Paying Tribute to Pecs

Noemi had a bad week. Among other things, she accidentially spilt a glass of wine on her laptop. A shocked gasp later, it was fried. Her mom took it to tech staff at the National Museum of Fine Arts, but they’ve been oscillating all week on whether or not it would be possible to save any information at all. The computer itself, though, goners.

I figured that just treating her to a nice Jeremy-cooked meal (all the ingredients used to be enclosed in one bag) wasn’t enough, so I suggest we whisk ourselves off to Pecs (Pay-Ch) for a weekend overnight. Three hours by IC train, it’s a perfect weekend destination, long built up by guidebooks and stories. We took off early Saturday morning with smiles.

Pecs is the biggest city in southeastern Hungary, perched on rolling hills just before Hungary slopes into Serbia. The hills are flush with wine, the southern side of the mountains has a Meditteranean feel to it. The climate goes as far as to offer fig trees along the streets in Pecs.

Two architectural highlights crown the city. In the main square, a green-domed church stands as proud tribute to the 150 years of Turkish dominance. (Shown in the picture, alongside one of the delightful nationalist rallies that you run into every once in a while in provincial Hungary...) After conquering Pecs in the 16th century, the Ottomans razed the largest church and made a grand mosque out of the rubble. When the Hungarians (fine, Austrians…) retook the city late in the 17th century, they were strangely more sentimental and, in rather unprecedented act of foresight, converted the main mosque into a unique Christian church rather than razing it in retribution. Inside, you can still read verses of the Koran painted onto a few of the walls. At the other end of the downtown area, formerly encased inside a city wall, is the four-spired cathedral. On this particular Saturday, at least ten brides stood white against the picturesque towers.

We ate food, we drank wine, we touristed. Come Sunday, we hiked in flipflops up the hills that grows from the north end of the town. First we wove through residential streets before settling on a footpath to the TV tower atop the bluff. While we weren’t properly afooted, the trail was nice hiking and the view from the top even better. After the long stroll and a good meal, we dashed back to the train for the last Sunday afternoon train, refreshed from a quick night out of the city.