Bring Me the Finest Wines Known to Humanity

BRASOV: After a boozy evening in Budapest we fled the city towards Eger in the heart of Hungarian wine country. Famous for a number of wines, including the evocatively titled Bulls Blood, it is also one of Hungary's most beautiful small towns renowned for its abundance of baroque castles. Upon arrival we hiked into town, no small ask, eventually located a private room and then lunched on yet another goulash. I set off to try and locate a thermal bath in the next town over but when that proved too difficult I settled for one in Eger and lounged around in a steaming outdoor pool for a couple of hours.

The next morning we climbed the rather disappointingly castle, looked around the town a little more and then headed to the town's number one draw, "The Valley of the Beautiful Women". Rather than a holdout for high street honey's, it's a series of little bolt hole style wineries carved into the sides of mountain. Ranging from big professional jobbies to home brew type of outlets it's a brilliant place to try and buy. Needless to say we tried a lot and purchased some, in plastic two liter bottles, that we've been lugging around with us for a couple of days. The best places were those run by little old men who speak no English, smoke quietly in the corner, and make their own wine from vines they grow out the bag. In the evening Kate and I dined in some flash restaurant on game.

The next day we headed north to Tokaj in search of some of the deliciously sweet wines for which the region is renowned. However nobody told us it is almost completely shut down in winter. Draped in a thick, soupy fog and virtually deserted of life the village evoked a Lynchian atmosphere which, despite being somewhat interesting for a while, failed to quell our bacchanalian desires. We eventually did find a winery open unfortunately it was devoid of character and we were forced to conduct the tasting, according to guidelines laid down in our trusty LP, ourselves. Still some of the wine, mainly desert wines, was sublime. We retired early to watch Hungarian cable TV, in Hungarian. Dull winter town.

Yesterday we hiked into town with full knowledge of the days train strike but determined to get to Romania. After waiting at the station for almost three hours, and discovering some lovely wineries that would have been perfect the previous day, we hopped our first train, changed en route to our international connection, arrived and that's where our problems began. A three hour delay and some very strained, though somewhat enjoyable, Hungarian-Romanian-English conversation later and we were well on our way to arriving at a motel in Cluj Napoca, four kilometers across town, that no one wanted to stay at.

Thankfully we managed to strike a deal with the conductor (I'm pretty sure the cash went straight into his pocket) to stay on till Brasov figuring we would make it back to our original destination, Sighiosora, at a later date. That was how we came to be, waking up to an odd sunrise in the plains that sit high up in the sky somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains.