Wilderness Adventures

This mood continued for the first 40 minutes or so, which were spent walking down a highway and then through an admittedly quaint village. As we passed into farmlands I grudgingly began to enjoy myself, and appreciate the fact that we seemed to have stepped into a past world. Without any motor vehicles in sight, and with farmers working their fields in the distance, one need not struggle to imagine themselves a century previous. We soon came to the foot of a small mountain crowned by white rock outcroppings. Climbing it took surprisingly little time; our guide new the area well and led us around the rock face and up its wooded back. The view from the top was breathtaking. Farmlands and tiny villages dotted a landscape split by streams and the occasional road. On the horizon the Danube glinted with morning light.

We rested there for a time before moving on to seemingly endless birch and oak forests. The solitude of such woods is an almost tangible presence. Silence was broken only by a light wind rushing through, and the occasional birdcall or rustling foliage. I must say, it had been a long time since I experienced anything half so peaceful. After two hours we reached another small mountain, and climbed it gradually through a series of wooded slopes and switchback trails. Once the summit was attained, our view was strikingly different (but no less impressive) than the first slope. On one side tree-covered mountains stretched into the misty distance. Between our mountain and the Danube, villages out of a history book dotted the floors of shallow valleys and riverbanks. The other side was apparently Slovakia, and was dominated by small wooded hills.

At this point our trip was nearly at its end. We hiked back down the mountain, and followed hiking trails until we reached the village of Dobrova (except with accent marks, and slightly different spelling). Since it was roughly 4PM and I hadn’t yet had breakfast, the restraint we stopped at seemed to have the best food in the world. I believe I had wine, bread, and French onion soup. Regardless, it was delicious. While we waited for a bus back to Budapest our guide showed us a popular scenic view: the aforesaid turn of the Danube. From here we could see another mountain, which we will be hiking in three weeks time. So stay tuned for more from the wilderness of Hungary, and eventually some description of what I’m working on here.