ago in order to work in a coal mine, and he was very excited to know whether I supported Aston Villa or Birmingham City. It was rather a bizarre conversation, and I feel profoundly sorry for anyone’s brother in law who has to leave somewhere so beautiful and go and live in the Black Country.

People started getting very carried away with all this metal business and asking if they could have second or third objects. After a while the German guy who I had been talking to, and who I must say was exceptionally nice, noticed that I hadn’t even made my first object yet. I wasn’t terribly bothered about making one, but he helped me to look at the moulds and in the end we chose a beautiful coin with a picture of Saint Martin and the beggar on. He then managed to interrupt the flow of Hungarian to indicate that it was my turn, and so finally I did indeed get a piece of lead to call my own As I was making it, everyone burst out in horrendous fits of laughter which I found a little disconcerting. It transpired that one of the men had said that I was very patient to have waited so long, and one of my friends had said that I had to be patient because I was Tim’s girlfriend

By this time it was gone midday and I’d really had enough of smiling inanely whilst people said things I couldn’t understand, so I was hoping we were going to head back to the town centre. Unfortunately the guide decided that it was time for another drink and led everybody else towards a rather seedy looking pub. I didn’t feel like a drink, I’m not sure I even had any money, so I asked for directions and went back on by myself. The directions I received were to walk straight on, so I did so for ten minutes or so, after which it occurred to me that my friend probably hadn’t meant “walk straight on forever” but more likely “walk straight on until you come to somewhere you recognise”. Spying the back of MacDonalds, I managed to make my way as far as the main square and felt a temporary sense of triumph that now knew where I was.

Pride comes before a fall, however, and it occurred to me a few seconds later that I didn’t actually know the way from the town centre to the student home. That must sound pretty ridiculous, especially taking into account that I’d been there six days now and must have made the journey multiple times. The problem was, I’d never done in on my own, and when I’m with another person I have an unfortunate habit of relinquishing all responsibility for directions. This actually came up in conversation on Saturday morning in Vienna, when we exited the Suedbahnhof and my boyfriend couldn’t quite remember the way to the bus station. He expressed surprise that I knew the way, given my general level of capability with navigation. I explained that the difference was that in that situation, I knew it was me who was responsible for where we were going. Similarly when I’m by myself, this morning I’ve quite successfully navigated myself 1.5m from the station in Hednesford to my client and recognised the route back again without reference to a map. But I absolutely hate the stress of navigating, and so when I can leave it up to someone else, I naturally fail to take any notice at all of my route.

I contemplated calling my boyfriend and asking him the way, but I knew he would have his phone switched off. I contemplated walking around in a circle until I saw another Esperantist, but then I figured they were probably all in bed or on their way to dinner. In the end I struck off in a direction that I recognised – I knew I’d been down the road before, I just wasn’t sure where I’d been going to or coming from at the time. It turned out not to be a very direct route to the university, but I got there in the end and promptly went to my room. Hmmm, Babel wasn’t there. He couldn’t have gone far though, because the door was left unlocked and all his stuff was still on the bed. I dumped my stuff on the bed, and went to the toilet to change my tampon.

Now, I may not be the world’s most skilled changer of tampons, but nevertheless I refuse to believe that this was a process which can have taken me more than three minutes. I returned to the room, placed my hand on the handle, pressed down to open it… and promptly discovered it was locked! Locked?! Wherever Babel had been , he had evidently returned, absentmindedly failed to notice that all my stuff had reappeared on the bed, and without wondering about where I might be, decided to go out for his dinner. Rather disgruntled, I began walking downstairs to retrieve the key from reception, and sure enough – I saw him walking down the road out of the landing window. When I caught up with him later, I think he was slightly surprised that my first greeting was to hit him

Hmmm. There was some sort of international cultural festival thingy going on in the afternoon, but coming from a country which doesn’t have a culture it didn’t interest me especially, and neither did the concert which was going on in the same room. We popped in briefly, but then together with a friend decided we could have more fun on our own and headed back to the boating lake This was a day I got to fulfil yet another one of my ambitions – I had never, ever, been in a rowing boat, and I had always thought that it looked rather cool.

Babel did a sterling job of hiring us one again, and then we set off on the lake. Our friend turned out to be rather skilled at rowing boats, but Babel didn’t do bad for a beginner, seemingly being gifted with some kind of weird masculine sixth sense which told him the direction the boat would go in if he did certain things. The expressions on his face indicated that rowing might be hard work though, and after a while he suggested that I should have a go. I wasn’t entirely convinced about this, as I thought the idea of being rowed was somewhat more attractive than the idea of rowing, and I was also worried that if we both stood up in the middle of the lake that the boat would capsize and I’d die from swallowing some sort of toxic water in the lake because I’d be too busy screaming to remember to close my mouth as I went under.. Our friend demonstrated though that it would be virtually impossible to overturn the boat without standing on the edge of it, and in the end I just about succeeded to swap sides with Babel.

Time for a crash course in rowing! Let’s just say it was exceptionally difficult For a start, the oars themselves were way heavier than I would have expected them to be, so that it was quite an exertion to lift them in the first place. My boyfriend tried to explain to me at which points I should be leaning forwards and backwards but it all seemed terribly complicated and I think I spent most of the time leaning in the wrong direction The boat hardly seemed to move at all, and when it did it was probably in the wrong direction, but nevertheless, it was an interesting experience.

We had a whole hour on the lake, during which time Babel decided to row us under a jet of water akin to the famous jet in Geneva, but not as big. Needless to say, this made us rather wet. There was also a sticky moment when we thought we saw someone we knew walking around the edge of the lake, but fortunately I had my binoculars with me and we ultimately decided that on the balance of probabilities it was probably someone else.

Returning from the lake, we went back to the town centre and I had one of the most delicious icecreams I’ve had for ages. I confess to not being much of an icecream sort of person – I probably only eat a couple every year and I’m not very brave with flavours – but this one was really rather good. I had three decent sized scoops in a bowl – one was chocolate, one strawberry and whereas I had assumed the third would be vanilla, it actually turned out to be lemon. This was a very pleasant surprise indeed as I generally find vanilla icecream is rather unpleasant and sickly. The lemon was wonderfully refreshing – I couldn’t eat it on its own in a cone, but in combination with the other flavours it was excellent.

What we did on Thursday evening, I’m not entirely sure. I know that we ended up going to the trinkejo and that I drank more red wine, because I can remember having a conversation with La Pingvino which culminated in him beating Tim up But what we did between dinner and going for a drink eludes me…

Oh, no it doesn’t! We sat in the dining room for as long as we could, talking about stuff. My boyfriend went through his PhD proposal in a very impressive manner, and then someone came and asked us to leave so that they could clear the tables. I picked up my tray to put it over on the side, and I really didn’t think I was in danger of dropping anything – I hadn’t been feeling well all day, but not in a serious sort of way because it certainly hadn’t hampered my enjoyment of anything. But somehow my hands must have been shakier than I thought, because next thing I knew my glass was rolling off my tray and onto the floor. It bounced a few times and there was a split second where I allowed myself to believe that it might actually be child-proof glass which would bounce and not break… But alas, that was not to be, and it smashed into a smithereens beneath the feet of a tonne of people who were all wearing flip flops and in danger of being cut by it :cry:

Babel was understandably rather annoyed with me, and I didn’t know the word for broom in Esperanto never mind Hungarian, and in the end it was all rather fraught and I just burst into tears. So yes, I think we must have gone back to the room for a bit to recover, and then come out again later in the evening to have a drink. The plan had been not to stay out too late on Thursday night because we’d cunningly stolen some bread from dinner in order to go feed the ducks before breakfast. I think, if I remember correctly, that it was about three when we got back to the room…

Tags: Esperanto, IJK, Szombathely

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Esperanto, Holidays and outings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.