Tokaji-Aszu is Awesome

We are back in Budapest at the Duna Plaza (Duna is the Magyar word for Danube), the second mall ever built in Hungary, to do internet, blog and put up some new pictures.

Yesterday we took the train with Gabi to Tokaj and spent some time wandering around this picturesque town on the Tisza river. They are very proud of their town because its wine is famous and it is also the only town mentioned in the national anthem. We went to a small but informative wine museum and visited several of the local churches and also the synagogue that has sadly been out of use since WWII. Of course we went to a wine cellar (after lunch so we wouldn't get too loopy) and sampled many of the different types of Tokaji wine. It ranges from dry to extremely sweet. Katie liked the drier types while I tried a special dessert wine called Aszu that was very very sweet (Katie says crunchy) and very good, in my opinion.

After that, we took the train to Nyiregyhaza and then got a ride to a small village called Őr. There we met up with Zita and the horde of school children on their holiday (kind of like a camp). We stayed here overnight after riding bikes around to a couple other villages, one called Vaja where there was a castle of one of the men of the Hungarian patriot Rákoczy. Zita cooked a very tasty potato paprikash that I ate so much of I felt like I would burst.....my but that was good!

In the morning, Zita took the kids to the Tisza and Gabi took us to some villages within shouting distance of the Ukranian border (we could literally see the hills of Ukraine) that had special meaning in Hungarian culture. There was the "Peasant Notre Dame," of the village of Tákos, a humble but beautiful Calvinist church with mud/stick walls. The villagers decorate the church with their own embroidery, and the ceiling was painted in unique floral patterns in the 1700s. We also saw an old mill, still working, in the town of Túristvándi and another town full of typical traditional homes of the rural communities. There was a flood here about 4 years ago and many of the homes were destroyed (mud plus water equals destruction).

One of the most unique things about this Eastern part of Hungary (and the last thing we did before heading back to Budapest today) was the town of Szatmárcseke with its interesting boat-shaped grave head-boards made of wood rather than stone. They look like canoes buried vertically in the ground. No one knows why the villagers do this here, but it is the only cemetery like this in the entire world. Some of the grave markers are hundreds of years old and the writing is completely weathered away. If you want to see the new pictures, you can click on this link here.

Tomorrow we are going to visit the Hungarian Parliament with Gabi and hopefully see the Royal Crown. We leave for Venice on Wednesday, but are taking an overnight train so we will really be there on Thursday. Stay tuned!