A walk down a typically quiet street in the small town of Tokaj in North Eastern Hungary was terrifyingly interrupted just an hour ago, not by a loud polluting motorbike or car, but by an electric bike. Terrifying? Yes, as someone who was warned about the electric bikes in China last year and was dismissive I’m sure you too, the reader will be suspicious about the fear that a diminutive bike with a silent electric motor can inflict. China is filled with electric bicycles and scooters, and I mean filled. They zoom up right past you at a cracking pace and you never ever know when it’s safe to cross the road be it for a mad Chinaman on his way to the market to get the last bok choy for sale.

And then there was one in Tokaj, a world heritage listed town in Hungary. I am sure the greenies will scream yes, yes, yes to the electric bike (though how green are they, I mean, you plug them into a socket that is supplied with power from a stinking coal power plant) but I say no, no, no. They’re a scourge that will a) make people fat because they no longer need to peddle, and b) kill and maim thousands of innocent pedestrians who walk in front of these silent killing machines.

All of which takes me back to Tokaj which really is a great little town. Population is around 2000 which is just a nudge over the number of people in the town where I spent my formative years in Australia. Famous across the world for their wine, the Tokaj Aszu even gets a mention in the national anthem, not bad for a drop of grape juice hey? The region is small, especially by Australian standards and in a fashion not dissimilar to Australian boundary battles, plenty of producers try to slap ‘Tokaj’ on their label when they’re not entirely deserving of the title.  The region is more or less completely enveloped with botrytis, a fungus that causes grapes to shrivel and become intense and concentrated. It’s known as Noble Rot as the effect of the fungus allows the winemakers to create intensely flavoured sweet dessert wines.

We arrived in Tokaj by catching a couple of trains from Eger, pretty simple; jump on the train in Eger and jump off at 10.52 am in Füzesabony and jump on the 10.56 am heading the opposite direction to Tokaj – simple if both trains are on time, but our first one was late and our second one was early which meant running from one train, downstairs, guessing which platform it was, jumping on and praying that we weren’t on a train to Bucharest. Lucky for us we did have the right train, and unbeknown to us we’d bought tickets for a train with allocated seating, very la-di-da. Just had to find our car (number 22, which was strange as it only had about 5 cars) and then kick out a family on their way to Miskolc from out seats. Very liberating work.

My history on the Austro-Hungarian Empire is a bit vague, but I know one thing for sure, it wasn’t this empire that was responsible for laying railway tracks and putting station names on signs so that train travellers can have a clue where they are. I know this because Austria does a stunning job of it and the Hungarians, well, frankly, do a shit job if it, so the signwriting clearly came well after the Hasburgs had been defeated. Peering out of the window every time the train slowed proved fruitless, so it was when the vineyards on hills became more and more pronounced that I started to retrieve our packs from the shelves above.

Fortunately some wise local thought it would be a good idea to paint a wall at the station with the name of the town and thus Tokaj was going to get a couple of tourists that it may very wall have missed forever if it followed national guidelines to keep everyone wondering where-the-hell-am-I-and-where-is-my-stop?

Our research done in Eger concluded that we should give our back a break in Tokaj and stay in a bungalow in Tokaj Tisza campground. First impressions are more often than not right, and in this case they were spot on. The bungalow looked like something that workers camped in at Port Hedland in the 1940s, and had they have had the opportunity they would have been built with James Hardie’s finest asbestos, but instead they had to make do with galvanised iron. The bathroom facilities were a long way below the used and abused WC and showers at Sziget, a week long music festival, and there was something a little disturbing about all of the bikie gang posters – 10pm Erotik Show – not exactly a family friendly camp.

We went for a walk into town and found Tourinform, the local Tourist Information site and inquired about somewhere else to stay. It’s funny really, in the days before guidebooks and the internet it would be the first port of call in a new town to find accommodation, but it seemed odd that I would walk into a shop and ask someone to find me somewhere to sleep. A guesthouse for 3250 HUF per night was offered – done, book us in for two nights and we’ll be on our way. It’s now night three and I just saw the lovely lady who owns the house and booked in for a fourth. Why rush? This place actually makes you feel like you’re on holidays and what’s more 101 days and 20 hours into a trip it is actually a god send to go to the supermarket and cook some meals at home – who knew a fried egg on toast could taste so good?

Speaking of supermarkets in Hungary though – Penny Market, what the hell? I know the place is cheap, but it is awful. Is it so tough to employ someone to actually unpack the goods out of the cardboard boxes and how about some staple items, like tonic water, onions and cold beer? By far the worst supermarket I’ve been to in my life. I’m sure it is reminiscent of the good old days under the Soviets when supermarkets simply filled their shelves with whatever they can get. ‘Do you have any chilli?’, ‘No, but we got a shipment of brown socks in yesterday?’ It really got to me, is it so tough to have a normal supermarket?

After some days of delay we went to Rákóczi-Pince és Udvarház for some pretty serious wine tasting. Offering about five different options on your degustation of wines, I went with the four glasses of Tokaji Aszú created from different varieties of grape, Furmint, Hárslevelü, Muskotályos, and Kövérszölö. The tasting was informative and the wines were beautiful, and it was all enjoyed in the setting of a cellar over 400 years old – it wasn’t a cheap experience at 3000 HUF each, about AU$19, but we were drinking wines that averaged 8000 HUF per bottle, or AU$50.

It was tough to leave Tokaj, but after spending five nights in the one spot we felt that we should move on, and we reluctantly caught a bus to make our way to Füzér, a small town of 500 near the border of Slovakia. We caught the first bus to Sátoraljaújhely (I’ve never even tried to pronounce that one) and then another onto Füzér. The final kilometres of the bus trip in gave us a view that we’d travelled to see, a partially restored 13th Century private castle sitting atop the small town.

We found a bed in the backroom of a house and then went to a restaurant for lunch. I don’t know the name of it, but it is easy to find, right next to the Roman Catholic Church in the centre of town, heading away from the castle. We had the best goulash we’d had in Hungary, followed by a sweet so good I wish I’d stolen the recipe; some sort of fettucini with home made raspberry jam sprinkled with icing sugar – delectable.

With only a few days left before we have to get onto a flight from Bratislava or Vienna (depending on Sky Europe and the Vienna Airport’s whims) to Thessaloniki in Greece we felt that we should move on the next day. We caught a bus at 9.32am back to Sátoraljaújhely where we attempted to catch a bus or train to Bratislava, but to no avail. The only way to get anywhere in Slovakia was to go to the next town, Slovenské Nové Mesto in Slovakia. Maybe it’s an Australian thing, but it felt pretty peculiar to walk across the border to another country with no officals, boom gates, passport controls or sniffer dogs to check us out. If it wasn’t for the old checkpoint buildings and the EU sign proclaiming we were now in Slovakia we simply wouldn’t have known.

We also didn’t know that Slovakia has just adopted the Euro, which goes to some length to explain why the woman in the ice cream shop looked at me as if I was demented when I asked her very slowly in English if she would accept Euro as we didn’t have any local currency yet. A train ticket purchased from Slovenské Nové Mesto to Kosice, and then Kosice to Bratislava. Little did we know we purchased the ticket that took us around the country, but the scenery was stunning and the second class train was extremely comfortable so all in all a good outcome.