Eger: Fortresses and Bull's Blood

Eger is a beautiful place, a couple of hours by train outside of Budapest. It’s the kind of town where a ruined fortress overlooks the burgundy roofs below.

We started our day there at Károly College, where a famous Astronomical Tower resides with one of the only existing functional camera obscuras left in the world (our guide claimed the only other one is in Scotland). I wasn’t sure how much to be impressed by this, but it’s actually pretty cool- something like the oldest version of a periscope that gives you a 360 degree, projector-like view of the city. The creaking of the metal rods our guide used to control the camera obscura assured us that this is, indeed, old technology!

Another plus of the Astronomical Tower: killer views of the city!

Afterwards we headed to the historical castle, in which “a small Hungarian garrison” famously fended off a Turkish invasion in 1552 (before the Turks captured the town forty years later- anyone feel the bitterness yet?). Some two hundred years later the Austrians demolished half of the castle in order to save money, so naturally as a demonstration of the usefulness of... I guess gunpowder, in the museum tour I had the unorthodox experience of actually setting a small mound of gunpowder on fire (probably would not be a thing in America).

The entrance of the ruined castle. Looks a little spooky, doesn't it?

By far the best thing about the castle was wandering the ruined walls. There were remnants of snow and beautiful views of the nearby Basilica and Turkish minaret. Sightseeing in the winter means not many other tourists, and there’s something profoundly magical about walking alone in a castle somewhere in the middle of Europe...

Posing on the walls, wishing I were wearing a Game of Thrones costume.

In the evening, we went to the Valley of Beautiful Women, because conveniently Eger is also home to some famous wine country. This was wine tasting number 2 for me, and the highlight is Eger’s Bull’s Blood wine (Egri Bikavér) so named allegedly because sixteenth century Hungarians would smear the wine on their faces and around their mouths, using its deep red color to scare the invading Turks into believing that they actually drank blood. Scary stuff. It’s good wine, though!

So happy and buzzing with bull’s blood, all of us crazy American students sang on the train ride home. It was a wonderful day.