5.
A Day in the Forest |
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This
morning we caught a bus to the Lover Hills (rhymes with “Over hills”)
and went for our first walk in a European forest. The first thing that
struck me was the strange smell, then I realized it was the forest smell.
Different species - different leaf decay smells. Of course this forest
is also very old. Not the individual trees, but as a forest it has been
allowed to survive to this day, here in the middle of Europe. |
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Here
are pinus species, oaks, chestnuts and lots of different sized edge plants
most of which I don’t recognize. We recognize the blackberries,
but here in a cold climate the bushes are very small and spindly, and
the fruit is very small. The few ripe looking berries are sour. No wonder
people took them innocently to Australia where they went berserk in a
warmer climate, making edges inaccessible. |
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We
used to pick them in the creeks at Myrtleford by dropping wide planks
over the top then picking buckets full, in areas where they hadn’t
been sprayed as a pest. The forest here is thin and thinned. The cut off
stumps are from about 250 mls to a dinner plate in size. They are the
older ones. The younger ones await their turn. But it’s done selectively,
it’s not clear felled, it’s not pulped, and it’s still
here!
Left: toboggan run
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We
were lost but headed up, finally getting to the top, where we paid to
climb the lookout. The man in the booth deserves a mention, because he
smiled. The first person in a job like that who wasn’t grim or resentful.
He actually looked happy and nice, and reminded me of Lisa’s father,
whose trail we were loosely on. I wondered if Vili had crossed this region,
so near the Lake, when he escaped his country from the Russian occupiers
at nineteen. |
Two
of the many forest fungi |
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The
Romans invaded towns
here two thousand years ago,
not two hundred like the
English in Australia,
But still the forest remains.
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| After
an hour and a bit we had reached the top, and the great view – over
Sopron, across to Lake Ferto, west towards the snow topped Austrian Alps,
and high above forest tops. Very scenic.
There is a child having a lovely time with her grandmother – Nagy
mama – on a swing. A large blonde man rides imperiously by on a
horse, ignoring us all.
As we look at the maps and picture boards, Lisa’s few words of Hungarian
enable her to realize this was the area
where the Jews
and“partisans”
had been murdered during W.W.II.
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Then after the war they were occupied by Russia, who surrounded the entire
country with electric fencing, imprisoning the population in their own
country. Why? How could such bastardry have possibly helped the Russians?
The Hungarians had to have an uprising in 1956 to free themselves, but
they didn’t get free of the Soviets until 1991. 1956 was only the
beginning of the inevitable. Why on earth didn’t they get their
country back when they got rid of the Germans in 1945? |
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No
wonder there’s a grimness around the mouths of many older people,
and their children. A smile is a risk, and I’m just another foreigner.
I must love them and not resent them in return.
Finding a path back to the bottom of the hills was
easy. We just headed straight down! A short wander around the neighbourhood
revealed another viewing tower, and the Szieszta Hotel– a huge concrete
monolith, probably built in Stalinist times, and truly awful! No amount
of redecorating could make it appealing. |
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This afternoon I
walked down to the other end of the street where we’re staying.
It is old and poor looking, and most of the buildings on the west side
have big arched coach-sized double doorways, with a small pedestrian
door in each. One big door is open, and I glimpse another world –
a huge area of courtyard, more like a village green size, with houses
backing onto it right around, and long overgrown grass, and sunshine,
and the sounds of children playing.
The windows of the houses are double glazed because of the winters,
and the walls are really thick stone. They have the remains of heavy
metal brackets next to the windows, indicating where heavy wooden shutters
used to be, in those centuries where everything was dangerous and each
building was a fortress with all open space occurring as courtyards
within. Of course the newer suburbs are nothing like this, and have
gardens and fruit trees and ornamentals and space, and reek of the same
sort of affluence as our newer suburbs. ................
Our refuge: menedekunk. .......
Haven: kikotonk.
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