In 1996 I climbed on a train in Belgrade with no ticket and rode for free thanks to a bottle of plum brandy. It was, in a sense, my first lesson in Carpathian hospitality.

Jumping the train in Belgrade was an easy decision. A friend who was supposed to meet me there conveniently forgot and had left town; it was midnight and the station was filled with more shadows and lurkers then friendly faces; and I had no dollars, a handful of Turkish lira and some Bulgarian toilet paper, which at the time may have doubled for currency. I was stranded and panicked. So I snuck on the only train still idling in the station, one that was on its way to the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

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In Southern German regions, it’s not uncommon to see people drinking beer for breakfast. In parts of Hungary, pálinka is, or has been, the breakfast of the dawning day – the “coffee of the poor,” as it was evidently termed by some in the early 1900s.

You see this retained in language, in the expression: Pálinkás jó reggelt!, which translates variously as “A pálinka good morning,” or “Good morning with pálinka!”

Naturally, there are explanations for this early, to American palates nearly inconceivable practice. Balázs quotes a handful of folk sayings:

In the morning, wine sleeps and shouldn’t be woken, so pálinka must be drunk.

or alternately:

Before wine, pálinka, then a bit of sausage, just so the coffee won’t hurt later.

A confession: When visiting a friend for a Transylvanian wedding, we were on hand for the arrival of a close Hungarian friend of the groom and groom’s brother. Maybe 10 in the morning. We gathered underneath the shade of the walnut tree to welcome him, and the bottle of brandy came out, glasses were filled, and the friend’s arrival was toasted. We smiled, and I surreptitiously poured the spirits into the grass.

But I was young. Today I would have wished them a Pálinkás jó reggelt! and let the wine sleep in a little longer.