'Every Hungarian feels in his heart he is Attila.'

Further down the river in the direction of Budapest, a pretty little town called Szentendre (St Andrew) adds another piece to the jigsaw of Hungarian history. Szentendre was founded by Serbs fleeing north after the catastrophic defeat of their armies by the Turks at the Field of Blackbirds in 1389, and many more came later when the Ottoman armies recaptured Belgrade in 1690.

It has a handsome Orthodox church, next to which is what used to be the priest's house and is now the home of the Eredics, one of the hundred or so Serb families still left in Szentendre.

Kálmán Eredic, the elder of the family, started his group of musicians thirty-two years ago. Various members of the family have now joined him and in the secluded garden of what is largely a 300-year-old house, they play, on violins of all kinds (with Kálmán on the double bass), vigorous folk music that has not just Serb but also Macedonian and Croatian influences. Marta Sebestyen, one of Hungary's most celebrated singers, who sang the haunting folk song in The English Patient, has worked with the group over many years. With her wide emotional range and apparently effortless technique she can cope with any kind of material, but it's the songs of loss and longing that seem to suit this tall walled garden as the sun goes down.

'Melancholic,' she says apologetically, after we've all been reduced to reflective silence.

'Just like our history.'

A very un-melancholic meal follows, featuring a complex and delicious goulash, prepared over an open fire by Kálmán's short, dark, feisty wife Zita, and augmented with Hungarian wine and shots of pálinka. We're sent back to the Budapest ferry in high spirits, after hospitality so generous that I'm unable to remember whether or not music is the food of love, or food is the music of love. Time for bed.