Friday, 10 August 2012

 

Start: Levoča 09:30

Arrival: Hajdúszoboszló (H) 21:00

Total: 446 km

 

 

 

 

 

Our first destination this morning was Spiš Castle, or Zips, as it's called in German. This is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage site. It's not far from Levoča where we had spent the night, and so around 9 o'clock, we stand – not yet at the gates and the walls of Spiš Castle – but at least in the parking grounds, staring up at the large fortress in the distance. It was not raining, but the sky was very cloudy, so we took our raincoats, just in case. Though it was early in the morning and quite chilly, there were already a lot of tourists around. The castle lies on a small hill, but it looked nothing as towering as Čachtice the day before. We set out.

 

At first, a large paved lane led almost straight towards the castle. As I had a nasty muscle ache from climbing around the forest yesterday, we took it slowly. Soon the paved lane turned into a gravelly path, which in turn became a steep grassland path. After about 10 minutes, we were overtaken by a Japanese tourist. With long, easy strides he walked past us. He was by no means running, it actually looked like he was leisurely enjoying the hike, but the distance between us increased with every second and very soon, he was only a little dot on the horizon. Gone. Sonia and I looked at each other. Who was he, Legolas? The guy must be at least 70! We increased our speed.

 

After about three minutes of not-so-brisk-at-all walking, I declared defeat. "My legs," I yapped. "We can take a rest," Sonia proposed. The castle didn't look any closer. That's the problem with really large buildings: they look deceptively close, even when they're still very far off. Also, the path didn't lead straight up anymore. It rather turned in a long, lazy circle all around the hill, and would finally lead us to the entrance on the other side of the castle. We walked and walked, for miles. It was a chilly day, but that was actually a boon, as there were no trees around to provide any shade. We enjoyed the workout and were in an excellent mood when we finally reached the entrance to the castle ... located right next to a huge parking lot. When we saw that, we broke out in laughter. We could have been here so much faster! But then we wouldn't have had this pleasant walk.

 

We entered the castle grounds and met our Japanese long distance walker again. He looked as fit as ever and, having explored the castle grounds, was getting ready for the way back. Lucky him. Feeling sweaty and worn out, we treated ourselves to a lengthy rest at the castle bistro. After that, we were ready to explore the grounds. The castle was nicely renovated, there was an old kitchen, church, armoury and bedroom, all with antique furniture, to give you an impression of how people lived back then. We liked it a lot.

 

When we were finally back at our car, we realized that this visit had taken at lot more time that we had expected. So instead of making a stop-over in Košice, the East Slovakian town that was to be European Capital of Culture in 2013, we drove straight into Hungary. Again, there were no checks at the border, Schengen be thanked. Looking at the map, we decided that we could make time for a little detour to the town of Tokaj. I'm not usually a wine drinker, and Sonia is strictly teetotal, but I like all things sweet and spirited, be they colourful cocktails, witty people, smart cars or, as in this case, the dessert wine of Tokaj. I'm no royalist, but I do like noble rot.

 

 

 

Tokaj is quite a small town, and it looked almost deserted. There is a famous winery in the centre of town, Rákóczi-Pince, which offers guided tours to their cellars, but we only took a picture of their building which you see here, with the "Tokaj Hétszölö" on the front. There are cute little shops all along the main street, selling wine and sweets. I bought a bottle of the very best aszú from a friendly old lady who didn't speak English at all. But I think she understood my köszönöm – thank you. The wine is a lot cheaper here than in the supermarket back home, and it tasted so much better with the scent of holiday on your tongue!

 

Everything in Tokaj is connected to wine, it seems. We found a plaque with the portrait of Paracelsus on it, and Google Translate informed us that the famous medical man had "studied the healing powers of Tokaj wine" in this town. Skál to that.

 

Before driving on, we had a bite to eat in a roadside restaurant aside of Tokaj. Hungarian is a difficult language which doesn't offer any clues to its meaning, no matter how many European languages you speak (or maybe if you know Finnish or Estonian, you might make a lucky guess). So we were quite glad that the waitress spoke a little bit of English and that she provided a menu in English too. Some of the dishes had odd names though. Sonia went for a "peach chicken in a pipe", wondering whether the poor fowl would be served in a musical instrument or some other kind of hollow cyclinder. But it turned out to be a simple chicken filet baked in a cheese crust with half a peach baked into it as well. According to my sis, it tasted delicious, even without the pipe.

 

 

 

After dinner, we drove towards our final destination, the spa town of Hajdúszoboszló (read, more or less, like the English "hi, do's a boo's, loh!" with emphasis on the hi). Hajdúszoboszló is the main settlement in the world famous Puszta. This grassland region, former home of the Huns and other strong-willed, independent people, has always held a special attraction for me. Just driving through the endless flat steppe (which, let's face it, didn't look so different from places in Belgium or France), I imagined the fierce hordes of former times rapidly approaching on the horizon in a cloud of dust. Luckily for us, none materialized, but what did approach fast was nightfall. The sunset over the endless marshes was beautiful.

 

We walked some way into the reed, but there was a sign stating some probably very important notice in Hungarian, that wouldn't be helpful to 99% of the tourists. What might the notice say? It had an exclamation mark at the end, so it was probably some warning. "Stay out, quicksand ahead!" "Don't become one more swamp victim!" "Careful, rattlesnakes and brown bears!" Spooky. We took a picture and looked it up back home. Google Translate informed us that they wanted us to "Protect nature's values!" Good thing we didn't trample around too much.

 

I had read on the internet that there was a place in the Puszta where you could almost entirely avoid light pollution. As there is no artifical lighting around, you can see on a clear night hundreds and hundreds of stars in the sky, many many more than you would ever spot in a brightly-lit town. I doubted that this stretch of highway would afford such a spectular view though. And in any case, the sky was overcast. Maybe one day, we will return to the Puszta and go stargazing, but for today, we were glad to reach our hotel.

 

The last few kilometers, we drove in almost utter darkness. Suddenly, we spotted a small elongated shape lying at the side of the road. And soon there was another one. And another one. I drove by slowly and Sonia peered out the window. Was that a rat? Or maybe a dead mouse? There seemed to be dozens of them. "Don't crush them," my sister begged. Whatever it was, it was probably dead, because none of the shapes moved. A creepy feeling got hold of us. For minutes, we hadn't met a single car on this road, it was utterly dark and right beside the road, high reeds loomed over us, barring all view. We thought back to the odd Hungarian warning sign in the reed. Maybe it had said: "Warning! Plague outbreak!" Who knew, maybe we wouldn't find a living soul in Hajdúszoboszló, like in this Dean Koontz book, Phantoms. I've read many Koontz novels, and every single one made me sit with my back to the wall, creeped out in delicious paranoia. I remembered them all now. "Stop the car", Sonia ordered. Certainly not. But she insisted, and when the next immobile little shape appeared, I pulled the car to the side and she got out. With my heart beating in my throat, I kept the foot on the gas pedal. She walked a few steps, peered down and got back into the car. "Drive on", she said, calmly. Was that a barely suppressed grin on her face? "So, what is it?" I asked. Now she truly grinned. "It's not rats." Good, so no plague outbreak after all. Probably. "It's corn cobs, silly," my sister said. And really, if you knew what you were looking at, it was quite obvious when the next shape came up.

 

Soon, we saw the bright lights of Hajdúszoboszló in the distance. The town was anything but dead, in fact there was a fun fair on the main square. There were rides and stalls and music and throngs of locals and tourists. All thoughts of the black death were quickly forgotten. As a couple of roads were closed because of the fair, we parked the car and joined the merry crowd. Then we set out on foot in search of our hotel Platán, which we finally found in a quiet side street. So far, we had been very lucky with all of our hotels. No noisy neighbours, no strange clicking or clattering from the plumbing, no discos right outside the hotel. With thoughts of Attila on my mind, I happily dozed off.