In Hungary, it's ok to be mental about your dental

Joe, in chair, with Arnold and I being just a little to mental about our dental.

After Lake Balaton, the beauty of Budapest, the wine cellars of Villany, the affordable dental care available here has turned dentistry into a tourist attraction. In Sopron, a Hungarian city that sits on the border of Austria, the streets are lined with dental offices. This would look strange if it weren’t for all the Austrians driving into the city to have dental work done.

My impression of the inexpensive dental care was not a faltering one. When I heard all of this, my mind lept to that scene in Marathon Man: “Is it safe?”  That admittedly ignorant belief did not waver, even in the face of assurances from Hungarian friends that Hungarian dental care is modern, not medieval.

With a year passing since my last dental appointment, and despite my misplaced misgivings, I began considering a visit to one of Hungary’s dentists. A friend knew just the dentist, so we all went to the office of Dr. Ada. We brought along Joe, a man whose near mortal fear of dentists was being overcome by four cavities.

The dental office was no less advanced and sterile than our own in Canada (I apologize for constantly comparing things to Canada, but I have no other country to compare dentistry to). A visit to the dentist is cheap, and they were effective. I was complimented on my clean teeth, but I grind my teeth in my sleep. Their solution was a mouthguard, which would cost about $50 CAD, meanwhile a quote from a Canadian dentist over a year ago was $260.

More important than money and fancy chairs and what not, Dr. Ada had great chair-side manner. So much of us have strange, primal fears of dentists – Joe, far example, had a beer on the walk to the office to calm his nerves – and either way, it's nice that when a stranger pokes around in your mouth, it does not feel like a torture scene.

Photo by Arnold

What's so cool about Kosice?

Cool stuff inside the East Slovak Museum.

Kosice was nothing more than a dot on the map that I came across when I was planning a summer trip to Krakow.

Budapest and Krakow run along almost the same line of latitude, but between the two cities is a snarl of mountains in Slovakia. Trains run around these, either due west, through Bratislava or Vienna, or deep into the old East Bloc, to Kosice.

On the map, there is nothing to distinguish the city. It’s at the far end of Slovakia. A Czech friend, who grew up near Prague and then lived there, gave me a strange look when I mentioned going there. “But what is there? That is so far east, it’s almost the Ukraine.”

But that dot in the far east of Europe seemed interesting. The summer trip to Krakow did not happen, but I decided to take a weekend, when one came up, to go for a visit. As I waited, I did a little research.

I got St. Elizabeth Cathedral at just the right time of day.

There’s a Gothic church in the old square, the most eastern in Europe. Kosice was the Hapsburgs' farthest eastern stronghold. In fact, this is where Western and Central Europe meets Eastern Europe: The whole area has historically been populated by Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Ukrainians.

It was a free city under Hungarian rule for a long time, such was the mix of ethnicities there. A Hungarian connection still exists today – Hungarians still call Kosice its old Hungarians name, Kassa. The city itself also venerates its most famous writer, Marai Sandor,an ethnic Hungarian.

If this cool history nerd stuff didn’t get my attention, the city is also a European Capital of Culture for 2013.

It’s like a European cultural Olympics. The state poured money into creating and renovating venues for art exhibitions, music and theatrical performances and other artsy fartsy pursuits. The hope for many host cities is that this investment turns into a long-term return – that the infrastructure creates an innovation industry.

Finally, finally, finally, I found an off weekend and dropped in for a brief visit.

It’s an old city, but the Soviet’s fingerprints are all over it. The city is a hodge podge of fin de siècle with socialist urban planning. There are old, clanking trams, but they are brilliantly coloured (with ads, but they are still colourful). The old town centre is a pedestrian only square, with the Gothic cathedral, a 100-year-old eclectic-style theatre and outdoor cafe. Within view of the square are old socialist apartment blocks. The apartment blocks, those monuments to socialist social engineering, are not grey, but lively, with murals and brilliantly coloured patterns.

I’m going to avoid going too deep into art critic mode here, but the art I saw at the Capital of Culture events are something else entirely different.

A great deal of it was contemporary art, and we all know how that can be sometimes. A lot of the work on display had an opinion. But there was a sense of humour in much of it, and there was definitely a distinctive voice, or sensibility to it.

I saw this throughout the city, from the exhibits I visited to murals painted on pub doors. There’s something about the spirit of the city that’s young, brash and darkly humorous. The city is young (so is Slovakia). It is a college town, so there are bars all over and, even though Slovakia is on the Euro, food and drink are affordable.

There is something going on in Kosice. I couldn’t tell you what it is for sure, not after such a brief visit, but it's a place worth watching.

The door of a Spanish pub.

Socialist apartment building, brightened up a bit.

Jakabov Palace

Being all classy while killing brain cells in Budapest

A colleague threw a pre-party, which got a little carried away, and so the pre-party became the party... but only partly. 

By the time we left for the real party (only a few doors down from the pre-party-cum-party), everyone was cheerfully feeling the effects of the party.

We gather around a latecomer, who brought a bag of gyros as a late-to-the-party present and arrived to the real party. By now, there was no way the rest of the partiers could catch up to us and they looked on as we dug into the gyros. This was a nice bar, but that did not stop the feeding frenzy.

Carlos, Budapest's Brazilian wine sommelier and the bewildered onlooker from the story above, often recommended various reds from Villany. He was never wrong.

We dripped garlic sauce all over the floor, while handing half eaten gyros to each other and barely saying a word between bites. One of our friends, Carlos, was one of those left looking on at the debauchery. As he put it, the whole bar was absolutely disgusted by our orgy of gyro munching.

I’m recounting this tale because it is important to note that this was not brought on by whiskey, tequila or even palinka, but rose wine.

Yes, rose wine.

Hungary is a wine-growing country, which was news to me when I arrived. Little did I know the hills and several provinces' micro-climates combine to create a terroir that produces some damn fine wine.

On a visit to Eger, my friend Pavel and I sipped Bull’s Blood, a delicious, hearty red. Interestingly, and lucky for me, Hungary is known well for their dry reds. But there's some whites too. Tokaji, a delcious sweet wine, was declared 'Wine of Kings, King of Wines' by Louis XIV of France. I might have gotten that quote backwards.

I’ve developed a taste for dry whites and – I’m going to admit this on the internet, which could mean getting my Man Card revoked from some whiskey/beer drinkers back home – there are some dry rose wines that are pretty good too.

One of the reasons the wines of Hungary have been so accessible for me is they are cheap by Canadian standards. You can find a good bottles of wine in a Budapest corner store for as little as five Canadian dollars.

Back home, I used to walk the LCBO’s wine aisles feeling as if I had no knowledge on the subject and as if I had no business there –  like I was shopping for tampons 

In Hungary, I recognize bottles I have enjoyed, I try new wines thanks to the decent prices, and while my pairing knowledge is still limited to “Red with meat, white with fish,” I now strut down the wine aisles with a little more courage – and I promise it's not the liquid courage seen in the tale at the beginning of this post.