Eger Castle & The Valley of the Beautiful Women

UPDATE: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (Boldog Karácsony and Boldog Uj Évet)!

Between our New Year's trip to Budapest and trying to finish our move to Gyula, we've been pretty busy...but now, back to the blog.

                                         ----------------------------------------------

So, two things left to discuss about Eger, the castle and the wine. They are actually linked historically by a very famous (in Hungary) story about how the Hungarians were able to fend off an advance by the Turks in the early 16th century.  

Under the leadership of Captain Dobo (see last blog), the Hungarian troops (numbering about 2,000) were able to hold off the Turkish troops (numbering about 80,000). One of the reasons they were able to do so is that Cap'n Dobo plied his troops with Egri Bikaver before the battle.  When the Turkish troops saw the red mouths and beards of the Hungarians they believed their enemy had been drinking bull's blood. And, as everyone knows, bull's blood makes people invincible (side note: Meliss and I just ate pig's blood the other week...but I haven't noticed any big difference).  This is how the Hungarians were able to defend their castle and, so the story goes, how the Bull's Blood wine of Eger got its name.

The Turks did eventually take the castle some decades later, though, which is why the minaret is here.  

Now that the history is covered (and now that we finally "found" our way into the castle), here are some pictures of Castle Eger.

Carved drawing of Castle Eger and the city

Wall relief of the castle defense


One of the castle walls

Wider picture of the castle wall from above

I'm realizing now how difficult it's going to be to explain these pictures.  The path in the above picture (there are two people walking along it) is the entranceway. Around that turn, the castle pretty much opens up into a big courtyard with different avenues and stairs and other assorted nooks and crannies.  

Entrance courtyard -- minaret off to the left

When we walked in, we immediately climbed some stairs to get a better look.  After that we just walked along the outer ring and up even further...eventually making our way back down to the courtyard. It was like walking around in a video game except I couldn't hit pause and check out the map.  To that end, I think we saw almost everything in the castle -- but randomly.  

Oh well, we didn't care. This was the first castle I'd ever been to (not counting Cinderella's Castle in DisneyWorld, which was much easier to get around...even if I did have to wear tights). Here's a map of the castle interior...of course, it's in Hungarian (or maybe German? or maybe both?) so it didn't help much.

Once inside, we went up these stairs

This guy was shooting crossbows into targets right below where we walked...then he let kids do it.

Looking down into part of the interior

Again, we couldn't figure out how to get into this thing -- Idiots!

Same spot as above -- looking down into castle

Two interesting things here -- 1) a solitary confinement well and 2) a Dr. Pepper!!

Ick

And a nice playground for the kids...right next to the enormous well! 

This is kind of a nothing picture, except you can see the graffiti tunnel we walked through -- that's how close we were!

That's where we would have been standing if we could figure out how to get in line!

Eger from the castle -- Dobo Square to the front left and the church we know nothing about off in the distance to the left.

Pretty neat -- especially because the explanation was in English!

So that's Eger Castle...in the courtyard they had a few museums. We went into the weapons museum but weren't allowed to take pictures, which is a shame because they had all kinds of cool stuff in there (suits of armor, shields, helmets, axes, maces, spears, etc.) 

After, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed to the minaret, then home for a nap, and off to the Szépasszony-völgy or the Valley of the Beautiful Women...of course, we had to find that too.

-------------

It was late afternoon when we found the street that would take us to the wine cellars. Rested and hungry, we walked along until we started seeing stuff like this:

This doesn't look romantic...this looks like it should be in Silence of the Lambs

We saw about four "houses" in a row along the side of the road that looked just like this. We knew we were on the right track but, to be honest, none of these places looked terribly inviting.  We were told that we should just walk up and ask to taste some wine...that was not happening.  We really needed to see like an open door with a big neon arrow and sign that said (in English), "Come taste our wine!". That would have made things more comfortable. And then...

Ok, it wasn't neon -- but still

And the door was open and we could see people moving around in there and everything!

We marched right up to the table with all the wine on it...waited for about ten seconds and then some guy appeared and in perfect English asked if we would like to try his wine. Why yes, yes we would.

He gave us a tour of his wine cellar, a little history of the wine region itself, and, most importantly, clued us in on where to go (we hadn't technically made it to the "valley" yet...but it was just up the road). 

Right behind the wine table at the barn door

The inner sanctum

After promising to return to buy some wine from him later (it wasn't a hard sell or anything -- we really were happy for the info he provided), we headed off to the actual valley. By the way, we both really like Bull's Blood here...it's semi-sweet, not syrupy like the stuff at home.

Oh, this must be it

And this must be the "beautiful woman"

meh

It's a good thing these places were qualified or we were leaving right then!

On the map: the arrow pointing down is the direction from which we walked
From the parking"P's" on, there were a bunch of souvenir trinket huts and restaurants.
Then, at the top, there is a big open grey space in a semi-horshoe shape...that's the actual valley
Wine cellars lined the outside of it all the way around with a big park in the middle
I don't know what any of the stuff on the right means.

Cheap souvenirs

And candy...nope, the zillion flies all over this candy didn't show up -- but they're there.

Restaurants and the road (to the right) to the valley

We were hungry and decided to eat before hitting a large horseshoe of wine tasting. 

Our wine-making friend from up the road recommended this place -- he probably gets a
kick back for sending dumb Americans here

I sorta understand 3 of these words

Happy Anniversary! 

More wine? Don't mind if I do...good thing Meliss wasn't drinking (ha, ha)

We sat here for about an hour, enjoyed a fine meal (see below), and literally just laughed. The first week in Budapest was AMAZING for us. Then, the first month is Sarkad/Gyula was a lot of things -- fun, frustrating, interesting, challenging, etc. But here, in Eger, on our anniversary, we had a chance to sit back and just be happy as hell that we made it over here and were experiencing some truly remarkable stuff together.  

The first salad we had that even remotely seemed like a salad at home

And Melissa's plate...both our plates looked exactly thesame til she "fixed" hers.
No quarter for this one.

Finally, then off to the cellars!

The cellars start here....but at the end of this road it opens up into the horseshoe/park thing.

This is how close all of the different wine cellars are.  

I think this is the one on the right

And the valley (right side and beginning of the horseshoe {that is one hard word to type, by the way})

Meliss took some video to show it a bit better -- also of the authentic Gypsy folk guys playing music (seems to me the Sarkad gypsies are much more "authentic" than these guys).

And no, I don't know what manner of insect tried to attack me.

The following are a crap-ton of pictures of the many wine cellars...some we went in, some we didn't...but all in all it was a fantastic time and we will definitely try to get back there before we leave.

Somebody better tell that guy he left his headlight on.

And yes, Melissa took pictures of almost all of the openings because
they all looked so awesome!

These people were having such a terrific time, Meliss asked to take their picture.
We don't know if they said yes or not -- slurred Hungarian is even more difficult to understand!

They even named one of the cellars after Melissa's mom!
(Wanda's Wine House)
Don't miss the sign for Palinka on the left

How much did all this wine tasting cost, you might be wondering? (You might not, but we took this picture so we're gonna use it).

Ok, prices are in Forints (or flutons as my dad calls them...or photons as my
mom calls them--they pretend like they're joking)
A small glass of wine is -- at most -- about 2 bucks (600 ft)
The most expensive bottle of wine is 12 dollars (5,990 ft)

After all that cheap and delicious wine, I needed to use the facilities.
Meliss took this picture from our table on the patio.

Hey look -- more gypsies!

Obviously, we had to pay for this picture and we had to pay another troupe we were listening to earlier. Problem was, we had no idea how much a reasonable amount would be for this type of stuff. So, the guys played and then we handed them about 200 forints, he left his hand there, we gave him another 200 forints, hand still there, so Meliss shoved a 500 ft note in his hand and he nodded and walked away.  To recap for anyone who might find their way into a gypsy camp in the near future and have to pay the fiddler -- I would say 1,000 ft should do it (about 5 bucks).

But then they played a song for her too -- so that's fair.

We couldn't have asked for a better anniversary weekend.

PS -- two quick things:

1.  We got lost coming home. Wine and a bad sense of direction are a terrible combination. We walked into a mini-mart type of place and the husband and wife offered (we think?) to get us a cab. We told them (we think) that we just needed to be pointed in the right direction. Easy enough, they sent their 7 year old son with us to walk us to the right intersection.

2. We got back to the walking street and were hungry again. We saw a McDonald's and forced ourselves to not eat there.

"We're in Europe, we are not eating at McDonald's! Let's get something healthy from one of the restaurants."

So we ordered from the vegetarian menu -- thank you vegans! 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm
Fried cheese, onion rings, french fries, and rice. Can it get any healthier?

PSS -- Meliss wants it mentioned that she told me to split the castle and wine cellars in to two blogs. Probably would've been a good idea. Oh well!

Coming next -- not sure...Romania? Vienna? Teaching/holidays in Sarkad/Gyula? One of those.