Tokaj Vacation

I spent 5 days in Tokaj with my mom. This is a village of 5000 people, about 170 miles from Budapest. I know that these numbers don’t seem huge but in Hungary the village would be considered large and the 3 hour train trip seemed long too. The region is famous for its wine. In Hungary it is considered world famous, and I am sure wine connoisseurs agree. Unfortunately it is not as known outside Hungary as the local winters would like to believe.Mostly we had a great time while doing practically nothing. Let me get out of the way the not so good parts. The weather. Although I did my bit of research and learned in advance that it will be humid, but couldn’t predict how bad it would be. I have never been to the tropics so cannot compare it to that, but it was difficult to breathe for me in the first few days. My mom complained that she had difficulties with sleeping because her heart was working too much. Except our last afternoon and the morning we left (when it was raining and stormy) every day was beautiful, sunny, around 35C. That’s a bit too hot, but was not unbearable. The first day we decided not to do anything around high noon, but somehow we always ended up being outside right then. We survived. A bit sweaty, but unharmed. We stayed in a beautiful and old inn called Toldi Fogado. (The “Toldi” Inn ? Toldi was the hero of the region from a popular ballad written in the 19th century by Janos Arany.) The building was recently modernized. The room was air-conditioned, but not as cold as they are in US motels. This is a not a criticism just an observation. Hungarian air condition is never as chilly. The inn also had an indoor swimming pool, about 12 meters long. That is also rare here. My mom dipped in several times and also used the jacuzzi and the solarium. Although I am not much a water person (any more) but was upset that I couldn’t sink myself in the water. I was not allowed because I still had some stitches in my leg. Being an open wound water was not supposed to touch it fear of infection. The nurse was supposed to take them out the day before my trip. But the doctor, who left the instructions to do so, was not in at that appointment and the nurse decided it was too early. I should be probably thankful for her for taking care of me, but I cannot stop myself thinking it is her fault I couldn’t go into the swimming pool. The food on this vacation was not entirely to my taste. We had breakfast in the inn. We could choose between scrambled eggs, ham-and-eggs and cheese and ham (to be put on bread.) The first day my mom had the eggs but she didn’t feel too good after them so after that we both had cheese only. And even that was too heavy, oily for me, so we bought some vegetable and salmon spread and I ate that in the mornings. We had dinner at two of the 5 local restaurants. They all seemed to offer more or less the same heavy Hungarian food, although they had more fish dishes than usual. The first night I had “grilled” trout. According to the menu it was supposed to be “grilled”, but in reality it was fried. Just like almost everything else. Once I got over this mishap it was not bad, but we didn’t go back to this restaurant. To be fair I had a nice peach soup there too. At another night I had honey-wine baked trout, while my mom was having grilled turkey with prune-wine sauce. This was the only time she had wine in any form. It’s a shame that we are not wine-drinkers, because there were dozens of wine-cellars in and around the village we could have visited and tasted. We also sampled the local bakery’s cakes, but they only looked good and tasted bland. We had more food over the week but they were even less memorable. Beforehand I was concerned that I would eat too much and gain weight, but due to lack of local variety and food that I could have really desired I avoided this pitfall. As far as proper tourist activities go we visited the one and only museum, the Jewish cemetery and a fifth of a mountain. The four story museum was a treat. On the ground level we saw lots of real and fake Tokaj wine bottles. The “fake” may need a bit of an explanation. The wine is so good and famous in the region that some, mostly non-Hungarian wineries labeled wines, not form here as Tokaj, hoping that it will sell better. Tools of the fishing trade were also on display. On the second floor objects related to the local churches (protestant, catholic, Greek Orthodox and Jewish) were shown. On the top floor tools of the winemaking craft were arranged along with leaves, names and explanations of the hundreds of different types of vines. There I felt that I learned a lot, but now, when I am trying to recall what I learned it is all gone. The cellar of the building contained some barrels and other things that you would find in wine-cellars. The best part of the museum though was its garden. A real Mediterranean little oasis. With oleander and palm trees, flowers, marble tiles, fountains. The area used to have a sizable Jewish population, but as far as I know they were all taken and killed during the war. What is left is a prayer room, one and a half cemetery, and a nice synagogue building that is halfway restored now. It is painted on the outside, but the windows are all covered with wood and I don’t know how it looks inside because we couldn’t get in. A day after we left a concert was supposed to happen there. I cannot imagine how. We visited the cemetery half a mile outside the village. Not much to say about it. Peaceful despite being between the slopes of the mountain and the highway. We were also planning to visit the other Jewish cemetery, particularly because next to it the ruins of a 2-300 year old castle were supposed to be accessible. They were on the side of the river that was accessible only by a ferry. But the ferryman talked us out of going there. He said most people cannot find the ruins anyway, the mosquitoes are huge, and we wood need big chopping knives to cut our way through the weed. Thus we gave that idea up. On another day we started out to climb the 500 meter mountain that used to e a volcano. I knew that my Mom was not in shape enough o come with me to the top. So about 10 minutes in the steep climb she turned back. She encouraged me to go on and she’d wait for me. But I realized that I also didn’t feel like going up in the heat of the day. This is the short story of how we didn’t look around from the top of the “Bald Mountain.” Another unrealized plan of ours was to go on a boat trip. First we asked at the very helpful and nice man in the local tourist information booth about it. He suggested that we should check the port, because the boat takes off any time there is a group of people to take it. We did find the sign at the port saying the boat leaves every day at noon. So on our last day we walked down there and found that for this particular day somebody rented it for the whole day. We were also thinking of going to a nearby cit by bus, but when we learned that there is only one bus going there a day and one coming back we opted out. We didn’t go to see a concert neither in a nearby village for similar reasons. There was no bus going there at all. Too bad, because I was interested in this singer who was signing gypsy, Indian, Hungarian, French and Persian folk songs. A final item for the list of things not done: didn’t go to the movies. My mom kept looking for it, but the theatre simply didn’t exist. Instead all of the missed opportunities above we were watching, reading books and I also worked a bit. I managed to finish four books. Not bad for five days. I plan to write a short review for them, but for now here are the one liners: 1. Gyorgy Dalos: “Szahalin ? Csehov Szigete (Sahalin ? Chekhov’s Island) ?comparative commentary of a remote Russian island, analyzing social, historical, and economic aspects and comparing them to Chekhov’s similar work 2. Daniel Varro: Tul a Maszat-hegyen (Over the Smudge Mountain) – lovely adventure story for children in rhymes with the author’s sister’s drawings. 3. Pal Salamon: A Sorel Haz (The Sorel House) ? Grand family history encompassing 3 generations. They were a bit mystical but always down to earth and honest to death. 4. Sherman Alexie: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven ? Collection of short stories. Very vivid, creative use of language. Magical. Although I spent days in front of the TV the only movie I recall having seen properly from beginning to end was Trial and Error (with Michael Richards, Jeff Daniels, and Charlize Theron), a nice legal comedy in the Nevada desert. I also watched most of “Allami Aruhaz”, a 50 year old comedy about the life of a supermarket and its people. Otherwise it was sitcoms and other kind of junk series. I feel that I don’t have to watch TV again at least for a month. There are two public spaces in Tokaj to log onto the internet. One of them is a small room, cramped with 15 computers and 3-4 teenagers, who play games with each other. I opted to go to the other place, where for the same price I could sit in a spacious room of a wine shop with only two computers, air condition and sip a glass of wine while working. I also managed to work from the motel room on my computer with a dialup connection. Thus I took care of every task I was supposed to, but didn’t stay on the net too long. The mission of the vacation was accomplished. We spent five relaxing days in each other’s company. P.s. The rain got so heavy on the day we left that there was a flood in the village and the major asked for government help to solve the emergency situation.