Midsummer Night Cellar Tour on Somló – 2015 Summary

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This year’s Somló Midsummer Night Cellar – Tour will be on Saturday, 20th June . The festival this year has its own webpage . Information is regularly updated here, and on this Facebook Event Page . We recommend that you use the “Subscribe” button for the latter so as not to miss our updates.

In 2015 we have 41 separate official locations, i.e. Somló Wine Cellars open for wine-tasting all night, and offering a variety of programs. Also for the first time on new, common locations cultural and wine-related professional programs will start already from mid-morning.

Participation on Somló Midsummer Night Cellar Tour and on any program is free. Cellars charge for their wine individually.

Opening times, programs: The 3 Somló Chapels will open at 10 am. From late afternoon these will host musical concerts in 3 different styles to welcome families and daytime wonderers: Classical concerts will be held at Ilona Chapel on the S-Western side, Folk concerts at Márton Chapel on the East, and the Southern Margit Chapel’s parking lot will be the location for Contemporary music bands. As part of the daytime programs Somló Fortress will host historical tours, and there will also be a free 4 hour guided geological tour to the top of the extinct volcano, that is Somló. Opening times and programs are all individually determined by the cellars. You will find the list of these here.

The night-part of the Festival will open oficially at 10 pm, when each cellar lights its bonfire to the tolling of the 3 chapel’s bells. Programs on the communal locations are sponsored by EISPRO Kft.

Closing : Clink your glass at 4:45 to greet the rising Sun on top of Somló Hill together with the most persistent participants. We take care of a musical wakey-uppey for the rest…
05:00 Surprise Program on the same location, on the front lawn of the Hilltop Vantage Point ( “Kilátó”)

Breakfast at Hegykapu Restaurant from 6:00 a.m.

Travelling to Somló: The Festival’s main transport partner is Hungarian Railways . According to our agreement:

You will be able to travel from and to Budapest by fast train without having to find somewhere to stay on Somló. On 20th June 4 fast trains will make an un-scheduled stop on Somlóvásárhely railway station , moving on the Budapest – Szombathely line. There will be 1 fast train that you can take back towards Budapest from the same station on Sunday, 21st June. Exact train-times here.
Wherever you are coming from within Hungary, you get 50% discount on trains. Participants of Midsummer Night Cellar Tour will be entitled to a 50% return discount, courtesy of MÁV-START Plc. These special tickets can only be purchased in person, at ticket-sales points, not online. They are available already, so you can buy them in advance.You must quote “Éjszakai Pincetúra, Somlóvásárhely” when asking for your ticket. Once on Somló, your ticket needs to be validated by us, otherwise it will not be valid for the return journey. You can get your ticket stamped upon arrival at the Station at our Inof Point there. Should you miss this, you can get it done during the night at Somló Wine Shop. There is a detailed Q&A regarding this in Hungarian here, we recommend anyone needing information in English to contact us on info@somloi.hu.
Closest regular or “slow” train station to Somló is Somlóvásárhely. Here only the above mentioned 5 fast trains will stop, and only on Saturday and one on Sunday. Closest fast-train station to Somló is Devecser town, in 15 kms distance from Somló. There is no regular TAXI service in Devecser, you need to pre-book. Keep an eye out for our update with the TAXI phone – numbers, or drop us a mail.

For community car-sharing we recommend this service: http://www.oszkar.com . Private car-share offers are also welcome on our FACEBOOK page , within the Event.

Accomodation: By now we have run out of places to stay on Somló. We issue regular updates regarding the accomodation-situation here, including possible new vacancies.

Getting around: The most actual online map of the official locations is available here, A4 pdf printable version is also coming once data is final. The same map will also be included into the Program-booklet of the Festival in A5 size. You will be able to pick these booklets up from any official location for free. This year again we will have our navigation web-app. You will need internet connection and location services turned on to use this. This will again be only published, when all data is final. To have a detailed map of Somló on your smartphone, we also recommend a very concise , newly published Somló Guide and Map – Application that also has an offline version. Only available in Hungarian, and only for iOS and Android smartphones currently, search for Somló in your App Store. The App is called “Somlói Okosutak” and it is part of the Guide at Hand Series.

There will be fluorescent signposts in most road-crossings, and in the critical locations local volunteers will help with finding your way around.

Transport on the Hill itself: We will have TAXIs, mostly 8-9 seaters. They will move both on a hop-on-hop-off basis, but you can also order them over the phone. The same vehicles can be used as transfers to – and from off-hill accommodations. We will publish phone numbers soon, and there will also be distributed to your hosts/landlords.

We kindly ask all our guests to leave their cars at the bottom of Somló Hill, at appointed free and guarded parking lots. We do not have enough Parking Spaces up on the hill itself. From 10 am till dusk our “Bornibus”, a small train-like vehicle pulled by a tractor will also be doing round trips between locations. Our small train-like vehicle called Bornibus starts from Bogdán Vinotéka, by the Railway station every hour, and carries 18 people.

Food: Many cellars will provide food as well as wine, check this in the Program list. Apart from the cellars there will be 3 restaurants open: Kreinbacher , Hegykapu, Tornai . We also hope to have a couple of streetfood-cars on different locations.

Payment Methods: Only a few locations are equipped to accept credit cards. This year for the first time we are intorducing a smartphone-based payment method, called BARION. This is a lot easier than using your Credit Card, as it does not require a POS terminal. For detailed info BARION’s own website is available here. Register with BARION for free with using this link : https://www.barion.com/Registration?r=060270007. Cash is accepted everywhere. Available Payment methods will be marked on all on- and offline festival material.

New features, prize – draws:

The festival now has its own Instagram profile called @pincetura. Upload your own pictures related to the Festival to Instagram with #pincetura2015 , and you may win a long weekend for 2 on Somló if your picture gets the most likes. A 6 bottle Somló Wine selection will be awarded to the person uploading the most amount of pictures with this hashtag. Photos already on Instagram can be found here. To have a valid entry to the prize draw, our picture(s) must be taken on this year’s or the previous years’ events, or somehow be related to the Festival.
This year we would like to know more about you, and about your ideas for 2016. If you feel like helping us with this, you can fill out our one – page questionner in person during the festival, with one of our volunteers, or do it online before, or after June 20. Online link later.
We would like you to return to Somló at other times, too. Our Program – booklet will not only contain all the contact details for all the official participant cellars, their GPS coordinates, programs and opening times, but it will also function as your yearly “Somló Pass”. Those visiting a minimum of 8 different cellars, and prove it in their “Somló-Pass” with the cellar’s stamps will be entitled to 10% discount at any Midsummer-Tour – Cellar, whenever they return within a year. ( for on-site consumption only)
Those visiting an outstandingly large amount of cellars will also be invited to a separate prize-draw competition with their Somló – Pass. Details of this later on in June.
To support the festival’s very heavy online info-background, our prize-games, BARION and navi-app, this year most of our locations will offer free wi-fi connection. This was made possible by our local service provider, iPlus Kft. , who offered a heavily discounted subscription to Midsummer Night Cellar owners. Wi-Fi spots will also be marked on our materials.
Safety: This is a hill-climbing, roaming-in-the-dark, getting-lost-in-between-the-vines-and-falling-over-with-laughter -type festival. Please do not take glass outside the cellars. You will be able to purchase our regular, nice and elegant – looking plastic wine-cups at any official location for 100 HUF. Read about other important “dos and don’t dos” here.

Should you have any further questions, feel free to contact us:
e-mail: info@somloi.hu, Facebook message: www.facebook.com/somloiborokboltja

Other important information: Somló Wine Shop does not take any responsibility for neither programs organised, nor actions and events occuring at any individual location. Somló Wine Shop acts as organiser only in two senses: we organise the programs for the common locations ( chapels, hilltop) , and supply the communications and media background for the above mentioned individual locations, but only as a marketing framework.

The financing of this event comes from an evenly distributed common contribution, paid in by the official participants. Our human resource – base consists almost entirely of local volunteers. Programs of common locations are financed by private sponsors. Prizes of the competitions are an additional voluntary contribution from participant cellars.

Midsummer Night Cellar Tour of Somló is in no way associated with cellars who did not take part in the a.m. common contributions in any form, therefore they are not listed as Official Participants, even if they do offer similar services and stay open during the Festival.

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