Hungary: Great Conversations, Impressive Architecture, Lousy Weather

Montenegro to Hungary by bus & train
After a memorable day of hiking in the Durmitor Massif of northern Montenegro, I walked a couple miles the following morning (10 September 2012) to the bus stop in Zabljak. My destination was Zlatibor, another ski town over the border to the north in Serbia. I had no particular interest in visiting Zlatibor which turned out to be a rather bland resort in an area of low forested mountains.

The route by bus from Zabljak, Montenegro to the train at Užice, Serbia

went through scenic mountains but travelling by bus sucks, in my opinion.

The bus ride took five rather boring hours including a short lunch break. The scenery was nice in spots but travel by bus is my least favorite method of transport. The windows don’t open on modern buses and taking photos through the glass generally produces bland results, the seats are cramped like those on jets, the ride is too bouncy and undulating to be conducive to reading or writing, and you certainly can’t tell the driver, “Hey, could we stop here? There is a great photo opportunity off to the left side of the highway.” An hour on a bus I can tolerate but five hours– ugh!

On the plus side, I was able to find a nice little apartment for the night in Zlatibor for about US$25. On the minus side, I couldn’t find any vegetarian dishes on the half dozen menus I studied at local restaurants and settled for a very mediocre veggie pizza.

The next morning, I took a short bus ride down to Užice and caught the next train to Belgrade. It was pleasant being back on a train especially since the windows opened wide enough for me to easily lean out for photos. The rear car had windows in the door at the end of the train which were a bit foggy but enabled me to shoot back along the line over which we were travelling. I met an Austrian mechanical engineer, Wolfgang, who was also enthusiastically taking photos out the train windows and was on his way back to Vienna after riding a narrow gauge “museum” train near Užice the previous day.

 

The view from the last car on my train from Užice to Belgrade provided great
opportunities for photographing the scenic and impressively-engineered rail line.

The following morning, I took an early train from Belgrade to Budapest, Hungary. The passenger cars were much nicer than those on the trains between Belgrade and Montenegro. The trade-off was windows that only opened a couple inches at the top but the landscape along the way was relatively uninteresting anyway.

My route by train from Belgrade (Beograd) to Budapest, then on to Timişoara, Romania.

Second class coach on the express from Belgrade to Budapest:

cheap, clean, comfortable, and uncrowded.

 

The landscape in southern Hungary is about as monotonous as northwestern Ohio!

An Introduction to Hungary from an American businessman

I arrived at Keleti Station in Budapest mid-afternoon, found my hotel three blocks from the station, and headed out for an appointment with Eric, my partner Judy’s ex-boyfriend. Judy and I are good friends with Eric’s sister, Karen, who lives in Miami. When she heard I was going to be visiting Budapest, Karen put me in touch with Eric, a 50ish American who has worked in management for several years with a multi-national corporation that has an office in Budapest.

We first had a beer at an outdoor café in the heart of Pest on the east side of the Danube River which bisects the city. Subsequently, Eric took me for a welcomed dining treat at a little buffet restaurant in a basement which serves tasty Indian vegetarian food.

I learned that Eric had married a Hungarian woman, and they had a daughter who went to school in Budapest. Despite being a very intelligent guy with an aptitude for languages and living with two Hungarian speakers, Eric was struggling to learn what may be (along with Finnish) the most difficult European language for an English-speaker to master. Hungarian (Magyar) is unrelated to the Indo-European linguistic family and most closely resembles languages of western Siberia.

Eric talked about the post-communist struggles of the Hungarian economy. Wages are poor, unemployment is relatively high, and most people in Budapest cannot afford to buy a home. Agriculture was collectivized under 40+ years of communist rule. Once the communist regime fell in 1989, the collective farms were broken up with families each claiming a small plot. Because they had been forced to work collectively under communism, Hungarian farmers rebelled against any form of cooperation with neighbors. As a result, agriculture had become very inefficient over the past 20 years, and farmers with small plots were having a tough time earning an adequate living on their own.

Hungarian erosion & environmental challenges

The following day, I was met at my hotel by Csilla (pronounced “silla”) Hudek, a Hungarian Ph.D. student in the Physical Geography Department at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. My very helpful colleague, Professor Miodrag Zlatic, at the University of Belgrade had put me in touch with Csilla because of her interest in erosion control issues. I learned that Csilla is doing her doctoral dissertation on the use of permanent vegetation strips planted along the contour on cultivated hill slopes in Hungary. She has found these strips are effective in reducing erosion, trapping sediment, and reducing the risk of agro-chemicals polluting surface water. For her experimental plots, Csilla and her colleagues have chosen an evergreen shrub, Oregon-grape (Mahonia aquifolium), which is native to the Pacific Northwest coast of North America and suited to Hungary’s humid climate. She has also used an erosion model to predict soil loss and runoff from agricultural hill slopes.

My gracious hostess, Csilla Hudek, showed me around rainy Budapest. We met again in Serbia the following week at the World Association of Soil and Water Conservation Conference.

Csilla told me that two divisions of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences are involved with erosion control: the Research Institute for Soil Sciences and Agricultural Chemistry and the Geographical Institute. Another research center, the Vituki Environmental Protection and Water Management Research Institute in Budapest, is concerned with water pollution.

Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and EU-funded projects such as new highway construction are subject to geo-engineering requirements for erosion control. Otherwise, while there may be an interest in erosion research, applied erosion control is still lacking in Hungary.

More than 50% of Hungary lies within a relatively flat loess plain. In this area, wind erosion of the surface silt deposits are a problem especially when cultivated land has no protective cover of vegetation early in the growing season. There was an attempt to plant wind rows using exotic species such as black pine and acacia but these trees were unsuited to Hungary’s climate. Recently, they have had better success with native tree species.

Land degradation map of Hungary shows large areas of soil erosion problems in the northern and western parts of the country. Source: http://www.mtafki.hu/konyvtar/HIM/fejezet8.pdf

There have been other land management decisions in Hungary which have resulted in environmental problems related to erosion. For example, the Tisza River is a major tributary of the Danube and drains much of eastern Hungary. In the 19^th Century, the course of the Tisza was straightened to improve navigation and bring riparian wetlands into cultivation. The results were increased problems with flooding along with lowering the regional water table creating soil salinity problems. Thus, instead of increasing arable land, many formerly productive areas are now only useful for grazing. Compounding these problems is climate change which is resulting in accentuated cycles of flood and drought.

I asked Csilla about the lack of post-communism cooperation among farmers which Eric had pointed out. She agreed and provided additional information about the problem. Prior to 1989, the communist government’s emphasis was all on crop yields with little interest in sustainable land management in agriculture. Thus, when the large collective farms were broken up, many individual farmers did not know how to farm on a small scale (the average farm is now about 1 hectare – 2.5 acres). Gradually farmers are reorganizing into local collectives. Local markets for produce are now flourishing and vineyards and organic agriculture are becoming popular.

A soggy tour of Budapest

After a very informative conversation with Csilla over coffee and tea, we headed out for a tour of her city with its stunning historic architecture. Unfortunately, it was a rainy day and despite our rain gear, Csilla and I eventually became damp and discouraged and cut our tour short. We thought of heading inside for a look at the impressive Gothic Revival-style Parliament Building but several hundred other people had the same idea, and we encountered a long queue waiting patiently under their umbrellas for admission. Our last stop was the Széchenyi Thermal Bath to ogle at the exquisitely painted dome above the main entrance lobby. We didn’t have bathing suits with us but Csilla suggested I might want to return later to explore the complex and enjoy the waters. Seemed like a great idea for a rainy day, so after we parted near my hotel, I grabbed a pair of shorts which doubled as swim trunks and took a trolley car back to the baths. It was a complex of indoor and outdoor pools, saunas, and steam rooms. Each pool or sauna was maintained at a different temperature and some had mineral additives or circulating vapors to enhance the experience. Young and old, families and couples, single men and women, swimmers and chess players, mostly Hungarians and a few foreigners were enjoying the baths on this otherwise yucky late summer day.

Top: The Széchenyi Chain Bridge across the Danube was opened in 1845.

Bottom: The Hungarian National Gallery is located in the Buda Castle

on the west side of the Danube.

 

Matthias Church on the Buda (west) side of the Danube.
 

 

 

Left: The Hungarian Parliament Building was completed in 1904.

Right: The Millennium Monument in Heroes Square, Budapest.

 

Artistic eye-candy:  Church at the Vajdahunyad Castle, Budapest.

 

Dome above the entrance lobby, Széchenyi Thermal Bath, Budapest.



The weather improved slightly the following day but there was no more time for Budapest in my cramped schedule.  I caught the early morning train to Timişoara in southwestern Romania.

 

Coming next: Serious Environmental & Social Issues in Romania