Moscow to the Hudson: Eger

I decided to spend one day of my time here on a day trip to another part of Hungary. I went to Eger which is a town of 60,000 & a two hour bus ride from Budapest. The bus station is underneath a sports arena & you buy the ticket directly from the driver ($10 one way). There were maybe one or two other tourists on the bus & the rest were locals. The bus ride was pretty uneventful & we arrived right on time in the center of town.

Outdoor bus station in Eger.

I saw a few cathedrals & the main square in town before making my way to the Eger castle.

The Eger castle is famous for a battle with the Turks where 2,000 Hungarians defeated an army of 40,000 Turks. The Hungarians consumed a red wine during this battle & it was a mixture of 3 different grapes. The Turks saw this red wine on the faces of the Hungarians & somehow assumed it was blood from a bull which gave them their strength to defeat the Turks. This wine was then named Bull's Blood based on this story & is sold by all the local wineries.

Of course you can't have an historical site in Europe without an army of schoolchildren there. The castle was ok, but a lot of it seemed to be fairly new. There were some interesting reenactors that were demonstrating their weapons with real gunpowder, check out the reactions in this photo.

Another field trip for the kids.

I ate a quick lunch & then it was on to the area just outside of town called the "valley of beautiful women" which where there is a group of wine cellars. However, something got lost in the English translation of the signs & they call it "nice woman valley".

The signs seemed to be pointing in the wrong direction because a 15 minute walk took 35 minutes. The wine area is a collection of 30+ wine cellars with seating areas for visitors. It costs about $.50 for a small glass & they sell wine by the bottle or will fill a customer's plastic container. One of the first stops was a cellar with an eccentric old woman that only spoke a few words of English. Her wine sample wasn't very good, so I moved on. After trying a few other samples, I found one version of the Bull's Blood wine that I liked & bought a bottle for $7. The return trip to town was only 15 minutes, now that I found the shortest route back. The return trip was also uneventful & I got back to town at 5 pm. It was nice to get out & see another city in Hungary for the day. Here a few photos of the Eger wine area.

Am I going the right way? The wine cellars are just past the next bend in the road.