Eger.... the Alamo of Hungary, and damned fine wine

Eger is one of the more important towns for wine in Hungary..... kind of like Napa since its known for its red meritage, Bikaver. Its also called Red Bulls blood wine.... and I will tell you more in a bit.Took a 2 hour train ride to Eger from Budapest. I didn't have housing arranged but had a target hostel in mind and figured it would have space on a Tuesday afternoon. In the train station, I was approached by this lovely lady to the left, who called herself..... Kathy (hmmmm, not sure if I believe that). She offered me a room in her apartment so I jumped, especially when she said washing machine and cable TV - yippeee !!!! Its very common for widows , especially, to rent rooms in their house to travellers. I shared a spotless kitchen and bath and had a living with plenty of room - for $15 per night. I ended p going the grocery store and making my own meals for three days and figured I was living on $25 per day, including museum fees. It was awesome... I was in a cheap mood. This pic is of Kathy making me coffee -kinda like Turkish coffee, since it steams up into a container - you boil it on a stove. I had this impulse to go and buy her a cheap drip coffee maker but then thought why, this works fine and she probably would like it more. Laundry is a treat on the road... here is my entire wardrobe except a dress I was wearing , drying in her bathroom. The washer is the white appliance to the right. It drains into the tub. On the left, you can see the hot water boiler.. they are in both the bathrooms and kitchens. When you need hot water, they spring to life..... very antiquated. Her apartment was basically a Communist era building.... kitchen, bath, the living room that had and the last room that she lived in. I think its very brave to take strangers into your house. And she was charming.

Not so charming is how American fast food is creaping into Eastern Europe. Burger King owned Budapest, and there was even a McDonalds in Eger, which is maybe 50,000 people. Not too many overweight kids but enough to see that video games and fast food are having a bad impact.

The shot above is from the castle in the town center. The mineret is the northernmost evidence of the Ottoman/Turkish occupation of Hungary. Behind it you can see the Orthodox Christian Church, and behind that some of the hills surrounding the town with vineyards on them.

Eger was a reallllllly mellow town... and after the frantic energy of Budapest was great. Instead of seeing large scale things , I got a chance to slow down. For example, the picture here is a shot of one of the churches in town reflected in the Camera Obscura at the local teaching college. Its like a big camera - the room on top of the building is darkened and light images from outside are sent to a white table in the room via mirrors. The guide was joking that he was could wear the clock on the tower of the church as a watch. This is the oldest Camera Obscura in Europe, from around 1776, I think.

Pictures of Mary from inside the Orthodox church, as well as the wall of the altar. Pictures of the apostles are always the top row, then pics of New Testament stories follow below. Mary is always to the left of center and Jesus is to the right in Orthodox churches.

The buildings in the distance are Communist era high rises - painted bright colors after the fall of the communist government in 1989. The museum guide said that the buildings spell USSR when viewed from the air. Creepy.
A typical street off the older part of town which the tourists don't usually see. These buildings look alot like houses all over Eastern Europe outside of the Medieval town centers.


The reason that Eger is like the Alamo is that it was the site of a prolongued seige by the Turks in 1552 that the Hungarians ended up winning. The Ottomans had taken over most of Hungary, even Budapest, and Eger was considered the last stand. About 2000 Hungarian troops holed up in the Citadel/castle against a force of about 40,000 Turks, who finally gave up and left. They came back about 40 years later and successfully took the town.

This plaque shows the siege. I especially like how women are portrayed as actively partipating... they are pouring boiling oil on the Turks below. Red meritage is called Bulls Blood in Eger, supposedly because during the seige the Turks saw the Hungarians drinking red wine on the castle ramparts and thought that it was bulls blood - and the Hungarians let them think that so they could be thought of as bad asses.

The original Hungarians (Magyers) came from central Asia and so Hungarian names begin with the family name, then the personal name, very much like eastern Asian countries. I knew that my maternal grandfathers name , Ferenc, was Hungarian, but after a week in Budapest and Eger, I realized its a common name, like Jones. I took this picture of some of the names of the 300 men who died in the castle during the 1552 seige - two are named Ferenc like my grandfather.

A pretty shot of a canel near the town center. I walked around alot. Also went to the local thermal baths. They werent as fancy as Budapest..... more like a water park. But you gotta love this image....a 60 year old woman, overweight, wearing a flowered bathing suit, yellow baseball hat turned backwards, blue wraparound sun glasses and a puca shell necklace. It looked like she got dressed in the dark next to an American rapper.
Y city I've been in..... lots of school groups, which makes sense here for them to be hearing about the historical importance of Eger. I love the head kerchiefs on the girls.

Now on to wine tasting! I didn't have a car to drive around the area, but there was a nifty option within 30 minute walking distance. There is a valley to the southwest of town full of caves. When the Turks approached the city, the townspeople not in the castle lived in these caves. Now, there are about 00 caves that store wine. They also are open for tasting... so you wander up and down the row of caves and can taste for about 25 cents per taste. If you like, you buy. Just bring a bottle and they fill it up with your choice of wine. I got a really nice Bikaver in a 500 ml Diet Coke bottle and had it at home with a bowl of pasta. I liked the cat at this cave.

This gent had some fresh cherries for sale.
A view of the vineyards as I walked home. The pic below has alot going on. There is a McDonalds sign advertising the restaurant a mile away, a Hungarian looking guy walking up the hill, a cross , and some crusty buildings. Captures Hungary to a tee!

Budapest Me!

Budapest - a GREAT city !!

Here is my first taste of Budapest - the metro escalators are really deep ( the Communists dug one especially deep to use it as a bomb shelter in the Cold War). And they go really really fast.. .I feared for my toes and baggage. Made for a nice breeze though, which I needed.. it was hot!



Buda is the orginal city on the left and is dominated by the castle/palace and cathedral. Its also hilly, as you can see from the picture. I took this picture after hiking up Gellert Hill. Pest is the original city on the left... is flat, and has most of the commerce. The bridge shown here is the beautiful chain bridge.

Took one of the night cruises on the Danube and was very glad I did. The colors were gorgeous. This is the chain bridge at night all lit up.

And here I am in front of the Hungarian Parliment building.

The Money Shot - the Palace in Buda and the Chain Bridge.

What you need to note here is the building lit up at the right end of the Chain Bridge. It used to be a palace but is a fancy pants hotel now. The Pughs stayed here on an HP customer event (boondoggle). Now, look at where I stayed in the next pic.

One of these things is not like the other! I decided to go cheap in Budapest since is was pretty spendy. I had been staying in hostels and pensions with shared baths and showers but a private room. I took the plunge and did the dorm room hostel for 15 Euros a night. This room wasn't too bad till the second night when it filled (8 bunks) with INFANTS who went out to party and got home after 4am. It was pretty funny... the next morning I got up and showered and left , all the while walking around the bodies strewn about and no-one moved. It was like a neutron bomb. Bathrooms were not too clean.. so I told myself I was treating myself in my next stop, Eger, Hungary. And had a nice dinner with a crowd of US and Canadian travellers the last night in Budapest.

This is inside a Serbian church in Budapest. I liked the digital alarm clock next to the priests robes.




This is one of the large indoor markets that were built for the 1,000th anniversary of Hungary in 1896. Its got one of those nifty tiled roofs like some of the churches. The next pic is a stand inside that sold spices, especially peppers and paprika !!

This is from a church carved out of the Gellert hill in Buda. The Communists covered it up during their tenure but its back to being an active church.

George looking refreshed since HE didn't have to hike up Gellert Hill to get this view of the palce in Buda. Danube River to the right.

In the square in front of the St. Istvan cathedral (means Stephen in Hungarian, after their first Christian king), there was a little old fashioned ride for the kids - love the kid on the left... he was mesmorized.

The wall just inside the door of the Matthias Cathedral, the major cathedral on the Buda side of town. Most of these churches are ornately painted inside - just gorgeous.













Went on a silly tour of the underground caves of Buda. They could hold 10,000 people if necessary, for things like treating wounded in WWII. Now there is a silly personal growth wander through the Labrinth. There were statues everywhere and it was dark ... really creepy. George liked the fountain spewing red wine, though.

View of St. Istvan (Stephen, first christian king) and a view of the Parliment from the Buda side of the river.

NOW THE BEST THING EVER !!!!

The Szechenyi Baths in City Park. These are traditional shared sex baths using the naturally thermally heated water .

Yes, guys do stand in the water and play chess. So fun.

Nice shot of the outdoor pools. There were three of them. One cool, with a play area with jets that whisked you in a circle. I just loved watching this one guy laughing with his wife in this area. If you put him in a shiny black suit, he would look like one of the Communist leaders at Statue Park.

The central pool is for laps. The last is a hot pool, 38 degrees C, about hottub temp in the US. This is the one to the left... and my favorite. I would just sit on those steps and people watch. All told, I spent 3.5 hours here... cold pool, sauna, steam room, hot pool, beer, pedicure (with tools that looked like dental instruments)..... rinse and repeat. So far, this is the best thing I have done in Europe.

Inside pools - some have a higher mineral content to be medicinal.

Someone must have snapped a pic of me and my crew in the baths.














COMMUNIST STUFF::::

Took a walking tour featuring the communist history of Hungary. These two shots are from Statue Park where they have moved the communist themed statues to one place. Very cool- I especially liked the red star of flowers in the middle of the park.

One of the old time cars built under communist rule. People waited 5 years on a list to get a car like this. Came in 4 colors- red, blue, white and maybe black. I don't think lime green was an option.

Also went to the House of Terror, a fabulous museum featuring the Nazi and Communist terror and control history in Hungary. Its one of the best museums I have too anywhere - they stage the info in a way that is personal. For example, the room with the theme of Gulag had a carpet that was of Hungary all the way to eastern Soviet Union.... so that you could see how far it was they the Soviets took the Hungarian nationalists that they moved to work camps for decades at a time. The last room had movies running of the last Soviets leaving in 1992, with music in the background that sounded like a 1940s tune about saying goodbye. This museum is housed in the actual building that both the Nazis and Communists used as a headquarters - so the torror rooms in the basement are real. Scary stuff, but really great museum.



Buildings of varying condition next to each other in Buda.

These American ladies from DC sked for my help in finding something before they realized I was not Hungarian. Do I look European yet? I doubt it since my wardrobe practically screams that I was dressed by REI.

Wien There, Done That

Czech Republic to Vienna, Austria and Slovakia



From Northern CZ, I headed down to Vienna, or Wien, as the locals call it. Pronounced "Veen". So, now reread the title of this section. I am so darned funny.

I was so proud of myself. I stubbornly did not want to backtrack to Prague to get to Vienna.. so I managed to leave from the little town I was in for hiking, transferred 3 times and ended up on a spiffy fast train (below).. got to Vienna in 6.5 hours, less than if I went through Prague.

I snapped this shot to the left a second too late - these ladies were sitting on a bench in rural CZ. Gives you a bit of an idea of how the locals look. Like my grandma, minus the black dress.

On the fast train, I was in a 6 seater cabin. They came to you with coffee and beer - gotta love that.

In Vienna for 4 nights, three days. So much of travelling is about eating.. you gotta eat this, you gotta eat that. I was still listening to that nonsense in Vienna, when I went to a high end recommended cake shop for cake and coffee. I felt overcharged.. George liked it anyways.

I like that they bring you an itty bitty glass of water with your coffee in Vienna.

Nice architecture in Vienna. I didn't know till I got there that Austria was under Communist rule from 1945 to about 1955. Even more reason to revel in the fun pre-communist architecture. Lots of Baroque fancy-pants buildings around town.

Here are the stairs to the top of the tower of St Stephens (I think.. there has been a bunch of them). I try to climb all the towers I can to get a great 360 degree view of the towns. This stairway is typical... narrow, stone, don't go if you fear tight spaces.

Here is a shot of the same cathedral and some nearby buildings reflected in a modern glass building. I liked the juxtiposition. Had to wait 2 days for this shot since it rained and was cold the first two days I was there. Nice colorfully tiled roof - reminds me of Beaune , France and the trip I took with the Pughs, Munshis and Jean.


I must admit that I was not a big fan of Vienna. It took me awhile to figure out why... and besides being at a lowpoint homesickness-wise, I think I realized why. Its all about rich people. Currently, lots of focus on shopping for high end jewelry and clothing. Historically, lots of info about the gigantic palaces and treasures of the Hapsburgs, who ruled over the Austrio-Hungarian for 500 years or so. But I didn't pick up on the history of this family beyond how well they lived and how well Maria Theresa was a procreating for the benefit of the dynasty (she had 16 kids, 11 survived to adulthood, Marie Antoinette was one of them, sold off to Louis of France).

Shot of the edge of one of the caskets in the royal burial crypt. All the biggies were there.. Maria Teresa and her hubby, and Franz Joseph and his Lady Diana precursor, Empress Elizabeth (aka Sissy).

At some point, it struck me that visiting Vienna, for me, would be like making a trip to visit Beverly Hills. Which I would have and did do in my 20's, but not now.

Shot from inside one of the courtyards of the Hofburg Palace. I had just been through the Royal Treasury and it was very cool . Its got crowns and religious icons and clothing and loads of stuff going back to 1100. Some of the crowns had sapphires and rubies as big as my knuckle on them.. and not all prettified, kinda raw still. Some of the clothing from bishops and investments into religious societies were embroidered with gold and silver threading. Really beautiful stuff.

I stayed at a pension about 20 minutes walking from the old town center. It was adorable. Had a private room with shared bath and showers down the hall. The main hallway was lined with hundreds of plants - very charming. Here is my host and gardener, Mr. Gebrial.

Okay, so I did like a few things in Vienna. Like the classic coffee houses (not Starbucks, who are all over the place testing the water in central and eastern europe right now). Here is a pic inside Cafe Hawelka. Rick Steves had described it as Trotsky-esque - and he was right. Filled with people on a rainy afternoon. You sit on couches reading papers that are strapped to wooden frames so that you can't steal them. I went two days in a row to read the International Herald Tribune (the international English paper that the NY Times publishes). I love that in this pic you can actually see the smoke in the air!! With a cup of coffee, the paper, sitting on a couch, all I was missing was my jammies and Atticus curled up on my feet to make it like my normal Sunday routine at home.

In front of my pension - I mean there is the door on the left , I saw a woman walking a Golden. When I asked if I could pet him, she answered with American English. Maureen and Paul Kruger are ex-pats working in Vienna. The pup is Hudson. After chatting for awhile, Maureen said that they were having a friend over to dinner and would I like to join them. Oh man would I , I was very homesick in Vienna. So I went to the opera that night but still made it over to dinner. The Vienna State Opera was good - Don Carlos by Verdi. But I had bought standing room tickets for 3.5 euro - so cheap! But the opera was very slow paced and was tracking to 4 hours, so I bailed at halftime and went to the Krugers for dinner - much more lively !!

A quick pic after dinner at the Krugers. My camera is new and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working - until the next day when I remembered I had it set for internal shots at the opera before I came over to dinner. Maureen is on the right, and Magdalena, a friend of the Krugers from Poland, is on the left. She was charming.... we had a bi-lingual (german and english) conversation about why bad American music from the 7ös is so hot in Poland. Favorite Magdelena quote..." Bee Gees - Super!!". Please note that both George Clooney AND ATTICUS DJANGO are represented here Maureen is holding a pic of Atty that I am travelling with. Pathetic, ain't it?

This is a picture from that dinner party - whew, it was fun! Actually, this is from the Dutch section of the Kuntz art museum - I just liked how the painting showed folks just having a good time. Except the dog on the bottom - he looks cranky. I love Dutch art = it took me a trip to Amsterdam to visit with the Pughs to realize that all of that "boring" art like fruits, and flowers and people partying was actually a little slice of life from the 1600's. Much of this art was funded by the newly wealthy trading class that was Protestant - whereas in the past, before the Reformation, the Catholic church had all the big bucks (can you say Indulgences, Martin Luther?) so art was about religious themes.

And then - SLOVAKIA! Vienna is 4 hours from Budapest - but only an hour from Bratislova, Slovakia. So, I decided to get off the train in for a half day to see what the other half of the former Czechoslovakia looked like. I expected to find more of the Communist footprint - Slovakia hasn't had as mad a rush to Westernization as the Czech Republic has.

On the hour train ride, I had a great chat with Peter and Silvika (Silvia). Silvia was pretty good with English and translated for Peter when he didn't know a word. They were a great help in getting me off the train, to the office to check my luggage while I strolled the town, changing my money to Slovakian currency and getting me on the right bus to the old town center. As you can see, Peter also carried my big bag up and down the many stairs in the Bratislava train station. It was very cute - just before we hit a stairway, his aunt would say something and you just know it was "carry her bag". Peter made a point of saying that Hungarian men are known to be gentlemen (he is from the area near Eger in NE Hungary). He also mentioned that he's quite the Casanova. Silvia described her nephew as "Talk Talk Non-stop! They were charming!


Here is one of the older streets in Bratislava - the town is now about 300,000, I think, and the capital of Slovakia. Most tourists hang out in the old old part of town. You know you are there when you see the big Michael's gate, which was originally on the wall surrounding the original city, shown in this picture.
I only saw a few things to remind me of the Soviets. One was this pretty bridge - apparently , they tore down a big section of the old town, and built this monstrosity right next to the cathedral where the Hungarian Kings were coronated for centuries. Also saw some large apartment buildings from the train. Many here and in Poland and the CZ are painted bright orange and yellow hues. I bet its because the locals couldn't paint them fast enough from the concrete gray they had before the Communists left.

And speaking of painting, maybe to reinforce the love of color, little kids were painting up a storm under the overpass of that bridge. Very cute.
These windows in a crusty old building were all painted with Van Gogh images - dunno why but I liked it.



Walking back to the train station, I came upon a few hundred kids dressed up in various Slavic ethnic outfits. They were playing instruments and singing - this pick shows a group right in front of the Slovakian White House - where the president lives. Very charming.