I have decided that Paris, The City of Light, has been named such because that is the speed in which time flies here.  It has been  2 weeks since I, along with a dear friend from back home, embarked on a 3 day excursion to”The Paris of the East,” Budapest.  Really, 2 weeks! Oh, my poor, neglected blog! Ah, but that will all be solved right now. Here’s to momentarily ignoring all of Paris’ charms so I can concentrate on capturing the memories and magic of a beautiful Hungarian city on the Danube! On y va!

My girlfriend, Steph from Minnesota, told me that if she visited me in Paris in February, she wanted to go someplace warm.  So I brought her to Budapest. 🙂  Now that isn’t as counter-intuitive as it sounds.  Budapest is known for its thermal baths, hot goulash and low prices compared to other European cities.  Our bodies would be toasty in naturally heated spring waters, our bellies would be warm and full with the native fare and our bank accounts would stay afloat so we could continue pay heating bills back home. Voila!  AND we got to pack swimsuits!  Budapest here we come!

Malev Airlines, a Hungarian airline, was our original transport of choice.  But its bankruptcy and complete discontinuation of service 19 days before our departure caused me to scramble a bit to find an alternative way to get to our “tropical” destination.  Up popped our salvation….a 31EURO round-trip ticket on Ryanair!  It was like I had the luck of the Irish on my side :).  And I have to say, if one has a suitcase that is exactly the required dimensions for a carry-on (55cmX40cmX20cm) it really isn’t a bad way to fly…

Yet more glamorous transportation.

This is the metro portion of our trip from the airport  to our 4 star hotel near the Budapest Opera (we didn’t rough it all the time!), and our second taste of Budapest’s public transport.  Our first experience was on the bus from the airport to the metro stop.  Above ground we were able to see  uniform, crumbling concrete buildings that dotted the suburban landscape (perhaps heralded from the communist era?) as well as some fairly quaint family cottages…interesting to see, but definitely not the most beautiful part of the city.

Our just reward!

We went from metro to bus to plane to bus to metro to finally find ourselves at our destination, a charming and cozy hotel in the heart of Budapest.  We readily followed our handsome Hungarian hotel guest services employee to our 3rd floor room that was equipped with kitchen and a chilled bottle of Hungarian “champagne!”  It was uncorked and poured the second Mr. Beautiful Hungarian Eyes dropped the suitcases and wished us a nice stay.  If I knew the word for “delicious” in Hungarian I would insert it here (and I would be talking about the sparkling wine and the Hungarian!).

Dinner at Bagolyvár

The slightly sweet champagne hit the spot and gave us the energy we needed after a long day of travel to venture out into the streets of Budapest to find our dinner destination. Our selection was a traditional Hungarian restaurant located in the city park and next to the zoo…but alas not animal sounds over dinner :(.

 

My quest for the typical Hungarian dish, goulash, began at this brightly tableclothed restaurant run entirely by women (which may have explained why, besides our table and one other, the restaurant was FULL of men). I chose wrong…but my boiled beef soup that came in a pot the size of my head was delightful.

I learned on this trip that Hungary is quite renowned for its fois gras, and it is responsible for supplying 70% of the world’s consumption with the plumped-up liver…so we started our meal with this entrée.  Slices of the house fois gras came with toast points, cut veggies and a spoon full of lard! Not realizing at the time that it is quite normal for Hungarians to spread lard on their bread like butter, Steph and I were quite perplexed about what we did with the blob of animal fat that just melted all over the plate.  This meal was also my first introduction to Hungarian wine, particularly their sweeter wine from the north region called Tokaji.

We wrapped dinner up with a typical Hungarian dessert of pureed chestnuts with Chantilly.  Perhaps not something I would chose for dessert every night, but it was fun to try…although I am not sure Steph had the same sentiments! 🙂

The next morning we rose early to head on our Culinary Market Tour of Budapest.  The meeting point was The Central Market…Budapest’s largest indoor market built in the late 1800s.

How did our 10am tour start?

With a shot of one of Hungary’s national drinks, Unicum!

(think Jagermeister…and uh, I repeat, the time was 10am!)

After finding our guides, Gábor and Virag, we were whisked up to the first level of the Central Market and introduced to the bitter, herbal liqueur of Hungary. Hungarians recommend it for curing ailments and like it as a digestif. I thought perhaps they also liked it for breakfast given that we were being served it first thing in the morning.  My guides just laughed at me. No, no, they were just serving it to us to get us loosened up for the 4 hour tour.  Bottoms up!

Hi Mom!  This is me eating HORSE HAM!

Yep, first they have us down a shot of Jager’s cousin and then horse meat….what could be next! Kitten!

One of the other adventurous meats we tried was dried ox tongue.  Gábor, our guide, told us to remove the taste buds because they can be quite prickly and hurt our mouth. Uh, okay, noted.

The best paprika in the world comes from Hungary…and they definitely do produce, sell and use alot of this spice made from dried chili peppers (like in their goulash dish that I didn’t try the night before 🙁 ).

Display cases in the Central Market would showcase every part of an animal…this particular one had many different goose parts.  The big yellow lumps are the livers of the geese that are force fed to make fois gras.

A jovial butcher with his goat skull on a stick that he would thrust into unknowing tourists’ faces to make them scream…brilliant.

Veggies that looked pleased to be pickled!

After the Unicum and horse ham the  tasting samples given to us became more tame.  We were introduced to local cheeses (mostly goat and cow that weren’t aged long and quite mild to the taste) as well as sauerkraut, which had a wonderfully crisp texture and light sweet vinegar flavor.

Because it was a food tour, next stop was lunch…

…at a butcher shop called Belvarosi Disznotoros.

Thank goodness they didn’t ask us to repeat the name 3 times rapidly in order to eat!

The inside was one part butcher shop and one part cafeteria. You could buy the meats and prepare them at home or, like we did, chose a meal from a variety of hot simple traditional Hungarian dishes and eat them on the spot while standing at big wooden tables in the shop. Our guide chose duck, pork chops, sausage and a venison goulash-style dish accompanied with potatoes and sauerkraut for our lunch.  The venison was the stand-out dish to me. However, whoever’s finger is in the above pic, must have really liked that sausage!

From lunch at the butcher shop we traversed a beautiful section of Budapest to find ourselves at….

Yay! A Patisserie shop!

Hungary is known for fine pastries and we indulged in several at this elegant coffeeehouse. The delicious Esterhazy cake, a buttercream and sponge cake dessert named after a 19th century Hungarian prince,  and the rich Dobosh Torte, a seven layer cake of chocolate buttercream named after Hungarian pastry chef in 1884, were 2 of the highlights.

So now that our bellies were full and dessert was done it is time for coffee…right?

WRONG!  It was time for wine tasting *the crowd goes wild*!

Frankly before planning this trip I didn’t know that Hungary produced any wine, let alone a rather famous white, sweet dessert wine called Tokaji and a bolder red wine known as “Bull’s Blood.”  Or that it has 22 wine regions and bunches of its own varietals containing names that even after a few glasses of wine I think would be tough to pronounce (although some of them translated are quite cute, like “sheep’s tail,” “grey monk,” and “king’s daughter”). Of course though, now that I do know they exist I am surprised to see how much Tokaji there is in Paris! And the sweeter it is, or the more puttonyos used to create the wine (buckets of botrytised grapes), the smaller the production which usually results in a more expensive, albeit quite delicious, wine.  “A match made in heaven,” according to our guide, Gábor , is a 2-3 puttonyos Tokaji and fois gras.

Virag, our other guide, was an aspiring Tokaji region wine producer so she guided us through a tasting of 3 different Hungarian wines.  My thoughts on Hungarian wines? I will reference a quote I said to Steph upon entering the vast wine section at a grocery store in Budapest after our tour, “I appreciate the wine culture in Hungary, I just don’t know if I appreciate the wine.”

Enjoying…kinda….my Szekszard (region) Kaderka (varietal)!

Now that we we had become experts on the food and wine of Hungary, it was time say good-by to our wonderful guides (only after exchanging Facebook information) and get out and explore the actual city!  But I think that will have to wait for tomorrow. Yes, that is a really good idea.  So stand by for a second  post that will include pictures of our adventures out and about…we have yet to break out the dusty swimsuits thus far!

In the meantime, go run to your local wine cave and see if you can find Hungary’s prized Tokaji wine!  Try some tonight…but save a glass for tomorrow when you look at the rest of the Budapest pics.  Perhaps the two combined will be enough to mentally transport you to this lovely Eastern European city on the Danube!

Kedves Egeszsegere (Cheers) from Budapest!

(I am hanging off the balcony in our cute hotel)

Plan YOUR Adventure:

Taste Hungary

website: www.tastehungary.com

 

Opera-Garden Hotel

Hajos U. 24

H-1065, Budapest

website: www.operagardenhotel.hu