Eger to please

If you like small European towns, you'll like Eger. Loaded with baroque-style architecture, it's Hungary's version of Germany's Rothenburg or Belgium's Bruges without the crowds or high prices.

Life revolves around a pedestrian historical core. The centerpiece is Dobo Square, where statues honor town hero Dobo Istavan and others who defended the castle against the Turkish army in the 16th century. The Turks eventually won and controlled the region for nearly a century. A relic left from that era is a 130-foot-tall sandstone minaret from a Muslim mosque open as an observation tower to anyone who wants to climb its 97 spiral steps.

Most tourists are from other parts of Hungary, Russia or Germany, so prices are higher than they might be in an Eastern European town with no attractions, but much lower than in similar towns in Western Europe that attract wealthier Americans, Italians, and British.

A cardamom-laced coffee at the Cafe Arabica, around the corner from our guesthouse, costs the equivalent of $2 in Hungarian forint, the colorful local currency accented with pictures of castles and kings.

We're paying about $54 for a double room with breakfast at the Dobo Guest House (www.hotels.hu/dobo_vendeghaz) near the square.

Marianna Kleszo has seven rooms in her family's home, each with a private bathroom and TV. Ours is outfitted with pine furniture, including a big wardrobe and desk. A bay window covered with a lace curtain overlooks a cobblestone street lined with buildings painted yellow and lime green.

A young college crowd mixes easily with an older population. Students carrying backpacks and listening to iPods contrast with women in bandanas at the public market, where there are cabbages the size of soccer balls and radishes as big as apples.

Walking to dinner, we stopped to listen to a man playing a wooden zither and singing folk songs on Szechenyi utca, the main street in the pedestrian zone lined with beer houses and pastry shops. Inside the Szantofer Vendeglo, a restaurant decorated with heavy wooden tables and chairs, it was mostly a neighborhood crowd.

I ordered a dish described as "Shepherd's stew of the Great Hungarian Plain." It was a huge $7 plate of duck-liver sausages simmered in peppers, onions and tomatoes, served with a mound of noodles topped with sour cream.

When we ordered glasses of the local red wine called "Egri Bikaver," the owner presented us with two huge pours.

"They call it Bull's Blood," he said.

We'll find out more about why soon because we're planning to go directly to the source — some 200 or so wine cellars tucked into hillside caves in a valley about a 40-minute walk from town.

Seems as good a way as any to walk off all those noodles and sour cream.