Our next leg took us to the little known Slovenian city of Maribor. The 100,000 residences proudly display their award as 2012 Cultural Capital of Europe. Lucky for us their annual Lent Music Festival was going on while we were there. The music was terrific being a great mix of everything including light jazz and heavy metal (loved it!).
We were lucky enough to catch a tour of one of the largest underground wine cellars in the world located 50 feet below the city. The cellar is the size of 4 football fields, built 100 years ago or so. The tour guide informed us the oldest bottle of wine in the cellar is from 1946; reason being during German occupation in World War II the German soldiers drank the cellar dry. (may have contributed to losing the war, not sure?).
Onward into Hungary we made a stop at Lake Balaton, a locals favorite holiday getaway. Renee and I couldn't decide on which sight to visit with our afternoon so she took in the Royal Palace, while I opted for the "man pick" - International Hunting and Model Train Museum. Renee said the Palace was amazing, and I was blown away by the greatness of my pick. There were artifacts, skeletons and mounts of almost every animal you could think of. Many were shot by the Royal Family in the Palace over the previous 150 years.
The model train museum was mind boggling with 30 trains continuously running up and down the tracks run by a complex computer system utilizing GPS tracking in each of the engines. The total track length was 2.5 km spread over a 150 x 50 foot floorspace. I wanted to run the computer so so so badly, but the engineer at the helm said no way! ....Boooooo.
Our host at the guesthouse was a treat, as he greeted us with a glass of wine and a great visit. In the evening we stumbled upon a wine festival in the street. All of the wineries in the area had booths, with a full glass of wine costing $1.00. We tried to get through the 13 booths but had to stop at the halfway mark to ensure we could find our way home to the other end of town. We grabbed one more for the walk home, off we went (Drinking on the streets is encouraged in most European countries!).
The next morning we tried to go down to the beach for some relax time. The lake has 220 km of waterfront (massive lake!), but yet every inch of beach was private requiring payment for use. We thought this was stupid so hid under a tree in the far corner. It worked until a young man came over asking for money in Hungarian - English (kind of). We pretended that we didn't know what he was saying and eventually he walked away...worked great!
Our journey has now taken us to Budapest, Hungary.
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