Wine Tasting

Hungary is famous for it's wine. They have been creating wines for thousands of years, so they really know what they're doing. http://www.winesofhungary.com/history.htm. Yestery I went to the Hungarian House of Wines to wine taste. It was astounding. It's located in Buda, rather near Fisherman's Bastian. You enter and are greeted by a very distinguished gentleman in a three piece suit. The price for admission is 4000 forints, which is around 20 US dollars. It was worth every penny. With admission you are given a wine glass, a bag of bready croutons that cleanse the pallet, and a map of the wine cellar. You descend some concrete stairs to a well-lit, impeccable basement absolutely filled with wine. There are over 700 varieties to try, with about 60 bottles open at a time. You walk through a labyrinth of passage ways and little caves filled with wine bottles. Whenever you see an open bottle that you'd like to try, you uncork it, and pour as much as you desire into your wine glass. The wines are arranged by region with a mural behind them describing their history and taste in German, Hungarian, and English. I was happily wandering the halls, and I stopped to try a white wine that had an interesting bottle (because, unfortunately, that's as much as I know about the quality of wines). I sipped it, trying my best to look like a connoiseur, and rather vacantly read the history of this particular region. I was startled to realize that the very wine I was drinking used to be drunk on wedding nights to encourage the birth of a male heir. Needless to say, I moved on past this particular exhibit. You are allowed 2 hours in the cellar, but no one really checks up on you, so realistically, you could sample wines for hours at a time. It was a very interesting place to people watch. There were men who looked as if they live in mansions and smoke cigars, but there were also foreigners with backpacks who were thrilled at the "all you can drink in two hours" rule. There were families with mothers carrying young children, holding hands with smiley fathers. There was a bachelorette party getting a guided tour. It was definitely a cross section of the world.

On a vastly different note, we finally have heat and hot water after 5 days of going without it. We noticed one night that we didn't have hot water, so the next morning we called our landlord, who told us that that problem had happened last semester, and gave us a fix for it. We were happy, took showers in peace, and assumed the problem was fixed. Two hours later there was no hot water again, and the fix didn't work; rather it made our hot water heater emit disturbing, sputtering noises. We woke the next morning in frosty conditions. Suddenly, it occurred to us that we hadn't paid our utility bill!! After much deliberation we figured out how much we owed, and ran to the post office (where you pay the bills). We handed the bill to the lady behind the counter, and she started speaking rapid Hungarian and gesticulating madly, waving around a yellow sheet of paper. We assumed that maybe we needed such a piece of paper, so we returned to our apartment, unearthed a yellowish tab, and ran back to the post office. We handed over the money and the yellow sheet, and she returned a receipt. We waited all day in hope that our utilities would come back on. Over 24 hours passed, and still no heat, no hot water. We asked around, and it turns out that there was no way our utilities could be shut off, so something must be broken in our apartment. So, our landlord came over, and indeed, something was very very broken. They sent over a repair man later that night to fix the problem. It turns out that it was a hugely difficult problem dealing with the inner computer (or something like that) so he had to come back the next day with the correct parts. However, the repair man didn't speak a word of English. Of course he picked me to try to talk to about the problem and he waved a wrench around talking sedatly in Hungarian, as if by speaking veeeery slowly I would magically understand the Hungarian words for things like "boiler" and "thermostat." After a phone consultation with our landlord, we arranged that he would stop by the next morning between 9 and 10 to fix the problem. Around 4:00 he finally came. By this time, our apartment was so icy that it was necessary to wear mittens. I was in a fantastic mood all day, as one can easily imagine. In any case, we now have heat, hot water, and apparently a new water boiler.

Happy Heat and Wine!

PS, I added pictures of some of my friends and I at the Hungarian House of Wines.