People with poor circulation visit the sulphur cave and sit on the benches, their heads above the toxic level, and let the sulphur widen their arteries. During Ceausescu s regime, when the country was its poorest, people used to lie down in the sulphur cave as a way to kill themselves. Many fathers did this so there was one less mouth to feed. Fortunately, it is not used for this purpose anymore, and has become a tourist spot. Something seen all over Hungary are small boxy cars, like the one that Yeen and I are modeling, which is owned by one of our professors.
People say that they are made out of cardboard.
Or at least the interior is. Another weekend in early spring we visited Eger, a small town in the wine country, about two-hours by train from Budapest. There are hundreds of cellars just outside Eger alone. Wine cellars were open to taste the wine, but the cellars were pretty cold this time of year. We were served wine by women in full snowsuits and we drank with mittens on.