Hike up Zengó Mountain

Saturday I joined Ági for a hike in the mountains.  She emailed me that it would be a 10 K hike.  I converted – the whole metric thing, you know – 6 miles.  I can do that.  Met her at the bus station Sat. morning.  She said, well, this is one of the more difficult routes – we’re hiking up the highest mountain in the Mesck range!! WHAT?  You didn’t say that in the email.  “Well, it isn’t the Alps” she laughed.  “And look how many people are older than you.” 

So I got on the bus to Pécsvárad with the group and our leader who was dressed in Alpine like short pants with great long socks. (see him below) Through the town we walked and up a hill to a church to set out on our path through the woods – after raiding a nearby fig tree that was loaded with ripe figs!!! Yummy.  The hike up was strenuous at times – think of climbing stairs for one hour.  I actually had this thought that if I had a heart attack up here – that was it – I would die on this mountain in Hungary, because I don’t think there is any way a helicopter could get to me – and don’t know if they have Medvac anyway.  But we took frequent breaks, so I managed to survive.  At the top we stopped and unpacked our lunch.  The leader passed around some home made wine.  I knew this guy was my kind of group leader.

There was a watchtower at the top which we climbed up for a view of the surrounding villages.  Then the hike back down was, of course, much easier than the hike up.  When we arrived at our destination village there was a festival going on.  So half the group set out for the bus stop to catch the bus back, and the other half went to the festival. 

There was music and dancing and a cooking contest. Here’s how it works.  You buy a festival pass – and get 3 tickets to exchange for food, and one for wine.  (I asked Ági if we could get 3 for wine and one for food) Anyway, you go through each of the booths and choose which food to buy with your tickets and whoever gets the most tickets at the end of the competition wins.  The food was great – I had a cabbage and pork dish with apples, a cabbage and pear dish (hey, I have Croatian blood, I love my cabbage) and a plate of food from the Croatian booth – I had to vote for them.  While eating we watched the performances. 

Ági met one of her former students, nice guy named Andras, and we wound up going to his house to visit his mother.  Ági had not seen her for a few years, but taught both of her sons in high school.  What a gracious lady.  She gave us an apple, then expresso, then this absolutely fabulous walnut cake with an amazing crème filling that her 83 year old mother made and which probably was a gazillion calories, and a glass of wine!! 

Well, we missed the second bus back as we were eating and drinking and visiting, but got lucky and caught a special bus that was taking a group of school children back to Pécs from the festival.  What a great day – I got lots of exercise in a beautiful setting.  (Of course, the walnut cake cancelled out all my exercise) Here’s a very short look at my mountain hike and the women dancing with wine bottles on their heads at the festival – how do they do that?