Sopron

I don't drink much beer in Hungary. I've grown used to the grainy micro-brews of Seattle and the beer here is Coors-like. Two brands you'll easily find in Hungary are Dreher and Soproni; and while we were in no hops for a brew pilgrimage, I was very excited to head to Soproni's town, Sopron, a small city in the northwest corner an hour away from Vienna that Lonely Planet calls a little Prague.

In most of our travels lately, we have been very happy to take a train, more relaxing on the way in and much more relaxing once there. But we took a car this time and made several other stops: Sümeg and its 13th century hilltop castle; Sárvár, home to the Blood Countess Báthory Erzsébet, a possible source for Dracula's legend; Fertőd, site of the lavish Esterházy party palace; Nagycenk, home of the more civic-minded Széchenyis and "the greatest Hungarian"; and Kőszeg, called the jewelry box of Hungary.

Once we emerged from the chaos of the Balaton district, past some quiet fields, we turned a corner, and there rising from the plains beside a Lidl and a Tesco, was a stunning fortress on a hill. According to its website, the Sümeg castle was home to King Béla IV during the Mongolian invasion (1241-1242) and it is the "only fortress in Hungary that the Turks were unable to capture." They also sold kürtős kalács there for 400 forints.

We have visited some spectacular palaces, fortresses and castles in our travels around Europe so far, but this one -- small, broken, open to the elements -- this visit was one of our most delightful. True, it didn't have the two hour long cutlery tour we encountered in Vienna's Hofburg palace and no cartoonist ever based a logo on its profile, as was true of Germany's Neuschwanstein, but its wind and stones and uncrowded paths allowed us to open ourselves up to it in ways we didn't in the more properly touristed sites.

Not far from  Sümeg we stopped by another castle, in Sárvár. Báthory Erzsébet (1560-1614) who lived here after her marriage to the so-called Black Knight, was considered to have killed 600 peasant women, based on her handwritten lists and descriptions, and she was convicted of killing eighty; she was witnessed biting chunks out of women's breasts and necks; and she was thought to bathe in the blood of virgins as a means of maintaining her youth. The Rough Guide to Austria has a well-written, brief description. The BBC has a longer description and more careful analysis of facts, and it includes several eye-catching eye-witness descriptions from Dracula was a Woman. There's a good blog entry about Báthory, even if it is from a site called vampirelegends. Each of these provide more specific and vivid descriptions than I provide here. Finally, here is a preview of the movie referenced in the above blog. Below is a picture of the castle that so bored Erzsébet that she began torturing and eating women for fun.

So why is Sopron considered a little Prague? Its buildings are the right vintage and colors, its churches are several and dramatic, and its squares provide a similar charm. Because one of the girls' favorite things we did here, in addition to the walking around the beautiful curved streets, was visit the archeology museum, we did get a feel for some of the history of this town. Before there were Hungarians, before there were Christians, Sopron was Scarbantia, a town on the Amber Road. Artifacts from the Roman Empire and even from the Celts before them were plentiful. Above all, Sopron also has a place in the heart of most Hungarians because, in 1921, the city actively chose to be remain a part of Hungary in defiance of a treaty awarding it to Austria.

Sopron also boasts a connection to Franz Liszt. Liszt Ferenc was born in what was then Sopron County. While he spent most of his life in Paris, Liszt gave a concert in Sopron at the age of 9; he returned for a second concert in 1840; and then, to absolutely cement Sopron's claim on Liszt forevermore and stock museums and concert halls and festivals and coffee houses in his honor, Liszt had a third concert in Sopron. We loved the Liszt Salon, where we were served gorgeous hot drinks on trays with shots of cold water in a comfortable room with dark wood furniture and Liszt history and murals covering the walls. My hot chili chocolate drink was outsanding. Below you can glimpse the aesthetics of the experience.

Another coffee shop exceeded the first in fine furnishings and cake selection, and Amelia loved her apple rétes there (strudel), loved it, but I missed the calm and hospitality (and spicy cocoa) of the Liszt salon. Even so, what welcome luxuries are the coffee shops of the world!

Stepping outside, this is what you might see of Sopron:

We left Sopron for a day trip to visit the Esterházy Palace, a place designated a UN World Heritage Site in 2004 and called the Hungarian Versailles, and for 30 years, the working home to composer Joseph Haydn. Much of it was under construction during our visit, which is good for the palace, I suppose, and the humble fences and dirt and scaffolding did nothing to hide the immensity of wealth represented by the place. Prince Nikolaus II (1765-1833) built the palace in this aristocratic impulse: "Anything the (Habsburg) emperor can afford, I can afford too." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called it the "fairy kingdom of the Esterházys" after attending a ball at the palace. Nikolaus -- throwing parties, debauching women, sequestering composers, raiding the world of masterpieces via the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars -- is certainly an emblem of 18th century Hungarian power.

Perhaps I am unkindly coloring the Esterházys as self-indulged patricians. It is very hard not to do when only a few kilometers away is the Széchenyi household. While the Széchenyis were a noble, wealthy family, just like the Esterházys, they were interested in very different things: the common good, for instance. Count István (1791-1860), a contemporary of Nikolaus, came to be known as the Greatest Hungarian. In a visit to Budapest's Academy of Sciences on February 4th (where I took the picture of the painting at right, and more importantly, which he established after conferring all of his estate's income to the project), we learned some of the reasons why: He engineered a path to modernity politically, attacking aristocratic privilege and imagining an egalitarian Hungary; he engineered the rivers themselves to open trade routes, even straightening the Tisza River and rescuing much of Hungary from flooding; he connected Buda and Pest with the construction of the Chain Bridge, the Lánchíd; and much more, certainly.

While visiting the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, I was thrilled and almost ashamed to be given the opportunity to not only view but to handle Széchenyi's diary, of which you can see two pictures below, including sketches of a bridge. He wrote in German, in French, in English sometimes, but not, surprisingly, in Hungarian, which, as a nobleman educated in Vienna, he knew only sparingly. This is the kind of unembarrassed access the great Hungarian hero imagined for the world.

So, below we see the Széchenyi mansion, kilometers and light years away from the Esterháza.

On our way from Sopron, we went to Kőszeg, a town just a few hundred heads smaller than Barcs. Sophie stepped out of the car, groggy from reading, and frowning at a stop far from home. But she was soon open and bright, as we all were, after an encounter with a sparkling town perhaps few Americans visit. 

Kőszeg's history dates to the 13th century, which you can read on the town's website, and this history includes a claim that they saved Vienna from the Turks. From caboodle.hu: "Suleiman the Magnificent and his one-hundred-thousand-strong Turkish army laid siege to the town in August 1532. Impressively, they were held off by just four hundred Hungarian troops under the command of Captain Miklós Jurisics, putting the brakes on any Turkish advances on Vienna. The Turks fled at 11 a.m. on August 30th, and the victory is commemorated every morning in Kőszeg with the pealing of church bells."

We were there for the eleven o'clock bells. Amelia shot arrows for the second time. We walked the moat of a castle. We ate bismarks and rétes. And we headed home, satisfied, full, happy.

Meanwhile, today is the Ides of March and a Hungarian holiday, commemorating the freedom fight against the Habsburgs occurring in 1848.

Japan, you are on our minds. A travel blog such as this presents itself as focused always on adventure, always on a legacy of joy. But certainly you must know it is not a whole truth.