Hungary For WINE

Several bottles of Hungarian wine including Tokaji and Bulls Blood (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Despite what many may think, the area known as Hungary holds more wine tradition than any other country in Europe.  Most of this very tradition is just now surfacing in the light, with people finally starting to catch wind about everything Hungarian wine has to offer. Even though many wine drinkers aren’t familiar with Hungary - there are many who are.

Hungary is home to over 20 wine regions, full of forests, vineyards, and orchards.  With several different varieties of grapes to offer, the vineyards found in Hungary have flourished since the great Roman Times.  The weather in Hungary is seasonal, to say the least, with cold winters and extremely hot summers.  This weather allows the soil in the country to be diverse, which allows winemakers to create a variety of quality wines.

Despite the communist control in the past, there are several different wines found in Hungary.  Although the vineyards here produce a lot of excellent wines, Tokay Aszu is by far the favorite here and the wine that locals always love raising their glass to.  Tokay Aszu is a popular wine with meals or dessert, in Hungary and also happens to be one of the most popular dessert wines in the entire world.

Tokay Aszu was discovered in the mid 17th century in Hungary, quickly becoming a favorite for many European aristocrats.  Even though it was great to the taste, many believed that certain types of the wine had mystical healing powers.  Although this was strictly a rumor, it actually helped the wine become more popular than ever.  Over the years, Tokay Aszu was one indeed the most popular wine in Hungary, spreading to other areas of the world as well.

Egri Bikaver, also referred to as Bulls Blood is another popular wine found in Hungary.  This is another popular wine for locals and can be found throughout the world as well.  Getting its name from its color, Bulls Blood is truly a feast for anyone who likes wine.  The wine is dark red in color, yet sweet to the taste.  The wine was first developed back in the 16th century and remains popular even to this day.

If you ever visit Hungary, there are many places you can visit to get some great wine.  You should also make a point to visit Tokay, located in the northeast.  You can take a train from Budapest and arrive here in a few hours.  There are several different wine flavors and varieties here, sure to please just about anyone.  The wineries found throughout the Tokay area are normally open for tours and tasters from May to the end of October.  If you visit during these months, you can tour the underground cellars, sample the superb wine, and learn more than you ever thought possible about the manufacturing of Hungarian wines.

All in the all, the wine found in Hungary is great to have in your collection or just have around the house for special occasions.  You can get it by the bottle, the glass, or by the case.  All types of Hungarian wine has been perfected over the years, making it something that you really can’t go wrong with.  If you like to drink wine, as most of us do, you really can’t go wrong with any type of Hungarian wine.  Hungarian wine gives wine lovers plenty to study, plenty to order, and plenty to drink.  The wine is very tasty and refreshing - and it helps to keep the nation of Hungary thirsty for more.

---

---

The Swiss Army Watch from Wenger and Victorinox

Victorinox Swiss Army Watch - Photo: Wikimedia

If you are looking for a Swiss Army watch then look no further than Wenger who are suppliers of not only Swiss Army watches but are also one of the two official knife suppliers for the Swiss Army, along with Victorinox. Since 1908, Wenger has supplied the Swiss Army with watches that are stylish as well as classy and they have permission to feature the Swiss Cross which is a sign of a top-notch product. 

Rival Firm Victorinox

A competitor in the Swiss Army watch segment is the rival firm Victorinox which sells affordable watches that have exceptional engineering as well as outstanding and perfected craftsmanship and this brand of Swiss Army watch is certainly worth serious consideration. The Swiss Army Victorinox watch can be used for hiking, skiing, climbing as well as other adventure pursuits and these watches are perfect for extreme sports as well as a good accessory for wearing to a dinner at the Hilton. The Swiss Army watch is warranted by the Swiss Army to the original buyer to be free of defects in material as well as workmanship under normal usage for three years from when it was purchased.

There are many models of the Swiss Army watch available from Victorinox as well as Wenger. Some other suppliers of the Swiss Army watch include Swatch, Mondaine, Camel Active and Jacques du Manoir. In addition, there are various models such as Alpine, Mountaineer, Commando, Standard issue, Bienne, original Swiss military, and field new generation in the casual watch category. 

The Alpine WEN.72123 Wenger Swiss Army watch is priced at about $180 and is made of stainless steel and has ETA quartz movement, and this a men’s watch. It is also water resistant till 100 meters and the case finishing is sandblasted with mineral crystal, regular crown, a brown dial and dial style that have Arabic figures and three hands for hours/minutes/sweep second. The strap is made of brown leather with a regular buckle and special features include date display, and it is also luminous for nighttime visibility.

There is also the Wenger Alpine Chrono WEN.70875 sports gents’ collection Swiss Army watch that has Swiss quartz chronograph, movement, and water resistance to hundred meters and it also has luminous hands as well as markers for nighttime visibility. It comes with a one-year limited warranty and costs approximately $300. (2009)

---

---

Boats, A List Of Do’s And Dont's

Photo: Pxhere

Doesn’t the idea of a lovely three-day sail in wonderful old boat sound nice? Here are a few things to think about before you sail away.

1. Do check the price. It may be possible to take an actual, fairly luxurious cruise instead of sailing on one of the oldest boats in America.

2. Do make sure you fully understand the size of your "room " on the boat. If you are hoping to have any romantic action in your cabin it would be good to know ahead of time that you and your partner each have a small bunk and these bunks are not on the same wall.

3. Do know ahead of time if you and your partner can both even stand up at the same time in your "room" on the boat. If the answer is "no" consider other options.

4. Don't leave without checking more than once to make sure you have Your luggage. Even though you carefully packed All the luggage, did Yours actually make it to the boat? If not you will have a fantastic time with no changes of clothing and nothing warmer than a sweatshirt. Don’t leave without all your luggage!

5. Don’t get on a boat where the crew is planning on having a lot of assistance from you and the rest of the paying customers. Like, for instance, doing your own dishes or pulling in ropes and such.

6. Don’t think you will get everything outlined in the brochure. Will you ever go onto land during this excursion or will you just ride around and around on the boat being quite sure you’ve seen that same shoreline five times in three days? Do ask the boat crew if you will ever see any of the sea creatures promised and what about the island lobster bake?

7. Don’t plan on real bathroom facilities and do ask where the shower is. Ha!!

8. Don’t even think of taking this kind of boat trip if you don’t like small spaces. Not only is the berth area minuscule, there is no other place to play games or cards except the galley, also tiny and often being used to fix the meals.

9. Do consider this boat trip if you enjoy working while on a very expensive vacation in the smallest accommodations imaginable while possibly seeing no sea life and not eating promised lobster!

These are some do’s and don’t of a boat trip I’ve actually taken.

---

---

Travel Tips: YELLOWSTONE National Park

Map of Yellowstone National Park
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yellowstone was made a national park in March of 1872. Yellowstone is mainly located in Wyoming though parts of the park are in Montana and Idaho. The park is widely known for the geothermal activity and the wildlife that use the park as their homes. Yellowstone Park is made up approximately 80% forest and the rest of the land area is grassland. The park is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined together.  

Yellowstone National Park covers an area of about 3,472 square miles. This area is made up of lakes, canyons, mountain ranges, and rivers. Yellowstone Lake is one of the highest altitude lakes. The lake’s elevation is 7,733 above sea level. The lake is approximately 87,040 acres in all and is close to 400 hundred feet deep. It also has around 110 miles of shoreline for vacationers and wildlife to enjoy. It’s centered on top of the largest supervolcano on the continent called the Yellowstone Caldera. The volcano is considered to be active because of the several eruptions over the last two million years. Approximately half of the world’s geothermal energy is located in Yellowstone because of the ongoing volcanic activity. Yellowstone is covered with lava rock from lava flows that happened hundreds of year ago.

The Continental Divide runs through the southwestern part of the park. This is a topographic feature that separates the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans water drainage. Some of the origins of the river such as Yellowstone and Snake rivers are near each other but due to the divide, the Snake River drains into the Pacific Ocean while the Yellowstone River drains into the Atlantic Ocean thru the Gulf of Mexico.

Yellowstone National Park sits in the Yellowstone Plateau region and is surrounded by mountain ranges on all four sides. The altitude of the park is around 8,000 feet above sea level. The surrounding mountain ranges elevation is anywhere from 9,000 feet to 11,000 feet above sea level. The most visited and prominent mountain peak in the park is Mount Washburn that sits at 10, 243 feet above sea level.

Yellowstone National park is thought to be one of the few remaining intact ecosystems other than in the state of Alaska. The land is virtually untouched by commercialization and with pristine land for the animals to thrive on is a perfect habitat. There are still inhabitants that lived in the region when first explored by white exploration teams.

---

---

The Roots Of Radio Hobbyists

A commercial 1-kilowatt spark gap radio transmitter manufactured by William J. Murdock
Photo: Wikimedia

Radio hobbyists can play with their equipment all day without giving a thought to the origins of their hobby. Early radio hobbyists were part of something that was, at the time, new and fairly crazy.

After radio technology was stabilized, there was a steady growth of radio signaling in the fields of navigation of ships and for rescue operations. On the other hand, the amateur radio operators also started to dominate the air. The first documented and famous amateur wireless enthusiast was a then young man named Irving Vermilya born in 1890 when the wireless transmission was being born. The young man since age 12 heard Marconi and built his own wireless transmission equipment and was often “heard” telegraphing with ships during that time. In 1911 he became a member of the Radio Club that had been formed. He got himself certified in 1912 when law mandated all wireless operators to be certified. In his own words, 

This was the pre-audio era, and communication was purely in Morse code. Irving then organized his own amateur group who had regular meetings monthly and would communicate daily wishing “GM” (good morning) and “GN” (good night), some of the first amateur jargon to be used. He also proceeds to describe in his series of articles published in QST magazine in 1917 as to how they managed to lay the telegraph lines and such and how they “drew juice” for the wireless operation from the electric lines instead of relying on batteries.

Meanwhile, apart from the “professionals” and “amateurs”, with the audio wireless signal transmission, there was a new revolution setting in. A Dutch engineer in Hague was the first to make regular wireless transmission via radio. This could be considered the first regular radio broadcast. After this, there was slow development until the commercial radio stations came into being.

The requirement to be certified killed the enthusiasm in many amateurs, and the number of amateurs dwindled. But then after WWI, there was a boom. The first radio clubs were formed in 1909 and this was the beginning of the radio hobbies which included radio as a part of the hobby activity.

During the WWI the amateur radio operators were asked to stop their activity and dismantle the equipment. Radio operators in uniform helped in military communications. They got back on the air again by November 1919 again. A similar lull in amateur radio happened during Second World War and got back on air by 1946. After lots of battles over the frequency range that the amateurs can tune into, the amateur radio is here to stay!

At present (2007), there are more than 170,000 ham operators which are possibly not the complete picture. It is still increasing. So, with Irving Vermilya was born the amateur radio operation, since he was the first radio hobbyist. After lots of developments, including the discovery of the transistor which greatly decreased the size of the radio equipment, the old ways still remains which included “waiting for someone to signal”. 

The rules to get oneself certified and licensed included a Morse code proficiency until the World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva in 2003 that eliminated the need for Morse code proficiency from the licensure tests. Taking effect from February 23, 2007, the Morse code has been eliminated from the tests for amateur radio license tests.

---

---

The Cold War

Photo: Wikimedia

When we look back over the span of centuries that represents American history, it is easy to call out major military engagements which represent the major wars of this country.  From World War II to the Civil War to Korea to World War I, America has been involved in many military engagements and emerged victorious in all but a few of them.  But one of the strangest, longest lasting wars that America has entered into was the one that was called “The Cold War”.

For many Americas living today, The Cold War was a fact of life for decades.  The reason it was a cold war was that there was no battlefield, no armies on deployment, nobody counts and no major engagements to report.  Instead, it was a long period of silent animosity between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from the end of World War II up to the early 1990s.  

The strange thing was that the cold war grew out of our relationship with the Soviet Union during World War II which was a relationship of friendship.  But the seeds of the “conflict” were in place at the end of that horrible war.  With the presence of nuclear technology, the concept of a “superpower” was born.  This was not itself a source of tension until the Soviet Union themselves developed the bomb as well and a long cold standoff ensued in which both nations trained thousands of these weapons on each other to warn the other that they must never consider firing those weapons.  

It was a staring contest that lasted almost fifty years and created a tremendous drain on both economies.  Both countries had to maintain “parity” of their nuclear weapons so neither country got more than the other thus throwing off the balance of power and giving one combatant an unfair advantage.  This was a strange logic in that both countries possessed enough weaponry to destroy the earth dozens of times over but still they insisted on “having parity” throughout the cold war.

It was clear that no battle between the Soviet Union and America could ever be tolerated.  The potential outcome of engaging those weapons had the power to destroy life on planet earth.  But neither country was prepared to lay down their arms and begin the process of making peace with the other.  So the weapons continued to point at each other, day after day, year after year, for fifty years.

So instead of conducting battles directly, the two countries fought each other through small wars around the world.  The Soviet Unions, working with China happily contributed to the humiliating loss in Vietnam that the United States endured.  But the United States then turned around and armed the Afghan Mujahideen which lead to the defeat of the Soviet Union in their occupation of that country.  From proxy wars, the space race, and occasional face-offs such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War continued for decades testing the will and resolve of both countries never to look away and give the other the advantage.

Finally, the pressure on the economies of the two countries took its toll in the early 1990s, particularly in the Soviet Union as the stress of sustaining such an expensive and unproductive war forced the Soviet economy into collapse and the empire broke up.  The United States had won the cold war by sheer will to endure and stubborn refusal to give in.  This is a seldom spoken of an element of the American spirit but it is one that the Soviets learned to their own disaster not to test.  Hopefully, no other “superpower” will ever think they are equipped to test it again.

And what is the situation today (2018) ???

---

---

Beyond the Naked Eye

Picture: Flickr

It’s hard to say when in our lives each of us become aware of this thing called “astronomy”.  But it is safe to say that at some point on our lives, each and every one of us has that moment when we are suddenly stunned when we come face to face with the enormity of the universe that we see in the night sky.  For many of us who are city dwellers, we don’t really notice that sky up there on a routine basis.  The lights of the city do a good job of disguising the amazing display that is above all of our heads all of the time.

So it might be that once a year vacation to a camping spot or a trip to a relative’s house out in the country that we find ourselves outside when the spender of the night sky suddenly decides to put on its spectacular show.  If you have had that kind of moment when you were literally struck breathless by the spender the night sky can show to us, you can probably remember that exact moment when you could say little else but “wow” at what you saw.

That “Wow” moment is what astrology is all about.  For some, that wow moment becomes a passion that leads to a career studying the stars.  For a lucky few, that wow moment because an all-consuming obsession that leads to them travelling to the stars in the space shuttle or on one of our early space missions.  But for most of us, astrology may become a pastime or a regular hobby.  But we carry that wow moment with us for the rest of our lives and begin looking for ways to look deeper and learn more about the spectacular universe we see in the millions of stars above us each night.

To get started in learning how to observe the stars much better, there are some basic things we might need to look deeper, beyond just what we can see with the naked eye and begin to study the stars as well as enjoy them.  The first thing you need isn’t equipment at all but literature.  A good star map will show you the major constellations, the location of the key stars we use to navigate the sky and the planets that will appear larger than stars.  And if you add to that map some well done introductory materials into the hobby of astronomy, you are well on your way.

The next thing we naturally want to get is a good telescope.  You may have seen a hobbyist who is well along in their study setting up those really cool looking telescopes on a hill somewhere.  That excites the amateur astronomer in you because that must be the logical next step in the growth of your hobby.  But how to buy a good telescope can be downright confusing and intimidating.

Before you go to that big expense, it might be a better next step from the naked eye to investing in a good set of binoculars.  There are even binoculars that are suited for star gazing that will do just as good a job at giving you that extra vision you want to see just a little better the wonders of the universe.  A well-designed set of binoculars also gives you much more mobility and ability to keep your “enhanced vision” at your fingertips when that amazing view just presents itself to you.

None of this precludes you from moving forward with your plans to put together an awesome telescope system.  Just be sure you get quality advice and training on how to configure your telescope to meet your needs.  Using these guidelines, you will enjoy hours of enjoyment stargazing at the phenomenal sights in the night sky that are beyond the naked eye.

---

---