Hungarian Heritage Moment II - Siege of Eger

Eger is a small town in the hills of Hungary. There is a castle and a whole lot of wine, and their history is intertwined.

The Ottoman Turks arrived here in the 1552 with an army and laid siege to the castle. According to the narrative, 2,000 Hungarians successfully defended the castle against 100,000 Turks.

There are all manner of legends of this phenomenal feat: The defenders rebuilding the damaged walls every night after a day of fighting and the Hungarian women who poured hot pitch on the attackers. My favourite legend is about the local wine, which is called Egri Bikaver or Bull’s Blood.

After a hard day’s work defending the castle, the Hungarians would drink the region’s distinctive red wine, rather messily, because the next day their beards were red from the spilt wine. 

As the siege wore on for days, then weeks and then months, the Turks wondered how so few Hungarians could hold out against so many of them. Every day they fought ferocious Hungarians with beards stained red, so they figured they must be drinking bull’s blood because that’s the sort of things people assumed back then.

The Turks didn’t take the castle that time around, but they returned 50 years later, took the castle, occupied the town and built things, including a mosque and a minaret. The mosque is long gone, but the mineret is the only thing that remains from the Turks’ 100-year stay in Eger.

A few weeks back a colleague and I visited Eger. We walked around the narrow streets of the Old Town and wandered the castle keep. 

There's a Czech in the castle keep!

We climbed the minaret.

And looked down.

We visited the basilica, which we pretty much had to ourselves, but the view was better from the castle.

I also sipped the local wine – without getting in it my beard.

That's about it. Not that exciting, unless you're a history nerd.

Hosting in Budapest

How do you entertain in Budapest? With three waves of Canadians friends due to arrive, I was stressing about how to show everyone a good time. What should we do? Where should we go? These questions haunted me.

When the first batch of friends arrived, we went for a walk along the Danube, and I stopped worrying. Budapest is a city that takes care of its visitors. It’s a hostess all on its own. I have lived here for over six months and I never tire of the sights. The city has the same affect on visiting friends.

Most of my fellow expatriate workers entertain visitors by showing Budapest's most popular sights: Danube River, Castle Hill, Andrassy Avenue, the Baths, to name a few. While I jokingly refer to some of the sites here  as the Stations of the Cross, people come from afar for a reason, these places are incredible.

But like any great city, Budapest will surprise anyone. As we walked along the Danube, Dan, Sid and I saw the Critical Mass bike rally, which included thousands of cyclists, ride past us.

There are also pockets of the city that are not world renowned, but are no less stunning, like the cherry blossoms on the quiet, less tourist-y side of Castle Hill.

Where did all those communist statues and monuments to the liberators, workers and heroes go? To Memento Park. It’s a place I just had to bring my photog-friend Marcin to – even if it meant a trip deep into parts of Buda I am not familiar with. 

All this stress about entertaining didn't matter in the end. For one thing, it doesn't matter what you do, you will always have a great time in the company of great friends. Second, Budapest is a city that might need an introduction, but Budapest makes one hell of an impression on its own. 

Drinking Amid the Ruin Bars

The ruin bar Fogas Haz in all its pre-happy hour glory

John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first prime minister and a spectacular functioning alcoholic, was reportedly so drunk during an election debate that he keeled over on stage, threw up, then stood up, pointed at his opponent and said that was how sick his opponent’s policies made him.

My friend Tommy and I had a term for getting that drunk: London Drunk. It’s not as pukey as the honourable Mr. MacDonald’s antics, but just as debaucherous. It happened often in London, because it’s our hometown and we were always in good company. Sometimes it happened in Toronto, where a chunk of hearty, strong-livered Londoners have set up shop.

Even though I don’t get that way as much as I used to, Budapest is a place that wholly supports London Drunkeness – as proven by the ruin bars here.

For the uninitiated, ruin bars are apartment blocks converted into massive bars. The courtyards are dance floors or drinking terraces. The rooms of the old apartments are converted into party areas with different themes. The cellars are dancing dungeons of debauchery.

Drinks in Budapest are typically cheap by Western standards. Drinking bylaws are similarly lax, by killjoy Toronto standards. You can close down a bar at 4am, and then stagger blindly into an afterhours dance hole. But the ruin bar remains the heart of the evening.

You factor these circumstances into a situation where you are partying with hundreds of people in a formerly dilapidated apartment block and you have the potential London Drunk.

There's  the usual uncoolness. I had my winter coat stolen at one bar. A friend got into a fight at another. The dance dungeon should have a warning at the entrance for epileptics. But these are fun, cool places. The decor is all weird, the vibe is pretty cool, and there are pretty girls too. It’s tough to put a finger on what exactly makes them so great, but I suspect that's what helps keep people coming back.

Is it an owl? Is it a lady? It's the ruin bar decor at Instant.

The debate about where to go out or, in most cases, where not to go out is eternal. How often has a gathering of friends turned into a debate club about what we’re in the mood for: music or ladies or avoiding that damn bar we go to all the time or a combination of the above.

For some reason that kind of abstract mental math has not entered into the debates about going out. The ruin bars, and all the different sorts of people they attract, for better or worse, make it better places.  

Nobody gets London Drunk anymore, but I cling to the belief that even John A. MacDonald would want to get Budapest Drunk in a Ruin Bar.