Tokaj to Slovakia border May 8-10

Thanks to the huge day the day before, we slept late at the campground in Tokaj. When we finally crawled out of the tent we entered a cool and gray, gray, gray day. The weather changed every 6 to 12 hours in Hungary. Grey mornings were often followed by pleasant sunny afternoons and vice-versa. I can't remember a place where the old joke, "Don't like the weather? Wait 15 minutes" was more true. The only consistent thing about the weather was the wind, which blew rain or shine and almost always towards us. So the gray morning wasn't so discouraging.

Our main purpose in Tokaj was to taste the wines. But somehow ten a.m. seemed a little early to go tasting so we spent a while exploring the town. The two things I liked most of the town were: breakfast (great cheese omelet) and a statue of a man sitting on wine barrel, laughing so hard he is almost falling off. But the statue looked a little out of place in the nearly silent town on that cool gray Sunday morning.

A wine is exactly as good as the marketing behind it so all the wine regions of the world call themselves famous and talk about how really special their wines are. Every region wants you to believe their wine is not just a notch but a few notches above the rest. But in fact, once a place has the right general soil and sunlight, there is very little difference between regions. California, France, Chile, Australia, Hungary, good and bad wines come from all those places.

But Tokaj wine is actually unique in my limited wine experience.

Tokaj's claim of distinction goes back to King Louis XIV who called it, "the wine of kings, the king of wines."

We eventually made our way to a cellar and went through the course of five wines. The key word for Tokaj wines isn't "nuance" or "subtle" or any such vagueness. The word is "sweet". I also detected a flavor something like nuts. I loved the somewhat sweet wines but not the sweetest of them. I actually believe that I could pick out a Tokaj wine from a group of others.

From Tokaj we headed north about 30 km to Saraspotak. Our wine making friend in Eger, Zultan, had recommended we stop in Saraspotok for a university there and the unusual buildings. I had expected a bunch of interesting old university buildings. Instead it was the strange new buildings. The buildings were in a sort neo-bohemian style. They had the dark wood trim on white buildings but the roofs had strange wavy curves and the windows made strange shapes while maintaining the gridded window panes within.

We spent the night two km north of town at an excellent campground. It was Mother's Day so we decided to try to call home. Unfortunately neither of the two phone booths at the entrance to the campground contained phones, just dog-eared phone books (many of the phone booths have beat up phone books inside). The campground wasn't near anything except a bar, about 50 meters down the road. We walked over to see if it had pay phone. It didn't. But it did have a hell of a party. The crowd was mostly young adults, likely students. It was probably the most raucous bar I saw in Hungary. And way out there, two km from town, next to the campground. Who would have guessed the hot spot would be way out there?

The next morning was our last in Hungary. We were just 17 km from the border of Slovakia. We stopped for a long time in the last town in Hungary called Satoraljaujhely. We just refer to it the last town in Hungary. We sat for a long time in the town square eating ice cream cones and watching the people go by. Lots of women pushing strollers.

We also made sure we had one of each Hungarian coin for our hideously weighty coin collection before changing money. In the end, we couldn't change money in town anyway so we headed for the border without any Slovakian Koruna.

Next: Slovakia

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