CRF: Hungary

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." Below are some of our favorite pics that never made the blog. We figured we'd reminisce a little while we're home for a visit. (Back in Europe August 20th).

Kalocsa is a small town with a lot going for it. Its claims to fame are varied and fascinating. It is the "paprika capital of Hungary," was the Holy See for one of the country's four archbishops and is the birthplace of some of the most celebrated and iconic Hungarian folk art. So, in one short day trip, we visited a museum dedicated to the national spice, saw the skeleton of Saint Pious all dressed up with no where to go and marveled at the colorful Kalocsa floral patterns at the Károly Viski Museum.

The Hungarian Great Plain or "Puszta" is the land of the cowboy. We went to see the csikósok at work (and play) in a fantastically entertaining and slightly bizarre horse show in Bugac. Here, a donkey sits in the stable mentally preparing for his part in the show alongside the majestic horses. Needless to say, he was the butt of a few jokes.

Just a simple lunch at a simple roadside eatery. Eggs, potato, sausage. Of course, there was paprika involved.

Hungary is a land-locked country with plenty of water. Aside from lakes like Balaton and Baja, there are over one thousand thermal springs that feed into baths and spas, indoor and out. Above, a woman relaxes on flotation noodles in the indoor section of the bath at Lake Hévíz. People had traveled from all over Europe to soak in the curative waters of Hévíz for hours. The pungent smell of sulfur and bobbing swimming capped heads made us think of hard boiling eggs. The regular bathers were no doubt more accustomed to the smell.

Eger was a really lovely city in which we camped for days.  It was our first stop in Hungary and, our first real days of summer in 2011.  We couldn't wait to see everything come to life once again after our long, cold, Slavic winter.  Sure, spring is great, but nothing quite beats green grass, flash showers, children trading backpacks for ice cream cones, overflowing market stands.  Watermelon. 

A cemetery in Eger. Last names first and plenty of flowers.

We can't remember exactly where we took this picture, but it was most likely in Eger - either from the top of the northernmost Turkish minaret in the world or up in Eger Castle. 

About 20 kilometers south of Kalocsa, we turned off at Hajós. The village has the largest concentration of wine cellars in Europe, around 1300 in just a blip of a town. Out of season (we were there in late June) the pincék were all shuttered. Only the faint smell of fermented grape hinted at the bustle of activity that would once again begin in a few months.

A summer concert in Eger's park draws an excited but demure crowd.

Just a small town corner store we past on our way to the horse show in Bugac. It was a sleepy town in that familiar way, somewhere between one long stretch of flat road and another.

CRF: Budapest

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." Below are some of our favorite pics that never made the blog. We figured we'd reminisce a little while we're home for a visit. (Back in Europe August 20th).

Budapest beguiled us in a way that left us a little speechless.  Or post-less.  Aside from the subterranean maze below Buda Castle, we didn't feature much of the unique,  charismastic city.  We were too caught up enjoying it.  Testament to the fun we had, our other Budapest-specific post was about garden bars. So, here's a look at all the things we couldn't quite wrap up in a neat bow.   Some of our favorite shots from the city that didn't make the original cut.

Construction being done on the Applied Arts Museum- a building that screams 'applied arts.'

Budapest's Great Market Hall is really impressive.  Outside, its roof is covered in green and yellow tiles with purple flecks.  The inside is just as vibrant.  There are three floors.  The top is tourist-ceentric, with handicrafts and food stalls serving up real deal local cuisine. The ground floor is a heaven of fruits, vegetables, spices, baked goods, dairy products, etc.  The basement is where they keep all the nitty gritty market fare i.e. the butchers and fish mongers.  Budapest is an excellent city to dine in.  So, the fact that we cooked in twice (making Hungarian cherry soup , fish paprikas and mákos metélt) shows how inspirational this market was.

The view from an apartment in the 5th district - a great neighborhood.  If you look closely, you can see the pull down shutters outside every window. That's something we noticed throughout Budapest.

The steep, winding Sikló walkway leads up away from the Danube to Buda Castle. Some tourists stop to rest en route to picture perfect Castle Hill. These two lovebird locals used the benches for other things.

We stayed in a rental apartment in the 8th district, a neighborhood that went from artist colony to prostitution den to the recipient of (what some call) the biggest urban renewal project in Central Europe. It has a big mall, cinema, kindergartens, but also hole-in-the-wall food joints and small businesses. It's cleaned up but not too cleaned up, you know? At night it buzzed with fluorescence and laughter.

The Great Synagogue in Budapest is the second largest synagogue in the world, fitting 3,000 people. It was built in the middle of the 19th century at a time when Jews were banned from the city proper. You can actually see a bit of the old Pest city walls right across the street. The synagogue is bright and beautiful inside. The chandeliers were particularly eye-catching.

A staircase in one of the many old, abandoned buildings that have been turned into a kurt. Many of them were palatial and people were tucked into every corner of every room, lining hallways and - of course - outside under the stars.  Kurt means garden after all.

Orange cable cars whiz across the Liberty Bridge.

River cruises moved down the green Danube and grand bridges stretched over it.  This building stood unused in its blue coat of paint with its round maritime windows.

When we're asked about our some of our favorite cities, Budapest comes to mind.  It's always difficult to explain why.  A city is often broken down into categories - sights, dining, nightlife.  Some cities excel in all three fields but never really stand out as more than a collection of great elements.  There's no connective energy, no character.  Budapest felt kinetic and edgy, but also comfortable and welcoming.  Heck, we couldn't put it into words while we were there and we can't now.  It's just someplace special.

Thermal Nation

Hungary is famous for its thermal activity - over 1,300 thermal springs feed some one hundred and twenty baths and hot pools around the country. Budapest alone has 118 springs and 40 spas and baths. "Taking the waters" is popular with tourists, but is also a normal part of many Hungarian's week. The first bath we visited, in Eger, was almost entirely local, and was mobbed with an after work crowd from five until closing, at eight.
As with most bathing complexes in Hungary, there were a variety of pools and temperatures to chose from. The baths ranged from very hot to cool, with the warm pools probably the most popular. Older men and women in particular liked soaking in the 85° to 100° water, sitting together in little bobbing huddles to talk and relax.
The cooler pools were generally less crowded, and were more popular with young children. We noticed a definite correlation between the temperature of the water and the girth of the bathers bellies, with cooler water swimmers being much thinner than warm water floaters.
Around the eight or so pools at Eger, a meadow for sunbathing and picnicking was dotted with blankets. Families packed food to eat, younger and older people filled the bars and food stands that lined one edge. If soaking in thermal baths is supposed to be good for you, eating at them certainly is not. Fried foods and sweets predominate; mugs of beer and soda slosh plentifully.
Lake Hévíz was an entirely different experience. Just off the south-western tip of Lake Balaton, a separate, much smaller body of water sits. Though it's undeniably diminutive (perhaps it would be better described as a pond), it's actually very big for what it is: Hévíz is the largest thermal lake in Europe by surface area (about eleven acres) and by volume (it is one hundred twenty five feet deep at it's deepest point). Radon and sulphur rich waters filter up from the rock beneath in astonishing volumes - the water in Hévíz is replenished approximately every 24 hours.
Platforms and bathing stations fan out over the surface, and people sunbathe or float amongst the waterlillies. The temperature of the water is generally only about 85°, which doesn't feel all that warm - more tepid than hot. Rebecca described our swim as being like "a dip in old person soup," which was astute. It's really quite peaceful, with far fewer screaming children and no loud music. In winter, the water never gets below sixty five degrees, so it's possible to swim here surrounded by icy trees and snowbanks.
Two enclosed areas are built over the deepest point of Hévíz, so that people can swim indoors. I think the purpose of these enclosures has more to do with the juice and beer bars than anything, but the water is slightly warmer there, where the surface is covered. It's possible to swim right under the containing walls, but putting my head under this warm, sulphuric water didn't seem appealing.

Gypsy Kitchens: Meggyleves, Hungarian Cherry Soup

Hungarians eat a lot of sweet things at dinnertime. Not just desserts, but sweet appetizers and pastas too - we have actually seen noodles served with a sugar dispenser. A favorite of Magyars, and something we've come to really like, is "meggyleves," or cold cherry soup. It's generally treated as a pre-dinner course, but would be just as good as a post meal treat. It's also good at breakfast time, and would be delicious on a hot afternoon, served alone.

Our version was created from the two most popular Hungarian fruits of the season: in addition to the cherries, a quarter of a watermelon provided a different layer of flavor.

The preparation is either incredibly simple or a little less simple - you have to decide if you want to pit your cherries. If you do, more of the juice will escape into the broth, the soup will be free from cherry stones and your fingers will end up stained red. Deciding not to pit them is fine - we didn't, because it's common here to leave the fruit whole and because it seemed like a lot of work. Stemming them is mandatory, however.

For the broth, use about a pound of nicely ripe sour cherries, boiled for twenty-five minutes in a quart of water. Before cooking, add sugar and a cinnamon stick to the water; if your tastes run in the direction of sweetness, add about 1/2 cup or more of sugar or honey. Many other cooks use 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, but our soup had only 1/3 cup of honey. It's not really important, as long as you're comfortable with what you're eating.

Let the broth cool to room temperature, then put in the refrigerator for a few hours.

Meggyleves is most often made simply with cherries, but we've had it with a whole host of other ingredients throw in - blackberries, raspberries, red currants, even plums. In effect, there isn't much that can't be added. The crucial thing is to recognize which ingredients should be cooked with the cherries, and which should be added once the meggyleves has cooled. Blackberries or watermelon, for example, are probably better as they are, uncooked, whereas red currants can stand up to the process and will impart more flavor if they're boiled.

Watermelon is very easy - just cube the flesh in a way that avoids as many seeds as possible. The final ingredient is sour cream - about a cup. Creamier soups call for more, of course, and are just as good.

Blending the sour cream into the broth can be a little difficult - one might try combining it in a bowl with a little bit of the soup's liquid before adding it to the body of the broth. Persistence is key, though a few floating bits of cream are really more displeasing to the eye than to the tongue.

Avoid the temptation to substitute yogurt for sour cream. Meggyleves is sweet enough as it is; yogurt would only make it syrupy. Some restaurants and cooks serve their soup spiked with red wine, added just before serving. It's probably very tasty, but that's only speculation.

It's a refreshing bowlful of fruit, with soft cherries and crisp melon and a nice undertone of honey. As the weather heats up and summer intensifies, it's easy to imagine craving this for an appetizer, just to cool down before eating!

Here's the recipe:

Meggyleves

Ingredients:

1 lb. sour cherries, de-stemmed

1 lb. watermelon, cubed with seed avoidance in mind

1/3 - 3/4 cup honey or sugar, depending on the chef's taste

1 cup sour cream

1 cinnamon stick

A pinch of cloves

-Bring the cherries, sugar, cloves and cinnamon to a boil in 1 qt. water. Boil gently for 20 - 30 minutes.

-Remove from heat and let cool until room temperature, then refrigerate for 1 - 24 hours.

-Add watermelon and sour cream, stir or whisk until smooth.

-Decide if you'd like to part with a cup or so of red wine, which can be added too.

-Serve cold, with a warning about the cherry pits and the possibility of watermelon seeds.

Things Hungarian People Like

Poppy Seeds and Paprika. Remember these two, they will be a trend. In Hungary, my favorite bagel topping found its way into most desserts and a few savory dishes. You could buy 'mákos' loose or as a paste. Hungarians' affinity for paprika was more expected, but was still surprising. I mean, two paprika museums in one small town is pretty impressive - being as there's only so much one can say about these two seasonings, let's move on.
Setting Up Shop in Unlikely Places. There was a go kart raceway set up in a supermarket parking lot, more melon and fruit stands than you can count on the roadsides and this pop-up bakery on a corner in Baja. She sold strudel, savory scones, small pizzas and tarts. The fold up table out front gave customers a place to enjoy their purchase and a very official receipt of purchase dispelled any question that she wasn't fully licensed.
Of course, our rétes was filled with poppy seed. A few black cherries were added in for variation, but mostly it was just a billion mákos stuck together with honey. Neither one of us would have passed a drug test after sharing just one.
Bogrács, Traditional Goulash Cauldrons. We saw these first in Slovakia, nearing the Hungarian border. Once over, into Magyarország, lawns were filled with shiny, new ones for sale. Silver and black, they stood next to garden gnomes and other figurines. In Eger, the public parks had fire pits with cauldrons hanging above them. Benches were pulled into a semi-circle around them. At a campsite in Csongrád, we were awoken by the smell of a morning goulash stirring. This picture was taken in Baja. We camped next to a large group of kids on a kayak trip. They were all lined up with bowls and pots in hand, clanging their spoons against the bottoms in excitement like a scene out of a revisionist Oliver Twist. The ladling chaperone seemed nervous that he may run out and was horrified that we may want a taste. "No, no, just a picture," we assured. We wondered if the bogrács were available for rent from reception. What makes the gulyás so red? Paprika.
Bibs. Poppy seeds may get stuck in your teeth, but paprika stains. There's really no getting around baby-ate-spaghettios mouth when slurping bright red halászlé and gulyás, however it's pretty easy not spill spoonfuls on yourself. This was not the opinion of at least two restaurants, where Merlin and I were handed bibs. It made me crave lobster. I guess a slightly embarrassed diner is better than an angry, stained one.
Hamburgers. Just one week before Hungary, in Slovakia, Merlin couldn't find ground beef to barbecue hamburgers. Ground pork, yes, but cow, no. Then, we entered a country that loved beef patties. That's not to say that it wasn't still behind goose, duck, chicken and pork in abundance on menus, but beef in hamburger form was incredibly popular. In fact, we saw the word 'hamburger' in every town and city, at every snack stand or roadstop. They were always microwaved, thin patties with varying multitudes of condiments, but hamburgers all the same. We've seen a lot of hot dogs in Europe, but this was our first hamburger-crazy country and we were happy to be here for the fourth of July.
'Live Gypsy Music.' These three words were scrawled on chalkboards and printed on posters just about everywhere we went. If a restaurant declared anything in English, it would be this and you could hear some four or fivesome's tunes travel through the air from somewhere on a still weekend evening. The use of the word 'gypsy ' was off-putting to us, so we never actively sought the entertainment out. However, we found ourselves serenaded over dinner more than once by a string instrumented band playing lively folk music. This young band had a particular pep and drew an adoring, mostly female, crowd of listeners on a street in Eger.
Wearing Overalls. This was a strictly male thing and extended beyond the neon variety worn by construction, maintenance and sanitation workers. Denim and khaki sets were popular all around the country. Shirt underneath, optional.
Seltzer Bottles. Between the fiddles, overalls and seltzer bottles, sometimes scenes felt downright vaudevillian. Seriously, though, seltzer bottles caught my attention early on. They were in every refrigerator and on ever bar or cafe counter. Okay, I thought, people like to make their own seltzer here. Then, I began to notice them outside antique shops and in pieces of art. It turns out, consumable soda water was actually invented by a Hungarian scientist named Ányos Jedlik and the Hungarian invention of wine spritzers quickly followed. So, you can say that seltzer bottles have a good deal of cultural iconography.

Honorable Mentions

Saying "Hello" as Goodbye. This is popular slang and was confusing at first, but we got used to waving farewell while smiling and saying 'hello!'

Lemonade. At first, I thought they must be spiked. Bars and restaurants had entire menus made up of lemonade. We were often surrounded by people sipping pale, yellow liquid through colorful straws. Most people seemed to opt for traditional lemonade, as opposed to the kiwi, mint, cherry or other variations.

Fallen Idols

On our way out of Budapest we stopped at a curious place. Szobor park, or "memento park," is a wasteland of rescued statues off a desolate road in the borderland between urban outskirts and fields. Collected here are some forty-five relics from communist-era Hungary, monuments to a time that has largely been swept aside and left behind.
The statues of Stalin and Lenin that once stood over countless squares and boulevards have been cleared away from most of eastern Europe, replaced with new figures or with advertising billboards. They were generally melted down or just discarded, but some of them were saved and relocated. It's difficult to tell, at Szobor park, if the statues have been saved as curiosities or because the owners really cared about them.

The monuments are larger than they seem, using visual tricks to play with perspective. This running man, titled "Republic of Councils," is one of the larger pieces - the back of the brick stand is about five feet tall, to give you some idea of the size of him.

The replica of Stalin's grandstand, once located in central Budapest, is interesting because of its lack of a figure - only the statue's boots were left in place when the original monument was torn down in 1956. The enormity of the thing is actually clearer, I think, without the rest of Stalin attached.
In a small exhibition hall, a life size reproduction of the boots stand almost humorously in a corner. The original statue was twenty-six feet tall, and its toppling was one of the most remembered moments of that early revolution.

It's possible, at the park's store, to buy t-shirts and knick-knacks that are (half-jokingly) emblazoned with communist images and slogans. Entrance to the park costs 1,500 huf per adult, which is maybe a little expensive for a place like this - very capitalist.

Garden Parties

In Hungarian, the word 'kert' means 'garden.' In Budapest, kerts (or 'kertok,' when pluralized correctly) are outdoor bars, which usually also stretch indoors through an abandoned building and almost always include some sort of performance space. These are not the beer gardens of Austria, with planted rows of picnic table and constant, uniform watering. These are overgrown and wild, like ivy that's overtaken a fence rusted closed a long time ago. It's that bed of wildflowers in someone's backyard, high purples and yellows, that you wish your mother had planted. When you discover that it's more a case of the owner not tending to their land than tending to it, you skip around just the same wearing a crown of dandelions.

Szimpla Kert ('Simple Garden') began the garden/ruin bar trend almost a decade ago and is one of the only spaces open all year and filled with perennials. Counteracting a movement to fill Budapest with sleek, trendy nightlife spots, they went organic. The city is loaded with old buildings, a lot of which are abandoned or not livable. Szimpla moved on into one and filled its multiple floors like squatters with a keen curatorial eye. A compost of odds and ends was laid down in the courtyard, an old pommel horse and gutted jeep amongst other things, and a garden quickly grew. More people began to do the same.
Now, each year, kerts pop up in new places. Most do not stay in one place for more than a season - which may or may not have more to do with licensing than with the hide-and-seek aspect. Some people wait to see a posted list of kert locations at the beginning of the season and others stay loyal to owners, following them wherever they move whether publicized or not. There's a large emphasis placed on art and music and many locations host concerts, film festivals and parties that run well into the night. They're just as much performance venues as they are bars or cafes and some cross the line into nightclub. This is Europe, after all.
We thought we may be a little too uncool for a kert, too young or too old or too foreign. However, the 'come as you are' attitude that we encountered all around this fantastic city extended to the gardens. There was no prescribed fashion, lifestyle or drink choice. People sat alone with a book, in couples with wine and beer, tea, coffee or nothing at all. When we visited Szimpla before dinner one night, it was fairly easy to find a spot in a corner to Skype my father for his birthday. Three men in suits stood at the bar and a group of teenagers huddled around a hookah on a busted spring of a couch. It's the only place I've ever been where the smell of cherry tobacco and hamburgers mixed in the air.

At night, Szimpla is pretty crowded - and we fell in love with this smaller kert close to home, in the VIII district, called Gondozó. We never went inside, where there is a larger bar and a stage, content to sit on the small courtyard under a single strand of Christmas lights. There was a scrap of a sign outside the unused house its located in. It's Gondozo's first year and, quite possibly, the only summer it will be here.

We wondered if the mural will be painted over by the next inhabitants or if it will chip away for years, the courtyard remaining empty. Vibrancy and decay seem to mix so well in Budapest that the idea that a space could transition seamlessly from abandoned to popularized and back again in the course of year is unsurprising - and charming.
This kert, the first we visited, felt more familiar. A lot like Brooklyn. A curt (ha!) woman served us our drinks and then went back to sit with her friends. One of the many rainstorms during our time in Budapest had just stopped as quickly as it had started. We sat on our raincoats under a beer branded umbrella and sniffed the greasy air wafting from a grill in the corner. It's called Mixart and, apparently, hosts some of the longest garden parties- though, they are said to be less-than-raucous affairs.
Its bar had prayer flags hung across the top and a chalkboard spelled out the daily specials, which included hot dogs and tofu curry. An English child ran around while three dreadlocked 20somethings drank coffee and a pair of women in twin sets sipped beers. Then, there was us - happy to be outside in this moment of dry weather. Happy that we were in a city that let you feel like you had a backyard to lounge around in. Each kert felt like it belonged to nobody and everybody at the same, which made us feel - for that moment - that it also belonged to us.