Simple pleasures of a Hungarian train

Magic hour at Keleti train station, in Budapest

The train has only pulled out of the station a few minutes ago, and it already takes on the familiar feeling of a Hungarian train.

The polite exchange of seats, as those with reservations ask those without reservations to get out of their seats.

The sound of a can of Dreher being opened. Then another. Then another. 

A lady sitting down across the table from us, pulling out a tin-foiled bundle and unwrapping a sandwich.

At the next station, a man sits beside her. As the train pulls out, he too pulls a tin-foiled sandwich from his luggage, unwraps it, and takes a bite.

We already finished our snacks and sandwiches.

Train travel is easily romanticized, as if it's still like solving mysteries on the Orient Express or watching the world blur past you on a bullet train.

But for most of us, it's a necessity. No Belgian detectives solving mysteries. And it's the local, so there's plenty of stops and no bullet speed.

So if you must take the train, why not make the most of it and stretch out and crack open a beer? You have to pay for the train ticket, so pay for train food when you can eat a delicious sandwich?

Any kind of travel doesn't need pricey upgrades or faux luxury. Often, it's the simple pleasures that make the trip worthwhile.

A ride on a Hungarian train is a refreshing return to that grounded normalcy. 

Once, on a flight from Budapest to Rome, I unwrapped my own tin-foiled wrapped salami sandwich. The old lady across the aisle from me nodded in approval. The flight attendant man gave me the stink eye.

It's not his fault. Airlines have managed to monetize every last bit of enjoyment of travel, while removing the last shred of dignity from the experience of flying. 

Passengers are treated like cattle, milked for every cent.

In the process, they've priced out the simple pleasures. Can you really, truly enjoy a $10 beer? Or do you feel compelled to tell yourself that it's a good beer?

And what about those sandwiches made under questionable circumstances with unidentifiable ingredients?

Train companies have yet to crush the joy of traveling and the simple pleasures that come with it: leg room, a homemade lunch, and cold beer. 

These things aren't sacred or even necessary, but they add something unmistakable to a train ride. That's something Hungarian train passengers haven't forgotten.

Tourists in Budapest

Taking in the Danube from atop Gellert.

We had less than a day in Budapest, so we left our hotel and went for a walk, heading south towards Gellert Hill.

We went along the Danube on the Buda side, strolling beside the river, avoiding bicyclists, dodging rollerbladers, weaving past tourists stopping to snap photos of the Hungarian Parliament Building across the river – and pausing to snap our own. Then under the Chain Bridge, through a side street, browsing in a small design shop, until finally reaching the foot of Gellert Hill.

We climbed the switch-backing paths, catching glimpses of the city below, and savouring the spring flowers. We were hungry when we reached the top, but we still lingered to appreciate the view.

Then we walked down the hill, through the park on the backside of Gellert and, without really meaning to, we went to a touristic, Hungarian restaurant.

The restaurant looked traditional. There was a big, old ceramic furnace in the corner and red,table clothes with traditional Great Plains-ish patterns draped atop the tables. Even the waiters seemed authentic –  grumpy, old men in white shirts idly walking around and waiting on the three occupied tables, but mostly trying unsuccessfully to look as busy as they could in a not so busy restaurant.

We sat down, ordered our food. My novice food-ordering Hungarian language skills seemed to brighten the grumpy waiter's mood. We even earned a further nod of approval when we ordered a bottle of Kadarka.

When our food arrived – which was delicious, by the way – a traditional Hungarian band was tuning up. Why would a band get ready to play so early? we wondered.

At 6:03pm, they started playing a Hungarian folk tune that sounded familiar from my years spent living above touristy Hungarian restaurants with outdoor bands on Vaci utca. At 6:04pm, a table beside the band abruptly stood up and left while the band played, eliciting an angry, hurt, surprised reaction from the first violinist.

At 6:05pm, a busload of Chinese tourists filed into the restaurant, occupying every spare table. The grumpy old waiters lept into action, taking orders and bringing drinks. As the band played, most of the tourists stared longingly into their phones. Some did talked among themselves. One old lady put her head in their hands and dozed off.

The band started playing the Blue Danube – the 2001 song... the spaceship one, not the bone smashing song, which is not a dinner-eating tune –  as the grumpy old waiters hustled from table to table, bringing food to tables filled with filled to delighted tourists. Even the dozing old lady took her head out of her hands.

The familiar tune was treated with indifference. The tourists remained glued to their phones  as they ate or poked suspiciously at their nokedli, while the violinist strolled up and down the aisles, playing his violin solo.

The dessert was served and the the band took a break. They smoked outside and sipped water at the bar. While the grumpy old waiters to carried away the plates, we drained our wine, settled our bill – which brightened our grumpy waiter's mood – and walked into Budapest's gathering dusk.

One of the prettiest parts of BP is the other side of Gellert Hill.

The Strange Places of 2017

The first week in January is a week of looking. Looking at the work inbox in amazement that so many people were sending emails over the holidays. Looking at the window at 4pm to see the sun has set long ago. Looking at the year that went by before looking at the year ahead.

Here are some (not all, that would be a long blog) highlights from the year that was 2017. 

Soaking in the Cave Bath at Miskolc-Tapolca. 

We started the New Year in Miskolc-Tapolca, where we visited the famed Cave Baths. What stuck with me on our trip was our Lillefüred visit. It was a foggy, cold day – cold enough for the lake to freeze, so we could walk out onto it. 

Again and again, when we came for family visits to Hungary, we returned to the country's beautiful east side for hikes, wine drinking, and heritaging. 

The view from Füzer Castle.

Kata's Christmas gift for me were tickets to a Düsseldorf hockey game. I'm a Canadian cliche, but I'm okay with that.

Great seats, too.

We ventured into the Netherlands twice this year, to Rotterdam and a great road trip to The Hague, Haarlem, and Kinderdijk. It might have to do with my Dutch heritage or that every bar and cafe offers cutting boards with meat, cheese, and deep-fried nibbles to snack on as you drink your beer, but I feel like I can't visit that country enough.

When the sun comes out in Rotterdam, you get out.

Our time in Canada always feels brief, so I pack the schedule with friend and family time, and the getaway so Kata can discover my homeland. This year, we made it to Ottawa, where we were easily able to combine Discover Walks with some family time with the locals.

Family time = Photo Time 

I had a month without work and a freelancer friend in Hamburg had some time on his hands. We met halfway between our cities in Bremen for a mid-week getaway. Bremen is an old Hanseatic city, with a lovely Gothic old town. But it's also a student town with a energetic artsy vibe. We discovered this because the only good bars open on a Tuesday were the student drinking holes, which we frequented.

The entrance to Art Deco Street.

The oldest guys at the student bar always take the most selfies.

Kata and I discovered the Eiffel National Park. I wanted to write a longer, stand-alone post, but I couldn't find a story, theme, or thread for 200 words. I'll get to it later, but it's a wild, big, beautiful corner of North-Rhine-Westphalia. 

Walking around old lava.

Watching a friend get married, twice, in Toronto and Paris.

Well look at that, holding up the bar well past last call again.

My parents came to visit Europe. This was a big deal, and a lot of fun.

Walking through Aachen with the Euro-Trippers.

And this happened.

Hungary's Heart(land)

On the trail to Fuzer castle.

Every country has a landscape that shapes its mythology. The beating heart of the nation. For Canada, it's the North. The Americans have the West. Hungarians have Hortobagy, our first stop on a road trip with Kata's parents into Hungary's east.

Poets have waxed, well, poetic, about it. It's vast and bare, hot and dry. There are few places to hide from the sun. Wildfires flare up in the summer heat. Sandor Petofi called it the Burning Fields.

Driving into the Hortobagy is like driving into a time capsule. The barns have thatched roofs, with carefully grounded lightning rods to avoid fire. Water is brought up from wells with wooden levers, visible from far off. And some even wear traditional costume.

Driving through it, you notice the landscape itself. The shades of brown that stretch almost as far as the eye can see until the plains turn into hills in the hazy distance. The sunflowers weighed down by the seeds, and the fields of swaying wheat. If you're counting horses through the heat shimmer, you lose count.

But we were only passing through the Burning Fields. We stopped briefly in the town of Hortobagy – long enough to buy a handmade straw hat at the old farmers' market and see the famous Nine Hole Bridge. Then onto the road we went...

The Nine Hole Bridge of Hortobagy. 

Debrecen

For my entire stint in Hungary, the only thing I knew about Debrecen was that they made delicious, spicy sausages there. It wasn't until this trip that I learned its other big export is Resistance.

For some reason, the Reformation ideas resonated with the people of Debrecen, and the city wholeheartedly latched onto the Calvinism in the 1500s. Its university produced Calvinist scholars who traveled all over Europe, spreading the good word of the Reformation and giving the city its nickname: 'The Geneva of Hungary."

Calvinism was huge in Switzerland, but the rest of its followers were scattered in small pockets all over Europe. Debrecen was on the edge of the Roman Catholic/Protestant world – to the south was the Muslim Ottoman Empire and further east was Orthodox Russia. For Calvinism to take hold and become its springboard in the region says something about its people's dedication.

Debrecen University's pretty library.

We visited the Debrecen's university. Aside from a nice museum about medieval life and a beautiful library with artifacts from the university's most famous graduates, they have an old lecture hall. This is no ordinary lecture hall. It was here, in 1848, the Hungarian National Assembly declared independence. Kossuth Lajos would later read the proclamation from the steps of the nearby Great Reformed Church to a cheering crowd.

The lecture hall has a new coat of paint, but mostly it is as it was then. Assembly members would have sat in the same wooden pews. There was a raised pulpit up front, where Kossuth would have read the declaration.

To reach the library and the lecture hall, you climb a flight of ancient, thick wooden stairs. They're worn smooth, but still sturdy enough that they don't give way or groan under someone's weight – quality oak from the forests we'd be hiking the next day. As we climbed the stairs, Kata said, "These are original! Can you believe that Petofi Sandor and Kossuth Lajos walked on these same stairs?" We were walking in the footsteps of Hungary's heroes.

The Great Reformed Church in Debrecen.

Füzer

Our final destination was a hunting lodge in Füzer, a region of sloping, forested mountains close to the Slovak border.

After a good night's sleep – the lodge's bar closed early – we struck out on the planned 23km hike. The route would take us up several mountains, through scenic woodland, past the great castle of Füzer.

Hungarian castles are not Cinderella castles. Most have seen action. Many were built to resist another Mongol invasion after the nearly apocalyptic first Mongol invasion in 1241. The Mongols defeated the Hungarian army and destroyed the capital, pillaged the countryside, ravaged the population, and destroyed every city or town that wasn't protected by a stone fortress.

Anticipating a second invasion, the Hungarians set to work building stone castles that couldn't be breached by a horde of Mongol horsemen. They might pillage and burn the countryside, but they couldn't stay long with a garrison of troops in a castle that could attack them from the rear.

The strategy worked against the second Mongol invasion. With all the food stored in the vaults of the impregnable castles, the Mongols starved. Facing guerrilla attacks from the castle's garrisons, they fled in disarray.

Most those Hungarian castles couldn't resist the gigantic siege cannons the Ottoman Turks dragged with them through the Balkans. One after another, castle after castle fell to the Turks as they marched into Hungary, driving towards Vienna.

Füzer held out against the Turks, along with a handful of others like Eger, and have passed into national myth. But it was the Austrians who destroyed it. Getting tired of putting down Hungarian revolutions, they planted explosives in every castle, demolishing them to leave no stronghold behind for Hungarian rebels.

It is a not-so heroic end for castles that stood against so much, so I understand the government's recent desire to rebuild the castles. I also understand the romantic desire to leave the ruins behind as a more somber reminder of the past. But I have to say, there is something raw and awe-inspiring about visiting a castle ruin in Hungary.

Fuzer castle has been carefully restored,
 right down to the toilets.

Füzer was one of the rebuilt castles chosen, and they've done a lovely job of it. The chapel, living quarters, a disconcertingly large amount of toilets, four storage vaults – for wine, beer,  bacon, and then everything else – among other rooms are carefully restored.

Füzer was a short stop at the hike. Much of the day was spent humping mountains and going off the beaten path in the forests beyond Füzer.

The trail skirted the border between Hungary and Slovakia, a silly border that is just shy of a hundred years old – very young in mountain and forest years. As we hiked along the path, we flitted from Hungary to Slovakia and back again as lumberjacks and hunters must have done for centuries before the Allies plopped a border there in 1920.

We also stopped at the Hungarian Language Museum.
I looked at the pictures there.

Tokaj

After an evening of sleep and recovery from the hike – despite staying up later, since we ordered extra beer before the hotel bar closed – we stopped at Tokaj, one of Hungary's top-notch wine growing regions.

The Romantic English poets, like Byron, loved this region's wine. Louis XIV declared it, "the King of Wines and the Wine of Kings." For centuries, it was one of Europe's favourite wines. Today, after being held behind an Iron Curtain for two generations, wine from Tokaj is rightfully getting its reputation back.

And yet, despite a great visit to a wine cellar, where we sampled three varying grades wine from dry to semi-sweet to sweet, and then a final a dry, furmint version, the only photo I took was of this public toilet. A toilet Kata designed as a young industrial design student.

Still, I recommend visiting Tokaj for the fine wine, and the finely designed public toilets.

The proud designer and her public toilet.

Hungary's Huge Year in Sports

My new soccer hero, Hungarian goalkeeper Kiraly Gabor,
who always plays in sweat pants.

There are few sports fans who have lived with as much angst and despair as the Hungarians – especially their soccer fans. The angst and despair are all the harder because the country was once one of the best in the world.

The Magnificent Magyars, led by Ferenc Puskas, won gold in the 1952 Olympics and defeated Italy to win the 1953 Central European Championship. 

Later that year, in what is now called the Match of the Century, the Hungarian team played England in front of a 105,000-person crowd at Wembley Stadium and picked a heavily favoured English team apart 6-3. The next year, the English tried to get revenge, but managed just one goal, and lost 7-1 in Budapest. 

The Hungarians were now recognized as a soccer powerhouse and came into the 1954 World Cup as the favourite. They beat Brazil and cast aside the defending champions Uruguay. They faced West Germany in the Final, whom they had already beaten in the first round. It was a tougher game than expected. With six minutes left and the game tied 2-2, the West Germans scored the winning goal. Hungary lost the World Cup, in what the Germans would call the 'Miracle in Berne' and the Hungarians would dub the 'Disaster in Berne.'

The team still dominated international soccer, winning a few more international matches and seemed posed to win a championship until 1956. The team was abroad when the revolution erupted against the communist dictatorship in Budapest. After the Soviets invaded Hungary, the team stayed abroad, but eventually broke up. Some players returned to Hungary, while the rest scattered across West Europe. 

Over the next few years, the national team might occasionally break out of the first round of a tournament, only to be  defeated in the next round. Eventually the team stopped qualifying and faded into obscurity at international soccer's second tier.

When I sat down on Tuesday evening at a German beer garden with Kata and another Hungarian friend in town for business, you could say the mood about being at the Euro was "We're happy to be here."

The first half could have gone either way, but Austria seemed in control. In the second half, a Hungarian player in Austria's goal box looked as if he lost control of the ball but managed to slide-kick it into the goal before the Austrian goalkeeper could get to it. GOAL! 

We were on our feet. The rest of the beer garden didn't seem to be watching the game, except for a grumpy old German who grumbled something in German. On the TV, as the players jumped into the crowd, we heard how loud the crowd was at the stadium and they were chanting "Magyarok" or something like that. 

Now even Kata is paying attention as the Austrians tried to tie up the game. We saw a yellow card, a close Austrian attempt, a close Hungarian shot, and a brutally twisted ankle. Finally, Hungary scored the second one and the victory was confirmed to be no fluke.

The game ended. The grumpy old German at the next table grumbled and we watched the post-game analysis from German TV announcers. They didn't know what to say. They clearly prepared notes about Austria winning, but knew nothing about the Hungarian team, not even the pronunciation of their names. So they talked about what Austria didn't do during the game.

On the other hand, our social media feeds were filled with photos of Budapest streets brimming up with celebrating fans. Remember, it's been decades since something like this has happened.

Earlier this year, Hungary's hockey team participated in the World Championship in St. Petersburg. Aside from a brief appearance in 2009 this was their first appearance there since 1939. A massive contingent of Hungarian hockey fans followed their team there and sang the national anthem after every loss. 

In their final game, they scored five goals to Belarus' two and won their first game in 77 years. Look around online for video of fans after the game and try not to get a little emotional. 

If Hungary does well in water polo, it's like Canada wining gold at the World Junior Hockey Tournament, it's expected. But watching both their soccer and hockey team win their first game in eons is a huge thing. We're witnessing a huge year for Hungarian sports.

The Vacation filled with un-Vacation-y Things

Munich's Frauenkiche, all grey and grumpy in the Bavarian rain.

We begin the story of this vacation on a train station platform, because we're not doing this the normal way – it's a vacation of un-vacation-y things. We're taking the long way to Budapest. We're waiting for our train to Munich.

Despite its difficulties with kitchen appliances and the internet, Germany can do rail travel. You pay a premium, and in exchange you get a clean train, a bit of leg room, and a punctual train. 

There was just one hitch that had nothing to do with the wonders of German train travel. Kata chipped her tooth on a baguette sandwich we bought shortly before we boarded the train. I panicked. She just looked at the nub of tooth in surprise and reassured me it was already a false tooth. She would settle with looking like a hockey player until we found a dentist.

We arrived in Munich, hoping to stroll the streets and see the sights. But the rain gods had other plans, and we spent a soggy afternoon and evening exploring the old town. We braved the rain between meals – sausages for me, soft food for Kata's snaggle tooth – and one-litre beers in warm beer halls.

Our train was due to leave at 11:30pm.


Night Train to Budapest

I'm coming out right now and stating that night trains are awesome. Instead of wasting a whole day traveling or losing bits of your life to endless waiting in airport, a night train lets you sleep as the traveling is done.

Is such a slow way too travel un-vacation-y? Perhaps, but I'd take a night train over one of those evil budget airlines any day. Back to the story, before I get worked up. 

Our night train was not a German train. It was a MAV train, the Hungarian train service, which not only felt like we were stepping onto Hungarian soil, but was also cheaper than the German train from Dusseldorf to Munich.

We got a two-person compartment, which is pretty much what you've seen in the movies. You get your bunk beds and there's breakfast in the morning, and there's sink too! It is quite the upgrade from the six-person sleeper compartments I spent my travel nights in during my monthly trips to Berlin.

Beer-y Happiness by the litre!

Varga Family Compound

When we woke up in the morning on the night train, we were in Hungary. Familiar territory!

In keeping with our un-vacation-y vacation, our Hungary lodgings were not going to be a friend's apartment in Budapest, like last summer. This was an all-family vacation, so we were staying with Kata's parents in the countryside.

This might seem awkward, but it really wasn't. For starters, the house isn't quite a family house as much as a family compound. There is a main house and a garage renovated into another, smaller house.

Kata's parents used to occupy the house, while her sister and brother-in-law and their four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son lived in the renovated garage. They swapping houses to give the kids some more space, but making changes in the smaller garage house first. This left it unoccupied, so we moved in there for the week.

With the little kids around, we spent a great deal of time with them on their schedule, which changed the whole pace of the vacation at the Varga Family Compound. 

You wake up a little earlier to hang out with them. You play in the yard. You eat a lunch, because you're hungry from keeping up with little people who don't seem to get tired. Then you sit and enjoy some laziness while they nap. They wake up and, thank goodness, they want to stay close to the couch where you can remain sitting. Then it's a great family dinner with homemade food and an early-ish bedtime.

Plus, the two-year-old is just a little more ahead of me in Hungarian, so I got some language practice to boot.

Kata and the kids, including my two-year-old Hungarian teacher
who says 'Cheese' with, well, that face.

Eating in the Land of Meat with a Vegetarian

Kata had given up meat for Lent and had been so impressed with how healthy she felt that she decided to continue the meatless-ness beyond Easter. 

In Hungary, almost every meal is eaten with meat, so it was clear she'd relax her rules for the sake of eating a bit of home-cooked meaty goodness. 

The traditional Hungarian Easter dinner was cold ham with horseradish and hardboiled eggs. This was delicious stuff, so Kata snuck little slivers of the ham. The last meal was pork fillets cooked in a mushroom sauce. She accepted half a fillet. Between those two meals, she was treated to vegetarian meals, like Hungarian crepes, fried cheese (mmmmm!), and Grandma's potato dumplings. She did not go hungry.


Family Trip to the Hills

The Varga family is a serious hiking family and every Easter they do a walk around Szent Mihaly Hill, a forested hill that juts into the Danube River, just across from Visegrad.

I laughingly mentioned this is some sort of a boyfriend test. Then Kata's mom remembered they had indeed brought along an ex-boyfriend. I was determined to fare better than him and got my hiking game face on.

The hike was lead by Kata's dad, the alpha hiker of the family, and wound 21km up a hill, through a field, into a forest, up another hill to a lookout, and back down again to the city. It sounds gruelling when I write that all out, but the hike was great. The weather was cool and sunny and perfect for a hike. There were wild flowers everywhere and we had breaks for beer and ice cream.

I not only survived the hike, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I was told I fared much better on the hike than the last boyfriend. 

Hussling up the hill.

The monument to the Treaty of Trianon. 

  

The view of the mighty Danube from the lookout. If you look carefully, you can see the Castle of Visegrad.

A Trip to the Dentist

As I mentioned earlier, Kata chipped her tooth on a baguette between Mannheim and Munich. Not an ideal thing to happen on a vacation, but there are worst un-vacation-y things that could've happened.

This meant a trip to the dentist. This is no extraordinary thing if you're Austrian or German. Hungarian dentists are so inexpensive and so competent compared to their Austrian and Western European colleagues, that people travel to Hungary to get dental work done. It's true. 

Hungary thrives on dental tourism.

So Kata completed a rite of passage for a tourist from Germany: She visited the dentist. I came along and, as I waited, was confronted with the choice of flipping through Hungarian ladies' magazines or enjoy's the world's best view from a dental office.

A dental office's waiting room with this kind of view
helps you ignore those drilling noises.

Getting onto the Road

I'm ending this story on another train platform, this time in Budapest. We had traveled from Hódmezővásárhely way out on the Hungarian Plains, where we had visited Kata's mama  – in Hungarian your mom is anyu or anya, and grandma is mama, after all this is a country where 'Hello' sounds like 'See ya.'

We filled up on mama's homecooking and quality family time, and now we were arriving to the one part of our vacation that was not so un-vacation-y. We were there for only one night, and we'd be typical tourists, heading to a bath and a ruin pub.

And in the end the best part of the visit to Budapest was spending time with friends, which was the same thing that made the trip as a whole so great, and unlike your typical vacation: the chance to spend time with family.

Ideas that never became blog posts

When it comes to writing posts for this blog, I am ruthless. About half the posts I write never get past the draft phase. The posts die for many reasons. They wander off, without a point or theme – which is important for me – or I didn't like how they turn out and shelf them indefinitely. 

Whether the death is slow or quick, there's usually a kernel of an idea that brought about the draft phase in the first place. That idea that drove the dead posts often remain in my head, waiting to come out.

Here are a few ideas that did not die with their post, but still wait to come out.

Politics

During my stay in Hungary, an EU commission accused the Hungarian government of eroding its democratic institutions, there was a national election, and the prime minister called for an “illiberal state” based on Russia or Turkey. Lots of juicy stuff to write about.

Hungary never had genuine democratic institutions until the 1990s. Before that it was dictators, kings, and emperors. It takes time for democracy to take root and grow. Right now, this government is pursuing a nationalist agenda in spite of the economic and political consequences. It is not tragic. It is a part of a process every country goes through as they build a civil society. The real tragedy would be the day the Hungarian people quit seeking and defending their own democratic institutions. Happily that isn't happening.

There is a lot to say and, as a non-Hungarian speaker, I always felt I was never get the full story. As a guy with a political science degree, it always stuck in my craw that I couldn’t clearly elucidate even one political post about Hungary. Maybe some distance will help in the coming months.

No normal jeans

I only had a few weeks to wrap up the loose ends of my life in Toronto before I set off for Budapest. Buying new blue jeans did not make the list at the time, but if I could do things over again I would have brought a couple of pairs.

This isn’t the Cold War. Blue jeans are as common in the old East Bloc as they are in the West. All the jeans here happen to be very tight. I looked in several malls for a decent pair. These weren’t baggy pants with 30-inch openings I was looking for, just jeans that are a little looser in the legs, crouch, and ass. Not a big deal, or you would think.

The search got so desperate that I even asked a friend from Canada who was coming to visit to get a pair for me. He got hit by a car on the shopping trip, so I got no jeans and he got a trip to the ER (he’s fine... now).

My search eventually ended at a skate store in a Budapest, where I bought the baggiest pair I could find. How baggy were they? My sister laughed at them when she was visiting, saying I looked weird in skinny jeans.

Fröccs

A while back, I wrote about Hungary as an incredible wine country and my utter lack of any wine knowledge. After spending two summers visiting the beaches, bars, and patios of Budapest and Lake Balaton, I have a new wrinkle to add to that.

It’s fröccs, the ultimate spending-a-day-drinking-on-a-patio drink. Fröccs is wine and carbonated water. Admittedly, I’m no wine snob, so I won't gasp at mixing water with wine. I’ve also mixed carbonated water with whiskey for years -- Whiskey Pop! These sorts of drinks are bubbly and tasty, but also keep you hydrated enough to avoid the brutal hangovers that are the norm when you’re over 30.

The trick is ordering a fröccs with the desired wine to water ratio. This way, you stay hydrated as you drink away the afternoon, evening, night, and possibly morning.

Marshall's Lazy Guide to Froccs.

Hungary: One Nation Under Water

Let’s say you have a people living in a landlocked nation. Not only is there no sea, but this country is surrounded by beautiful mountains.  These people’s ancestors happened to arrive and conquer this land on horseback.

And somehow these people also have developed an incredible love of water. It doesn’t make much sense, but that’s Hungary for you – a nation of water babies

In lieu of any coastline Hungary has hundreds of thermal springs, which have spas and bathhouse built over them. Mentioning the spa to a North American immediately conjures an image of a fancy-pantsy retreat in the country where moneyed folks enjoy their mud baths and massages. In Budapest, the baths are for everyone, from the working man right on up to royalty.

Did I mention they are in the city limits? Nowhere else in the world do you have not just one, but several baths within a city. There’s something for everyone. For the mud bath enthusiasts, you have the fancy pants Gellert Spa (I don’t know about mud bath availability though). You’re already familiar with the old Turkish baths in Rudas if you’ve seen the opening fight scene of the Schwarzenegger classic Red Heat. It was filmed there.

Look past the man pecks, and you see Rudas.

No man pecks here.

My first encounter with the baths was with a group of Hungarian friends at the Baroque outdoor wonder that is Szechenyi in the morning of New Year’s Eve.

It’s a tradition. You arrive in the morning, spend the day loosening up and use that relaxation to take a long nap before the parties begin. The fog was so thick that morning that you felt like you were all alone in an outdoor thermal pool filled with several hundred people. You could hear the fountain splashing and gurgling in the middle of the pool, but you didn’t know it was there until you walked right into its spray.

Kata and I try to get to Szechenyi every time she's in Budapest. In our opinion, it's the best bath in the city.

Hungary also has a large shallow summer-getaway lake. About a two-hour drive from Budapest, this lake is sort of like Canada’s Muskokas, if the Muskokas weren’t pockmarked with eyesore mansions and the calm wasn’t interrupted by jetskiers going back and forth.

On Balaton, motor traffic is limited to the ferries, allowing people to actually swim in the lake or take sailboats out. And the mansions? The communists turned them into hostels for vacationing state company workers (some of which are still used for that purpose).

The lake is shallow, no deeper than three or four meters, but it’s large enough that there are plenty of places to visit along its shore, each with its own character.

Last month for my birthday Kata and I went to Badascony, a hill formed by volcanic fissures. This left basalt columns on the hill and rich, volcanic soil below it for amazing wine growing. We spent an afternoon hiking up the hill. Exiting the park we came out onto a road lined with wine cellars and drank as we returned to our hotel to suit up and go for a swim in the lake.

The summer before, friends and I made it out to Siofok, which is Balaton’s beach resort town. It has a sandy beach and a lot of muscled dudes and bikini-clad ladies ambling along, trying to be seen.

Across the lake, Tihany is different still. It’s a hilled peninsula jutting into the Lake, almost cutting it in half. The hiking is ok, the view is incredible, and there are quiet, private beaches to be enjoyed – if you can sneak onto one.

Feet up in Siofok. Photo by Torma.

Hiking in Badacsony.

Our forbidden beach. Photo by Kata.

Somehow, this lake, the land’s springs, and this water baby love culminated into a fierce water sports competitive spirit. Hungary, per capita, has a dizzying amount of Olympians – many are divers, swimmers, and, most popularly, water polo players.

There’s a lot of history in water polo here, and I will not get into it here. For those unfamiliar with the sport, it does not involve riding horses in the water. Think of it as rugby in the water. It’s brutally violent, incredibly exhausting, but very entertaining for the rest of us watching.

In Hungary, water polo players are treated like hockey players in Canada. They are revered national heroes, endorsing all sorts of products and marrying women who Canadians would recognize as puck bunnies. The similarities are eerie, sometimes.

A Hungarian telcom set up a water polo pool with big screens in
a Budapest public square for Euro Water Polo Tournament

Needless to say, water polo is a big deal in Hungary. I caught the water polo bug during the recent European Championships, which were held here. I wasn’t at the point where I was running down the street with a Hungarian flag as a cape, but I was getting home to watch the games on TV. I was jubilant with every win for Hungary, and I was crushed when they were trounced in the finals by Serbia. Admittedly, it might not just be water polo I was enjoying; I could be turning into a Hungarian nationalist too.

How a landlocked country is filled with bath-going, water polo-loving people is still beyond me. Hungary can seem like a nation of peculiarities, and this is just of one of them – and it’s a fun one, if you ask me. So I’m just going with it.