To celebrate 1 year of the Good Life in Aggtelek National Park, Kata and I organised a long weekend party over Easter. We also hoped that people would be able to help us dig a bit in the garden, but the weather was not ideal. Everyone was arriving at different times on Saturday, so Kata and I made a big simple pot of pesto pasta for dinner. Jeroen brought some delicious curry buns with chutney, as well as a cake, while Jackie contributed a linzer cake. In the evening, some of us played BLANKO in Hungarian, a word game like SCRABBLE but with some twists.

Sunday morning we welcomed everyone for Kata's traditional Easter breakfast. She outdid herself this year with individually baked challah with hardboiled eggs in the centre, and turkey hams from Tomi the butcher at the Hunyadi Square Market. This, combined with the last of our own horseradish went down a treat.  The weather was not very cooperative for any kind of serious garden work. Kata and Marcsi cleared an area by the gate for some lavender and other flowers, while Simon, Láci and I dug the new potato patch. Jeroen repaired the vegetable bed flattened by the tractor and planted early peas and beans where we had oregano and rucola last year. Simon and Dori's daughter Ema also lent a hand with the digging and finding snail shells and other interesting things to show us. Lennard drilled into the wall and hung up our ladders for us, and installed a water saving shower head which will hopefully reduce our energy bills further. In the afternoon, Jackie and Csaba cut the vegetables and I put the bogracs on the fire (thanks Guszti and Marika for the loan of a larger one). We decided on an Indian yellow curry just because it is easy, and most people expect you have to cook Hungarian in a bogracs. I threw in some onions, garlic, broccoli, eggplant, peppers, ginger, yellow curry, chicken, coconut milk and peanuts. We managed to squeeze 13 people inside thanks to an extra table Jeroen and Lennard brought. The dinner was complemented by homemade Italian Riesling from Örvenyes, and some nice heavy red wine Vincze and Kati made. Many home baked desserts were put on the table, but not much evidence was left at the end: Jeroen brought some banana bread and another kind of cake made from plums and walnuts soaked in palinka; Jackie put a huge Rizskoch on the table; and Kati brought a kind of two-tiered fruit and turo roll. About an 8^th of the rizskoch remained until late at night when Laci got hungry and somehow devoured the remainder.

On Monday we took some of our guests to the Rákóczi Cave for a tour, but we did not book ahead - forgetting that while not normally necessary, it was a full house over Easter weekend. The cave features, among other things, 2 stunning turquoise blue underground lakes. Perhaps the region's most spectacular cave in the Aggtelek karst, the Rákóczi Cave features a stunningly diverse and colourful number of formations. Remarkable pea-stones and dripstone runoff completely cover the walls. Snow white straw formations and calcite carnations offset the reds, browns and yellows of the cave. Judit, who normally manages the MagtArt Arts Granary in Bodvaszilas, was on ticket office duty and was kind enough to suggest a visit across the border to some waterfalls we had never heard of.

The village of Áj (Háj in Slovakian) is reached by crossing the border on the main road in Tornanadaska, then going to Torna and turning left on Hajska cesta. Cross the 4-lane highway and just go straight until you reach the village. Go through the village following signs to the waterfalls (vízesés) outside of town. Once you spot the falls on the left, you can park and walk through the beautiful canyon filled with gushing water, moss and tree roots. This would make a great little family excursion and picnic, but that day there were snow flurries. Coming into the village we were stunned to see a giant angel statue off to the right. We made the mistake of trying to get to it by going around the church, but it turns out to be located in the cemetery and unless you want to climb the fence it is best to try the direct approach. This giant, battle-scarred statue was used on the set of Behind Enemy Lines (Owen Wilson, Gene Hackman) that was partly filmed in the area. A little research also tells me that the village hosts the Gömör Folktale Festival every year on July 23^rd.

In the evening we collapsed in front of a film to relax after a very full weekend, only to be startled by a loud rolling boom we took for thunder, but in fact was a meteor strike above Miskolc 40 km away. The latest info points to an object a few decimetres in diameter travelling at a speed of 100-200,000 km/hour. The pieces are probably scattered across the Bükk Hills. I thought they tracked these things?