Hungarian Cuisine

 As the trip approached, I was not sure whether or not I would like the local cuisine.  Not that it would be a real issue if I didn't, Budapest is obviously large enough to get whatever type of food I wanted.  It turns out that I really enjoyed the food.  Hungary is known for its spicy (not spicy hot, but actually full of spices) food.  They use a lot of paprika, amongst other spices.  I read somewhere that there are over 40 types of paprika.  Who knew?  My travel buddy and I were also brave and tried a variety of local wines and liquers (we are brave little soldiers).

Goose confit
Verdict: recommend

chicken paprika with dumplings (thick noodles)
verdict: excellent.  We had this dish as well as beef paprika at several different establishments.  The worst one that we had was still pretty darn good








Below: some fancy chicken paprika and fancy dumplings.....very pretty

Langos
Verdict:  Kind of a fail.  This is a deep fried hunk of bread with the toppings of your choice.  I think you would need to have recently consumed quite a few alcoholic beverages.  This meal sucked the energy right out of me.  I had to go back to the hotel and get a nap.

 A walk-through window outside of McDonald's.  We didn't go there, but I thought this was funny.









Goulash.  Verdict:  Recommend.  This is a lot different than what we call goulash.  It had a thin broth.  It was quite good.

Unicum.  Verdict:  Not good.  Unicum is a strong liquer.  It is extremely spicy.  I have never had anything like it.  I hope to never have anything like it ever again.

I think my travel buddy's face says it all.  And that was just from smelling it.  I missed the look of revulsion after she tried it.

Palinka.  Right below.  Verdict:  Much better than unicum.  This is also a very strong liquer.  Not too bad.  It didn't make me want to die the way unicum did.  Next picture:  Hungarian beer....didn't catch the name.  Verdict:  good.  I didn't meet a Hungarian beer that I didn't like.

 In my hand, one of the many Hungarian wines.  We had some really good wines while in Hungary.  One of the more interesting was called Bull's Blood.  It was a red wine from the Eger region.
Verdict:  recommend that you try quite a few different types.

 Lemon and Esterhazy cake.  Both were very good.

These were some fancy deserts that were very expensive (in a building right on a touristy square).  I was glad that we tried it (guidebook says everyone needs to at least try it), but I don't think I would shell out the extra money in the future.  Maybe I didn't appreciate it because I don't have a sophisticated palate.  In my opinion, the ice cream on the bottom one was the best part.

Budapest

Here is the first Budapest blog.  You will have to forgive me for being so late in posting, but as you all know, Mark is usually the one that does the posting.  We considered having Mark write the post based on the pictures without any input from Erin (by the way, not a hoser) or me, but we decided against that.  So here it goes....

Erin

One of the first things that I noticed.....Budapest is cheap.  And I think that is one of the best qualities in any city.  After appreciating how cheap it is, it occurred to me that Budapest is really, really nice.  Bulgarian prices in a sophisticated setting.  I'll take it.  Given that Hungary is an Eastern European country, I figured it would be similar to Bulgaria.  I was surprised at how much more it was like Western Europe (minus the price tag).  

Here are a few of the things that we experienced in Budapest:

A night at the opera.  Total price.  5 bucks.  Okay, I will stop with the price tags now.  

I will say it might be worth forking over some additional money if you ever find yourself in Budapest.  I was in charge of booking and there was only really cheap or really expensive tickets by the time I booked.  It was hard to see and we were near a bunch of noisy high schoolers.  Apparently they were on the same budget.  

Some shots of the opera after it was over.

A stroll through the park

mini Transylvania

Budapest has a large city park that has a mini replica of Transylvania in it.  You might be thinking to yourself...Transylvania is not in Hungary, that is weird to have a replica in Budapest (or maybe you weren't thinking that).  It turns out that Transylvania used to be in Hungary, but that part of Hungary was given to Romania after WWI.  Hungary actually lost land to each of its neighbors after WWI.  A lesson in foreign policy....If you want to keep all of your land, it is very important to pick the correct side in all World Wars.

More pictures from our walk through the park.

A monument that stands at edge of the park

The Baths

This was the first time that I was at a Turkish bath.  This is just the outside facilities.  There was an additional approximately 15 small to medium sized pools indoors and a number of sauna and steam rooms.  I will write more about this later.

Some pictures from the boat cruise on the Danube

Parliament

A walking tour.

Tour guide with statue of beer bellied Hungarian.  You need to rub the belly for luck.  

St Matthius Church

big church

More postings to follow for our day trips to Eger (small town in hungary) and Bratislava, Slovakia.  I will also post a few about Hungarian food and the baths.

Friday Night in Sofia

If this sign looks blurry to you, you may need some "Drink and Drive Services" - Sofia's answer to Sober-Cab.

Readers of this blog may have noticed that there have been few postings from Anne and Mark for a week or two.  One reason for that is that Anne had ventured north to spend a week in Budapest.  Hopefully, future postings on that trip will be forthcoming, although they will not be in the familiar "Anne and Mark" format as Mark was not involved in the trip.  Instead, they will be either in the "Anne visited" format, the equally-popular "Anne and her friend the hoser from Canada visited" format or the less popular "Anne forgot to write a post so there is nothing about Budapest posted on the blog" format (so... watch out for that).

However, the weekend before Anne left for Budapest, Anne and Mark spent a rainy couple of days in Sofia.  Sofia is the closest thing to a big city that you are going to find in Bulgaria.  It has about a million people, which is respectable.  However, it also has McDonald's, Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, which is what makes it a real city.

After checking into their hotel on Friday night, Anne and Mark decided to head out and check out the Sofia nightlife.  Some of the highlights can be seen in the video below:

For those who favor a description, here is some of what was going on in this video.  First scene: some guys on weird stilt-like contraptions running around and jumping and what not.  Mark saw one of these guys fall, but this was not caught on camera.  Mark assures you that no one was injured, but it was pretty funny.

Scene two: Anne gets rejected by a stray dog.  Anne appears to be on a mission feeding the stray dogs in Bulgaria this year.  Anne has always been a one-woman humane society, but this year she has stepped up her game.   Anne and Mark now both stink of hot dogs and kibble on a regular basis as they walk around town with a ready supply of food for the local strays.  Most of the time, these four-legged friends are beggars, not choosers and are happy and eager to scarf down whatever you have available.  However, this stray in Sofia must have had better options as he sniffs Anne's offering of a hot dog and turns his nose up.

Scene three: Anne and Mark were in a park and there were some performers.  The show started with some music.  It was enjoyable.  If you were the guy in the black leather jacket, it was really enjoyable.   From there the show morphed into a sing-along (the lyrics are on the screen behind the singers, so feel free to join in).

Scene four: So what was going on?  Apparently, it was a rally.  As the sign at the back of the stage states, the people are rallying for decent jobs.  Surely, this is a good cause.  We all want decent jobs.  So, what exactly are we talking about?  What is a decent job?  Manufacturing?  A trade?  Maybe professional jobs?  Well, how about a demonstration?  And what decent job should we demonstrate?  It's almost too obvious - fire dancer!  The show starts with two girls spinning some burning sticks.  Pretty cool.  Then they switch to burning hula hoops.  Also pretty cool (notice the support staff in the background trying to put out a fire that has gotten away from the performance area).  Finally, the full complement of fire dancers get on the stage and start spinning their flames in what Mark has interpretted as some sort of crazy "decent jobs or we'll burn this place down!" finale.  Very impressive (except for the girl in the middle, who appears a bit out of sync).

So, anyway, that was a pretty interesting night in Sofia.  Later, Anne and Mark went to the only nicest Indian restaurant in all of Sofia.  After obtaining a table despite not having reservations (you need reservations at an Indian restaurant in Bulgaria?  Who knew?), Anne and Mark eventually got down to business.  Anne enjoyed her meal, which consisted of hot hot hot and Mark enjoyed his meal, which was of course, green chicken.  All and all, a good night in Sofia.

Do not adjust your settings.

Bulgarian Churches in Turkey

As may have been mentioned previously in this space, the people of Bulgaria have some lingering issues with the borders of Bulgaria.  Namely, the Bulgarians long for days gone by when the borders of the nation empire extended much further than they do today.  The Bulgarians sometimes speak of Bulgaria touching three seas, as its borders formerly reached from the Black Sea on the east to the Aegean Sea on the south and the Adriatic Sea on the southwest.  Now, of course, Bulgaria still touches the Black Sea, but neither of the other two seas.

During the times that the Bulgarian Empire extended much further, the rulers of Bulgaria did their best to spread Slavic culture throughout the land, partially as a way to improve the lives of the people and partially as a way of preventing further infiltration by rival powers.  This is one reason that the Cyrillic alphabet was created.  The Slavic rulers wanted to prevent the people from using and falling in love with the Latin alphabet, which would inevitably lead to the use of the Latin languages, which would probably lead to sympathy for the Catholic Church, which leads to conversion to Catholicism, from which point you can easily be on the slippery slope to becoming a Notre Dame football fan (and no one wants that).   So they commissioned Cyril and his brother Methodius to write a new alphabet.  Cyril may or may not have been the smarter of the two, but he was definitely the better marketer as the alphabet the brothers developed was eventually named after him.  What gets named after Methodius?  Bulgarian dogs, mostly.

Another way that the powers that were tried to keep Bulgarian influence alive throughout the realm was to build churches in newly conquered lands.  On their way back from Istanbul, Anne and Mark had the chance to visit one of these churches.  It was a Bulgarian Orthodox church, but was now located in Turkey.

Top Line: Bulgarska Churkva.  I wonder what that means...

The Church was called St. George's (the bottom word on the sign above is "Georgi" - the 'p' is an 'r', the backward 'n' is an 'i', and the thing that looks like a hangman's noose is a 'g' - simple, right?).  Since it was located in Turkey, it was having some problems with attendance and upkeep.  The guide informed us that the Bulgarian ministry of culture was sending money to Turkey to provide for upkeep of this church.

That's the eye from the back of a dollar bill.

The church was loaded up with icons.  This is pretty standard for Bulgarian Orthodox decor.  The big-shot families donated either the icons or the money to buy the icons when the church was built.  You can see their names on the icons now.

Visting the church with a mix of tourists and native Bulgarians was an interesting experience.  Some of the native Bulgarians lit candles and prayed before certain icons, while the tourists milled about.  This was a little awkward.  But, apparently, Bulgarian Orthodox prayers can be quite short because then the Bulgarians started snapping photos and chatting.

No Stairway?  Denied!

One interesting aspect of the church for westerners is the layout.  First, this was a very, very small church.  It went up several levels, but the floor space in the main hall was minimal.  Second, there were no pews.  There were a few things that could be chairs, but they had icons lined up behind them - some of which looked very old and breakable.  It was not clear whether these were for sitting in.  In any case, there were no more than 30 places to sit.  Apparently, the Bulgarian Orthodox ceremonies involve a bit of standing.  Another interesting part of the building is shown in the photo above.  This is the closest thing Anne and Mark say to a pulpit or lectern.  It was not clear whether this structure, which looked to be glued- not nailed- to the column, would be able to support the weight of a Bulgarian Orthodox priest.  The final difference that struck Anne and Mark was that there really was no altar.  There were several places to light candles, but no altar.

After touring this church, Anne and Mark journeyed into the town and had lunch before crossing the border and finishing the return trip to Blagoevgrad.  While in the city they some thing that they usually do not see, as well as some things that they see everyday.  Guess which is which...

Cruising and Whirling

View from the breakfast room of our hotel

The second day in Istanbul, Anne and Mark decided to explore a bit of the city.  They embarked on a boat cruise that took them around the Bosporas Straits and the Sea of Marmara.  During this cruise the city of Istanbul will always be on either side of the boat, but it does take a good orientation and sense of direction to keep track of which side is Europe and which side is Asia.  Keeping track of this probably would have been easier had Anne and Mark been on an English tour.  However, for some reason, the charter service took the group (of mostly American students) on a guided boat tour in Bulgarian.  But do not fret, Anne and Mark were able to piece together much of the important information.  For example:

This was the Blue Mosque, as seen from the water.  But this is easy.  The Blue Mosque is one of the most iconic buildings of Istanbul.  Were Anne and Mark able to identify and appreciate some of the "lesser" landmarks?

Anne and Mark were able to conclude that this is the Turkish attempt at a Golden Gate Bridge.  Later, they figured out that this was the Turkish version of Buckingham Palace:

Apparently, in the analysis of Anne and Mark, Istanbul is a lot like Las Vegas - it has a series of recreations of famous buildings from other cities.

Ok, so maybe the guided tour would have added some value to our experience.  It was still a very nice boat tour, even though Mark and Anne were unable to get anything out of most of the guided portions.

I'm on a Boat!!

After landing back at the port, Anne and Mark observed some of the finest in Turkish commerce.  You have multiple ways to sell things in Istanbul.  There is the typical huge stack of breads carefully balanced on your head technique:

Taking the bread off the top is for losers.  Real Turks pull the bread from near the bottom in game similar to Jenga.

And they also have the 'bazaar' style of commerce, which entails taking about a thousand shops and salesmen and about 100,000 potential customers and just slamming them into the same general space.

The Spice Bazaar (also called the Egyptian Bazaar)

That evening, Anne and Mark decided to get all culturized, as they are want to do.  One thing you can see in Istanbul that you cannot see in most other places is the Mevlevi Sema Ceremony.  You may be more familiar with this when called by its more common name which has made its way into the English lexicon: the Whirling Dervishes.

The ceremony performed by the Dervishes is a religious ceremony for a particular group of Muslims.  The ceremony is loaded with symbolism and meaning, and Anne and Mark were curious as to what it was.  They had heard different things, such as that the point of the ceremony was for the participants to spin themselves into a trance, which would bring them closer to heaven.  This sounded interesting, so Anne and Mark headed over to the Hodjapasha Cultural Center.

The worst part about trying to find this was that whenever we asked directions, they acted like it was "right there."  Not helpful, fellas.

For those who are interested, this cultural center is next to impossible to find, hidden away on a side street, just off of the street on which it lists its address.  Anne and Mark planned ahead enough to track down the location earlier in the day, so as to avoid trouble closer to show time.  However, it was so difficult to find, it was nearly 4 pm before Anne and Mark hit paydirt in their search and were ready to head back to their hotel.  The cultural center was in the Sultanahmet neighborhood, while the hotel was past Laleli just off of Ordu Cadessi.  And you can imagine what the traffic is like on that road around 4! - Ok, well maybe you cannot not, but neither could Anne and Mark.  For future reference: traffic at that time of day (or at any other time in Istanbul) is a total mess.

Eventually, Anne, Mark and two Bulgarian friends (our cat sitter extraordinaire and her mother) made it to the performance.  The program said that the show would last one hour.  It also explained some of the symbolism, which was handy.  Finally, the program was very clear on two points: no photos and no applause.  The no applause rule was actually a relief, as this was a religious ceremony, so there would have been some pressure to not clap at the wrong time so as to avoid insulting the devoutly religious performers, but still pressure to applaud as appropriate so as to avoid insulting the devoutly religious performers.  A case of "reverse stage fright"?  The 'no photos' rule was a bummer, but Anne and Mark can report that the performers looked roughly like what other whirling dervishes look like:

The performers dressed like the men in the artwork above.  Anne and Mark had seen many pieces of artwork in Istanbul that seemed to celebrate the kinetic nature of these performances.  In the art, the gowns are always being swept into the air and spinning, indicating rapid motion.  But, just to be clear, the reality was much more a ceremony than a show.  The first 20-25 minutes were just the band (4 piece with a flute, percussion and two sitar-looking instruments accompanying three singers).  We did not see the first dervish until a full 25 minutes after taking our seats.  And then, when they did arrive in the performance area, the dervishes did several bows and prayers and other ceremonial type things.  After 31 minutes, we saw the first whirl by a dervish.  This created some excitement in the crowd.  There a total of five dervishes whirling.  They rotated around in a circle while whirling.  The choreography was impressive as they all had their eyes closed and still moved in synchronicity.

The one thing we did not expect, was that the whirling was very slow and never really became all that kinetic or rapid.   In fact, it might have been better described as 'smooth spinning.'  It kind of looked like they were standing on the infield of a Nascar track (one with no straightaways; just a big circle) and turning to keep their gaze fixed on the lead car.

The aspects of the performance that really impressed Anne and Mark were the discipline and endurance that the dervishes showed.  The spinning would go for five or ten minutes at a time and they never wavered or showed any sign of losing their balance or becoming dizzy.

After about 20 or 25 minutes of this, the dervishes did some other ceremonial-type things (knelt on the floor, bowed again) and then left.  For Anne and Mark, this was an interesting experience, although not what they had expected.

The Cistern Chapel

So, if anyone is wondering why the drinking water has a "fishy taste" - that's because there are fish in the drinking water. 

One of the major sites in the old portion of Istanbul is the Basilica Cistern.  Visitors today see a huge underground structure used to store water.  However, this site formerly housed a large Basilica, which was destroyed in a riot a few hundred years ago.  After the Basilica was destroyed, the site was changed into a large underground facility for the storage of water.

The huge structure is supported by several hundred large stone pillars.  It is believed that most of the pillars were taken from somewhere else and transported to Istanbul.  Some people will argue that these pillars were 'stolen' from other places in the empire before being brought back to Istanbul.  There are many, many things throughout Istanbul that were delivered there while the city was the capital of various empires (Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman, to name a few big ones).  For example, the obelisk behind Mark in the photo below is not native to Istanbul, but was delivered there to celebrate a great military victory (or something like that) and still stands in that city's Hippodrome.  Whether these things were "stolen," is a matter of opinion - usually influenced by whose ox is being gored.

That is not supposed to be here...

However, is it really even possible for the emperor to steal from within the empire?  I mean, if you're the emperor and you take something from your own empire and move it to another part of your empire, is that stealing?  If so, are you stealing from yourself?

But I digress.

One of the most obvious pieces of evidence indicating that the columns in the Basilica Cistern are not native to the site is the art contained on the columns.  In particular, there are two heads of Medusa that are used as bases for some columns.

Never trust a Gorgan.

Medusa is a character from mythology that you may recall.  There are a few different versions of her tale, but the two things they all have in common is that she had a head with snakes coming out it instead of hair (awesome) and that if you look at her, you will turn to stone (bogus).

These two columnar bases are carvings of Medusa.  Do not worry about turning to stone, however.  In addition to the mythology filter installed on the NewBulgarians blog, these carvings of Medusa were placed sideways and upside down by whomever placed them there.  This precaution is thought to reduce the chances of a 'flesh to stone' incident by at least 15 to 20%.

Other than the snakes for hair and being upside down, not a bad looking lady.

According to people who know about such things, these carvings were most likely done somewhere else in the Roman Empire (probably a little closer to Rome).  When the project to build this cistern was commissioned and required a few hundred columns, these and other statutes from around the empire were drafted into service.  They have remained on duty in the cistern ever since.

Anne and Mark found the Basilica Cistern to be stone cold awesome.