The Good Life in Aggtelek National Park Part XXXIII: Diosgyőr Castle Festival

Last weekend we went to the Diosgyőr Castle Festival near Miskolc. The entire programme was free, and featured craftspeople, local producers, an airshow by Red Bull super pilot Péter Besenyei, ExperiDance, and a concert by rockers P-Mobil. I had only been in Diosgyőr once before, and that was years ago in a hospital after some idiot did not yield at an intersection and turned the Gaspar's car into a croissant. Strangely enough, we had been on the way to go caving at Aggtelek National Park at the time but never made it. Both Kata and I had seen ExperiDance many years ago at Hösök tere and loved their performance, so we were looking forward to seeing them again. I had heard of P-Mobil and had seen their former lead singer Vikidál Gyula in a great performance of Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat at the Vig Szinház in the late-1990's. But these are all separate and lengthy stories which I will not get into now.

One of the only negative things about the day, but perhaps the most important, was that with the exception of one sign towards Lillafüred in downtown Miskolc, there were absolutely no signs for either Diosgyőr, the castle, the festival. This lack of signposting is unfathomable for a major tourist attraction and, well, a big town.

We found parking easily enough and made the short walk following the crowd towards the newly renovated 12th century castle along a beautifully chestnut lined walking street filled with crafts and local product vendors. There was a chilli seller with several kinds of hot chilli peppers for sale by the piece, hot sauces (Attila being the hottest), and pepper flavoured sea salts. There was a woman selling her enamel jewellery set off by a beautifully enamel inlaid mirror. Remdih (Czech Republic) provided excellent live medieval or world music along the way. The band had a barrel of instruments in the middle which they constantly dipped into as if they were selecting golf clubs.

The best find of the day was the Dimenzió Vineyard from the Kecskemét area. I first sampled the half-dry TÜNDÖKLŐ (940 huf) , a cuveé of Rhine Riesling, Furmint and Bianca grapes. It was very nice, but another wine caught my attention. The Regős wine (940 huf) was made from the relatively rare Kövidinka variety. Unfortunately, they had run out and I could not try it. More was on the way if I came back in 10 minutes. So, we wondered off for a big tasty cheese plate from some cheese makers/stilt walkers (500 huf). Ten minutes later the wine had still not arrived, but given the crowds it was not much of a surprise. We made one more swing through the festival, encountering the Kondobor jam makers along the way. Their Furmint jam was very tasty but a bit overboard on the cinnamon, while the Kondorbor jam reminded me too much of the Concord grape jam which was virtually the only jelly available during my childhood. The chilli jam was nice. We also made a stop at the Pecsétviasz (lingzhi or reishi) mushroom stand of Attila Suri. This mushroom has been used in China and Japan for centuries to treat blood, liver and lung problems among other things. Attila grows them in his basement, and they dried, they have the texture of sealing wax. Back at Dimenzió, the Regős had finally arrived, and it was worth the wait. Not only was it an excellent white wine, I was given 2dl free for my persistence. The wines are available at Metro.

The prize for the most practical, if not the most interesting items for sale must go to Péter Horváth (hopepe61@gmail.com) for his hand-carved wooden spoons. Who would have thought to make wooden spoons for lefties, carving a wooden shot glass on the other end of the spoon, or a small spoon at the other end for spices? While the men got a shot glass on their spoon, the ladies were treated to a carved wooden something else on the end of theirs for when the men are away. As I said, inventive and practical...hmmm...Still, 5000 HUF for a spoon, no matter how useful and inventive is a bit much.

The castle itself has been beautifully renovated, and had a much different and more positive feel than the Boldogkő Castle. Diosgyőr has been renovated at a whole different level. The changes include multi-lingual interactive terminals (though the one I happened to try did not function), and energy efficient windows. The replica wooden cabinets and trunks were gorgeous, but the tile stoves were breathtaking.

We walked out and had a pizza in town before the ExperiDance show. The place seemed to be run by the seat of its pants, and not friendly, but the pizza was reasonable and welcome. In the end, we should have taken a pizza to go and went back in to reserve a seat, because the stage was set on flat ground and no one could see above anyone else’s head. I ended up describing the action on stage to Kata, acting out some parts, much to the horror of our immediate neighbours in the crowd. Even what I was able to see, however, was fantastically boring, and I was glad to give up and head for home.

With most of our corn having been destroyed by wild boar last week, we decided to grill the few ears we had managed to rescue. I have a great recipe for grilling corn in the husk with olive oil, garlic and nutmeg. Although the recipe is fabulous, our corn was too starchy and I found it inedible. Even so, we enjoyed a fine bottle of Fritz Vineyard (Szekszard) dry red cuvee under the stars by candlelight. Just when we thought we had finished our fun with foxes, we discovered the 3 big white candles gnawed up in the middle of our garden the next morning. But we suppose it could also have been the wild boar. I found the grilled corn inedible; we then combined with some of our zucchini and made fried patties out of them, barely edible; and then tried corn chowder, mildly edible. Compost!

My mushrooming guide Sanyi had agreed to help us chop and stack the 3 m3 of wood from the acacia tree, but as usual, he was unreliable when it comes to work. Kata and I ended up carting the wood into the new storage and stacking it, but the pile collapsed almost on top of me last night. Then, thoroughly fed up with the waste of 3 days of labour, I was putting the wheelbarrow away when I almost stepped on a snake. I tried to shoo it away with a stick, but it preferred to attack rather than move along. Just at that moment, Sanyi arrived out of the dark and got the snake to wrap itself around his walking stick so he could remove it. He also gave me a bucket full of field mushrooms (champignons) and some chanterelles out of guilt. All I wanted to do was drown my sorrows in palinka, but I ended up processing the 1.5 kg of mushrooms until late evening.

I got up at 5am the next morning to clear up the collapsed wood pile enough for Kata to be able to make a new start when she got home from work. She worked the whole afternoon and managed to restack everything...until the woodpile collapsed again. In the end, we just dumped all the wood into the building and will have to tear the rest down and start again from scratch. Then we need to order the dry wood for the winter and get that chopped and stored. Hopefully we can harvest some of the walnuts this year, the cabbages will form heads, and we can still harvest a few zucchini for pickling.