Today we officially moved on to Hungary for the trip, despite visiting Tokaj yesterday we returned to Slovakia to sleep. For the next few days we will be in Hungary.
Our stop today was the nearby city of Miskolc. But as soon as we crossed over we ran across a Lidl so we added some food, and a bottle of Tokaj wine to the refrigerator. We are also going to have to recalibrate our minds from Euro’s to Forints, we spent the whole time asking each other questions like is 499 Forints a good price for a liter of OJ? Yesterday as we were driving we noticed all of the gas stations had diesel set at 619 Forints per liter, Ton did the math and that came out to €1.69 per liter, since diesel was around €1.80 in Slovakia we decided to fill up in Hungary. The problem was when we pulled into the first station there was a long note taped on the pump that told us the 619 Forint price was for Hungarian registered vehicles only, and that non-Hungarian vehicles had to pay 688 Forint’s. That turned out to be about 10 cents a liter more than it would have been in Slovakia. Oh well…
Miskolc is starting to get a little light on the tourist trail primarily for its food scene. The downtown core has a section of older buildings, but more so than in most cities we have visited a large part of the skyline is dominated by buildings built in the communist era which look like large Lego blocks made of poor concrete. The city was heavily damaged in WWII so the reconstruction was done by the communist government and the buildings that are not Lego blocks are built in the Brutalist Style that the communists favored which is not nearly as stylish as the art deco and baroque styles you see in most of Europe.
Miskolc oozes a blue collar vibe, and as it was Monday most of the cafes and restaurants were closed on the main street which has a very long name, that even the locals have shortened to Forint Street, as that is where all of their money goes.
There is an area of town that is built on the side of an extinct volcano that has hundreds of caves that have been used for various purposes in history, but today are being used primarily for wine.
We headed there to take a look, and passed a beautiful church that was the architectural highlight of the trip. You have to earn your wine in the Avos district as it is quite a climb from the city center. Unfortunately, for us it was Monday and all of the wine places were closed.
I think we caught the town at its least charming and I suspect that on a nice weekend with a crowd on Forint Road and all of the restaurants and wine stores open it would feel a lot more dynamic than it did today. We ended up spending about 3 hours exploring and then decided to move on to our next stop.
It was a quick drive to Eger and we arrived at what was a campground, but has been converted to an Aire. The problem is it is a no contact aire so you have to log into a website enter all of your information make your payment and then they send you a code to open the gate and enter. It was a frustrating 45 minute process due to a poorly constructed website, a poor WIFI connection, and two boomers trying to work a computer. We eventually got a code to enter, but must have done something wrong because about an hour later someone drove up and asked to see our proof of purchase. After some conversation on the phone in Hungarian the person confirmed we were ok. I am more and more missing people at check in.
