Enjoying Eger's thermal baths and Bull's Blood wine

EGER, Hungary — Ahh ... for a nice, hot bath.

How many times have you said that to yourself after a long overseas flight?

Eger's delights are many. You can fill a water bottle with wine from cellars built into hillside caves, explore a medieval castle, climb to the top of a minaret or join the breakfast crowd at the public market for sausages dipped in hot mustard.

But first things first. After a long flight from Seattle to Budapest and a two-hour train ride, my husband and I made our first stop the city baths.

Fed by underground hot springs, thermal baths are common throughout Eastern Europe. Hungarians call them spas, and it's not unusual for someone to show up with a doctor's prescription for a course of treatment for arthritis or other ailments.

Eger's bath culture goes back several hundred years, but its modern seven-pool complex more resembles a tamed-down adult version of an American water park than a treatment center. Here taking the waters seems to be as much about socializing as it is about health.

Eger

Where

Eighty miles northeast of Budapest in Northern Hungary (about two hours by train or bus).

History

Baroque city known for its wine, hilltop castle and 16th-century hero Istaván Dobó, credited with stalling the Turkish advance into Western Europe.

The wine

Bull's Blood is the dark, red wine for which Eger is famous. According to legend, the name originates from the Turks, who believed the Hungarian soldiers got their strength by drinking red wine mixed with bulls' blood. Sample it at restaurants, wine bars or at any of the cellars in the Valley of Beautiful Women.

Tourist information/Lodging

See www.egeronline.com.

Eger has lots of guesthouses and small hotels. Women with private rooms to rent will often meet the trains and buses. See http://hungary.egerhotels.com

Rooms at the seven-room Dobó Guesthouse range from $32-$86, including breakfast. Book through http://hungary.egerhotels.com/doboguesthouse.php

Other options: The Senator Ház Hotel, an 11-room hotel in an 18th-century townhouse in the heart of the old town (http://hungary.egerhotels.com/hotelsenatorhouse.php).

Rates: $48-$122. Also, the Hotel Korona, a newer business hotel in a residential area (ask to see the underground wine museum and cellars). See www.koronahotel.hu. Rates: $94-$108.

I liked the glistening blue wave pool in the indoor-outdoor "adventure bath" with a mechanical tide that pulled me through the water with little effort on my part. My silver wedding band temporarily tarnished to gold in the 97-degree thermal pool with a strong smell of sulfur. No worries. This was a great introduction to the local culture.

We brought our own suits (this is a mixed bath, so no one goes without them) and borrowed towels from our guesthouse. Lockers and showers were included in the $5 entrance fee.

A group of men moving their knights around on a floating chess board happily let me take their picture.

"German?" one of them asked me.

"No, American," I replied.

"Bobby Fischer," he joked, comparing himself to the great American chess player. I smiled and gave them a big thumbs up.

Bullish on wine

Tucked into a valley between two mountain ranges, Eger is a university town, and students with backpacks and iPods mix with women in bandanas selling cabbages the size of soccer balls.

It has enough attractions to be a mini-version of Germany's Rothenburg or Belgium's Bruges, without the crowds or high prices.

We paid $54 for a double room with breakfast at the Dobó Guesthouse off the main square. A cardamom-laced coffee at the Cafe Arabica around the corner cost the equivalent of $2 in Hungarian forint, the colorful local currency decorated with pictures of castles and kings.

The old town center is walk-able and compact with cobblestone pedestrian streets and baroque-style buildings painted in mint greens and lemon yellows. Cafes line Dobó Square, where statues honor town hero Istaván Dobó and others, including many women, who defended Eger and its castle against the invading Ottoman Turks in 1552.

Forty-four years later, the Turks attacked again and occupied Eger for almost a century. The only relic left is a 130-foot-tall minaret, and we worked up an appetite climbing its 97 steps to the top.

At Szantofer Vendéglo, a neighborhood restaurant with heavy wooden furniture and shakers of paprika on the tables, I ordered a $7 plate of duck-liver sausages simmered in peppers, onions and tomatoes. The local red wine is Egri Bikavér, dark and hearty enough to stand up to spicy food.

"They call it Bull's Blood," the owner said.

Legend has it that the Hungarian soldiers gained strength to fight off the Turks by drinking red wine mixed with the blood of bulls. The best places to sample it and other wines produced from grapes grown in the vineyards surrounding Eger are the dozens of wineries built into caves in an area called the Valley of Beautiful Women, an easy 30-minute walk from town.

Check out the caves

Estimates are there are about 200 caves around Eger (a 60-mile-long cellar system extends under the town, part of which is a wine museum located under the Hotel Korona), supposedly first dug by locals seeking refuge after the Turks took over the town.

Thirty-five or 40 cellars are open to the public along a horseshoe-shaped road filled with kitschy restaurants decorated with wagon wheels and fake wooden bridges.

The fanciest wineries have outdoor decks to service the bus-tour crowd. The more modest cellars, marked with just a metal gate and a few miniature plastic casks, can be deceivingly big inside, with moss covering the walls and ceilings and wine-making equipment stored in deep tunnels.

We followed a group of young Hungarians into a cave owned for the past 54 years by the Jozsef Sarai family. Some of the bigger operators charge for tastings, but Jozsef was pouring free samples.

I tried a few different wines, then let Jozsef fill my empty half-liter plastic water bottle with a dollar's worth of a dark, sweet Medina siphoned directly from the barrel.

Next time, I'd bring a bigger bottle or two or three. We were small-time customers.

The Hungarians left with six liters, maybe more.

Carol Pucci: 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com