We don’t know if the guests actually ate it, but since then, the expression “Blinks, like the frog in the Miskolc meat jelly” has come into common usage in Hungary. So Miskolc is the place to go to enjoy this treat (hopefully without the frog), and now is the season!
Kocsonya is prepared in late fall and winter by boiling (otherwise undesirable) pork pieces with vegetables and spices, skimming off (some of) the fat and leaving the broth to cool into a jelly dotted with juicy meat. It’s consumed cold with thick slices of fresh, white bread – for which Miskolc also happens to be famous.
Hence the Kocsonya Festival, complete with culinary contests, concerts and a street fair (with fairgoers in frog costumes!), starting in 2000. Try this local culinary specialty in 40 varieties, while you laugh at jesters and other festival funnymen, listen to chansons or brass bands, and then dress up and attend the Kocsonya Ball!
You could combine a trip to this nowhere-else-in-the-world festival with a dip into the hot-springs Cave Baths at Miskolc-Tapolca, also something not found anywhere else…
Kocsonyafesztivál
Date: 2011. február 18-20. / February 18-20, 2011
Place: Miskolc
Tel.:+36.46.508.806
E-mail: tobbmintlegenda@gmail.com
Web: www.kocsonyafesztival.hu (Hun, Eng, Ger)
Meat Jelly Festival is a prominent event of North Hungarian region and also a part of ‘Visiting Miskolc' programme set (1999) dedicated to popularize Miskolc and its surroundings.
Every year in the third week of February Miskolc Winter the biggest open air festival of winter in Hungary invites visitors. The festival was founded upon a story about Miskolc starring the frog and the meat jelly...
This unique event is based either on modern entertainment and traditions and values. In the wide range of programmes elements of culture, gastronomy, sport, health, environmental protection, and active adventure tourism are gathered together.
...there is a proverb about the famous case that happened here in Miskolc: ‘Blinks like the frog in the meat jelly of Miskolc'...
As part of ‘Visiting Miskolc' marketing programme set, which provides revival of the town and the region this multicultural, an open air city festival is a real curiosity for the gourmands, the young and old, and for everybody, who would like to experience the joys of contemporary fairs and pleasant meetings.
The streets and squares are filled with life, street musicians, barkers and stilted showmen entertain the guests, ‘merry-making' moves into the city.
More than a hundred programmes, concerts and performances are waiting for the small and big ones who can taste the famous meat jelly of Miskolc, the laczi-steak, the pretzel and can have a sip of ‘Korty' (Sip), the well-known beer speciality of Miskolc... And here even frogs are falling from the sky...
‘More than a legend...' - MEAT JELLY FESTIVAL= more festivals together at the same time: culture, sport, health, environmental protection, active adventure tourism, gastronomy
‘More than a legend...' - MEAT JELLY FESTIVAL= pleasant meetings,
common experiences, unforgettable family programmes, contemporary fair feeling + meat jelly
Miskolc Winter/Meat Jelly Festival/ had become a constantly developing, popular event of Miskolc, the region and the country as well as a special trademark of Miskolc.
As a pole town of Hungary, Miskolc is rich in special traditions, possessing several gastronomic and touristic products that are associated with the inhabitants and name of the town due to a long and persistent work. As a result of a decade of work Meat Jelly Festival had become an event of Miskolc internationally, and other touristic and cultural events had been integrated into this one week programme set.
The festival had grown into a unique, frequently visited and also well-known national event.
Every year the aim of the festival is to attract Hungarian and foreign tourist into the town and the region even in the winter season and demonstrate Miskolc as a hospitable cultural centre of the region, rich in gastronomic and touristic values. A centre, which has the right to have an important role in popularizing the values of the region. An important mission of the Festival is to introduce significant settlements and touristic attractions of the area. We are intending to popularize festivals and cultural programmes of Hungary and the region beside the towns applied to European Cultural Capital City title.
Introducing other cultures of different nations has a great part in the festival every year. Being multicultural is not just a slogan, since Miskolc is traditionally a hospitable town, where every nation can live together in peace.
Miskolc Winter-Meat Jelly Festival is looking into past and present at the same time. Into present, since it is based on the legends of Miskolc and into future showing (nano)technology of the upcoming decades and centuries this year. This multicolour attitude makes the festival completely unique and original. It gives Miskolc a great opportunity to prove it is not the town what it was before and offers a chance for all the visitors to discover: Miskolc is (now) more than a legend.
More than a legend int the collaboration of the Europa Connects Language School and the Aspic Festival here it is the language centre of the festival. We are here for your provision.
If you have any questions about the festival it self or the town of Miskolc, or about the language school please fell free to visit this e-mail adress - ugyfelszolgalat@europaconnects.hu - and our colleagues will response within 24 hours.
The frog in the legend blinking from meat jelly, the symbol of the festival gained a new meaning: the frog is the animal of the future that can be found ever where but can only live in a healthy eco-system. Man can hardly find a continent without any croaking and jumping frog species. The frog has not conquered the deserts yet, just amphibianity. Though some say frog is an ugly animal, we still love and host it.
Pixy, the African oxen frog of Miskolc Zoo, is the web frog of the festival, and its life can be followed live through webcam. Pixy also writes a frog blog showing the world around us through the eye of a frog.
A picture, which is invisible to the naked eye and was made in Bay Zoltán Foundation for Applied Research in Miskolc, represents a frog. This picture is so small that it would fill a hair cross section twice. This work piece shows what nanotechnology (the new science) is capable of. The picture was scratched with an ice pin on a surface covered with polyethylene. If we put 25 pictures next to each other, this line would be one millimetre long.
2003 - MEAT JELLY-SLALOM in Bánkút.
2004 - Visitors are looking for frozen coupons in the biggest ICE PYRAMID of Hungary.
2005 - Dog sleigh competition on the sledge slide of the city centre.
2006 - First Hungarian TROUT CATCHER SHOW IN THE CITY.
2007 - Hungarian Record: the biggest MEAT JELLY of the country has been prepared.
2008 - World sensation in Miskolc: the about eight-million-year-old white cypress could be seen here for the first time.
On the last day of the 8th Meat Jelly Festival symbol of the event, the frog has set off a world wide tour with a message in its backpack, and a geocoaching travel bug identification label in its neck, so anyone can follow its route at any time. The frog's first destination was Salt Lake City, Utah, the United States. The message in the backpack was the following:
Miskolc is a hospitable city in the heart of Miskolc where frogs and men can live together in peace. Protect the Earth!
At the organizer's strongest hope the travel frog will have been returned to Miskolc by 2010, on the 10th Meat Jelly Festival.
You can follow the frog's route on the pages of www.geocaching.com.
The festival had become a unique, frequently visited event. The festival acquired national honour and had been awarded with marketing prize in 2000 and 2004 by the professional boards. Due to apparently growing interest year by year the programmes and events places are widening. Growing number of foreign and Hungarian tourists shows that an attractive and proper place was found to bring life into February, a dead season in tourism and Miskolc as a ‘four season' town played a great role in it.
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Bank account of the foundation: 10918001-00000041-69530002
www.kocsonyafesztival.hu
‘More than a legend...' Public Foundation
Postal address: 3545 Pf. 490. Miskolc, Hungary Address: 3525 4 Kossuth u. Miskolc, Hungary
Telephone.: 00 36 46 508 806 Fax: 00 36 46 508 807 E-mail: tobbmintlegenda@gmail.com
‘More than a legend' Public Foundation
Creative leader: Edit Rózsa - EUROCOM, the creative communication
Az oldal a Miskolci Önkormányzat idegenforgalmi alapjának támogatásával készült.
