We are now in Hungary! Eger to be exact which is a major wine growing region in Hungary…and yes, apparently they have a massive wine culture and not many of them are even aware that Australia produces any wine! We are finally getting use out of the tent that we have been dragging around the world and set up camp in a campsite about 1 km away from all the cellar doors which is quite handy!
It seems that it isn’t quite the same as wine tasting at home here and it is expected that you order at least one glass of wine in each place rather than taste their whole selection and walk away. We worked this out after a couple of dismissive goodbyes so we started to ask if we could pay for a tasting instead of feeling obliged to buy a glass…this was received very well and we had some good experiences learning about all the wine styles here… and they are quite good…not as impressive as Bulgarian wines were but still very drinkable. We got a little carried away and now have three bottles of wine to try to fit on the bike with us… or drink… but I doubt much more wine drinking will get done tonight! Our time in Romania was fun… a little bit of medieval mixed with a little bit of Italian. The countryside was really beautiful and it seems like town after town was ‘oozing’ history as Lonely Planet would put it! It seems not only Italy has charm! Beautiful sunny riding days at 28 degrees, blue skies and fields and fields of sunflowers – you can’t really ask for more! It feels too good! We feel like we’re on holiday as nothing is really a challenge anymore. There’s plenty of wine to drink and nice places to drink it in, lots of pizza and pasta and good roads. It doesn’t feel right. And while we have both been gagging to get to Europe, now we are here, it feels like we are cheating. I guess we are adapting back to the western world without the luxury of earning money to pay for it all which makes it harder! It kind of makes us want to get home, earn money and see people we love or else fly back to Asia, sleep in a dirty bed again and avoid getting killed on the road! Still, we have another 3 months of all this nice stuff so we really have to keep things in check… hence the camping. Tomorrow we are heading to Budapest where we will be staying (in a hotel!) for 3 nights.