Blogs from Eger, Northern Hungary, Hungary, Europe - page 2

It is 3:30 a.m. and I am lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Kristen has somehow managed to remain asleep beside me, but as the roosters and dogs begin anew their incessant calls, I admit defeat and head out to the kitchen. Jetlag has won again. I find that Klara left the small radio atop the freezer playing before heading to bed, so to a curious Hungarian cover of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” I set up my netbook at the small dining table and type until the sun begins warming my back. By the time Gabe awakes and blurry-eyed begins brewing a pot of coffee, I already loath Hungarian radio. Europop, most of it in English, reigns on the airwaves, and my skin crawls with every joyfully soulless, generically programmed beat. It is made by Europeans for ... read more

I allowed the boys to sleep in this morning as it has been a while since we didn´t have to set our alarms. We were to meet at 11am to go to the pool although they had to be up earlier for breakfast in the hotel. Breakfast is very westernized. Much different from my last trip to Hungary. They had scrammbled eggs and potatoes and sausage and many of the cereals you will find in the in the States. The boys enjoyed it very much but I´d rather they experience a little more of the culture. Maybe when we get to Budapest. When we met at 11, much to our dismise it was raining outside. We proceeded to the pool anyway as we knew this would not stop the Hungarians from practicing. We found a good ... read more

The year was 1552. A great Ottoman army, 10,000 men strong, descends upon the Hungarian town of Eger, besieging its castle. It should have been easy pickings, but the brave townspeople, despite being vastly outnumbered, hold back the marauding horde for a month, eventually defeating the Turks. But the Ottomans weren’t finished yet; they came back forty-four years later to avenge their earlier defeat… That’s the basic story that is told about Eger. But the turn-of-the century writer Géza Gárdonyi embellished the story even more in his 1901 novel Eclipse of the Crescent Moon (subtle, that one!). In his fictionalized version of the first siege of Eger, he has the women of town pouring hot soup onto the Turks from the castle ramparts. Although this part of the story seems to have been Gárdonyi’s own invention, ... read more

I was thinking of heading to Eger as a day trip from Budapest but I ended up making it a stop while going from Kosice to Budapest. I got the 9 something train and got off at Fusesabony where I got the train to Eger. However, I had to sit tight at the station when I missed not one but two trains to Eger. Basically the first one left 3 minutes after I got off my train and the other was totally my fault for assuming that the track would be the same as the previous one - I saw my train pull in and pull out....while I had my mittens performing a skit (I was that bored). Story of my life, really. Thank goodness that the trains are hourly. Got there and negotiated a train ... read more

Day 9 (Saturday, September 13th, 2008) We were woken up on the train on Saturday about 7:30 in the morning when one of the attendants brought us our rail passes. We finally reached the station in Budapest around 8:45. Once off the train, we had to find the nearest departure board to determine what platform the 9:05 departure to Eger would be leaving from. The board listed the train as leaving 10 minutes earlier than originally listed, so we both ran to the train as we thought we only had a few minutes; however, when we approached the train, we realized that it was still leaving at 9:05, so we had several extra minutes to spare. The train ride to Eger, Hungary took about two hours. From the tiny train station, we took a taxi into ... read more