Last Sunday I was with my family in the city of Eger, in the North-East of Hungary, about a 2 hours' ride from Budapest. Every Hungarian has been on one of the school trips, and then later during university to get a little wasted from the many wines in the Szépasszonyvölgye ("the valley of the beautiful woman" - the name might want to indicate that every woman turns into a beauty after 2 litres of wine :))
Apart from tasting good wines, you can count all the kinds of churches, visit the medieval fortress, meet some medieval fighters and learn in details about the torturing methods of all times in the torture museum!
The fortress is known by every Hungarian kid - we all have to learn in history our famous battle against the Turkish. The Turkish Empire was occupying half Europa, and also Hungary, 1526 Mohács was gone (we still have a saying which goes if you are sad about something you ought not to be: "We have lost more at Mohács"), but in 1552, at Eger the little troop in the fortress stopped the huge Turkish army. Gárdonyi Géza, our writer wrote about this a book named "the stars of Eger" and we all have to read it - for those lazy ones there is the movie to watch. To get an idea about the fight check out this video:one of the comments says that we could make movies already decades ago which compete with The lord of the rings :D :D
If you are in the castle, and the sun is setting, find the spot where you have the view like in my photo: the sun is exactly between the two towers!
And do not miss the torture museum!! It is rather trashy as a museum, and of course all the information is only in Hungarian but I guess you can use your fantasy to understand how things worked... There is really creepy stuff out there, and look at the year dates!!! Even in the 19th century, various torture methods were used widespreadly.... Actually, I started wandering that the so called kaloda (stock in English) could be a nice thing even these days for petty crimers, corrupt ministers, or the always too loud neighbour :DWhat do you think?
Bakonyi Zsuzsa
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