Take another shot of courage

The small bottle of bright red vodka looked appetising and exotic on the shelf of a Hungarian supermarket but back at the van it just tasted like slightly sweetened medicine and we couldn’t finish the 250mls.

After our night toasting the best of German football with schnapps, we vowed to be more adventurous with alcohol as we travelled but there were bound to be mistakes.  Egri Bikaver or Bulls Blood is one of Hungary’s well known wines; this comes from the area around the lovely town of Eger and it would have been remiss of us not to have a bottle of this robust red wine while we were in the area and chose a mid-price bottle that we did manage to finish.  To sustain us while sightseeing in Eger, we also sampled the coffee and fantastic cakes in one of the glamorous cafes that would not look out of place in a Viennese street. 

Back with the alcohol sampling, many tourist shops sell something called Unicum 1790 Zwack in dark coloured round bottles, something like a Marmite jar.  Unfortunately, it did not taste as nice as Marmite and was more like sour Veno's cough medicine, another failed experiment.

The best and most expensive Hungarian wine is said to come from the area around Tokaj in the north, near the Slovakian border.  This small town is surrounded by vine yards and hordes of wine producers.  In Tokaj every other shop sells wine and tasting the local sweet wines clearly attracts the tourists.  We are not very fond of sweet, dessert wines and so purchased a dry Tokaj wine, which went down very well on a sunny evening on our waterlogged pitch... have we mentioned the weather?