Gulyasleves [gooyash-levesh] = goulash soup. You really can’t go to Hungary and not try this; it’s nothing like the meat stew that is described as goulash in english-speaking countries: not a stew at all, but a rich soup, with much emphasis on the paprika. One variety is bogracsgulyas [bogratch-gooyash], which means it comes in a small cauldron, although the literal translation of bogracs is kettle.

Bableves [boblevesh] = bean soup. May be listed as Jokai Bableves. Smoky, creamy soup which often has large lumps of pork fat in it. Still nice, though.

Raguleves/csirkeraguleves [cheerka-ragu-levesh] = chicken soup, slightly thicker than a broth, usually has a lemony flavour, and yet more sour cream. Did I mention the sour cream? There will be some of this in anything you order. This soup may be described as tarkonyos, which means tarragony. One of my favourite things. This could also be pulykaraguleves, [poika-ragu-levesh] which would be turkey.

Hagymaleves [hojma-levesh] = onion soup. May be served cipoban, which means in a bread roll, which is a novel experience. Definitely point to this one on the menu, as a slight mispronounciation will cause you to order onion soup in a shoe.

Fokhagymakremleves [fok-hojma-krem-leves] = garlic soup. This stuff is amazing. It was the only good thing to happen to me in a town called Gyor.

Gyumolcsleves [joomolch-levesh] = fruit soup. This is served chilled, and has actual cream rather than sour cream in it. The usual variety is a sour cherry soup. Yes it’s a dessert, but it will be listed with the soups and served as a starter.

And now some manners:

In Hungarian, there isn’t really a sentence structure equivalent to I would like the goulash soup, please; you just have to make a polite face while telling the waiter what you want, which will probably be lost on them anyway, and certainly won’t be returned.

Here’s what you say: A gulyaslevest kerek [o gooyash-levest kayrek, where the o is as in hot]. This means I want the goulash soup. You put the t on the end of the word gulyasleves to mark it as the object of the sentence, but really, don’t worry about this, just do it.

When the surly waiter brings you your soup, you can say koszonom [kersernerm], which means thank you. All of these hungarian words are supposed to have accents on them, but I fear that WordPress will just explode, so go with my phonetic renderings instead.

There are occasional readers of Rise whose hungarian language and soup skills are far superior to mine, so do check the comments box for addenda and correctia.

My only worry is that the next time we travel somewhere, Pete will find me a far less useful tourguide; there isn’t a city in the world that I know as well as I know Budapest.

Still, we started off staying far from my ‘hood, in the glamorous but hot-water-free zone that is the Marriott Hotel, which meant that on arriving some time after midnight, I was at a loss to know where to take Pete for his first Hungarian beer. His first Hungarian beer turned out to be Dutch Amstel, in some sort of music club, where we sat happily until around 4am.

The Marriott didn’t offer us breakfast, which I consider to be a good thing, because instead we were able to try out the coffee and chocolate croissants in various cafes, our favourite being Cafe Europa on the Pest side of the river. Subsequently the holiday turned into something of a gastro-tour, because I only had a week in which to show Pete all my favourite restaurants, all the interesting soups, and how different a Bloody Mary can be from one side of town to the other.

We weren’t that lucky with the weather; it was a case of 30 degrees last week and 30 degrees next week, but mostly rain during our stay. This, sadly, prevented us from doing anything too energetic, and contributed to the whole drinking-and-eating theme, because it was at least warm enough to sit outside a bar and watch the passers-by.

We did all the things that one really must do in order to say that they have truly experienced Hungary: admired the view of the Danube from Margit Bridge; took photographs of Heroes’ Square; ate goulash, bought shoes, visited Lake Balaton.

Balaton was a particularly good source of drunken giggling, featuring such incidents as Pete shouting uborka across the lake, late at night; a german with a dog named Kevin; and me managing to pour a glass of water over my head whilst attempting to throw it off the balcony of our room. But the best giggle of the holiday was the I steal your wife incident, which Pete will have to tell you himself. Oh yes, he met Ken.

When we returned from Balaton, we stayed in a hotel near the city park, which is the far end of my ‘hood. The sun came out, we walked around a lot, and started research into iced coffee across the city.

I seem to have managed to delete most of my bad memories of the country. I also seem to be able to speak reasonably good hungarian, after all this time.

I’d like to thank the Marriott Hotel for its fantastic view of the Danube, especially at 6am; the Balazs Villa in Balatonfured for upgrading us to a suite; and the Liget Hotel for having hot water.

I’d also like to thank the Soul Cafe for the best meal of the holiday; Articsoka for the best coffee; Iguana for two litres of frozen margarita; Ket Szerecsen and Pompei between them for the friendliest service [not an acknowledgement I thought I would ever be able to make about a hungarian restaurant]; Cafe Vian for the best cocktails; and the For Sale Pub for all the monkey nuts.

The only trouble is that I think I have already seen and done everything, and it’s hard to know where to start. For the first few nights we’re staying on the banks of the Danube in some luxury, because Marriott do pretty good weekend deals. Nick is disgusted that we should stay somewhere so blandly international, but in the city there is a dearth of charming Hungarian-style pensions. We arrive late at night, but first thing the next morning, we’re going out to get breakfast in a cukraszda and then cross the river to the Buda side of the city and take the funicular up to the Castle District, from where we’ll be able to look down on our charming concrete hotel. Fortunately I still have half a block of BKV tickets, which will do until I can bravely approach a ticket counter and try out my rusty and never-particularly-good-anyway Hungarian, at which point Pete will be able to observe the charming customer service skills that characterise the Hungarian ticket desk person, who will refuse to understand me until I wave the old block of tickets at her and push money under the little window. Castle District has a lot of museums, but the best thing about it is certainly the colourful cobbled streets, the amazing tiled roof and circular window of the Mátyás Church, and the wedding-cake effect Fisherman’s Bastion, which, outrageously, they charge you to climb on. And it smells of wee. But it does offer a great photograph opportunity of the Houses of Parliament opposite.

From the Castle, we can walk down to Batthyány Ter and along the river to the Margit Bridge, the centre of which offers my favourite view of the city – here is where your panoramic camera comes in handy.

The centre of Margit Bridge is also the place where you can get on to Margit Island, which is probably the coolest place in the city, surrounded by water and covered with trees. The problem with Margit Island is the danger of being run over by children in pedal carts and idiots on two-person-side-by-side bikes.

We’ll walk, or take the tram perhaps, if it’s hot, over the rest of the bridge and back into the Pest side of the city, where more stuff is happening. The main street runs in an arc from Margit Bridge round to another bridge (Erzsebet Bridge?) further down the river, and you can get a tram all the way round, because it’s much too far to walk. Here is where all the shops and most of the restaurants are, and the leafy squares full of cafés and bars, and the sudden yellow buildings and the tourist tat markets. Here is where we will escape into the air-conditioned Westend shopping centre if it’s too hot, or into the Kossuth cinema opposite, if it’s raining. Of course, when you’re really a tourist, going to the cinema to watch a mainstream movie with subtitles is the wrong thing to do. Instead we can go to the one museum in the city that I am still curious about, the Terror House. This delightfully named cultural edifice is at the end of the street where I used to live. I could see the word TERROR emblazoned on its walls from my bedroom window. It’s the former headquarters of the Hungarian secret police, and last time I checked, charged foreigners ten times as much as Hungarians to get in. My curiosity has yet to reach the level where I don’t find this outrageous.

Another thing that is really nice to do in the rain is sit in the thermal baths; in fact, rain or no rain, this is probably the top of my list of must-do Budapest experiences. The novelty of hot sticky mineral water under blue skies or grey will never wear off for me. The wrinkly old germans standing under the fountains, the enormous women in the sauna, the ancient crowd of chess players who never move from one visit to the next. You just have to be there in the soup with them, to know what I’m raving about.

After we have taken the waters, we will walk over to the funfair, which boasts the oldest roller coaster in Europe. Really, it boasts about this. You should see it, it’s frightening. The wooden struts creak as the cars hurtle around. There’s no way that thing is safe. Next door to this is the zoo, the best bit of which is the Elephant Gate, which you can admire without going inside, thank you very much. Animal lovers would not particularly enjoy that zoo.

Moving swiftly on, we’ll walk back round the park to Heroes Square, where I once tried to stand up on rollerblades. But these days I have to be careful not to break my wrist again, so sadly I have to retire from rollerblading. In the winter, the boating lake nearby is turned into an ice rink, and I’ve never yet managed to skate on it; I don’t suppose I ever will, now.

The one other thing that I always show tourists in Budapest is the city market, which is an amazing building both inside and out. We will need to go here to buy kolbasz and paprika to bring home with us. We will also have to go and look at the sad-eyed fish in the tanks downstairs, and the bright-coloured jars of pickled peppers [obvious joke, I’m not gonna make it].

When we have thoroughly done the city we will venture out of it a little way. We might take the chairlift up to the lookout, because that’s so calm and quiet and pleasant. Or if Pete wants to, we will go to the Szobor Park where all the statues of Marx and Lenin and Glory Of The Working Man kinda thing were put, after the fall of Communism. I like it there, but I’ve been twice and there’s not that much to see, but it is quite impressive and extremely photogenic.

Then we will venture further, and I’m thinking maybe Balatonfured with Tihany as a daytrip. I’ve never been to either of these places, but they’re on the shores of Lake Balaton, a couple of hours out of the city by train. There we can stay in the charming rustic pension, and there we will have to try out our Hungarian, because we’re more likely to encounter German speakers than English speakers, and my German is worse than my Hungarian.

And then there’s one of the main reasons that I ever travel anywhere: food and drink. In Hungary, goulash is a soup. A very good soup, if you eat it in the right place. You can live on soup in Hungary. Cream of garlic soup…. Chicken and tarragon soup… onion soup in a roll… cold fruit soup. Or you can have a proper meal, which will consist mostly of meat and potatoes, with a chilli and some pickled cabbage making up your eight portions of fruit and veg. And if you try really hard, you might find some drinkable wine, but you know I’ll only be there for the Bloody Mary.

I wrapped up and put on my clumpiest shoes, and walked along grinning from ear to ear, because I’m enjoying this cold, wet phenomenon immensely. It makes me brave enough to go into shops with my pidgin hungarian, and buy things like bandages (the current one is getting a bit grubby). I raised some money through a combination of exchanging my emergency sterling, and collecting all the 20 forint pieces that were lying around the flat. What I particularly enjoyed on this marvellously snowy day, was knowing enough to get by. I don’t know the word for bandage, but I can point to it and say I would like something like this, please (in hungarian, obviously); and I understand when I’m being asked if I want anything else, and if I have any smaller notes, and snatches of overheard conversation, like the girl in Rossman’s telling the dog outside that it was pretty. It wasn’t pretty, it was a dog, but I only claim to understand the words, not what goes on inside their heads.

That doesn’t mean that I didn’t want Fraz or dad to stay. I loved having them. It feels great that dad wants to spend time with me, and having Fraz with us fulfils all the parenting needs we could ever have. I like her more and more as she gets older. She reminds me of myself at her age, but in a nice way, because I realise that maybe I wasn’t as horrible as I thought I was, as a teenager. She does have certain advantages, like stable schooling and happy parents, but I don’t suppose for a moment that she appreciates them. Her hair is much, much better than mine was at thirteen, too.

August was just so long, tiring, difficult and expensive. I thought it was a good thing that Pepsi Sziget started so soon after Fraz arrived, but in the end I really didn’t like Sziget. There’s a difference between enjoying spending time with my little sister, and being expected to be the responsible adult the whole time, without much support. Ken was busy doing his thing, which involved a lot of beer and some very late nights. I have discovered two new neuroses. Well, I knew about my phobia of mobs already, but I now know that I also obsessively hate mobile phones.

Before I had a mobile, I was one of those people who thought them nasty, intrusive, and slightly silly. Then I ran out of petrol halfway home one night, and had to call in at a gloomy farmhouse and ask to use the phone. So I admit that they have their uses. You would think that I liked text messages, too, being a chat addict and generally favouring the written word over the spoken one. Text messages are stupid. The linguistic style they have engendered is the verbal equivalent of sporting a baseball cap backwards. I am unable to see the point of a conversation carried out via SMS, when the communication could take place more efficiently and effectively by the two people actually speaking to each other. After all, they both have mobile phones, don’t they?

I also resent the fact that, once you have foolishly given someone your mobile number, they feel free to call you at any time of the day or night, in a way they never would with a landline. It doesn’t matter where you are, what you’re doing, the phone will ring. The mobile owner rarely uses the option of ignoring the call, but answers it, with a cheery greeting, and immediately provides information about where he/she is and what he/she is doing. It’s like an electronic tag. When people call Ken, I feel like our privacy is being invaded. Yeah… we’re walking along the river/we’re in Badacsony/we’re having a cup of tea/… MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS AND STOP CALLING ME!!

One good thing about August was getting ADSL. I don’t know yet how we are going to pay for it, but if, as Ken reckons, it will work out cheaper than our monthly phone bill, then that seems okay. For me, there’s something very comforting about an always-on internet connection. I can always switch on that box and relate to people the way that I want to: in writing, and at a safe distance. I dislike talking to people on the phone, and some days (or possibly in some circumstances), I dislike talking to people in person. I’m not very good at chit-chat. I don’t remember faces well, so I am not confident in large groups of people I’m supposed to know. I would usually prefer to stay in with Ken, than go out on the town; and my ideal dinner party would be just two more people, preferably ones I know really, really well. Preferably family. In fact, preferably Nick and his gf. Other people require far too much social effort. I want to be surrounded by people with whom it all comes easily. I can’t be like Ken, for whom it comes easily with anyone.

So, Sziget was bad, ADSL was good. Then for the next few days the weather was shitty, which interfered with our plans for about a week. Dad arrived, and the weather continued to be poor. We queued in the rain for Manchester United tickets, and that ensured that the cold I developed after Sziget took up permanent residence. I still have it. We did a handful of touristy things, but there is still plenty left for next time; and we patronised a good many Budapest restaurants. Dad has rated them all, and I’ll write up his chart another day, with my own restaurant reviews. It cost us a fortune, though. I must have cooked at home twice during the fortnight he was with us; and otherwise we ate out. We ate some great food, and only had one really bad restaurant experience. It’s a nice lifestyle, but not one we can easily sustain.

Over the long weekend, we were invited to Nick’s gf’s parents’ house, to eat Hungarian food and have multi-lingual conversations. This is where dad and Ken got the nickname they had been earning all week. There was some general discussion of Ken’s fondness for beer, and dad asked, with irony, where do they get the idea that you’re such a wide-boy? The family pondered for a moment, how to translate wide-boy into Hungarian, and came up with csirkefögö. Apparently it’s some kind of tool for killing chickens, colloquially used as an equivalent for wide-boy. Since then, they have been calling themselves csirkefögök on tour. Everyone else has been calling them it, too.

A lot of pool was played. Much unicum was consumed. Chicken nuggets and other items of junkfood were brought home to appease me in the early hours of the morning (unsuccessfully: this was only funny the first time).

As a grand finale, the Budapest Parade took place yesterday. There was much hype, especially as the Szt Istvan day fireworks had been cancelled owing to the floods. It turned out to be nothing more than a vast crowd of pissed up kids, following float after float featuring blaring music and half-dressed jiggling people. The atmosphere was unthreatening in the sense that you weren’t expecting baton charges to take place at any point, but for someone who is already tired and stressed, with the aforementioned phobia of crowds, it was all too much. Inching through a mass of people with their sweaty arms pressed against you, only to arrive at a place where there are more packed-in people, unable to hear a thing for the same music blasting from each of about 45 lorries, continually losing members of your party in the throng. Too much. If hell exists, I know what it looks and sounds like, now. It will be one long hot day at the Budapest Parade. Herewith, I officially retire from crowded events.

Thanks to the combined efforts of Lufthansa and whoever it is that runs the british railways these days, it took me twelve hours to get from home to my hotel today. So I am chronically tired because of August, and I am acutely tired because of August 25th. In two weeks’ time I get back to Budapest, and finally get to spend a bit of time with my husband. It will have been two months since we had any amount of private time together, and I think we need to press our reset button. Meanwhile, I plan to sleep muchly.

There is a direct train from Budapest Keleti to Tokaj, taking just under three hours; or you can change in Miskolc. It’s 220 kilometres, so costs around 4000 HUF return. On arrival, turn your back on the station building, cross the tracks, and turn right to find yourself on a road called Szerelmi Pincesor. Ken translates this to mean I Love Wine Street, but I prefer Sweet Cellar Row. At the end of this road, turn left onto Bajcsy-Zsilinsky Ut and walk towards the centre of town.

Accommodation: You will pass loads of houses offering private rooms on this route, and after about ten minutes, you will come to the new Millennium Hotel (tel 352 247), which has double rooms at 9100 HUF; keep walking, there are now a handful of panzios in the town, and if you cross the river, there are two campsites on the right: Spori Sport Camping and Tisza Camping; Pelsöczy Camping, on the left, is very relaxed and reasonably clean, charging 450 HUF per tent and 450 HUF per person. You can camp right on the bank of the river and listen to the frog chorus all night. The mosquitos aren’t too much of a problem, susceptible as they apparently are to good insect repellent. Arzenál Camping provides bungalow/motel type accommodation rather than tent space.

Eating in Tokaj can prove difficult. Makk Marci pizzeria closes at 8, yes, that’s 8, even in July; we managed to get there by 7 on Saturday, to find that they had no pizza. The Tokaj Hotel restaurant subsequently had neither the wine nor the chicken dish that we ordered, although they did manage to find us an alternative for each. To complete the trio, on Sunday morning the Bacchus (which really is no more than a cafe) had no coffee. We recommend instead the restaurant of the Lux Panzio and the Co-op on Kossuth tér. There is a large road between the Tokaj Hotel and the Bodrog river, so you can get neither a room with a particularly nice view, nor a waterside table on the terrace.

If you’re not interested in wine, don’t visit Tokaj, but if the vine is your thing, then you can easily spend a couple of days visiting the cellars. Our favourite was the Hímesudvar Pincészet on Bem utca, where the cellar tour costs 200 HUF per person, or is included if you choose the tasting, at 1600 HUF per person. This consists of 0.5dl each of Muskotály, Szamorodni, Hárslevelü, Furmint, Fordítás and a 6 puttonyos Aszú. You can also get small plates of cheese and paté, which might be wise…The town is full of cellars, where you can buy a decilitre of wine (100 ml) from as little as 50 HUF. Wander back to Szerelmi Pincesor, or behind Kossuth tér to Ovar utca, where a couple of pleasant cellars are open. One has a garden stretching up into the hill behind it, where you can sit with a jug of furmint and watch the sun set behind the storks, nesting on a pole a few metres away; the other one is less pleasing aesthetically, but stays open later.

If you somehow get bored of wine tasting, you could have a look inside the attractive church on Kossuth tér, or visit the Tokaj Museum for 200 HUF per head. The synagogue is now completely closed and looks like it is mostly collapsed, but there is an impressive storks’ nest above the pavement outside.

Back to the Hímesudvar Pincészet: we took the cellar tour in hungarian, as part of our intention this weekend was to practice in an out-of-the-way place where not too much english would be spoken; we work as a team: Ken speaks and I listen. Between us, we can manage conversations fairly well, slowly figuring out what was said and how to answer appropriately. After the tour, and as it was barely lunchtime, we chose to share one tasting between us, accompanied by some excellent non-hungarian blue cheese, some ordinary hungarian white cheese, and a booklet of tasting notes translated into very novel english.

Muskotály is the grape variety, and the first glass to try is this reasonably dry, gooseberryish white, which tastes much as you would expect, although better than your average hungarian white.

You then move on to the Szamorodni, which is a later harvest than the Muskotály, made from grapes which are not selected; that is, they include all the gammy wrinkled and mouldy ones. You can taste them, too, in its musty, apple flavours, if the description hasn’t put you off.

Next, a Hárslevelü, or Linden Leaf, with the sweetness turned up a notch to taste of elderflower honey and cloves. In contrast, or perhaps because our palates were becoming accustomed to sweetness, the Furmint seemed less syrupy, with a pleasant flavour of almonds and a pale golden colour. I am not a drinker of sweet white wine, associating it mainly with Liebfraumilch at student parties, so by the time we reached the Fordítás, I was quite nervous about the whole thing. Fordítás is made from a second pressing of the Aszú grapes, and it is hard to imagine why anyone would want to make something sweeter. It’s a liquid brandysnap, with the sweetness growing in your mouth. If we had consumed this at student parties, I would be the size of a house by now.

All this was building up to the Aszú, which, if you have heard of Tokaj wine, is the Tokaj wine you have heard of. This comes in varying degrees of sweetness, according to the number of punnets of sweet grapes added to the wine after pressing (2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 punnets = 2/3/4/5/6 puttonyos). The six-puttonyos wine we tried was a deep amber hue, and tasted of crystallised brown sugar. I wonder what would happen if you added it to your coffee. Having said that, it was not unpleasant, and if it wasn’t so expensive I’m sure I could have drunk it for the rest of the afternoon. I have quite changed my mind about Tokaj wine; I don’t think it’s horrible sweet goo anymore, I can appreciate its subtleties now that I have a little knowledge about it. I would recommend a visit to the town, if wine is a subject close to your heart and you happen to be anywhere near Hungary. Maybe not necessary to come here just for that, though; there are lots of nice things to see in Budapest too. Next stop, Villany, home of the Big Red…

Went this morning to buy a washing machine and a fridge. Sometimes transactions go beautifully, the assistant is patient with our slow hungarian, and everything is sorted out in a few minutes. This was one of those times. Yesterday we had a little more trouble sorting out the telephone line, but only because the forms were all complicated. The day before, I went to withdraw some money from the bank, and the cashier spent ages holding my passport under the UV light, turning it round, examining it. I asked if there was a problem, and she said nem…. szep!!: No, it’s beautiful! She was looking at the daffodils and thistles that show up in the light.

I apologise if the following wine notes bore you. For us it was the most marvelous fun. You purchased a ticket (or in our case, the company paid our entry fees), and this golden ticket opened the door to a cellar containing about 700 bottles from all the wine regions of Hungary. You have two hours to get as many of these as possible down your neck.

Before we start the tasting notes, let me share with you one or two of the rules of the cellar: 1. We recommend moving about with caution – at your own risk – on the steps and under the low vaults of the cellar. 5. It is an objective of the HHOW to promote the idea of a well-mannered culture of wine consumption, and therefore conduct involving intoxication, loud remarks, or being a nuisance to others, is alien to the rules of the house, and will result in exclusion from tasting. So: you pay ten quid, we give you two hours of uninhibited quaffing of hungary’s finest produce, but you may NOT become drunk or exhibit symptoms of being pissed.

Luckily, there was no-one else in the cellar. Ken and the BC stuck to white for most of their vinitual trip (as opposed to a virtual trip) around Hungary. I, however, started with a Hajósi Cabernet Sauvignon Sümegi borászat 1999, priced at 1880 HUF/bottle (the current exchange rate is about 383 HUF to £1) It was like a smooth slide down into this cellar full of bottles labelled drink me, to copy a stylistic silliness from my xenocolleagues.

My next wine was the Egri Vincze Béla Francia Cuvée 1999. An imitation french wine, spicy and a little harsh; followed by a Soproni Taschner-vin Sauvignon Blanc 20021, of which I have no memory whatsoever. And this was early days. All around the cellar the wines were stacked up and displayed on top of the counters, with the whites in clay jars which kept them impressively cool. Near each set of wines was a pottery jug to tip (or presumably to spit) your surplus wine into. I don’t believe Ken or the BC used this facility at any point. Being vastly more sophisticated, I tipped quite a lot of my wine away, but still managed to get disgustingly pissed.

Ken and the BC made me try a Tokai, which I made no note of, but I vaguely remember it was a 3 puttonyos (puttonyos is the level of sweetness and goes up to 6, like the stars on your Metaxa), and really quite drinkable. But back to the proper wine. For the sake of novelty we tried a Villány Monetvino rosé 2001, but it was completely tasteless,as is the case with a lot of rosé wine. This is probably why Mateus Rosé is so popular with the tenerifies who think they are sophisticated because they spend two weeks in the Algarve each year.

The Légli Sauvignon Blanc Tolna 2001 didn’t taste much more impressive, until a second or two after you swallowed it, when it erupted on all your tastebuds at once. This was followed by the one that the BC asked to be noted as his favourite, a Neszméli Chardonnay Sauvignon Blanc 1999, Hilltop Budavar Selection. This had a fine yellowish colour and a peachy flavour which lasted long after the wine had gone. Perfect for a hot day on the terrace, but not the wine about which he waxed the most lyrical. But maybe that was because he became aloquent with elcohol, or something…

Ken asked me to make a special note of the Etyeki Kúria Chardonnay 2000, which had lovely orange labels and a peppery fizz on the tongue. He also enjoyed several of the many Csérsegy Fuzéres, marketed in the UK as The Unpronouncable Grape, but trust me, it isn’t. This is the wine that we buy in plastic bottles for about 430 HUF per litre: every bit as drinkable as the surprisingly good bottom-of-the-market plonk you pay £3.50 for in England.

We tried the strong, flowery-flavoured Dörgicsei Pántlika Pincészet Sauvignon Blanc 1999 (pantlika? huhu, huhu, he said pantlika…), and a label we recognised: Egri Thummerer Muscat Sweet Kózer 1999, which was a raisin-sweet nutty liqueur that you could drink all day (with dire consequences, I’m sure).

As we moved into the Balaton region, the wines improved noticeably. I think all three votes for the wine of the evening went to the Badacsonyi Barbély Pince Ottonel Muskotály 2000; a bargain at 1580 HUF, this wine was like drinking savoury perfume, fruity but not sweet. The BC named this wine Fruitbowl In The Mouth, comparing it to taking a big fruitbowl and pushing it into your face. He drank quite a lot of it.

Following the fruitbowl, we found the Pannonhalmi Szöllosi Mihaly Chardonnay 2000 and the Móri Bozóky Ezerjó 2000 decidedly ornery, the Balaton Felvidéki Kálvin Olaszrizling 1999 revolting, and the Somlói Dr Halla Olaszrizling 1996 absolutely vile. The BC liked the Somlói Fekete Béla Juhfork 1999, too, but I thought its only redeeming feature was the nice picture of some sheep on its label.

The last three wines were the last simply because we were tired of seeking new experiences, and ready to circle around the tastes we knew we liked, comfortable and confident in the knowledge that we were, by this time, truly drunk. Another label we recognised was the Nagrédi Szoloskert Szov Chardonnay 2001 from the Mátra Hills. This had a typical, pleasant chardonnay flavour and a mellow aftertaste. Just the sort of wine that restores your faith in eastern european viniculture, when you really start to miss the californian imports too much.

The wine of the evening runner up, at least as far as the BC was concerned, was the Mátraaljai Szoke Mátyás Mátra Hills muscat ottonel 2000. The nutty flavour collected in the front of your mouth and not on your palate, and the BC named it Fruitbowl On The Tongue; never one to miss the opportunity to invent a new soundbite, he said (only slurring a little), you serve this to your friends, they will like you.

The final wine of the two-hour slot was a Szekszárdi Cabernet Sauvignon 1998, full and oaky and delicious, bringing the experience full circle as far as I was concerned. Deep dark red wine, frivolous whites and lots of giggling, and finally to rest on a velvet bed of more deep dark red wine.

Bob drove me down to Heathrow because she had to be down south for an interview anyway (and the good news is that it sounds like it went pretty well), and Pigger miaowed the whole way. I was worrying that if he thought an hour and a half in a car was bad, he was never going to cope with an aeroplane, but everyone has recommended that I don’t sedate him, so sedate him I didn’t.

I was at Heathrow at 6.30am for a 9.55 flight, so they wouldn’t let me check in, although someone did take my ticket and reserve my seat, before telling me to come back in an hour to check my bags. I sipped vile hot coffee, my food hygiene past preventing me from wheeling my trolley into the cafe to get something to eat; my £1000 laptop preventing me from leaving the trolley while I got some breakfast. Just coffee, then, and talking to my baggage every now and then to see if he was okay. He seemed to have settled down a lot, stretched out on his cushion in the box, just jumping a little at the announcements. He was probably doing better than me; I felt hungover, tired, nervous and emotional. Always a good travelling frame of mind.

I wheeled him back to the check-in desk, where everyone fussed over him and the woman checking me in used the wrong ticket. I pointed it out to her, and she sent me back to the desk where I had reserved my seat earlier to see if they had kept it. Then she made panicky phone calls to find out what she should do. Then she turned round to the stewardess behind her who kindly pointed out that it was under her seat, at which point I burst into tears. The dozy bat apologised profusely (mainly because she thought she was going to get into trouble), and neglected to charge me for my excess baggage; she didn’t even charge me for Pigger: result!

I was told to hang on to Pigger until 9, as the loading bay was noisy and he would be happier with me, so I got myself another vile coffee and went back to my book. By this time he had decided that adventures were a piece of cake, and was busy watching the world through his plastic bars. I continued to be the madwoman talking to her baggage. By 9.00 I was a complete wreck, and managed to bite my lip and only burst into tears again once the nice man had wheeled Pigger away. He didn’t give me a chance to say goodbye! He just walked up to me, said is this the cat for Budapest? … I’ll take him from here and was gone, leaving me with just my laptop case, which was a darn site less cuddly than the black cat had been, and a lot heavier too.

At least I could finally go through to the Departure lounge and get a bite to eat (Pret a Manger chicken and avocado sandwich), and pick up bits and pieces for the Magyar contingent: Empire magazine for Upsetter, Toblerone for Upcsetter, and wine for Ken. The flight was delayed by about twenty minutes, so I had a little extra shopping time before I had to find my gate.

The queue at the gate took forever and I was starting to feel really ill; maybe it was the sandwich, or the two vile coffees. I was almost desperate to get on the plane in case I passed out or something (I felt that wobbly), and they told me I wasn’t fit to fly. Finally I crept into my windowseat and spent the next three hours worrying about Pigger, especially in the heavy turbulence as we ascended from Heathrow. What on earth must it feel like to be a cat, a particularly nervous one at that, stuffed into a box for six hours by that time, and jolted and shaken and stuck in the hold of a noisy aeroplane in the dark with no-one to talk to. He would never speak to me again, I was sure of it; or worse than that, he wouldn’t survive the flight.

Couldn’t eat my in-flight sandwich (what the hell has happened to aeroplane food? Why is it always sandwiches these days? What happened to the overheated omelette and rubber lasagne that I used to enjoy?). Finished my book, though, and then watched the Danube curve into view like a smile. The point where I managed a smile as well, was that moment where you feel that tiny alteration in the speed of the plane, and you know it’s just about to begin to descend. Then the captain made another announcement, welcoming the first-time visitors to Budapest; welcoming the Hungarians home, and I burst into tears again.

As I walked off the plane, I paused to ask the cabin staff if they knew where I could collect the cat from, and made some joke about him bumping down the conveyor belt, which they took seriously and were at pains to assure me would not happen. By the time I had been processed through passport control, he was already there, waiting by the belt, alive and well. He gave me a get on with it then and quit yer snivelling look, and complained when I lifted him on to the trolley. No-one said anything when I took him through the green channel. No-one asked for his papers or took the slightest bit of notice of him. Ken was there waiting with a rose (yes, more tears), bundled us into a taxi, hurried us home.

Pigger stepped out of his box in his new world, looked around, recognised his furniture, gave Ken a big headbutt, and spent the next hour or so wandering round inspecting everything. He likes this flat, especially the dusty bit behind the heater, and he thinks the rattan bedframe is a scratching post especially for him. His favourite spot is Ken’s chair, and he has of course contemptuously ignored the catbasket I bought for him on the christmas market.