Travels with Joan and Lou: Through The Czech Republic to Hungary

I have been trying to master at least a few words in Czech since I got here. They will not stick. I don't know why I can't remember thank you which is something like djyekwee. I've got "please" but rarely use it. I understand Hungarian is even more of a challenge. It has been eye-opening that so many people speak either some or fluent English. It has become the Lingua Franca of this age. This, on the other hand an example of Hungarian. It means "housekeeper" and was a sign on the door in one of our hotels.

Today (Day3) we road through more fields as the temperature rose. There are red poppy-like flowers, fields of them and now vineyards of grapes. We have ridden into the Hungarian wine country. This was the day with a steep hill in the middle of the ride it wasn't awful but the fact that it was hot with no shade on the climb did made it a bit more challenging. We elected to do what we were told was an additional 12 miles that was supposed to be almost all downhill. It wasn't. It was rolling hills, some steep and with the heat, it was a push. Our ride today ended at a sumptuous castle originally owned by the Lichtenstein Family as a summer home. We walked trough the gardens but it was pushing 90 degrees and was after that long hot 54 mile ride. I noted it was pretty but maybe I didn't fully appreciate it in the moment.

We stayed at a lovely hotel that often hosts weddings and parties. That evening we had a wonderful meal outside overlooking a lake with the group. This was followed by wine tasting in a cellar run by a man whose family has been making wine in this region for generations. Maybe you have tasted wine in California but it's nothing like this event in Hungary. The vintner is an older man with a very large circumference. We each got a glass and he took this very large wine siphon and sucked a large amount of the first wine and gave each of us a generous portion. It tasted like a young, grassy white wine. We drained the glass and he poured another portion of a second white wine. It was described differently but tasted a lot like the first. We got another portion of what was supposed to be a moscato. Somehow, they all tasted the same. Meanwhile the 15 of us are squeezed into a small underground cellar surrounded by barrels of wine . One of the guides Martina translated all his explanations and stated that there were going to be 8 wines to taste. When he was describing how one wine was made Martina had trouble coming up with the English word for "skin." She said it in Czech and it became the toast as we raised our glasses for the rest of the trip: Shloopka! The group got louder and louder. Lou and I started pouring our wine onto the rocks under the barrels. It didn't seem to matter because the wine guys was spilling a lot of wine on the floor as he poured the next selection. He kept saying that he tried to make the wine as natural as possible and that his wines shouldn't cause a hangover. We decided not to tempt the fates especially because we are such lightweights and to walk back to the hotel on our own before the drinking concluded and a little food was served. Others chose to stay and didn't seem any the worse for wear in the morning.

The next morning (Day 4) we returned by bus to the Lichtenstein Castle for a short tour. It is very well maintained with beautiful wood-carved walls, ceilings and staircases. The castle was first taken from the family by the Nazis and then by the Czech government. Since this was just a summer palace maybe the Lichtenstein family hardly missed it when it was taken. If I understood correctly, the wife of Lichtenstein whose portrait was on the wall - pregnant was in this condition 24 times. I guess it would have been hard to paint her other than when she was pregnant. I believe 9 children survived but her body must have been somewhat changed from when she was a lovely young thing. Her husband used to sit in one of the rooms obsessing over a painting of a nude woman much to his wife's consternation.

This is the painting Lichtenstein obsessed over.

Hard for a picture to do justice to this amazing staircase.

Today's ride took us through a nature reserve (very bumpy bike path) ending at the ruins of the Devin Castle just outside the Hungarian city of Bratislava. The Morava River and the Danube meet here. This was the place where many people tried to cross the river to escape from the Soviet controlled Eastern Bloc to the West. There is a monument in honor of those who were killed, died in the escape or were deported to gulags. We even passed a remnant of the barbed wire fence that kept people in. At the end of today's ride we loaded onto the bus and transferred to Sopron (Sho-prawn) another UNESCO Heritage City.