Memories of Budapest

Besides eating ( Lángos,  Turtlenecks, Goulash, Foie gras, pálinka, fried cheese, chicken paprikás, porkolt, etc...) and staying in interesting apartments, here are a few of the other things we did in our week in Budapest.

Went for a walking tour and crossed from Pest into Buda via the Chain Bridge

Visited Markt hall for some Lángos,  the best mulled wine we had in Hungary, and souvineirs

Soaked in the Szechenyi Baths warmed by natural hot springs for well over 4 hours.

Went to the ballet at the National Theater. Copellia, one of the stranger plots for a ballet.

Pedaled Bubo around Margaret's Island

Walked along the magnificent facade of Parliament

Climbed to the top of the Citadel in the Buda hills

Admired the view of Pest and the mighty Danube

Made a grumpy face

Admired the hike up to the Citadel

Got on a train to Vienna for a 36 hr layover before heading to Ljubljana

Apartments in Budapest

Jim couldn't resist the opportunity to book us the "Retro" apartment in Budapest. Retro meaning circa 1960. Here's a peak.:

This is our tub couch in the kitchen. The kitchen also supplied GDR cups and plates.

Fun family photos.  Love this boy's stockings.

The living room. Note the giant stereo on the right. Pretty cool, except it didn't work. Also note the classic wallpaper and upholstery. 

A birthday request

So soon, on November 13th and 18th respectively, Jim and I will be celebrating our birthdays. He will be 31, and I will be the big 30.

Since if I were home, there would be booze, food, a waffle show and general hosting merriment,  and you would all be invited, but we're not home and we can't see your warm smiling faces,  I would like to make a request for a possible substitute.

I miss you, so send me a video with some birthday love, and be sure to show off your new apartment,  latest baking endeavor recent crafting find, favorite new book, loved old spots that remind you of us ( bonus points for a video from the BU pub), adorable cats, new offices, TV clips, etc....

Send via email,  YouTube link or Skype message by November 18th  and be sure to attach your current mailing address, and as incentive, we will try to find the most ridiculous post card and send it to you.

Missing you,
Christiana and Jim

Eger and the Valley of the Beautiful Women

Eger was a really cool day trip we took.  It's a two hour train ride from Budapest into Northern Hungary.   Above you see the minaret that is the northernmost such minaret left from the Ottoman Empire built when the Turks invaded back in the late 1500's.  A minaret is a narrow tower often connected to a mosque.  I suspect we'll see more once we make it to Turkey.  It is crazy narrow inside with steep steps that you can climb up.  I thought parts of the belfry in Bruges were narrow, but this was ridiculous.  Here I am at the top of the steps:

At the top, you have a great view of Eger Castle where the locals actually successfully defended the town from the Turks in 1552 despite being outnumbered by about 20 to 1.

This is a point of pride and the date is found on a lot of the souvenirs.  Of course, they were attacked again and defeated in 1596 (leading to the building of the minaret), but that's beside the point.  We played cribbage inside the castle walls and had a pretty sweet view there as well.

Now, my last post talked a bit about food here but the best tasting thing we've had in Hungary is the red wine.  In Eger there is a section of town about a 20 minute walk from the center called Szépasszony-völgy, or in English, the Valley of the Beautiful Women.  The signs pointing you in that direction helpfully call it Nice Woman Valley which I enjoyed.

I have no idea why it's called this (besides the fact that my wife was there) because it is a horseshoe shaped street of wine cellars that have all types of wine.  There are over 40 so you kind of just pick one that looks good and ask for whatever suits your mood.  It's kind of like a pub crawl except with wine and they are all right next to each other.  It would be a really fun place to go to on a summer night with a group of friends.  You can enjoy glasses at the cellar or buy the typical bottle, but you can also get big plastic jugs.  I heard you can just ask them to fill up whatever bottle you have with you but the one I asked about that said no.

The most famous type of wine from this region is a red wine called bikavér or bull's blood.  The story behind the name goes back to the aforementioned defense of Eger in 1552 where the Turks saw the red, wine stained beards of the locals and believed they were drinking bull's blood for strength.  It's really good and we particularly liked the one from cellar 45 which you can see Chrissy enjoying below.

Hungry in Hungary

Let's talk about food some more as it is one of my favorite things to blab on about. Hungarian cuisine is famous for an absolute devotion to paprika which most clearly manifests itself in goulash (which is a soup with a paprika spiked broth).  It is also not to be confused with pörkölt which is basically the stew version of the same thing.  Both are good but I enjoyed the goulash more.  Chicken paprikás, chicken coated in a paprika cream sauce was sort of underwhelming though the chicken was really tender.  As a random side note it's pronounced paprikash, and as far as I can tell every single s in Hungarian is pronounced like sh.  That may not actually be true but it seems like it.  For example, Budapest, where we are now, is actually pronounced Budapesht.  

You will also see goose liver on menus everywhere (often going by its much fancier french name, foie gras, though traditionally that is fattened goose or duck liver).  In a lot of the world it is a delicacy and that is true here, but it's so common it shows up in places like this:

Yup, a McDonald's burger with (as Google translates it, roasted foie gras).  Naturally we had to get one.  It's a bit weird, but not bad, and the sauce on it was really good. They also have a pork burger with sauerkraut and salami.  Neither of them would ever fly in the States, but it was a fun little experience.  Also, I'm pretty sure the fries taste the exact same anywhere in the world which is sort of comforting.

Kutna Hora

A day trip from Prague sent us to Kutna Hora, home of the "Bone Church" and once a seat nearly as important as Prague for its silver mine and mint. Here's a view of the Ossuary ("Bone Church"). 

 Over 40,000 human skeletons were used to decorate this church in the style of Baroque devotion. They are supposed to remind us that our time on this earth is short. 

Every bone in the human skeleton is represented in this chandelier. I don't know about you, but I just found this to be creepy.

In a change of pace, we headed over to the silver museum and mine and got the chance to don white miner's jackets and hard hats and descend about 300 meters underground into a mine that was initially dug in 13th century.

Getting ready to go into the mine

The mine is narrowest at 40 cm, and shortest at 124 cm. Get out your meter sticks, it's tiny. 

But we did make it back up to the surface, better educated about why we both would not ever like to be silver miners.

Discover a new artist

One of the things about wandering the world and bumping into things is that sometimes you get great recommendations that you actually have time to take advantage of. Take our stay in Prague, where my sister suggested we visit the Alphonse Mucha museum. Never heard of him. His style, Art Nouveu. And since we had had our fill of Dutch masters and strange contemporary works, and impressionists in our previous 50 days, sounded like the perfect new art exposure. And it was. The Mucha museum gives you a taste of his life as an artist (famous in his life time) , and a thorough view of his posters. But it also turned our attention to his life's master work, the Slav Epic, which was actually housed in a completely different place due to its size. Luckily,  it was one of the few museums we've been in thus far that allow pictures. Here are some excerpts of the 20 piece Epic.

For a sense of how big this 20 piece master work is, if it were transported to the states, they'd likely be able to squeeze them all into the GSM ballroom, but barely. It is massive, and it was singularly painted by Mucha. 

I think what appeals to me beyond the sheer impressive feat of the thing is the use of light and shade that make figures seem like they float on different planes, giving them an other worldly presence, the intense eyes from the people staring out at you from the canvas, and that, though he paints frames into the pictures, he frequently breaks that frame by having a character step through it, or drape a piece of fabric beyond it, bringing the art closer to our world than the one he's created.