Eger

Eger is a beautiful town. The Romans liked it for its hot
springs, which they built public baths around. The
Turks took it over for awhile and it now has the
northernmost remaining minaret from its age in the world. The
minaret is a lovely sight visible from most parts of
the low little town.

The town is in a valley ringed by hills. The hills along one side were perfect for a
fortress and different groups over all these centuries of use built or added to the military buildings there. The fortress wall is really long and underneath it are
dungeons that seem to go on impractically far. The dungeons are cold and stale and damp -- wherever there's a little light, the walls are coated with moss. To get
into the dungeons (where it's apparently easy to get fatally lost), you have to take a tour. So we took a tour.

Our tour group consisted of a class of little kids, their teachers, and me and I. The guide said lots of stuff in Hungarian and the little kids would chorus back an
answer sometimes and we couldn't understand enough even to guess what we were missing.

Farmers grow wine grapes all up and down the hills and in the bottom of the valley they sell their wines. In the town of Eger most little restaurants have big soda
bottles or jugs filled with the local wines, labeled with the year and the maker. We walked down one evening to a row of little wine cellars at the valley floor where the wine makers will let you buy a bottle or even just a glass of their home-made wine for 30 Forints, or about twelve cents.

The cellars themselves seem to be where the wine is really made --they're
dark and damp, made out of stone (or cut out of the hill or a natural cave -- we couldnt tell which) and they smell overwhelminly of fermenting fruit. But some
of them have a few little tables right outside, and we ordered a glass of wine at a few of these. We're not wine aficionadoes and really haven't had enough wine
to appreciate its variations, but this stuff wasn't our favorite. It was fun, though!

We visited I.'s grandmother's sister in Eger. She lives right off the main square in a Soviet-era complex that wasn't too bad. She used to live in the beautiful old, old
building right across the street, but the government at some point kicked all the tenants out in order to make that building a public monument so more people
could appreciate its history and charm. They built the block apartments she now lives in to house the people they kicked out. Then they gave up on the idea of the
public monument and filled the lovely old building up with souvenir shops.

I.'s grandmother is quite elderly and is cared for by an upstairs neighbor who is slightly less elderly but completely active, lively, sweet, funny, and adorable. We didn't have much language in common, but she kept talking to us, and some of
her joke-a-minute goofiness needed no translation. It was a wonderful visit.

They fed us so much we need a few days to recover.