We finally said goodbye to Poland (we'll have to go back one day, there's so much more to see) and drove south through Slovakia to Hungary.  As we were a bit behind schedule we rushed through Slovakia in a day, admiring the snowy Tatras mountains and warming ourselves up in hot springs (and some of the best saunas we've seen) at the fairly-tacky-but-wonderful Tatralandia resort.

It was a shame not to have longer, but this did mean more days to check out all the wonderful Hungarian food - and wine - and more time to zigzag all over the place rather than planning a sensible route.  We learnt lots, but three things stick out.  Firstly, the wine's excellent.  Secondly, most of Hungary's pretty flat.  OK, really flat - think East Anglia but with more moustaches.  Thirdly, goulash isn't what you think it is ...

Today Barnaby set off to explore the cellars of Tokaj to find out just what makes the wine here so golden and yummy.  Having studied the works of the 16th century alchemist Paracelsus, who believed the wine contained actual gold, he thought he could come to a more scientific conclusion. Probably something to do with botrytis.

But when Barnaby saw it (we wouldn't let him actually drink it. Not after Poland) he refused to believe it was anything so unsophisticated as rotten grapes.  We have bought several cases for him to continue his analysis.

Louis XIV is said to have called the sweet wines of the Tokaj region of Hungary "the wine of kings, and king of wines", and they've been used as diplomatic sweeteners at the highest levels for hundreds of years.  We went to find out what makes them so great, and discovered that they are still the king of wines - perhaps these days even more so than ever before.  However, they now seem to be the wines of very different kinds of kings... 

The puszta - the great plain - is very important to Hungarians.  It may not sound very interesting to outsiders: it's the flattest part of the country, dotted with fairly shabby isolated farms, wells, marshland and perhaps not a great deal else.  But here it means more than that: it holds an important place in the Hungarian imagination and sense of national identity.

As we found out, though, it's also a place to hear lively folk music, eat the best bread and pork fat we've found so far (and that's saying a lot), and learn how to play the pig's bladder while cracking a whip. At least, it is if you're coordinated enough, which one of us was ...

Tonight we spent the evening at Tuba Tanya, enjoying the fantastic local specialities of course, but also the Hungarian folk music and other folky activities.  The band (Tuba Rózsa) were fantastic: listen to that bass sound - it's someone rubbing a wet cloth up & down a stick attached to a skin stretched over a jug.

Click here to listen to the band.

After that we all went outside to play with the enormous whips the herdsmen traditionally use out here.  Anna was very good at it ...

Click here to listen to the whip-cracking.

Click here for more audio samples.

Barnaby has been relieved to find that Hungarians love coffee as much as he does, and serve all manner of espresso-based drinks in very upmarket cafés.  Here in Eger he and Matt needed big lattes after all the wine tasting yesterday.

Barnaby supposes that the Hungarian passion for coffee must stem in some way from the presence of the Ottoman empire here some 500 years ago.  The trend is so pervasive that even McDonald's has caught on - there are 'McCafes' complete with Starbucks-style faux leather armchairs in every town.  Barnaby is tempted to make a profound observation about imperialism, but hasn't quite worked out what it is.

Today Barnaby made real gulyásleves while staying in a little cottage in Csongrád.  Having researched what a genuine Hungarian goulash should be like, he altered Anna's previous recipe by using a) a greater assortment of vegetables including carrot, potato, celeriac, parsley root, tomato and pepper, b) caraway and paprika, but not too much of either, c) beef rather than pork, and d) lots of water so as to make it more soupy than stewy.  He has informed Anna that her previous version was more of a pörkölt or paprikás than a gulyás.

The Hungarian language is fascinating, and nowhere is this better reflected (for me at least) than in the words for 'bar': a borozó is a wine bar, and a söröző is a beer bar. 

At first sight, perhaps, you might not agree that these words are particularly fascinating.

But you'd be wrong. And here's why.