I was booked on something called 'Wizz Air'. Once upon a time all airlines tended to have stolid, upstanding names: British Airways, Air Canada, Continental. Then there's EasyJet and Ryan Air (invariably announced over the intercom, in the moments when trumpets aren't blaring, with that conspiratorial culchie accent that seems to make it all the more grating). Now I'm on Wizz Air. Which, frankly, all sounds a bit slipshod.
On the positive, they have a uniformly hot team of, presumably Hungarian, stewardesses well used to the baiting of the English stags, or in the case of a few rows in front of me, a mid-fifties lads weekend to Budapest.
Earlier, amongst the seventeen page clicks it had taken me to purchase my flight, I had opted for the airline's express shuttle bus from the airport for four euro; reasoning that represented a good piece of business, despite not altogether being certain where it was delivering me to.
I was flying out of Luton, my least favourite London entrepot (extrepot? Can we get a ruling on that? Also, Stansted can't believe it's luck after that last sentence.) Naturally the plane was delayed by over an hour, leaving me some fourteen minutes from touching down in Budapest to my appointed bus rendezvous. This being random Europe, I made it with time to spare.
Standing alone in the quiet of long term parking, an unmarked white van pulled up at speed, with a young man throwing open the sliding door "You Muncaster?" Well, that didn't actually happen, but would have been cool. Instead I wordlessly pointed to my single name on a clipboard and we sped off again to destinations unknown. (I presumed he would drop me at the train station or something, and wasn't too worried about it. One of these trips I'm definitely going to find myself in the wrong unmarked van, but I digress.)
Dropped off at a bustling modern traffic square in Pest I went in search of some cobblestone streets and a leisurely stroll in the humid Friday August evening for my scheduled 8pm glass of red in the Mercure hotel lobby bar with my old university buddy and wine confrere Eric.
That first evening we found a lovely street in the university district on a neo-classical piazza for some al fresco dining and Staropramen. Day one found us exploring the Royal quarter on the Buda side of the Danube; ascending the citadel via the Grand Budapest Hotel-esque funicular, drawing laughs of comparison to the similar gondola utilized in the Ralph Fiennes film.
After lunch I was delighted to learn from the guide book that there was an establishment nearby labelled 'Domus Vinum Magiarum'. Not least because I feel Latin really ought to be used as a lingua franca more often. It was billed as a wine and cicchetti bar sponsored by the Hungarian wine authorities specifically for promulgation of their country's home products. So you've got a couple of veteran wine geeks actively looking to be impressed by their nation's offering, and on a thirsty, sunny Saturday afternoon the House of Hungarian Wine is shuttered up closed.
Crestfallen, I had to make do with getting out of the baking sun by checking out some nearby catacombs that spuriously claimed to be the holding dungeon of Count Dracula. Furthermore, I thought Hungarian wine might have missed its best shot to impress me. Happily I was to be proven incorrect on that score.
As day turned to evening, we found Budapest strangely quiet. I wasn't even convinced it was the old carte blanche August holiday of grand French or Italian tradition. After all, there weren't any hastily scotch-taped, pen scribed 'closed' signs across the multitude of shuttered joints.
Irrespective, it was a grand town, and sufficiently John Le Carre-esque enough vibe for the Euro-trotting Eric and I to bask in. One morning's coffee was taken at a cafe situated in a 19th century apartment block courtyard. The euro police siren echoed from the busy thouroughfare; a couple of cute college aged girls with potentially American accents laughed and took photos the next table over. Instinctively and humourously, Eric and I lean in, take on Kim Philby- Cambridge Five toff accents, and wonder "Could Langley be on to us!?" Funny thing, twenty five years ago you would have probably been shot or at least suspiciously gulaged for joking about such stuff in that city.
That evening, finding the town bizarrely demure for a browse of restaurants and bars, we settled on investigating a restaurant with a highlighted wine menu that I had noted in the guide book. Called Borbirosag, it was located on another empty, non-descript square in the south end of Pest and turned out to be one of the memorable restaurants of my whole life.
It's about half full on this balmy Saturday night in August and we get an outside table. The service is immediately friendly, intimate, and knowledgeable. Their wine list is a thing of beauty. Some two hundred wines available by the glass, and all of them Hungarian! The actual menu wasn't a trifle either as we both enjoyed wonderful meals.
I'm not a food porn kind of guy, so I basically recall that Eric had a whole white fish, possibly pan fried, that came apart beautifully. I had a tenderloin of beef alongside the Hungarian foie gras equivalent that's a local favourite.
What impressed me most with the Hungarian wine was it's breadth. Encompassing a range of well known varietals, both red and white, in addition to their own homegrown niche grapes. They might not have the mass scale export capability of a Chile or South Africa, but compared to Canadian wine, say, they left us stone dead, and all with enticing prices; at least there in the Hungarian Forint.
Both nights (we ended up returning for round two on our last night it was so memorable) we naturally started with white before moving onto red either with dinner or the cheese course.
My favourite white was a Furmint, the local grape grown historically for Tokaj, the famous sweet wine of centuries gone by. This dry offering, from the village of Mad in north-eastern Hungary (I'm sure there's an accent in there over the 'a' but not sure which one, or how my computer does it) was crisp and yet full of flavour. Somewhere between a cleaner Sauvignon Blanc and a fruitier Pinot Grigio.
Next we had a couple gorgeous reds from the Ikon vineyard situated around Lake Balaton, a resort area not far from Budapest. Their 'Evangelista' offering is 100% Cabernet Franc (always one of my favourite grapes) and retails around £11 if you can find it in the UK, which I would happily pay. The rarer 'Tulipan' bottling is a bordeaux blend, and regarded as a top notch Hungarian wine.
Our waiter was a young man and did yeoman's service in shepherding us through the pages of the exhaustive wine list, which was fantastically interesting for it's inherent foreignness. The second visit, the food was just as good, but a couple times I was left feeling average on the staff's wine calls, asking more than once for something "closer to what I had last time".
Ultimately, having an all round jolly time and deciding to proverbially push the boat out on the Hungarian Forint, I simply asked as the waitress, "what is the best red wine you have?" I can assure you I've never done that at a restaurant before, nor unlikely will again in most conceivable circumstances.
I was brought a glass of 2009 St. Andrea 'Merengo' from Eger region, and it was a fascinating blend of 40% Merlot, 33% Kekfrankos (whatever the hell that is), 20% Cabernet Franc, with a bit of Syrah and Pinot Noir. Maybe it was just me at the end of another lovely meal, but it was everything a young but brilliant claret wine should be like. Incredible length and succulent tannins. It was so good, I took another glass of it over a harder edged night cap.
I see online Jancis Robinson, the esteemable veteran British wine writer, has given this bottling only a B+ kind of grade, which does make me wonder: maybe it is all in the setting, and the ambiance, and the expectation to enjoy one's wine. By the way, with conversion, the glass of this amazing restaurant's best red wine cost about £8. About what you'd pay for a large glass of plonk in a Kensington pub.
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| the old tour guide in me |
As for the rest of our site-seeing, naturally we had more history on the docket. First up was the largest synagogue in Europe, which upon entering is notable for its basilica like plan. What was especially moving was the adjoining cemetery, which was full of dates from the winter of '44-45. Spectacularly, not even needing transportation to the concentration camps, the vast majority of these poor souls had simply starved to death locked inside the streets of the Budapest ghetto.
Next, we travelled by commuter train to the northern hinterland of the city for a glimpse at archaic and repetitive Roman crap, which I adore. We found ourselves in the half decently preserved shin-high ruins of Aquincum, one of the remotest Roman civilian towns in the empire. The very limits of the province of Pannonia.
On our final day we toured the Hungarian Parliament in the morning, a building often regarded as one of the jewels of the Danube. Afterwards we hit up the thermal baths at the renowned Gellert Hotel on the Buda banks of the river.
Bathing suits in plastic bags, we manage a sortie into the side entrance of this grand edifice. It was kind of like entering a central national library and asking where we go swimming. Soaring vaults, marbled floors, and bronze statues greeted us as we paid our day pass.
We split our time between the hilarity of the Jude Law-ian Grand Budapest Hotel scenes in the main indoor pool, to chilling with a couple beers on the patio deck of the outdoor wave pool and massive hot tub. And to think we were situated in a veritable oasis in the middle of a large metropolis, was one of the coolest experiences of my life.
From the Keleti Station we boarded the train westbound and disembarked in the Habsburg capital, Wien.
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