I
am not drunkard, but I love wine.
The
famous lines in the traditional Hungarian song that says,”
Meg
azt mondjak reszeges vagyok pedig en a jobort szeretem nagyon…….
Even
if you are drunkard or not or just a social drinker, the Szeged Bor/Wine
festival is for you. I really don’t drink any alcoholic beverages, but during
the one-week festival starts from May 18 to 27, I really give in to that. The
aroma of wine, brandy and whisky is on the air. You can’t stop your self from
tasting them.
We
arrived at Szeged bus station on May 25, Friday at exactly 10:08 in the
morning. We visited the huge fruit and vegetable market nearby. Suddenly, we
received a message from my husband’s cousin, Iren Pinter that she was in the
bus station waiting for us. We don’t know exactly how she will look like
because they never meet for long time. To my surprise, Tibor and Iren just
hugged and recognized each other at their first glimpse.
We
went home and had a welcome wine drinks with her, Imre and Iren’s mom, Julis
(We call her Julisnenya.). Welcome drink with Tokay wine is their tradition in
welcoming their guests. They actually cheer saying “ egeszsegedre”.
After
having lunch, we went down to the city and going around the center to see how
beautiful Szeged was. You could see people dancing and some were playing the
traditional instruments and others were of course selling food and wine.
The
buildings are immaculately beautiful. They had been built more than centuries
now. According to my husband, Tibor, these buildings were used to be palaces in
Hungary. Not only buildings, we saw also some mural paintings, which were
beautifully made to depict the history of the country.
Szeged
is not only famous with their Wine Festival, but they also well known with
their famous land mark, The Szeged Church that has Two tall and huge towers.
Believe me or not, but we did climb up on one of these towers just to see the
view of the city at night .It takes 10 minutes to go up and down, but it’s
worth it because we had seen the pictures taken around 1980s when the Tisza
river which overflowed that damaged millions of properties. Going that way made
us feel mercy to them who lost their houses. After feeling sad, the mood
changed when we got to the top. It feels good, while looking the down the huge
crowd during the night rock concert.
The
party is not yet over. We actually witnessed the fireworks display during the
last day of the festival that was lasted for 10 minutes together with the
Hungarian classical live band. In fact, Tibor and I were dancing in the middle
of the crowd. When the concert was over, Iren’s friends and us went to another
venue to drink another wine again. It’s really fun that we had 3 days and
nights drinking only wine.
Please
don’t get me wrong. I am not really drunkard, but I really love the sweet Tokay
wine. It is sweet, but it’s very strong. After drinking one shot given by
Iren’s friend Tibor, I felt a bit tipsy. Like the wine festival or they called
“ Szeged Borfesztival is sweet, but strong. After we enjoyed the sweet moment
of the festival, we were so much tired that we slept as soon as we hit the pillow. But
then, it was a great experience to meet new friends and experience new culture
and history here at Szeged. Thank you Iren and your friends, Imre, and Julisnenya for making this event so special and memorable.
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