To the Valley of Beautiful Women We Go
Although we love cities, we know that cities are never truly representative of the entire country. But we do have to leave Europe sometime, so some of the countries have gotten short shrift, at least this time around. Since we were headed north to Krakow, we decided to stop in the Hungarian town of Eger, where, we were told, there is a valley of beautiful women and wine. The valley of which we speak is actually called that – Szepasszonyvolgy, translated as the Valley of Beautiful Women. I’m not sure what Sean’s intentions were, but I quite liked the Hungarian wines I tasted in Budapest so I was game to go taste more of them.
Unfortunately, best laid plans go awry quite easily. We should know better to try to squeeze in too much, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself. We showed up in Eger without accommodations. Normally, this is not a problem and can even be beneficial. Not in this case. I am somewhat of a planner by nature, so this fly by the seat of our pants approach does not come naturally to me. Although I tell myself, really, what is the worst that can happen, in Eger, I started to fear the worst – that we would have nowhere to stay.
We arrived in Eger in a somewhat cranky state after having been on the hottest train known to humankind. It was over 90 degrees that day. This train – an ancient relic dug out of retirement solely for the purpose of torturing us on the way to Eger, I was sure – naturally had no air conditioning. It also had no air flow, made even worse when it inexplicably insisted upon stopping, for no apparent reason, for an eternity several miles away from Eger. We tried to buy tickets on an overnight train the following night from Eger to Krakow. After telling us we could buy the tickets (we think; it was in Hungarian), the ticket teller then changed course. All we could surmise was that there was some sort of problem on the route. This left us no choice but to take the hot box back to Budapest, then take the overnight train from Budapest to Krakow. So while we originally had the entire next day to spend in Eger, we now only had an afternoon and evening the day we arrived.
After walking through a never ending construction zone to the old town, sweating profusely, I thought we could quickly find a place and get to the business of drinking wine. Over two hours later, after Sean trekked all over town while I stood guard with the bags in the hopes of speeding up our task, we still had no place to stay, even with the assistance of the tourist office. Everything – and I mean everything – was full. We finally were helped by a different woman at the tourist office, who told us about several options outside of town who had called to say they had availability.
By the time we ended up at the guesthouse, the entire day had passed. We were tired, exhausted, and hungry. Reality was dawning that we would not get to see hardly any of Eger. A big disappointment, for sure, because Eger seemed like a really cute town. It is known as Hungary’s Baroque jewel box. Plus it has thermal springs.
Although there was talk of devoting the evening to touring the town, we stuck with our priorities and headed for the Valley of Beautiful Women after grabbing something to eat. (For future of reference of anyone who travels to Eger: there are restaurants close to the Valley, so you do not need to head into the old town as we did if you don’t want). The Valley is a collection of wine cellars in a horse shoe shape.
The wine, made on premises at many of the cellars, is cheap. Supposedly you can take a plastic jug to be filled with wine straight from the barrel, but we just tried the different wines by the glass. For $2 or $3 dollars, you could have two very large glasses of wine. We didn’t see any beautiful women, per se, but we did drink many delicious wines.
Oh, but Sean did ~ see a beautiful woman ~ he was with one. 🙂
One thing Hungary is known for is beautiful women but who can understand their language …