Eger and Maramures

We took a tram then train to Eger, in wine country, and stayed in a pension, a local home made into suites. I lost the coin toss, so I could choose either the bed in a dark cubbyhole behind the bedroom door, or the bed in the kitchen by the balcony. Kitchen it is!

We walked around the town, which is the centre of traditional Hungary, where the first Magyars came from Asia and settled. The Hungarian language is known as Magyar. It’s a small city but has massive churches and a castle. Lunch was goulash and lemonade, which is made with many flavours in Hungary.

After a supermarket dinner and a quick shower where my clothes got soaked while lying on the floor, we set off for a short walk out of town to the Valley of Beautiful Women. Here there are several vineyards with wine tasting. We were fed glassfuls of a dozen different wines, mostly crap, by a couple of funny local ladies. The region is famous for its red wine known as Bulls Blood, and it was the best wine we had. Two were pretty much undrinkable but it’s all about the experience I guess. I bought a huge plastic bottle of white wine for about $6 to share later.

The next day was a long van ride into Romania. We stopped in Debrecen, the second largest city in Hungary, then across the border. We needed to show passports even though that’s not necessary in the Schengen region of Europe but some countries have instituted border checks again because of all the refugees from Syria over the last few years. We are in the Maramures area, shared with Ukraine, and travelled along the border with Ukraine to the north.

Here in a small town named Vadu Izer we have a stay in a big chalet style home that fits most of our group of 13 including our tour leader Mike. He’s British, lived in Vietnam for several years, where among other things he did standup comedy. This is helpful in a group with a demanding woman, Lorraine, and her husband who plays a supporting role.

At the home stay we had massive meals with lots of tiny cabbage rolls, and locally sourced ingredients for everything, including the local firewater known as palinka.

The next day we were met by our local guide Victor. His tour in this area took us to a monastery in the hills, then an old wooden church, and a palinka (or schnapps) home brewery. Here this massive man surprised us by pulling out a violin and playing songs from our countries while the little old brewery owner banged a drum once in a while.

We went into an old communist prison, now a museum, where many Romanians were held or died, where we mostly looked at pictures since explanations were in Romanian. But, the language is a Latin language like Spanish or Italian, with some similar words, so it’s not too hard to make out some of it. This is a great contrast to Hungary, where the language is unlike any other and might be unintelligible even to Hungarians!

Then the Happy Cemetary, where colourful wooden tombstones decorate the graves, with paintings and descriptions of the person, sometimes including how they died. I won a contest to find a tombstone of someone who had been hit by a train. Fun in the graveyard.

Our laundry had been done for a few lei apiece, and was hanging randomly in the yard when we got back to our home stay. We needed to sort through the underwear to find our own which was a little weird. I’m still missing underwear!

Some of us walked down the road to the bar, where a big beer costs 3 lei, or $1, and then had cabbage rolls for dinner.