Carol & David's Excellent Adventures PART XI - Hungary? - David A. Braun Copyright - September 1998 One of the things that sometimes happens when you have the sort of job which involves business travel is that you "get to" go to places you wouldn't normally go. Sometimes "get to," means, "have to." But other times, it really is an opportunity after all. Due to certain business conditions, I found myself changing planes in Munich on my way to Budapest, whose airport code is "BUD," which is what Carol and I call each other. (But, that's another story.) Lufthansa claims that 50 minutes is sufficient time to accomplish this task and Carlson Wagonlit, my employer's in-house travel agency booked me a flight with exactly that amount of time. For once, I found myself hurrying through an airport and arriving at the other end with time enough to cruise the duty-free. (Has anyone out there ever tasted that Sheridan's coffee liquor which comes in a rather intriguing two part bottle, one with black liquid and the other containing white?) Before I get too far ahead, let me go back a bit... We don't have a car. So when I travel on business, we take advantage of the fact that it takes a rental car, at company expense, to get me to the airport near Lyon, about 100-km away. The family does some shopping and/or sightseeing when I get a car. (We also rent one ourselves, from time to time.) On Sunday morning before the trip, when I went to pick up the rental, the Hertz guy informed me that they were out of A-class (tiny shit-box) cars. Would I accept a Mercedes Benz instead? Would a cow lick Lot's wife? My contacts met me at Budapest's Ferihegy Airport, terminal two. This is the new terminal. It was nice. Terminal one was supposed to be closed already. We went there to get my cohort, flying in from elsewhere. It is run-down looking from the outside, but has great character from its older design and expensive materials and workmanship. Whilst waiting, I went to a cash machine to get some local ducats (florins, actually). The machine accepted my card and code, thought about it for a while, and then gave me my card back with a message (I had selected English) which said, "The machine has no cash available." I must ask, why not have this message on the INTRODUCTORY screen of the cash machine? We watched three people in succession repeat my exercise in futility. Somewhere, some programmer was obviously being promoted to a management position. Eventually Andy's flight arrived, followed shortly by Andy himself. Kaj, Andy and I piled into the Chrysler Caravan (?!) for the drive 200-km south to Pécs (pronounced "Pesh"). Latsie was driving. Within a short while we had skirted the outgirdles of Budapest. I enjoyed the billboards. Gintonic Sportswear was a product name I liked. But I REALLY liked the picture of the old black and white King Kong with Faye Wray in one hand and a (color) slice of pizza (Hut) in the other. The national highway quickly degenerated to a two-lane good-quality blacktop road, without shoulders. Traffic included the ubiquitous Mercedes Benz cars and trucks as well as some little Eastern European Spam cans like Skoda, Lada, and Trabant. Andy told several Skoda jokes, such as: Q: What do you call a Skoda convertible? A: A skip. (Brit for dumpster.) Q: Why do Skodas have rear window defrosters? A: Hand warmers for the guys who are pushing it in cold weather. VW bought Skoda and are cranking in a certain quantity of quality with the idea of nudging it toward becoming an upscale mark in the Eastern Europe. Go figure. The motorcycles observed on the highway varied from the predictable eastern marks like CZ, MZ, and Jawa to fancy Aprilia 250 two-stroke race replicas and even a Suzuki GSXR1100. Big rig marques popular with the long haulers in Hungary are UAZ, KAMA, MAN, IFC, and of course, Mercedes Benz. We passed various rolling roadblocks on our way southward. Some folks there are still hauling freight with dray horses. The centerline of the highway is almost always dotted, and Hungarians always pass on it. Everyone makes room. Except for one time. The guy in front of us, driving some new, sporty, Japanese car, pulled out to pass two trucks and Latsie pulled in behind him. All of us in the Caravan thought the guy in front was going for a double-pass because he had the speed, the time, and the room. Well... he faked us all out and eased in between the big rigs. Latsie found himself having to slow almost to a stop to get back in behind the truck we were passing. The car coming the other way also almost stopped. We were all remarking on what an idiot the guy in front of us was when Latsie pulled over... for the police. The fine was 2000 HUF, payable NOW, in cash. At about 220 HUF/$, this doesn't look so bad. But someone later told us that it was about a day's pay. Travelling along the main road, we would occasionally pass small groups of attractively made-up, revealingly attired women, parading up and down the roadside with a distinctive saunter, usually in the middle of nowhere. This is confusing when you think about the fact that the services they're selling are often peddled in proximity to hotels. Latsie informed us that they generally work for the long haul truckers, who tend to have sleeper cabs. He claimed ignorance of current market values. At one point, we passed a roadhouse that pretty well captures the essence of today's Hungary. The building had stucco walls and a complicated, beautiful, THATCHED roof. Lying next to it was a metal, promotional, Pepsi-can that was the size of our van. We danced along the verge of the Danube a time or two, passed a locomotive junkyard with a sign claiming it to be a museum. Eventually, after leaving the plains and winding up and over a mountain, we arrived in the hills of Pécs. I hereby proclaim Pécs to be a Real Nice Place. Downtown has GREAT architecture, some of it going back 1100 years. Our hotel, the Palatinus, was... well... they just don't build 'em like that anymore. Buildings can have frou frou. This one sure did. The ceiling in the dining room looked to be quite difficult to clean, let alone construct and then paint. I think that ceiling was made of more pieces of wood than were contained in our entire house in Fort Collins. The ballroom was even more spectacular. And now a word about porcelain fixtures... what is it about porcelain design that brings out the creativity in Europeans? In the USA, there are lots of toilet manufacturers, but they have all adopted the (in my personal opinion, CORRECT) idea that the drain hole goes toward the back of the device. In Europe, I have seen what some call a Turkish toilet, which is a glorified porcelain hole in the ground with Yeti-sized textured-porcelain footpads, as well as a plethora of different designs configured with the drain hole toward the front. Some of these feature a sort of "shelf" which rises above the water level. Why folks might want the opportunity to "appreciate" their "work" in all it's glory is beyond me. Come to think of it, Freud was Austrian, wasn't he? Meanwhile, I noticed some urinals in Amsterdam, situated in stalls with a door that went all the way to the floor. While in France, you can visit a pissoir located on a public boulevard, with your upper body and feet in full view of the traffic stopped at the light on the corner. (Sorry, but I just had to get those observations out of my system, as it were.) Later that evening, I learned some great Hungarian words, essential to the traveler... "kisnum" is "thank you" and (phonetically) "egga-shegga-dre" is "cheers." The folks Andy and I were visiting in Hungary were Finnish. It turns out that if you speak neither Finnish nor Hungarian, they sound about the same. (This was NOT the egga-shegga-dres talking.) These two languages share lots in common with each other and nothing in common with any other language. Of curiouser interest is the fact that they only have about fifty words in common. All that aside, you can get by pretty well in Hungary if you speak either German or English (probably Russian, too, but that is just a guess). For instance, Hungarian for a mini-mart which never closes is "0-24 Nonstop." And a flat tire is a "gumi-defect." The next day, during the meal break in the midst of performing some actual, useful work, we went to lunch at McDonalds. The Fins took us there because they weren't real fond of the surprises you might get in the company canteen. Chicken Foot Soup (nails and all) was mentioned, for example. On the way there, Marjokaisa, driving a borrowed car, peeled out at a light. The Fins referred this to, as "Hollywood tires." The price of a Big Mac Value Meal is one of my world-travel economic-benchmarks. In Hungary, it runs about 500 HUF, a bit over US$2. This is less than a third of what it costs in France. While we were eating, some military Peacekeepers came in for lunch, too. This particular batch of soldiers was from Norway. But while we were in Pécs, we also saw some from Hungary and Finland. A couple nights later, after most of the useful work we were there to accomplish had been completed, we went out for a special dinner. Latsie drove. When we were about 45 minutes out of Pécs, he pointed to some hills, which he said were Croatia (clarifying the Peacekeeper issue). We pulled up at the end of a dead-end dirt road in the middle of a vineyard in the waning glow of the setting sun and saw a fellow wearing rubber boots standing in a skip pitchforking over the contents into a hopper. As we disembarked, I realized that he was standing in grapes, forking them into a juicer which was hooked up to what looked to me like a fire hose, pumping the juice into some monster, two-story high, stainless steel fermentation vessels. Did I mention that the place smelled GREAT? We mounted the stairs, entered a good-sized hall, sat down, and sampled the red wines, starting with the youngest, a Blue Portuguese, working our way to the last two, a Cabernet Franc and a Cabernet Sauvignon. The vintner was friendly and funny and spoke German (to us, anyway). He was a third generation vintner whose efforts had been well recognized, as he had won several awards. One of the Fins translated and I got educated (as well as lubricated). He explained that the amount of tannin in the wine affects the speed at which the sugar is processed. Blue Portuguese grapes have only a little tannin and are picked early (it was, in fact, what the guy in the boots in the dumpster was forking over). It is bottled after a minimum of fermentation time and drunk two years later. After about five years, it starts to turn. That is what is referred to as a "young wine." The Cabernet Sauvignon is at the other end of the scale. High tannin content slows maturation. It takes five to eight years to fully mature in the bottle. But, it will be good for twenty or so years. You can add up to fifteen percent of something else to a wine and still call it by the name of the main grape. This, it turns out, is the real secret of the vintner's art and expertise... how much of what do you add to which to get YOUR wine to taste better than the guy with the field next door. Remember, you have to make the call by tasting the GRAPES at harvest time, not the wine. Latsie was drinking only (unfermented) fruit juices. A hard row to hoe, until you find out that the blood alcohol limit under which it is permissible to drive in Hungary is 0.000%. This pretty well removes any guesswork. (Let's see... if I'm in Colorado and I weigh 190 pounds, have had five beers over three hours, with food, am I legal or not?) If you drink AT ALL in Hungary, you can't drive. Meanwhile, in amongst all the sipping and trilling (and storytelling and laughing), we sampled a variety of excellent homemade sausages, pickled peppers, and cheeses. We raved on and on about how good the Cabernet was and how we couldn't imagine how anything could be better than this two-year old wine. We asked the vintner about his history and family and stuff. I guess he must have liked us because after a while he had us follow him down to his private wine cellar. Behind a locked, wrought-iron, gate (in a grape motif, obviously) was a brick-lined cellar containing heaps of bottles covered with white mould that looked like that cob web stuff you get at Halloween to string around and look spooky. He picked out a bottle of five-year-old Cabernet Sauvignon and we trooped back upstairs while he explained that he didn't usually do this. In fact, he had refused to sell any of the '93 for even DM200 (at about 1.65 DM/US$) a bottle earlier in the week. Up until that night, the best wine I ever tasted was at a meal that was like a dream in a city that is a dream, Venice, Italy. I can't remember anything specific about that meal, except for the type of wine, a Cabernet Franc. And that it had been darned tasty. The vintner explained that really a red wine should be opened an hour or more before drinking. He explained that it continues to age when exposed to air and that the act of decanting it introduces more air as you pour it into another container. He explained all that, and then (after he sampled it to check the quality, of course) just poured it straight into our glasses. Up until that night in southern Hungary, I didn't UNDERSTAND why folks become wine connoisseurs. Up until then, I thought it was all bluff and hoity-toity bravado. (Spoken whilst glancing askance though pince-nez, looking down the nose: "It's an insulting, laid-back little wine, which plays a half measure ahead of the beat," sort of nonsense crap.) Webb Wilder sings, "One taste of the bait is worth... the pain of the hook." [1] There are now a couple of bottles in our basement with "open 2003" written on them. Egga-shegga-dre! [1] The last time I quoted that line was in reference to a Ducati motorcycle.