in villages, and the toilet for the bar is probably a very primitive affair such as a shed around the back. Things are set to improve, and cafés often have very good facilities. Toilets in the rail and bus stations of small towns are often in a poor condition and have no toilet paper unless there is an attendant to whom you pay a few forints. Look for the universal WC sign or Mosdó, and if there is no male or female symbol on the WC door Férfi is man and Női woman.
Monkshood on Csóványos, Börzsöny, Walk 4
Flora, Fungi and Fauna
The actions of thermal springs and karst drainage have created today’s landscape of deep wooded valleys, montane beech forest, damp gullies, caves, sink-holes, sun-bleached limestone outcrops, upland meadows and rolling downland, providing habitats for a variety of rare and endangered plants. Hungary’s vegetation zones range from Carpathian in the northern hills to Mediterranean in the south, but there are also pockets of sub-alpine, Illyrian and Boreal species which are relicts from the Ice Age. The basalt crags in the Balaton region provide a micro-climate for the lip fern, a survivor of warmer times, and the open karst and volcanic outcrops harbour several species of stonecrop and saxifrage. In the sinkholes of the Bükk-fennsík plateau temperatures have been recorded well below freezing on a summer night, creating a unique habitat for the aconite, gentian, carline thistle and Austrian dragonshead. Hungary’s position in east-central Europe and touching on the Balkan peninsula encourages forest to grow at high altitudes. Beech, hornbeam and oak are the commonest species, although there are many varieties of fruit trees and bushes specific to Hungary.
There are almost 500 types of mushroom in Hungary, and woodland species of the boletus, russula and inocybe groups are commonly found. In the early nineteenth century the German settlers in the Bakony collected bracket fungus for tinder to light pipes and make hats. Today mushroom-foraging continues to play a small part in village economies.
The relatively undisturbed forests are a haven for wild game such as roe deer, red deer and, less commonly, the moufflon, introduced from Corsica in the 1920s. The wild boar is largely nocturnal, and the walker is more likely to see the upturned turf of its foraging than the animal itself. Red squirrel, pine marten, badger and fox are also present, but the wildcat, which prefers old beech forest, is very shy. Hungary’s hundreds of caves and crevices have attracted speleologists and archaeologists from all over the world, but also provide a good habitat for many species of bat, including the Mediterranean Horseshoe Bat. Lynx and wolf were once extinct, but thanks to a hunting ban since the 1970s have been making a cautious comeback in the Aggtelek and Zemplén. The brown bear is a very rare visitor from Slovakia.
Birdwatchers coming to Hungary tend to concentrate on Hungary’s wetlands and the Great Plain, but the highlands also offer plenty of interest. It is worth taking a pair of 8x40 binoculars to sort out the various species of raptor wheeling over forest meadows. Rare but on the increase, the Saker falcon can be seen on the high Bükk plateau, and the range of the imperial eagle is spreading thanks to conservation efforts. Several species of owl seem to have survived the days when superstitious villagers killed them, and the remoter parts of the northern forests provide a habitat for the eagle owl. North-east Hungary is also at the western limit of the ural owl. There are many species of woodpecker, including the black woodpecker with its unmistakable plaintive call. The rare hazelhen, a woodland-loving member of the grouse family, is also to be found in the north. Orchards, smallholdings, vineyards and downs provide breeding sites for summer visitors such as the golden oriole, wryneck, hoopoe and many species of warbler. Thorny scrub on heaths and farmland provides a grisly larder for shrikes, and a closer look at sandbanks in open country and farmland will reveal colonies of holenesting bee-eaters. Stony hillsides are the haunt of rock buntings, stonechats and ravens. Overgrown damp meadows with scattered bushes are the haunt of the shy corncrake. White storks nest on village chimney pots and pylons in a few villages in the hills, but the black stork also breeds in small numbers in the north.
Salamander, Oltâr-patak, Börzsöny, Walk 4
The hills have a variety of habitats suited to reptiles and amphibians. The lidless skink and sand lizard favour the sun-warmed rocks along the trails, and frogs breed precariously in shallow forest pools and flooded ruts of tracks. The spectacularly marked fire salamander can be spotted in the leaf litter along cool wooded stream banks. Despite the depredations of snakeskin hunters over the years, the common viper and other species continue to thrive.
Upland meadows are notable for many species of butterfly such as the beautiful swallowtail. The 25cm carpathian blue slug inhabits the Zemplén, and the black snail, an Ice Age relict, can be found along the old mill streams of the Bükkalja. In summer expect to see many species of longhorn beetle and the rather odd spectacle of stag beetles in flight.
History
Hungary’s highlands are peripheral to Hungarian life today, but they were once the scene of competing empires, faiths and ideologies, and have played a large part in the struggles for national liberation. Settlement in the hills began long before recorded time, and excavations of Hungary’s many caves have provided evidence that the highlands were inhabited about half a million years ago. The region has been notable as a crossing point for the great migrations, and the first important groups were the Bronze Age Illyrians and Thracians, who migrated north from the Balkans into the Carpathian Basin. They built hill forts to defend themselves from another incomer, the northern Celts, who eventually dominated the region. By AD 100 the Romans had defeated the Celts and created the province of Pannonia in the lands west of the Danube. To defend this eastern frontier of the Empire the Romans built a line of fortifications (limes) stretching from the Mecsek to the Danube Bend and deployed Syrian light cavalry against the Sarmatians and Germans.
By the end of the fourth century AD the elite of Rome had retreated, leaving a partly urbanised population practising viticulture and Christianity. Germanic tribes swept south to exploit the power vacuum, but in turn were defeated by Attila the Hun, who harried settlements as far west as the Rhine. After the Huns came Teutonic Longobards, proto-Slavs and Turkic- Bulgars, but they were held in check by another nomadic people from the East, the Avars, who for 250 years ruled over a multi-ethnic empire anticipating the shape of modern-day Hungary.
In the ninth century the Carpathian Basin was divided between the Moravian and East Frankish empires. Large areas of the disputed marches were sparsely populated, and in the year 896 there was little resistance when the Magyar chieftan Árpád led the ancestors of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin. In 906 they destroyed the Moravian Empire and in 907, after defeating Gemanic tribes, occupied Pannonia. In the manner of the Huns before them the Magyars used the region as a base to raid for booty and slaves, and their forays, as far afield as France and Spain, prompted the western prayer: From the arrows of the Hungarians, save us Lord.
The turning point for Hungarian history was the year 955 at the Battle of Augsburg, when Emperor Otto I defeated the Magyar light cavalry forcing the fledgling Hungarian state to align itself with Western Europe. In 972, Géza, great-grandson of Árpád, converted to Christianity, and in 1001 István was crowned with papal approval and laid the foundations of the Hungarian state.
In 1241 the Mongols swept through Hungary and defeated the Hungarian army at the Battle of Muhi. King Béla IV and the remnants of his shattered army retreated through the hills of the Bükk and sought refuge on the Dalmatian coast. There was famine and epidemic, but on his return Béla ordered the building of stone castles to replace the hilltop stockades. The Mongols did not return, but during the fifteenth century the castles served as strongholds for Hussite rebels.
It was King Matthias who drove the Hussites out of the northern hills. The rule of this clever king is considered to be Hungary’s Golden Age, but he was also an expansionist, and with the help of a mercenary army ruled an enlarged kingdom stretching, for a while at least, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. After his death, Hungary was weakened by a succession crisis and a failed peasant uprising and fell easily to Suleiman the Magnificent at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. For 150 years Hungary