HI Monica,
I told my husband what you had written to me. And his answer was that Timisoara is down south than Hungary.
Of course the spring will arrive here also only even the weathermen don’t know when.
One thing is sure. Monica, I hope you understand me, but I saw that the plants know the temperature. In my garden the tulips, the narcissi, the buds of the yellow goldenrods changed their mind, and they stopped to grow, or the buds didn’t blossom they are waiting for a little warmer days.
Our village is on an island on the Danube. And on the island always colder than the other side of the Danube. For example, every year on the other side the spring arrive two weeks earlier than on the island. They are only few hundreds meter from each other.
szentendrei-sziget.lap.hu/szente … e/25602616
This is our island, and the name of the village is Kisoroszi. It is 42 km from Budapest.
Bye: Kati
Hi Monica, thank you for the pictures! 
Hi Kati, I’m sorry to hear that you broke your ankle and are now confined to bed (I read about it in a different thread). Hugs!
Hi, Kati
Did you say tulips? I see these red ones on my street every day, when I walk the dog:
In my country, flowers don’t know temperatures so well! Look these yellow flowers surviving under the snow, three weeks ago; last week it was freezing, but they didn’t die and now they are still yellow:
I saw your place on the map - the island is so interestingly shaped! It looks like a long leaf of a flower. How wide is it? 1 km? 2?
I can imagine it’s colder now there, but in the summer time it must be better (cooler) than in other places, because of the wind, am I right?
Do people use to go swimming or fishing in the river?
Thank you, and I wish you and your husband to get better.
Monica
Hi, Cristina
I’m glad you like my pictures.
I like your foggy and mysterious forest, every time I see it.
Well, how is this spring in your area? Any sign?
See you,
Monica
Dear Monica,
There was one single warmer day I really have no idea what happens in my garden as I am still bed-ridden.So I am happy that there isn’t sunshine. I have to support still 8 days and, I will receive a plaster with I can walk again.
The Danube where this village is, this Danube used to be very good to swim. I was very lucky because when my children were little it was shallow and it deepened very gradually. When the hydroelectric power plant/ weir with a lock of Gabcsikovo (from dictionary) had been built, the Danube had been dredged up and now you can go in and after 5 steps the Danube deepens, and you are in the deep water. For children it is very dangerous.
The ferry is there at our garden, and the ferrymen are very angry because the flood arrives very unexpectedly when the Slovak men do the lockage. This water power could have been a common water power, but after the regime change the Hungarian resigned and the Slovakian government built it by itself. It was a big mistake on the part of Hungary because now they have not any say in the matter. Always the politicians depend on everything.
What you imagine about the island it is good, you described its climate very well. As its shape similar to a leave there are places where its width is 20-25 km and the two ends finish a peak.Otherwise, it is beautiful.
For saying anything good I send you a pic and a film about our village where you can see our house and my husband.
From our garden this is the view,
atv.hu/videotar/20111013_kisoroszi_barangolo
My husband and our house can be seen from 29:02 till 23:14 12 minutes.
Have a good night Monica!
Bye:
Kati
Dear Kati,
Thank you for your explanations and for posting the pictures with the Danube and the video. Without them, I couldn’t have ever imagined how beautiful the sight is! In the summer time, I think it is Heaven on Earth there, isn’t it?
I liked the peace and quiet of the place, I can hear the sound of the Danube flowing down in little waves, I like the beaches, trees, forests, hills, everything.
I see that you live in a beautiful village, clean and quiet, with good looking houses, streets and gardens. It looks like everything is in the right place.
I admired the paintings of your husband and also the part of your house that can be seen in the video.
I’m glad that in a week you will try to walk again. It’s great.! The weather has been on your side all this time, but spring is coming, so it will be perfect for you and your husband to relax in the garden, to “hear” the silence, enjoy the scenery and admire the flowers.
Many thanks again,
Monica
Dear Monica,
In winter it is a small village with 400 residents. W arrived there in 1968 May . Still I was breastfeeding my son and my daughter was 4.
We were very poor but very lucky. I found a house at the Danube which had been renovated, but nobody lived there, and it was totally empty.I asked the neighbour who lives there. I could approached the house that at the Danube there was any fence only lot of trees like a tenantless ground. I surprised when in the middle of the garden I had got a sight of a house, It consisted of 2 rooms and a kitchen and a loo in the garden. The well was in the street. I fell in love at the first sight and immediately with the two little children I came to Budapest to tell my husband what I found. Before we lived in lodgings what we should have left soon because the lodgings belonged the owner’s tenant and the owner told the tenant that she hadn’t right to hire out her room.
So it was a luck that I found this house. I went to Budapest very enthusiastically. My husband saw some green my eye and asked me " you are totally crazy ?" Do you think that they renovated for hiring out? I said: Please call him here is his phone number. My husband called this unknown man and he told okay he let hired it out. Besides he asked ridiculously less money. We have to pay only three summer months, but he gave us the keys and allowed that in school-year when the weather is nice we could go at weekends.
We liked it very much. The guy visited us every summer and admired me “'how could live here where isn’t bathroom and you have to go to the well?” I answered - not very cleverly -that I don’t understand you that you hired out this good house. After 10 years he appeared and said the next summer they want to pass the summer in this house.
We didn’t have money - but we began to see the houses to sell. We found this. It was an adobe house in a very ruined state. Now there are two houses in the parcel the old peasant house and the studio what you saw in the film.
How could we buy it? My husband had a car we sold it, we took a higher loan from the bank and some friends.
After renovated it you could see on the film and it has a veranda of 33 meters. You could see on the film my husband and the reporter went before it.
I am very sleepy,.
Many thanks for your answer.
Good night:
Kati
veranda in the peasant house
Hello! Yes it` s very cold outside. I am waiting for spring, too! I hope this week end will be warm enaough for a bike ride. NIce week end everyone!
Hi, Lorena
It’s your first day here so, as a compatriot, I say to you: welcome to the Forum!
I’m happy to meet a new learner from Romania.
It looks like the western side of the country is luckier than others, because it seems that spring has come here already. I the morning we had 5 C 
but now it’s 17 C, the sky is partly cloudy but still, sunny. Excellent for a walk or a bike-ride.
Have a good time! Enjoy the Forums and many other things that English-test.net has to offer.
See you,
Monica
Hi, Kati
Your veranda looks very, but very much like my aunt’s, in the region Ardeal of my country, not far from you. I had the feeling that I knew it, when I saw your picture.
Thank you for sharing the story of your life if I may say so, because you have lived for a life time there, on the island. I liked reading what you have done, step by step, to get settled in a new place, with two little children, and to achieve what you have now.
Kind regards,
Monica
Dear Monica,
I could tell lot of things, and I hope I will. Only what is very sad that our street is a very short street altogether (now I am counting) one side there are 6 houses and the other side there are also six houses. To live in an island it is a really very nice community. When we moved into this house we were the most young in the street. I can’t tell you what a nice people lived there. When they make a cake they brought to my children, when there was the season of a fruit they offered to the children. It was the whole street similar to a big family, in the evenings about at 5 almost everybody were together and told the stories about Kisoroszi, and about their youth, These people are in the cemetery. We are alive 5 people my husband, me and our neighbour who is 2 years older than me. And a couple who were teenagers then, now they seems to be if they would be in my age. When these people passed away , the new generation is nice, but the difference the old people and these new ones are as different as chalk and cheese. I loved them very much!!!
I wanted to say that when I was in Romania I saw that the villages are very similar to the Hungarian ones. So I didn’t wonder that your aunt’s veranda is much like the ours.
Probably in May we will go to Praid to the salt mine because there is an artificial salt cave from salt of Praid here in Budapest and now my hub began to visit it, and it really ameliorates his breath.
Bye: Kati
Hello Lorena,
I send you my kind regards from the ETN Forum. I hope you will enjoy yourself here in the Forum. I am not your compatriot as Monica but your neighbour from Hungary.
Where do you live in Romania?
what do yo do?
How old are you?
Write something about yourself because we are very curious.
Nice to meet you:
Kati
You’re right, Kati
and I understand you perfectly. The saddest and hardest thing in this life is the disappearance of the people we like or love, friends and relatives. Sometimes I can’t find the way out of my sadness because of this.
But “show must go on” and good moments come back again.
All the rest is easy to live.
Good night,
Monica
Hi Monica,
I live in Bucharest and I always wanted to visit Ardeal. I agree about the beauty of the vernda.
Thank you very much for this welcome. I am very new here on the forum, yes and I am glad to find out that I can improve my english in this way. This period, i have a little much time at my office and I can spend it on this benefit way.
Thank you again,
Lorena
Thank you very much for this welcome. I am very new here on the forum, yes and I am glad to find out that I can improve my english in this way. This period, i have a little much time at my office and I can spend it on this benefit way.
Thank you again,
Lorena
We are not compatriot, but yes, we are neighbourgs :).
I live in Bucharest, I am 34 years old and I am a public functionaire. In my afternoons after my work, I like to go for sports in the nature. I like bike-rides, jogging, basket, fottball with my children or walking in the park. I also read in the tram (on my way to my office and back home). Im not a happy person.. I am sad most of the time.. I am pesimist.. I know I am wrong and I have tough fights with myself to change my feelings.. I dont really succes… I am not happy with my life… I would like to have the courage to change completly my life. Id like to leave this country, estabish into a warmer one.. I would like also, to have an idea that brings me some money and help people, children that are sad, orphans, hungry.. I would like to live my life with a purpose. I hate wasting time.. time is passing over.. I find me old and Ive got nothing to look at in my past. I dont want to speak about my children. I brought them into this world, but I dont know if I gave them all that their deserve… and Ill never know it.. So.. Thats me and myself…
Lorena, your pessimism or you incline the depression is very familiar with me. But I am over 71 and it began in the last years. When I was in the same age than you the life was difficult but never past hope. Now it is very difficult to be optimistic in our country when I can say that we are not among the 4 million starving people, but if you listen to a radio or television phone-in program you become pessimistic. In our case we have to cope with illnesses and its consequences.
I would like to console you, because you are young and you like to do lot of things, sport, walking in nature ,cycling, going jogging, playing basketball game,playing football with your children, reading and learning English. Please try to be happy and not worry. Your children will take over your pessimism, and they will be also pessimist persons.
We can’t help everyone who became homeless, starving-of course it leaves deep traces in us but you have to think of your children who love you and you are their role model.
youtube.com/watch?v=_DWgm48jIFE
With affections: Kati
Nice to meet you too, Lorena
Yes, the North-West side of our country is worth to be visited. I had my grand-grand parents there, also aunts, oncles and cousins. In my childhood, I went there every summer for two weeks. I visited my aunts last summer after a long period of time and I saw that the town named Jibou has a beautiful botanic garden, with incredible exotic plants, with animals and also birds.
I’m from Timisoara and I have lived here since a lifetime. My lifetime.
So, did Kati cheer you up?
She’s a good-hearted woman and I know she’s right that we should value what we have; you see, I’m half way between you two and I do have some life experience…
On the other hand, I think that one day you will find a way to do what you mostly desire in your life. It’s never too late and you shouldn’t worry, like the song says
See you,
Monica
Hi Monica,
I finally remembered to take my camera when I went out the door this morning and I snapped a few pictures of some plants in “my” area just for you:
I can’t see any signs of spring really, can you?
