Today was one of those days that, if you’re lucky, you get to enjoy while traveling every once in a while. It’s not the kind of day you can plan or even to hope to have again, you’re just thankful that it happened.
The owner here has a local woman, Margit, who does some of the cleaning up around the house from time to time. This is in addition to her full time job, which happens to be working for the local municipality taking care of the surrounding forest to ensure its ongoing sustainability. The owner inquired just what it was this work entailed, and we got treated to a first-hand experience of what it’s like to work in environmental sustainability in a rural Hungarian village.
Margit and a colleague picked us up and we drove through the town and out into the forest to their current work location, about 10 minutes from the house. There, they had been planting Acacia trees all along the hillside for the last few days. Margit told us the trees would be harvested (cut down) in about 15 years. When asked what for, all she could say was “energy trees” (Margit’s English is much better than my Hungarian, but that still isn’t saying much). I surmise the trees will be turned into charcoal, but I really don’t know what an “energy tree” is.
When we got there, the team (in addition to Margit and her colleague, there were 3 other people on the team – 1 man and the rest women) was getting ready to have lunch. They had built a fire and set up a pot, witch-cauldron style, in which they had cooked up some potatoes with bacon and a goulash-paprika seasoning. They offered us some food and obviously intended for us to join them, as they had prepared plenty of food and had plates and plasticware for all of us. So, we sat in the forest with the Hungarian forest maintainers and ate the delicious potato/bacon dish they had prepared, along with some fluffy white bread and water.
The weather was really spectacular today – warm, with a lovely breeze, so you never felt too hot or too cold, just wonderfully mild. A great day for an unexpected forest outing.
After lunch, Margit walked us back toward the car and across the road to a vineyard that operates there. There was a small building with a table out front shaded by a grapevine-covered trellis. This isn’t the type of vineyard you think of when you think of California wine tasting – this was a very bare bones operation:
The owner was a lovely man named Laci (pronounced “LATS-ee”) who let us look around the operation and offered up some 2011 Merlot for us to taste (I’m guessing we each got a glass to a glass and a half of delicious Merlot). Before we left, Laci handed a full bottle of wine over to us as a “souvenir” and told us to go pick some grapes, pears and walnuts from his property, all of this at no cost to us whatsoever. Hungarians are known for their hospitality, and we got the full pleasure of their amazing generosity, not only of stuff, but of spirit, today.
Since the forest workers had fed us lunch, the owner of the farm prepared dinner for us instead of the lunch she would normally provide. I’m the only volunteer on the property for the time being, so we enjoyed a lovely meal of fish and fresh garden veggies accompanied by Laci’s delicious Merlot.
Today was truly most fantastic. For added funsies, here’s a bonus pic of the affirmation pig I’ve been working on:
TL;DR: Treated to a unique and generous wining and dining experience, Hungarian style.
Lovely! I would so like to have been your traveling companion! Thanks for the beautiful pictures!