Bull’s Blood, Beatles & Beautiful Women
First published in Sunday Times, July 2023
If heading for Hungary, after a few days in Budapest you would do well to head for Eger in the Hungarian winelands.
Budapest is a fairly frenetic city especially in summer, with loads of ruin pubs, party boats on the Danube and tourists, especially youngsters seeking parties, everywhere. It has become more so as years go by, I have found ̶ my first trip to Budapest was more than 20 years ago and I have returned sporadically since then.
In contrast, Eger in Northern Hungary is an utterly lovely town with a medieval atmosphere, set among wooded hills. It reminds me of Stellenbosch in more ways than one.
Eger has its fair share of baroque buildings, cobbled streets, cathedrals and churches and is mostly visited by locals or day visitors. It is also really affordable for South Africans, even given our current exchange rate. What a plus, travel partner Winnie and I agreed, and drank a toast to this with a glass of wine upon arrival.
Train, but no taxi
Seasoned traveler or not, it’s easy as pie to get from Budapest to Eger. There are more than a handful of direct trains daily from Budapest’s Keleti train station.
It’s a 2-hour ride from the capital to Eger (visithungary.com/category/eger-region and visiteger.com/en), past Hansel and Gretel station buildings and fields of wheat, corn and sunflowers.
Eger Vasutallomas (we didn’t t even attempt to pronounce this multi-syllable word for train station) is close to the town but not really close enough to walk if you are straddled with luggage. We waited a while before a taxi appeared but hey, we were on holiday, so no sweat.
When researching our trip we found that Eger has a variety of accommodation options, mostly really affordable. We booked into a spacious apartment within a few minutes’ walk of everything worth seeing within the town and went looking for wine. We were in wine country after all!
In vino veritas
This part of the Hungarian winelands is known for two famous wines, Tokaj (vinotek.hu/2021/07/tokaj-sweet-wines/), a honey-sweet dessert wine, and Egri Bikavér or Bull’s Blood (tastehungary.com/journal/hungarys-two-bulls-bloods/). ‘Bika’ means bull and ‘vér’ means blood.
The name Bull’s Blood is derived from a legend concerning the castle of Eger.
During Ottoman times, in the 1500s, Suleiman the Magnificent and his troops invaded Eger. A small group of local soldiers, with red wine-stained beards, defended Eger Castle. Successfully.
The Turkish soldiers supposedly believed that the brave Hungarians drank bull’s blood mixed with red wine to give them the much-needed courage to fight fiercely.
We quickly discovered the Egri Bikaver you buy today is of variable quality. Let me hasten to add, as is the case with most wines wherever you go in the world.
We opted to start with a harslevelu though – this tongue-twister is a Hungarian grape variety used to make light dry white wines as well as really sweet ones. Occasionally it’s found in South Africa too.
The next day we headed out to the Valley of the Beautiful Women (visiteger.com/latnivalok/osszes/szepasszonyvolgy). Contrary to what it sounds like, this has nothing to do with a Tinder vibe. Instead, it’s a half circle of about 30 wine cellars carved into rock. We saw one bride – in white tekkies – but no beauts otherwise.
No-one is sure where the name of the valley comes from. Some locals joke that the more wine you drink, the prettier a woman, any woman, becomes. It’s even funnier to try to say Szépasszonyvölgy (Valley of Beautiful Women in Hungarian) before ̶ and after ̶ having had a tipple, or two, three.
Some of the cellars have spectacular vaulted ceilings like Ostoros (ostorosbor.hu) or hobbit-like attic windows like KissPeter (kissborbirtok.com); Juhasz Pince (juhaszbor.hu/en/) seems to take it a notch down with a kitschy castle façade, yet another has plastic grape bunches seemingly glued to the interior walls. Many cellars have wine bars too. Quite a few cellar doors displayed dangling 5-liter plastic jerry cans; you could do a tasting and then have it filled with whatever tickled your fancy, let’s say some chardonnay. We were not even vaguely tempted by this option and settled for the more upmarket options.
To get to the Valley of the Beautiful Women we hopped on the Dottika that looks like a toy train but is actually a ‘car’ with attached wagons. It leaves on the hour throughout the day and it takes less than 30 minutes to get there.
In hindsight we made a mistake not to include Tokaj (visithungary.com/articles/the-tokaj-wine-region) in our itinerary. Alas, we missed out on a picturesque town where the renowned sweet wines of the same name have been produced since the 15th century. It’s really too far for a day trip we realised once we were in Eger. What a pity, we nursed our sorrows over another glass of wine, as we had heard that Royal Tokaji Winery (royal-tokaji.com) is not to be missed.
The king and his castle
The Valley of Beautiful Women is the second most popular destination in Eger; the top position goes to Eger Castle (egrivar.hu/en), erected in the 13th century after the Mongols invaded this part of the world.
The Castle of Eger was used as army barracks until 1957; nowadays there are several museums inside but we chose to stroll the castle grounds in order to have more time for … more wine drinking.
But first we ambled through quiet streets to get to the northernmost Ottoman minaret, the Eger Minaret (minareteger.hu). You can climb this Turkish spire of 40 metres high for a good view of the town centre but by now hunger pangs set in.
We opted for a “four-legged animal lunch” at Depresso Etterem (kitchen or restaurant) (facebook.com/depresso.eger/)
The menu at Depresso is divided into two main sections: ‘Two-legged animals’ and ‘Four-legged animals’. On the two-legged side you will find chicken breast and goose leg, on the four-legged blackboard they have whole front knuckle of pork, wild boar stew and beef cheeks.
They had me at beef cheeks!
Jumping ahead, on our last night in Eger we headed to Macok Restaurant (imolaudvarhaz.hu/en/the-macok-bisztro-wine-bar.html) for more of the same. Macok has the reputation as the finest restaurant in Eger; their beef cheek goulash came highly recommended too. We snapped up the last table for the evening (booking is essential). Service was a bit rushed as the popularity of this establishment seems to have gone to the heads of the waitrons. The evening didn’t come cheap either but it was worth the treat.
For whom the church bell tolls
A friend calls me an ABC traveller. (Here’s looking at you, Phoebe!) Another Bloody Church!
Luckily Winnie is like-minded where popping into every church goes. We marveled at the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Apostle (visiteger.com/en/sights/all/basilica-of-eger) on the main square, the beautiful frescoed Minorite Church (visiteger.com/en/sights/special-attractions-in-eger/minorite-church) and a few other baroque churches including the Serbian Orthodox Church (visiteger.com/en/sights/special-attractions-in-eger/serbian-church). Also known as the Greek Orthodox Church, the latter has a most spectacular iconostasis stretching across the entire back wall and a baroque pulpit. To our surprise we heard that they have a sister Serbian Orthodox Church in Sunninghill, Johannesburg.
Take a Turkish bath
The Turkish bath and pools (visiteger.com/en/experiences/bathing/turkish-bath) are the only surviving baths of this ilk in the countryside of Hungary. For both of us the highlight was floating in the main pool with a cupola of 200 000 shiny gold-plated mosaics above. We also languished in various smaller Turkish-style pools with jacuzzi jets but gave the steam baths a miss as we were ready for, you guessed it, another glass of wine.
Hey Jude
Who would have thought?! A Beatles museum in Eger in the heart of Hungary. Yes, you can ‘Come Together’ and ‘Twist and Shout’ at the Egri Road Beatles Museum (beatlesmuzeum.hu).
As we approached the former 3-storey hotel the familiar faces of the Fab Four seemed to stare at us from a window above the door. Whilst walking through – and giggling at – shelves and display cabinets filled to the brim with Beatles dolls, wigs, photos of their mouths to kiss, erasers, toy Kombis and other limited-edition rarities, films and newsreels are played on screens and you can listen to Beatle hits on headphones.
Rumour has it that occasionally one of the museum guides will grab a guitar and strum his heart out. We were out of luck but, whilst mulling over another glass of wine after our museum visit, we were in unison, ‘All you need is love’ and … an interesting travel destination. With wine in abundance of course.
***
Once in Eger expect to pay:
One-way train ticket from Budapest to Eger: R130-R160
Spacious 2-bedroom apartment: R1000 per night (R500 per person)
An every-day drinking bottle of Egri Bikaver: R100
Entrance to Eger Castle: R195
Beef cheek main course at Depresso: R200-R315, depending on side dishes
Meal for two at Macok (2 pre-drinks, 2 starters, 2 main courses and 1 bottle of wine, incl. tip): R1320 (R660 p.p.)
Ticket for Beatles Museum: R162
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