Boats around Budapest and the Danube bend

Everyone likes boats. We have been on 5 different boats while we have been here. The InSEA dinner cruise was aboard the Europa, easily the nicest boat we were on, it was a gem and I didn't bother to look for the life jacket storage compartment. The other boats were a little edgy and I did look for the life jacket storage compartment, made sure one would fit me and then hid it in a bathroom stall. I also made sure I knew how to man the life boats and take over the helm, just in case. I saw several other wary passengers doing the same so I felt fairly comfortable. Most of the crews seem to be German so that in the event of a problem you know they would be the first ones in the life boat, capacity 10.

Anyway...the boats were old and cool. Here are a few pictures I took of various Danube craft. The medium sized freighter was at anchor above Budapest. The large boatel, which are common up and down the river was docking at Visegrad. There are several of these moored in Budapest that do not cruise, just moor. Most of the pleasure boats are of US production, the European pleasure boat manufacturers are high line and can't touch the mass produced American brands. You see a lot of Mercury and Honda outboards. We have seen a couple of sail boats motoring thru, the 9 kph current and the Buda hills make sailing difficult. I deducted the current speed while we were on the Visegrad trip. There was a monitor that showed the speed of the boat, 15.5 kph going up, 24.5 coming back. I think that's right. Mitchell, please confirm. If a boat leaves Budapest at 9 am....you get the picture.

Enjoy the boats

Final week, Danube cruise with Barbara Bush

It's been a busy final week for us here in Budapest. We have spent two days cruising the Danube, a nice trip to Visegrad on Friday and a trip with Andrew and Aggie on Sunday. The Sunday trip included a tour of Margit Island and a boat trip to Romai part for a great dinner. Romai part is a group of river side restaurants with common outdoor seating, sort of like a Hungarian food court. We are busy getting the flat in order so we can get our deposit back, checking the inventory to see how many glasses we have broken and making sure none of the high quality IKEA forks have bent tines. I have been occupied building a custom cardboard box for my antique suitcase and other small items we will be smuggling back. We are most concerned about our paprika collection. We will store a box of things at Birs Bisztro until we return in October.

The pictures are of the Citadel above Visegrad palace, the stone works in the palace, the crocheted hat club on the boat, the Citadel gate and an art picture. I thought the leader of the hat club looked like Barbara Bush, and it may have been.

I'm running out of battery so here are a few pics until the next update.

Special Instructions...

Obviously...read these in reverse order. I was a bit fuzzy this morning at 6 am.

SBB

Part 5 of 5

Chapter 5, Slovakia and Somosko Castle

Back to the car and headed north toward Slovakia. Beautiful countryside, narrow winding roads, vague road signs, large corn and sunflower fields, occasional horse carts and small villages. We planned on crossing the border at Kral and expected a delay as they checked our papers. We had our passports and auto documents ready, we expected the inquisition like we had going into Romania. As we approached the border there were signs, flags, instructions in several languages and impressive borderesque buildings but no guards. The place was deserted, it almost felt like a scene from a disaster movie and for a bit we felt like we were the only people left on the planet. It really was strange, we drove slowly into Slovakia expecting to see a new EU style border crossing or flashing lights, armed border guards, maybe even a tank but there was nothing. So…basically we snuck into Slovakia. We drove thru a couple of towns, missed a couple of turns, asked directions from a guy who had never seen a map of Slovakia, ate a traditional Slovakian dinner in the midst of a huge party with blue and tan cakes, drank a Slovakian beer and just as quietly snuck out of Slovakia at another abandoned border crossing near Somosko.

I had read about Somosko Castle. A 13^th century castle built on top of a long dormant volcano. The dome is the highest point in the area and a natural place for a castle. You can gaze across the surrounding valleys and see other castles on the tops of many hills.The walls of the dome are steep and rocky. When they started looking for stone to build the castle they discovered that the site chosen for the castle was on top of the largest columnar basalt deposit in Eastern Europe. It’s unclear as to whether they knew what it was but it was obvious to 13^th century castle builders that these polygonal stones stack easier than round stones. The stone work is fascinating; all the foundations of the entire complex are made from stacked basalt. Even when parts of the castle were destroyed it could easily be re stacked, there is no mortar in the foundation. The upper parts of the castle are a mix of stone even some brick here and there. This is basically a ruin, only the east tower remains and it has gone thru several reconstructions in the past 1000 years. The man at the ticket shack, his name really was Zsolt, made it quite clear that you enter at your own risk, the stairs are steep and mossy, the remains of the walls are still piled around and except for a few 2 by 4’s across openings it is safety device free. You can climb down a ancient stairway and stone path into the quarry, I’m quite sure you could carry off as much of the basalt as you wanted, providing you could carry it up the stairs. It is an amazing place that we all enjoyed. We watched the sun set over the mountains and enjoyed the fading light accenting the ruins of Somosko Castle. We left the castle around 8 pm and were back in Budapest by 10:30.

I hope you enjoyed this series, most of the photos are self explanatory or covered in the text.

Part 4 of 5

Chapter 4, Sirens Valley

After lunch we successfully found the car. I had left in the care of a Gypsy man, I think his name was Zsolt. I had given him 440 huf for the parking lot and a 100 huf tip. This allowed me to park in his lot until 8 am on Friday the following week, something was lost in translation here We then drove the short distance to Szepasszony-volgy or Sirens Valley. This compact little valley is home of the world famous Egri Bikaver, Bull’s Blood, wine. A rich and fruity dry red wine that has been made in this area for over 150 years. We walked thru the collection of small cellers, about 40 in total, all numbered to easily differentiate between them as all of the names are confusingly similar, this eases the sampling and rating. Some of the cellars are more commercial than others, some were selling food and beer, most appear to be small family operations. We saw one guy sitting at a table applying the labels to his wine bottles while another man sat and chopped vegetables. Our favorite was cellar number 23 owned by 76 year old Zsolt. He was a big fan of Ronald Regan, one of his cousins from somewhere was a member of some delegation about something and he met Regan. He gladly gave us a tour of his cellar, provided unlimited tastings and told us about his 15 hectares of grapes. His best year was 2000 and the wine he produced, a Kekfrankos, or Blue Frankish, won many awards. The moldy awards were proudly displayed on the walls of the dimly lit musty cellar. He kept a concise guest book and shared it with us. His cellar seemed to be a favorite of the older locals, they were sitting on the deck in front of his cellar enjoying a bottle of wine. Most of the other cellers were populated by tourist types. The wooden barrels were great for show but my feeling was they hadn’t been used for many years. We bought a 1.5L plastic bottle of his wine for 500 huf and we have enjoyed it.

Part 3 of 5

Chapter 3, Eger and Eger Castle

Eger is famous for its castle and for its wine. The castle has been visited by every Hungarian school kid and the wine, which has also been sampled by every Hungarian school kid, is a national treasure. Hungarians call Eger castle, parts of which are over a thousand years old, the Hungarian Alamo, great battles defending the country from invading armies, some won, some lost. The greatest battle was fought in 1552 when Istvan Dobo defended Eger and Hungary from the Ottomans. The castle is huge and well preserved and managed. They have a nice collection of cannons; the guy taking the tickets could not answer my question as to why the biggest cannon was pointed at the church. The interior of the castle is a bit commercial, shoot the cross bow, ride the pony, eat the sucker shaped like a cannon. But the views from the walls were worth putting up with the errant cross bow bolts flying around. We explored the castle and then walked toward the center of town. The church spires are impressive; there are 4 cathedrals and a basilica. Eger is also home to the Lyceum, a teacher’s training school since the mid 18^th century. In the same building is the oldest library in Hungary and a camera obscura. The library is reported to be amazing to see, no Dewey Decimal system here, the books are arraigned by size, all 150,000 of them, in over 100 languages, arraigned by size, by size? However, the Lyceum, the library and the camera obscura were, in great Hungarian tradition, closed for renovation. We wandered around the square, found a nice café, I boldly ordered the wild boar soup with cream while Lisa and Barbara wimped out by ordering the carp soup.

Part 2 of 5

Chapter 2, visit to Mezokovesd

We picked Barbara up at 7am and headed toward Eger. She was nice enough to have packed sandwiches for the trip. As we left the M3 and headed into the mountains Barbara remembered reading about a small town with a cultural village of artists and crafters. The village was just off the main road south of Eger. We saw the sign, actually Barbara saw the sign and we headed toward Mezokovesd, a lovely small village with a concentrated area of original thatch roof houses that the owners open to the public certain weekends and as luck would have it, for Lisa and Barbara; this was one of the weekends. The houses are picturesque, some over 300 years old. Each of the dozen or so houses in the roughly 6 block area has a certain specialty exhibit, one was musical instruments and furniture, another was baskets and a third one we visited was a lady who weaves rugs, they were nice quality, fairly priced but ugly. In the house with the musical instruments I met Zsolt, one of several Zsolts we met on our trip. We had a nice impromptu jam session using the collection of instruments. He was astounded at my mastery of the Jaw Harp. We wandered around the village’s narrow streets, had some good pastry and a cup of coffee and headed toward Eger. It was a nice stop to see the village and the efforts to preserve both the houses and the local artists. Zsolt said he would call me to sit in on their next gig but he didn’t ask for my phone number, curious.

Hungarian Slovakian travels...a series

The trip to Eger and cities in Slovakia will be reported as a 5 part blog. There is just too much interesting information to condense.

The chapters will roughly be;

The SEAT Ibezia, A sport wagon from Spain,

A visit to a small Hungarian village,

Eger and the famous Eger Castle,

The Eger wine cellars and Zsolt the wine seller,

13^th century castle on the Hungarian Slovakian border.

Chapter 1, the SEAT Ibezia

The rental car from Hertz was a brand new, 700 km on the odometer, SEAT Ibezia Sport Wagon. SEAT is now part of the Volkswagen Group, the factory is in Spain. The styling of the wagon is quite sleek; there is considerable room behind the rear seat however the backseat leg room was sparse. It probably is closest to the Volkswagen Jetta wagon. The controls were pretty much standard and easy to figure out. The 5 speed manual transmission was smooth and the gear ratios were proper. The 4 cylinder 1.4 liter gasoline engine performed well and had plenty of power to climb the northern Hungarian mountains. Over the 500 km trip we used 31.87 L of petrol, you will have to figure the MPG if so inclined; I’m just not that smart, but it seems really good. The fuel was 391.90 huf per liter, total fuel cost was 12,490 huf. Remember the forint, or huf, is about 187 to the USD. It is interesting that the Hungarians have adopted the ridiculous policy of having the price of fuel end in point 9. This must be some international conspiracy as it makes no sense or cents. At least the Hungarians have eliminated the 1 forint coin and they rarely mess with the 5 forint coin, rounding everything to the 10 which is still only ½ cent. It’s the principle. Anyway, the car was just OK, it was sportier and more powerful than the Suzuki we rented for the Romanian trip but was smaller in the rear passenger compartment. If you are really interested you can look at SEAT’s web site.

Hungarian birthday greetings

Roughly translates....

Every year on your birthday someone tugs on you ear, your ear lobe will grow down to the ground which means you've lived a long life.

There are other variations on the same theme, all with the same good wishes.

Happy Birthday to Lovely Lisa

Happy birthday, worth saying again. Certainly a birthday you will remember.

Love

Scott

Still cool and rainy...sorry

It’s rather quiet here. The Universities are closed for the summer; everyone has gone to Lake Balaton. Lisa has had her head buried in the computer working on a couple of papers and I have been reading. It’s amazing how the absence of television has rekindled my enjoyment of books. The titles and authors are quite varied; Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, an amazing story about a side of Lincoln I’d never heard about, several Agatha Christie books and currently I’m reading the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

We continue to work on perfecting the paprikash recipes. They are as varied from house to house as chili and spaghetti sauce recipes vary across the US. My nose has determined many Hungarian Mothers make a large batch of paprikash several times a week and then add the favorite or available final ingredient as it goes to the table, chicken, pork, potatoes, beans and mushrooms are all common. It is commonly served as a rich stew but can be served over meat. The expression “it will be better tomorrow” is used to describe the paprikash. It is often used as a sauce to bake meats and it thickens and richens as it blends with the meat juices. More investigation is necessary and I remain committed to the project.

We had a lovely evening at Andrea Karpati’s on Wednesday. We had not seen her flat, located on the Buda side. It’s a very unique and arty place with walls of books and special collections here and there. Her daughter Anna joined us for dinner and we enjoyed getting to know her, I knew instantly she was a brilliant young lady when we discovered we both liked South Park. I will bring her some SPAM on the return visit. Andrea had prepared a fruit soup, a chicken paprikash and her special spinach dumplings she had made for us in Illinois. We also celebrated Lisa’s birthday a couple of days early.

Andrea’s building is near the Rubik Studios, see pic, I couldn’t resist taking a picture of one of the Budapest street signs near her home. We were looking for her building, No. 74. We saw this sign and naturally walked to the right, her building was to the left. Maybe they moved the building. The sentry guarding the sign is further evidence of this.

We will celebrate Lisa’s birthday on Friday with a trip to the New York Café. I wonder if they have a Budapest Café in New York. There is a Russian Tea Room in Chicago.

We have a busy weekend planned. I think I have a car rented and we are heading to the wine country near Egar and then driving thru a National Forest toward Slovakia. There are several castles near Filakovo we want to see, a day trip on Saturday. We are spending part of Sunday with Stefan, Andrea and Eva going to a island in the Danube. We are heading to the flea market on Sunday morning to look for Lisa’s birthday present.

Anyway…here are a couple of pictures from the last few days. Lady vendor sleeping at the flea market; A nice flower shop; everyone reads on the trams; another interesting t-shirt; a view of the Gellert; Lisa, Andrea and Anna; art picture of a spider.