More Melancholy over Change - The Quaint Valley of Wine is no More

Are there flying cars in my home town of Winston-Salem? I imagine there are if it has changed as much as the Valley of the Beautiful Women (more recently changed to "Nice Women" according to the signage). I approached the Valley, a favorite memory of my youthful drinking days in Hungary, on foot during a morning run. I didn't recall many houses around those 16 years ago - it seemed a bit suburby now. As I got closer, a dozen or so restaurants appeared before getting to the hobbit-hole like wine cellars that decorated this little dale. I've forgotten a lot, but I swear this was just a big field that tour buses parked in.

Returning later in the day with Janine, I found one of the few cellars that had not undergone a makeover and settled in for a pohar of bor. The old man who ran the place tolerated my Hungarian and also spoke a little English. I explained the best I could my story and asked if he recognized the cellar in the middle pages of my book. At first, he said without his glasses it was impossible. Some time later he found his specs but still could not tell. They all pretty much look like half cylinders carved into wet stone so it was a crap shoot we would find that particular cellar - not that I really cared, it just would have been fun. He confirmed the restaurants had not been there on my previous visit in 1994.

After we finished as much of the mid-day liter of wine as we could, we got the obligatory plastic 2-liter of his wine and were off to have langos (Hungarian Pizza) at the stand next door before tromping back to town. Eger is a tourist town. It's to be expected they would fall to the same kind of rampant commercialism that we had seen in Budapest. I wonder if my little town of Jaszbereny would still seem as quaint. I'll find out tomorrow.