Riding Horses with Bette and Feri

I met Bette when she was a student in one of my film classes on a trip to Hungary six or seven years ago.  She is an amazing women, and I'm glad we have kept in touch.  She now lives outside Budapest in the mountains with her boyfriend, Feri.  He is also amazing.  He is the musician in the post on my first night in Budapest below.  He's also an artist.  I was able to see some of his artwork that had been in an exhibition and is was stored in the house.  Very interesting drawings - on the dark side and thoughtful - often incorporating found objects.

Bette and Feri train horses and give riding lessons.  Feri competed in show horse jumping.  I spent a few days with them in the mountains and got a look at a very different side of Hungarian living.  The house in the photo is where they live - and you can see the setting where the house is in the first shot - and the mountains and the pasture where they keep the horses. And yes that is me on my first night there - leading one of the horses from the day pasture into the area where they stay at night.  I can see that it is a lot of work taking care of animals.  Bette and Feri work in a different manner from traditional horse trainers.  They believe that humans should study horse behavior and use the natural instincts and behaviors in training hores instead of trying to get the horses to adapt to the humans.  They know a lot about animal behavior.  Bette has gathered an amazing amount of research and is writing a book on the topic.

I also helped them redo their electric fence in the night pasture - that is the fence you see in the video.  The white lines contain thin electric wires for the current.  The view of the countryside at the end was taken from top of the horse that I rode - and you see Feri also in the video.  

Bette and I went to the market and bought food for dinner.  She taught me to make hot wine (awesome - and Bette and I were shocked when we realized how much wine we drank together that day), a traditional basic soup, and stuffed cabbage.  Wow it was great.  Get ready for some good food and hot wine when I come back in December.  Sorry I did not take a photo of our food.

I really enjoyed my time with Bette and Feri since they let me see how they live, and I got to help out occasionally.  The horses are beautiful animals and so are their two dogs.