DOMINIK turned 13

 

My elder, first-born son, my sweet Dominik is a little gentleman. He always detects my mood, says nothing just hugs me when I need. Unfortunately, he hasn’t met his father for more than a year. Two birthdays, two summer holidays, an Easter, a Christmas, a complete school year, tremendous weekends without him – till now (and a police report abuse because of non-fulfilment to maintain his child and then a warning letter to his employee to let them know that he has such an obligation), but presumably this will be expanded. Who knows when and how he is going to appear again. Sad thing. He lives his life with his honey baby happily who also has a son (same age) but lives separately, with his father. Bag and its patch…

 

My sweet son grew a LOT in the last few months. His voice is changing and has already overgrown me in height and in shoe size. He is a PC-guru, a real gamer. I like when he is playing with foreign children and speaks in English with them. Anyway, his English is very good and never stop developing due to the games, all in English. We often speak English with each other at home and he often initiate and always can express everything he wants to say.

The two boys love each other very much and they really got together since March due to the digital education. Nolen’s first and last thing in the morning and in the evening is to enter Dominik’s room and give him a kiss. Dominik sees him affectionately and nicely smiles at him.

He is the right hand of Gabi around the house or else and helps him in everything. Sounds strange but he can help much more to Gabi than Gabi can help him. Their relationship changed more times and a LOT during 3 years. It was completely different at the very beginning, at the age of 10. There was a breakpoint when the classic sentence was said „he is not my father” and then when Nolen was born and then… now as he gets older and smarter, he can put the things in its place. I love him very much and am very proud that both of my sons would never hurt anybody deliberately, on no condition.

NOLEN turned 2

Mersei Nolen Traktorka – as he calls himself for a good while – is a genuine unique person. Perky, as the squirrel in the nursery rhyme. Cool, and he knows exactly. He has a great sense of humour and often made everybody laugh. Of course, he wants to do everything on his own, I can’t say any activity that he haven’t said till now that "I do it". He thinks he can do everything on his own. He is sometimes fearless but basically very careful and circumspect. He is a great fan of cars, both toy and real cars. He wants to sit in each car, on the driver’s side, of course, and to move the steering wheel, to touch the gear as it is exactly seen from the adults. Most of the times the „destination” is his favourite supermarket, Lidl. He is also interested in construction vehicles very much. He is undoubtedly a real boy character with real boylike features.  

He speaks fluently, tells full stories for choice, his brain is sharp like a razor. His reactions to the adults’ sentences is the most appropriate like eg. "kár… hoppá… nagyon… szuper!" (=what a pity, oops, so much, super). He speaks as politely as he can and uses the words "kérem szépen, légy szíves, köszönöm szépen" (=please, be kind, thank you very much) regularly and doesn’t miss to say thank you to the waiter or hello to the cashier, always repeats what is heard from us. Little imitator. He easily gets in touch with unknown people on the street or in the supermarket. He initiates, says hello ("szia néni, szia bácsi!"), speaks to them even if they don’t want to. He can even order pancakes at the plage for himself – at the age of 2. It happened! We were just wondering what and from which seller to buy when he suddenly told to the woman standing at the desk: "I’d like to get pancakes." He wasn’t sure about the taste, mostly he eats empty or lightly covered by powder sugar, so for the smiling question which taste he replied: „Here, into my hands.” Brave and special and cute. We were amazed. And all the sellers, too.

We are staying within borders

Covid make us to discover the domestic beauties and get to stay within the borders during this summer holiday. It would not be a wise decision to stick to the original plan of the bike tour and to visit any nearby country, as they show increasing tendency of the virus. A question of time that the number of infected people will rise significantly in Hungary as well, because vacationers will bring into the country very soon.

To tell you the truth, I'm much adventurous like this, but as a responsible mother this must be handled otherwise. For independent, single, young travellers, covid provides the best opportunities to travel, as far as it is allowed and there is no restrictions. No crowd can be found at the tourists' show-places and in some cases never-seen discounts are offered. I've just read about Bali, the Indonesian Paradise, which is in a big trouble because of covid, as it is completely based on tourism, and nobody is there nowadays. Sicily covers the half of your flight ticket and finance every third night of your stay. So let's go, young explorers! But always be cautious and do not forget any protective measures.

So Balaton, friends, cycling, home pool, village life and exploration of those gorgeous places that are just in reachable drive distance - these are playing the main role this summer.

We started at Lake Balaton Uplands with my Balaton cycling round connected with some nice family engagement (Veszprém, Tapolca), we took part in my best friend Anikó's official wedding ceremony then after a nice island picnic in the green in the capital, then Balaton again, where we tried SUP with the help of long-seen friends which was on my wish list for some time past, then me and my sister introduced the village life again to the kids and met cousins as we usually do year by year but this time extended with some extra program (Debrecen, Szarvas), then Dominik was invited and enjoyed some luxury with his friend in an African themed hotel for a couple of days, then we organized a canoe tour with Dominik at the beautiful Danube Bend with the help of the most professional and long-seen story and history teller tour guide Peter, and then we celebrated birthday after birthday which made us to prepare and so to stay at home for a while. My plans are neverending!... Summer is still ON.

Flip-flop would have been again around Lake Balaton…

…in case the weather of June 20th had supported this kind of footwear. 180 km within a day, so this time the lake won with its 220 km. I couldn’t finish it entirely. I surely would have done it if I had been alone and there was no one to pick me up. But my feeling is that I would have been crazy to continue it. So many impedimental factors arose: the pain in my knees, the pain in my ass (even after the 40th kilometres), the stormy wind all along the south shore. I slowed down and the collected kilometres stopped to increase. If I want to find some other excuses, I would enumerate my age which is 4 years more than I was at my last Balaton round, my weight which is 4 kgs more that I ever had but these are negligible and are just excuses. The most important factor is my bike. This is the very same that I used in 2016 but to tell you the truth it also gets older, not only me. Although, we spent on it and fixed what needed but it proved to be not enough. Other cyclists outrode me one after the other, with much less effort but with much better bicycles.

My KTM is a trekking type and is very OK for relative short distances and now I know that it is not a solution for such a huge distance any longer. So I gave up, the car’s GPS showed 38 km till the hotel when I sit into. The temptation of fulfilment was strong. To continue the tour would be the last and most difficult 3-4 hours in darkness, complete darkness between towns, without cycling path. I COULD give up and I believe it was the best choice. I will change my bike to a better level after baby Nolen has grown out the seat and will be able to ride on his own. New bike, new equipment (helmet, glasses, clothes), new speed. Regarding the speed, I expected to be much faster than previously because I was alone and I did not stop at the checking points to collect the stamps. Against my expectation I judge myself very slow with my average speed of 16 km/h. I guess it was mostly because of the bike and of the wind. I can’t wait my super bike. New bike, new challenges.

The most frightening part of the tour was before sunrise, when approaching Lake Balaton from Tapolca. I let myself to be guided by the signs. This can be done during the whole tour. (I only lost the path in Siófok.) Animals ruled the countryside at that part of the day. I had luck to meet some foxes, I needed to tinkle to the group of deers to get out of the road and I also met a cute badger. It lasted hours to meet the first people and cars in the morning. While approaching the Lake Balaton, I often look left to the direction of monadnocks of which the sun tried to rise behind.

I spoke to the sun to rise as soon as possible, I spoke to the application to work properly and I spoke to the lake when it appeared. That was my strategy against darkness – speaking. Seemed a bit crazy but it worked. And once the sun came up, the fragrances became intensive and I hardly could fill up my lungs with it.  

I want to say a big thank you to my husband, without whom this tour wouldn’t have been realized or rather would have been realized in a much different way. He got my bike prepared, invested into a roof rack, supported my goal, took me on a bit during my Balaton-round (near Balatonvilágos), recorded video while cycling, looked after the children and immediately saved me when I decided to give up. He is very proud of me for this achievement and told me million times well done, well done…