More Cricket in Belgrade

The view from fine leg

After keeping this blog for more than a year now, it seems this is the point in the blogger's life were we realize that our lives are essentially cycles within cycles and all we can do is keep on dressing up the mutton as lamb and pray no one catches on. But at least we have the now annual Belgrade trip to throw a little fun into the banality of existence.

The Serbian guys (and a few gals) we first met last Spring came up to Budapest to play a couple times last summer, so by now they seem like old friends rather than new friends already, even if I misplaced a few names I should have remembered. Belgrade still has a sense of unselfconscious fun - at least the parts we see - that in Budapest seems to have gotten in large measure drowned in Hungarian cynicism and insularity and post-communist consumerism. And you can still smoke in the bars there. Not that I smoke anymore. Much. I don't usually eat big chunks of red meat either, but hey, this is Serbia.

Here we have from left to right, Tim, who only revealed himself to us that morning, as we bought our train tickets, as being back from a six month visit to Oz, and then immediately realized he had forgotten his Oz passport at Adrian's hostel and had to do a taxi-borne Chinese fire drill with just minutes to spare for the train. Adrian, looking regally simian, the only leftover from last year's trip besides me. Slightly touched Stokie Kevin - the less said the better. And Dávid, smugly thinking, "I might have lost my train ticket 90 seconds after purchasing it and had to buy a new one, but at least I'm not the goat who forgot his passport." Not shown are Gareth, Kevin's long-suffering son-in-law and, for obvious reasons, Hungarian slow-bowling wunderkind Disappearing Dani who mesmerizes opposing batters out of a pre-determined number of wickets and then vanishes from the corporeal world until the next match. So, not counting second passports and Dávid's various fantasy nationalities, it's two Brits, two Aussies (a third, Andrew was already in Belgrade for his business recruiting the people of the Balkans to settle the Outback), two Hungarians and me. Typical DCC diversity, but with some typical DCC last-minute party pooping, not enough for a team, for which we'll borrow a few Serbs. Morale is high in the photo because the Hungarian border guards have just let me and Kev run across to the pub to replenish our dangerously low beer supplies before doing the passport check.  

And a long trip it is as we go into single .... click..... track.... click.... mode..... click..... between Subotica and Novi Sad as we got to enjoy the unblurred beauty of every cornstalk in the Vojvodina, the same way God sees them when he's not in a rush to get anywhere. And then we get to Belgrade and find the queen of all hostels, furnished with oversize kitsch tables and chairs made from old egg cartons, shopping carts and bathtubs and with one wall full of illuminated mildly homo-provocative paper illustrations and a balcony and a bar downstairs. Just the thing for a cricket team free from the womenfolk for a few days.

Tim and Adrian show their affection for gay Balkan kitsch

For supper we had our first round of pljeskavicas for the weekend on cobble-stoned Skadarlija street, where Kevin found a back-up band to replace the one that got his single played by John Peel in 1983.

When the old cricketer leaves the crease

Sadly no audio/video exists of this startlit serenade. And then the night dissolved into a quick tour of Kalemegdan Fortress, which first-time Belgrade visitors Gareth and Dávid pretty much ignored in favor of attempting the hopeless task (for Europeans - even Canadians get hopelessly muddled) of teasing out the metaphysical themes of the Dukes of Hazzard. Tim has a funny story: he's been to Belgrade before but his visit was restricted to a transfer on the train up from Istanbul to Budapest with a bad hangover - just like the Orient Express but with no food or water and about 36 hours longer - and scouring the streets for something to eat. Who knew the best pizza in the whole world was to be found in a Belgrade side street?

The next day it turns out we have to play cricket. With help from Luka and Nenad at right we put in a respectful showing against a mostly mixed Belgrade XI. Partnered with Luka I manage to stay in for 3 overs, which isn't so bad for me, but then I'm fooled by a tricky spinner for an LBW. Dani, putting in a brief social appearance at left from the astral bowlers plane was really man - er, entity - of the match with 3 wickets taken, just as foreseen by the oracle.

Then more pljeskavicas at the very same place on Skadarija, with the whole of Salix CC, the London-area team we'd be playing the next day joining us. Here we have smart-mouthed Andy flanked by Serbs Haris and Vlad, the main organizers of Cricket Serbia and two of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Andy and I have a bonding moment when buying smokes we get separated from our unit on the way to a Serbian wedding party on the Sava side of town (I don't think large groups of strangers (to the bride at least) get impromptu invitations to wedding parties in other countries, even if it's not the official formal dress-up party) but I get us there in a route that was about 200m longer than optimal, which wasn't good enough for Andy, who is former royal artillery and knows maps backwards and forwards. So why didn't he find the place for us instead of griping? Because Her Majesty didn't teach you Cyrillic, did she Andy?

Somehow we make it back to the hostel in the appropriate numbers and the next day it is more cricket, another loss, in which I didn't get a bat, this time against eventual champions Salix. The Serbs are very proud of their new grounds on part of a major sports complex that was slated to be a water park, but the Italian developer ran out of financing, so they got it on the cheap. A little bit of grading and a refreshment kiosk and it will be prime cricket territory. We'll be back next year to see.

Mladen, the taxi driver who has been ferrying us between city and grounds suggests a Serbian folk tune we may like:

On the night train home, herded into a common carriage without compartments, we're the group of loud guys that you hate sitting next to on the train as Kevin expounds on his severe distaste for puppies, God, anyone from the South of England and for all members of the various socioeconomic classes oppressing the pottery workers of Stoke - he actually has an MBA from a respected (the kind where you actually go there and study stuff) university in the US, which I try to point out automatically makes him an upper-middle class American even if he never earns another penny in his life, but he wasn't having it. But somewhere around the border, after conversation has lulled around less heated topics like the state sport and motto of the State of Maryland (jousting and Fatti Maschii Parole Femine, and it wasn't me who brought it up) it's sleepy time and dreamy resolutions of our return next year and at least, say, three days, without beer or red meat. Goodbye Belgrade, we'll see you again.

Wines from the Great Plains at the Agricultural Museum

Over the long May Day weekend the City Park is given over to the simple springtime delights of the proletariat, so Rob suggested we go sample some hardworking plebian wins from the Alföld (the "lowlands" or Great Plains of south-central Hungary) at the one-day tasting at the neo-neo-Baroque Agricultural Museum, which looks like this on the outside:

Possibly the most grandiose venue for a wine venue I've ever been to, if you don't count the exterior of the Buda Castle, which contrasts nicely with the humble workaday wines that the Alföld tends to produce - not because the winemakers don't know what they are doing, but because of the sandy soil and dry climate it's hard to grow grapes that pick up a lot of interesting flavors and acids, although they make lots of perfectly good table wines. Also, they are spread over a giant wine-producing region which is mainly given over to crops and grassland and probably have difficulty establishing a collective market persence - which presumably is why they are having this showcase event in the capital, as most of them, smaller producers, are priced out of the more important wine festivals.

So we three, intent on uncovering hidden gems after the spectacular 2011 harvest were admitted for free: Rob because he is a wine-maven-about-town and knows everyone in the wine world, me because I am evidently a celebrated gastro-ish-bogger (see, it's not a complete waste of time and might even have tax benefits) and Dougal because he's from Scotland via Australia and claims he's moving to Trieste (and was duly warned: Trieste is near the top on my short-short list of cities to visit).

We started out tasting the range of the Gál winery from the southern tip of Csepel, roughly Budapest's equivalent of Long Island, except it's in the middle of the Danube. Light and airy whites and rosés -good for those who like such things on a hot summer day when a beer just won't do.

Frittman, probably the region's closest thing to a major known producer of premium wines, winning the highly politicized winemaker of the year award a few years back, had his youthful marketing machine out in force. He has a solid selection of white and roses, but I've noticed lately that the taste of the steel tank technique tends to come through more than that of the grapes themselves. Occasionally he comes out with a compelling red at a reasonable price. I have to see if I can find some of his kadarka - kind of a Magyar analogue to pinot noir, and equally fickle, before the sweet cherry season starts in a few weeks: two very distinctive Hungarian flavors that for some reason complement each other very well, at least for me.

Top prize, by general consensus of our pan-anglophone cohort went to Köpcös Pince, which not only had a full bodied Harslevelű: Rob and I had a good row as to the perceived and fundamental elegance of Harslevelű vis-á-vis Furmint, its overbearing stepsister in the crucible of Tokaji Aszú-making, from under whose shadow it only occasionally gets to escape. I say Harslevelű is an intrinsically finer wine and is widely appreciated as such. Rob agrees on the first point but holds that it is a minority view, which is why there is so little of it. Anyway, dry Harslevelű goes very well with a freshwater fish, especially trout. Köpcös doesn't seem to have a website, but this is what the winemaker, Zoltán Léder looks like:

A walking testament to the quality of his own product. If you run into him on the streets of Csengőd, ask him to sell you some. Also he had some excellent Kékfrankos, the 2008 vintage of which accompanied the following day, to great effect, Móni's and my last roast duck breast until the autumn leaves wither and die once again.

Honorable mentions go to Birkás and Balla Géza, the latter right over the Romanian border, both with a range of quality products.

The exhibits were closed because you can't have tipsy people learning about sugar beet cultivation processes, but from around behind the corner was peeking Kincsem, the greatest racehorse of all time.

One of these days I should have a look around when they're not slopping out booze.