A Szob Story: How a trip to Visegrád Turned into a Fantasy RPG

Four nerds decided to go on a trip to Visegrad over the weekend, and just like that a simple trip turned out to be straight out of a fantasy RPG-- a veritable quest to reach a castle.

Getting to Visegrád is, I repeat, very easy. You buy tickets at Nyugati station for five bucks, hop on a train, ride just shy of forty minutes, then hop off and you're there! And you can begin the hike to the castle and see the sights.

Unfortunately due to a riveting conversation about category theory and a general lack of awareness, when Owen asked "where are we supposed to be getting off?" he immediately answered his own question-- "it's here, it's HERE!"

We rushed to the doors. They had already closed and as the train was pulling away from Visegrád, we saw a glimpse of the castle we were supposed to be hiking towards fade into the distance as we zoomed into the abyss. We had missed our stop. It was 9 am.

So we got off at the next stop and contemplated sneaking onto the next train in the opposite direction, which was conveniently just about to leave from the station. We hesitated-- what if we were fined? What if the train didn't stop at Visegrád? And in those two seconds of hesitation the train pulled out of the station and we found ourselves in Szob, a completely random village along the Danube.

We took stock of our situation: at least we weren't in Slovakia! And, of course, we whipped out Google Maps.

This is what we saw.

The best plan seemed to us to just walk along the Danube until we got to Visegrád. That way, we wouldn't get lost and it would be a pleasant walk by the river. The first mile or so was enjoyable. The day was crisp and clear, the river was blue, and we even stopped to share a steaming lángos at a small riverside stand and let the crispy, cheesy, bacon-y treat burn our fingers as we devoured it.

The clouds rolled in, though, and it got windier by the river. At the all-important crossroads at Zebegény, we decided to abandon our river plan and brave the woods. After all, we had Google maps. There was no way we'd get lost if we just kept heading in the same general direction. So we turned off from the river path and headed into town.

Welcome to Zebegény, young travelers. Stop by the local Spar to refuel with chewy candies and water and be on your way!

Unfortunately, we got sidetracked by the side quests (why does that always seem to happen?) There were a few trails marked in the back of Zebegény with interesting castle signs. So we walked up, saw a few nice vistas, and ended up at a memorial which after reading the signs is to commemorate (or lament) the splitting of Hungary after WWI. Which I suppose makes sense, as we were along the northern border of Hungary.

The view of Zebegény and a sliver of the Danube.

A memorial.

Here, again, we found ourselves at a crossroads. Our options: continue to a valley path which Google Maps told us would head straight to Visegrád OR head directly uphill to another, less travelled path which had a very indeterminate final destination.

We talked a bit about our options, then decided in Kevin's words "as long as we head in the same general direction it's probably fine." We headed uphill.

At one point (our thighs burning and our breaths heaving), we considered going off-trail and cutting back down the mountain to intersect the valley path, which we knew was large and flat and easy. But after a few scary moments of being almost lost in the woods, we decided it was too late to change our minds (no way do we turn around: that would be ludicrous) and we had to keep charging forwards.

So we ended up climbing up a mountain.

Natalia and Owen are confused because we are lost.

Ah, but what awaited us on the other side? At around 12:30 pm we finally arrived at Nagymaros, the town just across the river from Visegrád.

Welcome to Nagymaros, young travelers. Admire these yellow flowers, because it is almost spring. +10 happy points.

We walked through the town and passed many country houses, each of which had its own dog (or two) to bark at us for walking past their owners' houses. Finally, we had reached the Danube again. And just across the river, our goal the castle was in sight.

Back on the Danube, we can finally see the castle. It is 1:30 pm.

We had to get across the river. So we did what anyone would do in an RPG and asked around to get some information. A waitress and a shopkeeper were both unhelpful, but then a fellow hiker (and boys' camp leader?) took pity on us and told us about the ferry that was leaving from the dock in fifteen minutes for a small fee of 450 schmekels. I mean, forints.

So, after approximately six hours which included climbing a mountain, passing through multiple small villages, and fording a river, we finally arrived at our goal: the hike to the castle.

Of course, it started to rain. We considered turning back and hunkering down in a cafe, but Kevin with his indomitable attitude convinced us that the rain would be over in an hour. So we continued up the steep, steep, road (as it turns out, there is also a hiking trail meant for walkers without cars, but that would've been too easy) and into the mountains until we finally reached the castle.

We made it!!

The castle itself was interesting with a few small historical exhibits, a wacky wax museum, and some fun medieval torture devices open to the public to try (it's fun!)

Oh no, I'm trapped! My friends will probably have to go on a side quest to find the key.

One side of the fortress.

The castle was beautiful, and the views were also stunning. But as it turned out, there wasn't more than about 2-3 hours worth of sightseeing and hiking to do in the vicinity. So our RPG adventure seemed to be well timed. And we were all happy to have not been eaten by wolves along the way.

Happy travelers

But the adventure was not over. We headed down the mountain and saw a paper sign saying that the next ferry would be at 6:45. So we stopped for dinner, took our time, and returned to the ticket vendor at 6:20. The window was closed and dark.

Had we misinterpreted the paper sign? Did those lists of times not in fact correspond to the ferry times? We panicked (well, I panicked) a little bit as we headed to the dock to do some sleuthing. Luckily for us, a few other people were in the same boat (ha) who could actually read the Hungarian on the paper and who told us that the ferry would, indeed, be coming and that we could pay for the ride to the ferryman directly.

It was dark, and the stars were out (more stars than I had ever seen yet in Hungary). As the ferry quietly took us across the river, we shivered in the dark and pointed out Orion and the Little Dipper.

We got to the train station, and realized that the ticket booth here, too, was closed. Predictably so, I guess. We whipped out our phones and tried to buy tickets online before the next train came... and then the next train came. Another crossroads: do we hop on and try to buy the tickets on the train or stay off and catch the next one?

The warmth of the train beckoned. We hopped on. And realized, to our extreme chagrin, that once the train leaves a station, you can't buy tickets from that station anymore. The ticket man was coming. We had no tickets. So we got off at Kismaros, and realized NOT ONLY that the next train would be coming in an hour, at 8:30 pm, BUT ALSO that the train we had just gotten off from as well as the next train leaving from Visegrád would both reach Budapest before we got on the next train stopping at Kismaros.

This is what distress looks like. I am holding a carrot that I am stress-eating.

Of course, we did make it back to Budapest around 9:30 pm, which all things considered is not bad at all. And after a day full of adventuring around the Danube, I'm pretty sure the four of us collapsed in bed as soon as we got back to our apartments.

So our Szob story ended up turning into a wacky fantasy RPG adventure and with the strength of the paprika in our systems and a sense of "general direction" we had a fantastic day.

Bushy Busós, Scary Sheepmen

What do you do when a huge fluffy monster in a terrifying mask jumps on you to give you a hug, stroke your face, ruffle your hair, or jump around you maniacally? (or possibly all of the above?)

One of these terrifying creatures.

Well, on March 3, Carnival Sunday, in Mohács, Hungary, I would learn the answer to that question. It was the Busó Festival (which, if you've been reading along, you should know is pronounced "boo-sho"), an annual celebration, as I would quickly learn, of fertility and beating those damn Turks. But mostly fertility.

Wikipedia had told me the legend of the festival far before I stepped onto the cobbled streets: when the Turks occupied the village in the 16th and 17th centuries (read about Eger for more about these nasty Ottomans), the villagers hid out in the woods, and, on the advice of an old Slovak man, waited until a thunderstorm to dress up in terrifying costumes, make as much noise as possible, and march back into town. Those cowardly Turks thought the busós were literally demons and allegedly ran out of town. In some more boring versions of the legend, it's winter that the villagers beat back, but what fun is that?

A sample of some of the kinds of masks that we saw. They're really big and wooden, and combined with the giant fur coat make the wearer look like a literal Yeti.

Anyway, ever since then, the people of Mohács celebrate that glorious victory by dressing up in the costumes of their ancestors (the women dressing either in traditional garb or as witches with carrot noses), making a lot of noise (with strange wooden contraptions that make your eardrums feel like they're rattling out of your head), getting rip-roaring drunk (can't speak for every villager but that was generally my impression) and generally embracing their fertile sides by accosting unsuspecting women tourists.

In the beginning of the morning, before I realized that the hugging and the ruffling of hair was going to get real old real fast, I was so thrilled with being accosted by the sheepmen that I insisted on a selfie.

That wooden thing he's holding is a loud clacker. Also notice how huge he is in comparison!

Mohács is a small place. Eric (friend I came with) and I spent the first half of the day walking the length and breadth of the town multiple times, stopping every so often to admire the ubiquitous street shows, folk performances, and spontaneous busó processions happening on the crowded streets, and jumping (or at least I did) every time they fired a cannon (blanks, I hope) about once every two hours.

We snagged a picture with a busó who was otherwise unoccupied with finding a woman to busó around.

Ohoho, what is THIS for? We would soon find out.

This iconic guy on the right was "playing" a stringless violin with a spoon and whistling the notes all day.

LOTS of processions like this one with LOTS of cars and busós and women processed down the streets that day.

For food it was definitely a heavy Hungarian kind of day. We stopped at a stand for lunch that had giant iron cauldrons full of all manner of Hungarian foods and essentially picked the two that looked the most delicious. What we ended up getting (to share... it's a lot of food) was my absolute favorite Hungarian dish Toltott Kaposzta (cabbage stuffed with pork and rice) and another dish... which we assumed was beef. It was not beef, and when we cut into it and realized it was less fibrous and more porous than expected, we asked the woman next to us what it could be. She responded "blood."

Hungarian specialties for sale.

Our lunch. On the right, we have some lovely Toltott Kaposzta and on the left... a mystery...

Aha, we rationalized, the kidneys filter blood. Maybe we are eating kidney.   

Since then, after consulting two Hungarians and doing some Internet research, I have come to the conclusion that what we were eating was actually congealed pig's blood fried with onions and spices... called sült vér, it's a traditional breakfast dish at Disznótor, a kind of Hungarian pig feast where a giant pig is slaughtered and eaten all day and nothing is wasted.

So after fueling up with the blood of my pig-enemies (I guess?) it was back on the road for more busó madness. We headed to the river along with a giant procession hauling along an ornately-decorated coffin, which was put on a barge and then allowed to float gently down a river (one of the witches, I assume she was part of the act, followed the coffin and screeched and carried on about letting it float down the river).

Eric posing from our vantage point (a stone wall we had to clamber up) of the coffin floating away (that speck in the back)

It was late afternoon at this point, and I had decided after one particularly aggressive busó chased me around the square in order to give me a big bear hug that I was going to avoid eye contact and fast-walk whenever the busós were around. It was all in good fun, but at a certain point you get a little tired of the face-stroking and hair-ruffling.

THIS guy respected my boundaries.

Want to add a disclaimer that we DID see some monogamous busós, which really made my day.

For dinner we decided to top off our cholesterol-heavy day with a nice load of grilled meat, including some fatty, tender grilled pork and an enormous spicy sausage (notice a theme here, anyone?).

My camera didn't have the range to capture the sheer amount of meat at this meat stand.

Mmm, meat.

As evening fell, Eric and I (along with the entire crowd) gathered in the town square to watch a gaggle of busós light a giant bonfire (along with a man (Turk? Winter?) made of straw) on fire. Some cheerful folk music played in the background as the fire roared in the twilight countless embers flying into the sky and falling into the thrilled crowd. After watching the bonfire burn for around ten minutes, us (and the other day trippers) marched out of the town to catch the 6:40 buses, lined up like ducks in a row at the station, back to Budapest.

Behind us, I like to imagine that the witches and busós were dancing around the bonfire as their town slowly emptied of tourists and they could reclaim the night.

"Wear Proper Shoes" in the Tatra Mountains (also, some useful traveltips)

After spending a lot of time in cities (Budapest and Vienna... I will eventually get around to writing about Vienna) I was craving something breathtakingly outdoorsy. Some friends had recommended the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia, so without further ado (other) friends and I planned a spontaneous trip up north to Poprad, the so-called "gateway" of the Tatras and a (slightly dinky) town in Northern Slovakia.

What you will hopefully be seeing if you follow the instructions below...

Figuring out how to get there was no easy feat. There aren't great directions online about how to get from Budapest to Poprad and then from Poprad to the actual mountains-- thank you obscure TripAdvisor forums-- so to save any future Budapestians some of the stress I (as an intensive planner) had, I'm going to remedy this Internet gap immediately:

HOW TO GET TO POPRAD/ TATRA MOUNTAINS FROM BUDAPEST:

1. Buy tickets from Keleti Palyaudvar in person to Kosice (big destination in Slovakia) at the international ticket desk. It should cost about 20 euros round trip, and there's a train that runs daily at 5:55 am and another at 5:55 pm (check the MAV website just to be sure).


2. Don't worry about booking trains to Poprad in advance. It's very easy to buy these at the Kosice train station, and all you have to do is check the timetable in advance to see how much of a rush you have to be in to buy the tickets. You want to go from Kosice to Poprad-Tatry, and there are lots of trains that go fairly regularly.


3. Once in Poprad, we were able to walk everywhere (including our absolutely amazing and immaculate Airbnb).


4. When you decide you want to go to the mountains, everything you need is in Poprad station. Take advantage of the excellent information desk and get at least two brochures: the mountain railway timetable brochure and the trail map brochure (this one is quite commercial and not a comprehensive trail map but it'll be enough for you to get an idea of where the trails go). On the information lady's recommendation for winter hikes, we paid 1.50 euros each way to get to Stary Smokovec and began both our hikes there. There were also day passes for 4 euros and options for longer passes as well.

Since by the time we were situated on Saturday it was already 3 pm, we opted for a quick hike beginning in Hrebienok (it was easy to walk there from Stary Smokovec) and looping to Bilikova chata and back. The mountains are breathtaking in the sunset and we definitely got some Mac-desktop worthy shots. I'm pretty sure I shot the exact same photo with three different kinds of lighting.

I might be talking to an imaginary friend here...

Slightly blurry (adds character!) photo of the gang!

@Apple if you're looking for new backgrounds...

The next day, we hopped on the 7:30 am train and planned to do a long hike to Teryho chata, which the information lady told me we needed "proper shoes" for. She might have been looking at my Nikes when she said that. We definitely weren't in any sort of proper gear (I was wearing as "layers" every piece of running clothing I own and three of our party were sporting jeans).

We began the long hike optimistically, though, buoyed by Carpathian landscapes and absolutely quiet trails (save some early-morning cross-country skiers, who are really brave about skiing right next to those intense snowy drop-offs). The paths were a little slippery, but nothing we couldn't handle ("proper shoes" HA!).

Wow! She's a stunner.

After a certain point, though, the wind picked up and the mist rolled in, and we were walking in a ridge between two peaks and staring up at the steel-grey rocks, wondering when it got so steep. The scant few hikers in front of us stopped and reached into their bags to strap on their spikes. We, of course, started bear-crawling our way up the some 70-80 degree incline. So... this is what info lady had meant by "proper shoes"!

While hiking up, this was the view from behind...

...and to the front...

...and what we had to climb up!

I'm pretty sure the Europeans thought that we were insane. Multiple people gave our tennis shoes and jeans pointed looks. One even told us straight up, "even you Americans know how to play with fire in the middle of all this ice and snow" (not exactly like that, but almost).

Unluckily (or luckily?) for us, at a certain point it was too steep for us to continue and we kind of slid our way back down the ice and snow to more level mountain.

The hike down was, unexpectedly, even more fun than the way up. Tempted by the enormous, marshmallow-like snowdrifts, we may or may not have gone off-trail a number of times. And when my entire leg fell into a dune of snow, we peered into the resulting hole that went down and down and realized that there was so much snow that in fact it was covering entire trees...

That's a tree.

And this is what it took for us to realize that there are buried trees here. The hole just kept going into the abyss...

Also important to mention: all along the more travelled paths we saw that people had left their marks on the mountain by writing their names (or other things) on the sturdy snow. Well, we left our marks, too. Near the end of the hike, we decided that a few iced-over hills of snow were essentially natural slides, and the guys who were wearing jeans left faint blue stripes on the slide down-- our mark on the Tatra Mountains!

At the bottom of the mountain, we decided to cough up the 6 euros to go sledding down the 1-2 km sled track from Hrebienok to Stary Smokovec with these old fashioned toboggans that literally bounced on little hills of snow on the way down. Avoiding all the innocent hikers while zooming down a mile-long slope-- exciting stuff!

We ended the day on a long, crowded train to Kosice (apparently, they overbooked the train so that every single seat was already reserved) before finally transferring to a blessedly empty train back to Budapest.

FYI the prettiest thing in Kosice that we saw was this cathedral.

Upon returning to Budapest, I realized that seeing the words "Keleti Palyaudvar" rings especially like home. Kind of funny how quickly that happens!

Dobogókő-kör: Danger is Fun

Before I came to Budapest, I had some idea of going hiking, but not going to lie, I didn't have the highest of expectations. After all, Hungary isn't exactly known for its Alpine slopes (we're surrounded by the Buda Hills). So when I decided to show up for a hike organized by ELTE (after Google translating the event description, of course) I wasn't sure what to expect.

Well, I was in for a treat.

I went with two other BSM-ers (thankfully one of them spoke perfect Hungarian) in a group with zero other foreigners and a woodsy-looking guide. We took a Szentendre-bound train, got off after about an hour, and then took a bus deep into the countryside, amid rolling hills, gutted fields, and cottages ringed by colorful fences. When we finally got off at the entrance to the park, big cauldrons of goulash (foreshadowing: this will be a cultural experience) and a lovely view of the countryside awaited.

What's better than a steaming cauldron of hot goulash on a cold day? Trick question, nothing.

The first mile or two was a steep, icy downhill. The snow on the paths had completely compacted and turned to cold, hard ice, and within about ten or twenty minutes I had fallen three times, thorns had scraped up my palms, and my leggings were more mud than polyester. It's about then that the three of us realized just how metal Hungarians are. Several old ladies as well as a dad carrying a small child on his shoulders made it down the icy slopes faster than we did! (I henceforth referred to them as my "North Stars" because they were beacons of hope for the fact that, young and spry as I was, I could do this hike. I just needed to follow them).

Unfortunately I was too busy falling to take a picture of the steep part, but here's an icy part. That white stuff... not snow.

After lunch, we hiked uphill some (thank goodness) and befriended a couple of English-speaking Hungarians (including two fellow math students studying at ELTE, an aspiring tour-guide entrepreneur, and a lovely master's student who studied abroad in Pohang, the same town in Korea my mom is from! We stopped at a breathtaking vista where we snapped some photos, then huddled around a campfire for snacks and brownies (made by the entrepreneur). It was here also that I was baptized with a new Hungarian name, courtesy of the master's student: Kincso! (pronounced "keen-che")

The Vista-- and the curve of the Danube.

I promise I wasn't here alone!

A campfire-- where I was bestowed a Hungarian name. Fun fact: Hungarians celebrate "name days"-- like birthdays, where each day of the year is assigned a few Hungarian names and you celebrate when it's your name's day. Unfortunately my name days have already passed this year.

We gathered after the campfire break and learned that the next part of the hike would be "slightly dangerous." I looked to my North Stars for comfort. How bad could it be?

As it turned out, we were going to hike along a literal rock ledge, scrambling past barely-marked trails and sheer drops. And also sometimes climbing down those steep drops. It was awesome. Also terrifying. But if dad-with-kid and the old woman could do it, so could I!

A pleasant rock photo...

A scary rock photo. I'm not sure how scary this looks in photos, but trust me, it was scary.

We took another break at the bottom of all this rock scrambling near a small mountain stream, where we refilled our bottles and possibly were blessed by the house dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the "miraculous tree" that apparently was there.

Here's the little monument to the Virgin Mary. Not sure where this miracle tree is, though.

A bunch of people (including both of my North Stars!) took a detour to the small town to head home before dark. The rest of us enterprising souls soldiered on to what was undoubtedly the coolest part of the hike: in a ravine, hiking up a stream. When I say up, I mean that metal ladders and handrails were in place so that we could literally climb up the stream.

The ravine, with some people for scale.

I thought these ladders were wicked cool, but apparently in the recent past there were chains that you had to hold onto to climb?

My shoes got impossibly muddy and doused in ice-cold mountain water... multiple times... but the ladders were incredibly cool and like nothing I'd done before.

After traversing the ravine (wow sounds intense) we had about a mile of uphill before we ended up in the same place we started, where we could take a bus back to the train station and end up back in Budapest. Right before my trusty iPhone died at 37% in the cold (thanks Apple), I managed to snap this sunset photo:

After about ten miles of hiking that day, chilled to the bone with our shoes nice and damp, we sipped on mulled wine while waiting for the rickety bus, where the bus driver would take our forints one-by-one, give us change for the journey, and take us back to civilization.