A bunch of us from my friend Peter’s workplace spent the weekend in the northern foothills of Lake Balaton in the hamlet of Obudavar. Jean arranged this. He wants you to learn Hungarian and read his blog:
http://blog.metc.hu/janc.php
I contend it is something rare and Hungarian that nearly everyone in the group works together in the same office and then they all hang out together outside of work for drunken weekends like this, bosses included. How many other places do you see that?

Obudavar is a beautiful quiet place of minimal landscaping, a village with no stores and only a cell phone signal by the sign that tells cars how fast they are going, so all the city folk have to schlep up the road to the sign to make a phone call and check their messages.

We walked through the vineyards to Uncle Toni’s place where he sucks wine out of big barrels and with his semi-clean index finger acting as a stopper, incessantly plies everyone with nonstop sweet white wine. He does it all for free, and sells the rest for only 225 forint a liter, exactly one dollar.

We sat around by the campfire to roast big slabs of fat that are then dripped on to some bread with onions and paprika. Where else west of here would you see people in their thirties eating that, especially women? In California if you proposed to a girl that you go roast chunks of fat by the campfire together…let’s just say it’s a non-starter.

The next night bogracs gulyas (“kettle goulash”) was made over an open fire. Hungarians have funny ideas about the proper way to cook it, such as rotating the pot 90 degrees every 15 minutes, but it’s always good.