Hungary

Here's the much anticipated post with the pictures of our last two stops on our trip, the Hungarian cities of Eger and Budapest. Eger is a small city two hours north of Budapest, so we jumped off the Krakow-Budapest train a little early and caught a one-car train 30 minutes east to Eger. This Joe standing on top of the Lyceum in Eger. We'd just gotten done seeing the camera obscura, and exited onto this balcony.

Here's another view of Eger, with a building painted the common cheery yellow.

Another view from the Lyceum. It had been so overcast and rainy that this actually seemed like a fairly sunny moment at the time, so we took lots of pictures.

This is Dobo Square in Eger, with a statue to Istvan Dobo, the city's hero who defended the city and Hungary from Ottoman invasion in 1552.

Here's the castle where Istvan fought off the Ottomans. There wasn't much in the way of an actual castle here; more like a big fortified hill. This is a view into a sunken courtyard, and there are tunnels and rooms built into these walls and running underground throughout the hill.

Here's a view of the wall surrounding the castle grounds, and a look at the walkway leading down to the city.

Me on top of the castle walls.

Here's a picture of the northern-most minaret in Europe. It's the only thing left of a mosque that was built after the Ottomans came back in 1596 and conquered Eger and Hungary (sorry Istvan). They ruled this region for almost a century.

There was a little market hall just off Dobo Square that had lots of produce on the ground floor, with big meat and dairy stalls on the second floor. In the very back there was also a little cafeteria, with stalls serving lots and lots of varieties of meat and potatoes. Because this city is so much smaller they don't get many American or English tourists here, so everything was labeled in Hungarian and sometimes in German as well. I knew enough German to decipher what kind of meat we were selecting and to place an order, but that's about it.

Here's me trying the mystery-wurst. Despite my reluctance, it was actually really good--it was full of rice, pork, and lots of spices. The Hungarians are also known for their pickled foods, and Joe tried a few different pickles here. I was apparently too grossed out to get a picture of them, but he claims they were the best pickles he's ever tasted.


When we first walked by this building on the night that we arrived, we assumed this was the Lyceum. But then in the daytime we saw the statues on the top of the building and realized this is Eger Cathedral (which may help explain why we wandered lost in this town in the rain from about 9:30-10pm).



Part of Eger's tourist attraction is the Sirens' Valley, which is just on the edge of town. Apparently when the Ottomans first seized Eger, the people moved into these neighboring valleys and lived in caves in the hillsides, which are covered in vineyards. When the Ottomans were driven out, they came back to the city, but they kept these caves, which just happen to be the perfect temperature for storing wine. Now families sell wine out of the caves, and when it's not rainy and cold, it's supposed to be quite the spot for a fun evening.


Here's a picture of the main loop in Siren's Valley. It's a horseshoe, with caves (some with covered porches built onto the fronts) lining the outsides.


Here's the inside of one of the caves where we sampled a few glasses. This was fairly typical of the caves we saw--wooden benches, local vintners filling glasses straight out of their reserves further back in the cave, and slices of white bread with some cheese spread on them for snacks. Very laid back and a cool local feeling.


So here's the only problem with the whole wine cave experience: the wine was terrible. Maybe we should have known, since you can buy a glass for about $.40 (we spent less than $2 total here). But we weren't expecting anything fancy and particularly amazing, just something that was at least worth the trouble of walking out here. And I can safely tell you that the wine wasn't worth the $.40. It was like slightly sour grape juice, which I think my stomach found even harder to digest than actual wine. It was as if my stomach couldn't really classify the liquid ("It's not juice, but it's not alcohol...") and just decided to dispose of it with all haste. Which is what we ended up doing to the Siren's Valley as well.


And where did we go after the disappointing wine venture? To a restaurant where we could console ourselves with some beer and goulash, of course. Joe is sampling the traditional Hungarian goulash, which is more broth-based than what we typically think of as goulash. And nicely spiced with paprika.


After three days in Eger we headed to our final destination, Budapest. This was our second favorite stop after Krakow, I think. This picture, taken from Gellert Hill, is overlooking the Danube, with Buda on the left and Pest on the right. We actually hiked up here on our last day in Budapest, but I thought I'd put it first because it was the only sunny afternoon we had while we were there.


Here's the same view of the city.


Here's me in front of the Chain Bridge, which was a few blocks from our hotel, and what we used to walk into Pest every day.


This is the traffic circle on the Buda side of the Elisabeth bridge, and the fountain is where we started our hike up Gellert Hill.


A picture of some of the boats that were constantly cruising up and down the Danube.


This is Gellert Hill. The hill is named for Bishop Gellert, whom King Istvan brought from Venice in 1000 when he converted the country to Christianity. Some of the local Magyars weren't really ready for a Christian bishop, however. They put Gellert in a barrel, drove nails into the barrel, and then rolled him down this hill. Now he's St. Gellert.


This was a little church a block from our hotel. Notice the roof. It's a little hard to see, but it's decorated in Hungary's three colors, red, yellow and green. Almost all of the church roofs had elaborate decorations like this, and were really beautiful.

This picture is just to illustrate some of the oddness of walking around Budapest. You'll see a beautiful restored building, like the church in the previous picture, and next to it will be something like this monstrosity, which is the ugliest Marriott hotel I've ever seen. This picture doesn't even show just how bombed-out this building looked.


Here's a view of the Chain Bridge from Castle Hill. Castle Hill is on the Buda side, and the picture is looking over the Danube to Pest.

The big building in the top left of the picture is the Hungarian Parliament building. It was built for the city's millennial celebration in 1896 (like many other things in the city).


This is St. Matthias Church on Castle Hill. Here's a good example of the roof decoration I mentioned earlier.


The interior of the church is just as decorated as the outside, though not in the same gilded way that many other European churches are. The interior of this church was completely and elaborately painted (we saw several churches decorated this way in Hungary). All the paintings tell the history of Hungary and Budapest.


Here's me in a street on Castle Hill.


This was a big grocery store in a square near our hotel. In the background you can see the illuminated dome of the Hungarian Parliament.

Another view of the Hungarian Parliament. The last part on the right side was covered in scaffolding.


After exploring Buda, we headed over to see the sights in Pest. This is the Great Market Hall. We thought the market hall in Eger was interesting, but this is about ten times the size. If you're a vegetarian, this place definitely wasn't for you. There were stalls and stalls of meat in every form.


Here you can see some of the size of the market hall. There's a second level that goes around the outside of the hall and across bridges like the one in the picture. There's also a basement with a grocery store, and then stalls and stalls of everything you can think to put in a jar and pickle.


Ok, there some vegetarian-friendly stalls too.


And lots and lots of stalls selling paprika.


Here's Joe in pickle heaven.


This is the large, public Szechenyi Baths in Budapest's City Park. Joe was looking forward to these baths for the entire trip. There are three pools. The first one that you see here was the warmest, and where we spent most of the time (still not much sun, as you can see). Behind this one was a large, cooler pool with lanes for lap swimming, and then there was a third, cooler pool with bubble jets and a little circle thing that turned into a very swift "lazy river" when the jets were turned on, whipping you around the circle.


Another view from the warm pool.


He might not look like he's having fun, but he was. It was just a little chilly outside of the water.


In City Park there is a replica of a Transylvanian castle, Vajdahunyad Castle (Transylvania was part of Hungary for a long time).


There is also a Baroque mansion, which now houses the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture. These bright flowers in front of the museum smelled like caramel. I distinctly remember the smell because I was darn hungry when we were here.


This is a square off the main tourist strip in Pest. We wandered here on accident while trying to find the Great Market Hall. It turned out to be a cool little square though, so it wasn't a completely worthless wander. Again, notice the decorated roof on the domed building.

This is St. Ivan's Basillica.

Another view of the Chain Bridge on the way back to our hotel.


We stopped at the grocery store near us and picked up some beer that we hadn't tried yet. And yes, Joe shaved. Apparently the beard was getting too bushy and he had no way to trim it. We only had two more days at this point, but I guess he'd had as much as he could take.


On the morning of our last day in Budapest we went to Statue Park, which is about a twenty minute bus ride outside of Buda. When the communist regime fell, someone collected all the communist statues from the city and put them all here in this park. The Social Realism "art," so to speak, provided an interseting glimpse of what life was like in those days.


One of the statues, with the iconic closed fist symbolizing strength. All of the dude in the statues were ridiculously blocky, with gigantic calves and quads, and square shoulders. I guess this was supposed to make them look strong.


A view of the park.

See what I mean about the calves and quads?


This is the last image as you depart the park. These are Stalin's boots; the rest of the statue was torn down in a protest, and this is all that could be saved.


One last picture of us on the walk along the Danube.


This was our very last night abroad, and we decided to celebrate by having one last helping of our favorite pastries in our hotel room. We referred to these as "fluffy balls." I'm sure there's a better, more appetizing name, but it was unrecognizable and unpronounceable to us. Under the outside cream there is a thin, fried doughnut-like thing that is hollow and stuffed with more cream. They are delicious.

The Unicum is a special Hungarian drink made from 150 different (or thereabout) herbs. Unlike the fluffy balls, it is extremely un-delicious. I managed to do the equivalent of stick my tongue in it, which was more than I ever want to have of the stuff again.

And that's it for the trip!