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At 8 o'clock in the morning in Vienna, Michaela and I drive off.
In the boot we carry the soup.
Originally, our friend Csaba wanted to come along with us, to visit his home Transylvania. Because of business appointments, he had to cancel his holiday and to call off. Anyhow, this journey would not have been accomplishable without him. He has planned this trip down to the last detail, cared for the daily soup cooks and supported us by many phone calls and his improvisational skills, to keep the soup on the right way.
Our first milestone is a small village named Mimis, about 30km away from the border town Arad. We arrive in the late afternoon and find quarter at the Pensiunea Agro Tur of Mr. Geza Tüdös. To our surprise, the guesthouse is a perfect oasis of peace after a long car ride. You enter the house, which is located on the outskirts of Mimis, by crossing a lovely, fully grown, but well cultivated garden, filled with manifold fragrances of bloom and colourful flower arrangements.
Cats are snooze lazily in the sun, shady bowers invite you to rest, to drink and to eat.
Maria the cook leads us to the house, to show us our quarters. It consists of two rooms with bath, equipped with old heavy furniture, partly ornamented and painted artfully, unknown oil paintings on the wall, shelves containing dusty books; a beautiful old red-brick floor with a deep matt-finished surface, which got its uncompareable patina by long time treatment with linseed oil.
The apartment and the whole building has the flair of a prosperous middle-class house, grown from one generation to another, where all the collected items are telling us about history, but also the spirited presence finds its appropriate expression, in terms of the delicious wine, produced by Geza himself.
Behind the house vineyards strech over rolling hills, where the grapes are grown for their pristine red and white wine, that comes to table without marks and definitely inspires me. There we are served an opulent dinner along with an impromptu gulyas Jahressuppen soup.
Around 10 o'clock in the evening the Patrone Geza himself comes by. Like us, Mr. Geza is already a bit illuminated and for the pleasure of all present, he donates another bottle of red wine from his cellar.
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