Since I began writing books about our years in Kathmandu, Nepal, and another describing our “association” with wine, I have delved into diaries, notebooks, journal articles and of course previous blog posts searching out relevant content and memory joggers. I’m coming to the end of the wine book now and yesterday I was writing the chapter titled Wine With Art when I came across some photos of a 10 day trip several years ago to Prague and Budapest. I needed some photos I took at the Alphonse Mucha museum in Prague which celebrates this great Czech artist who created a lot of posters advertising champagne in the Art Nouveau style. Anyway, this post isn’t about Alphonse, it’s about the fact that the first inkling of calling this blog Buddha Walks Into A Wine Bar arose in one of the Buddha Bar Hotels. It was in the Budapest Buddha Bar, now sadly closed, that they had a magnificent brasserie/restaurant with an enormous Buddha statue staring down at everyone, and you really felt that Buddha had his eye on you. What would he be thinking, what did he want to say? Let’s face it, you don’t normally walk into any brasseries and find statues of Jesus staring down at you! Good job too, Buddha seems a bit more philosophical for such a “position”. So, in my photo search for the champagne advert images I found a photo I’d taken of the big Buddha, and here it is:

Categories: Wine

Tags: Buddha, wine addict, wine books