Eger, Hungary

Breakfast at the hostel was spent trying to balance eating with talking to Sophie in Amsterdam and verbally confirm a new flat over Skype that we wouldn’t be able to see and just had to take her word for… Which we did… And so, with a home to arrive to when we finally got there, we made our way to the castle. Skipping the tours and the exhibitions, we instead walked the grounds and took in the views. There wasn’t a great deal to see, but it was a lovely day. We had spied a very tall and pin-thin tower not too far away, and decided to climb to the top. Luckily I am only mildy claustrophobic, as it was so hard to get up, and we had to duck so our heads didn’t hit the steps above us as we spiralled up to the top. It seemed to go on forever, but we eventually arrived at the platform that wrapped the top, holding on to the iron rail for dear life. We shuffled around the platform, and then attempted to get back to the bottom, which proved more difficult than the journey up.

Eger’s highlight was said to be the wine region, and not too far a walk from the town centre lay ‘the valley of beautiful women’, which was where all the wine caves were, and is apparently regarded as an incredibly deceiving name for the area… We arrived to find a varied mixture of different caves, from branded boutiquey renovated caves to basic ‘holes in the ground’ with mould-lined ceilings and big barrels of booze in the back. The idea is that you buy wine by the 2L plastic jug to take away with you. We started in one of the nicer places and enjoyed a different red each inside - each delicious, and it was so lovely to sit in a cool cave during the intense heat of the day. It was then time to move on to some of the cheaper places for some more taste testing, and we were on a mission to find some more bull’s blood to take to Poland, and something else a bit different. We tried some very sweet reds, which were quite odd to us, and some very tasty ones that you could only buy by the bottle, but our testing paid off and we walked away with 2L of bull’s blood, 2L of a lovely cabernet sauvignon, and a small bottle of bull’s blood so that the boys could recreate the legend of the bull’s blood name now that their beards were coming in quite nicely. All very cheaply priced and delicious!

It was nearly time to leave Eger, and we headed back to our accommodation to collect our things before running to get some pizzas for a picnic in the park before boarding our train. Luckily no one was around to witness Josh and Andrew with their tops off, pouring red wine through their beards and playing up to the camera.

We made our way to the station prepared for a long journey ahead of us, as we were catching a night train to Krakow. We had a change to make to connect up to the Krakow train, and when we arrived at the station with 15 minutes to spare before our train arrived, Andrew went to check out which platform we were leaving from. While he was checking, a train pulled up for Krakow, and we checked with the conductor (who didn’t speak much English) what time it would leave to see if it was our train. We thought he told us it would leave in 15 minutes, but when the train took off as we were waiting for Andrew we hit panic mode. Josh found another conductor who said it wasn’t our one (whew!) and that ours was running 45 minutes late. Then he left. Now we were basically the only ones at the whole station, waiting on the platform in the darkness, hoping like hell that the train would arrive. It finally did, and we jumped onto the most rickety old carriage, not sure we would be able to sleep a wink before we arrived into Krakow around 6am.

Josh searched down the rest of the train, and found a slightly better carriage (with seat covers), but the only sleeper carts were getting released from the train halfway through our journey in Slovakia. Josh met a Slovakian family down the train while trying to charge his computer at a power point in the hallway, and made instant friends who bought him a beer when they found out he was from New Zealand, gave him a gift of Bulgarian alcohol they had bought on their family holiday, and warmed his heart a little! Especially as all he had to offer in return was a tacky New Zealand postcard, but they were just lovely.It was beginning to get late, and we contorted our bodies through the cabin, but none of us slept more than a few very broken hours, in the uncomfortable, noisy cabin which got colder and colder as the night went on. We arrived just before 6am to a chilly dawn at the station, all very drowsy, unsure how we could face the day ahead...