"It's Just a Little Farther"

What an adventure…

After my late night of writing, I decide to sleep in till 12:00. Laura appears at my door talking about going for a nice leisurely walk. I decide to join here, get ready, and head out. We head to the main square to take pictures, when we are greeted by tons of people and music. MagyarStar, the equivalent of American Idol, had come to Pecs in buses and was holding auditions right in the main square. There was a really good singer playing a guitar that we decided to watch, then headed around to the other side of the group.

After hearing a group of people sing a part to Womanizer (I don’t know what it is with Hungarians and Kate Perry), we take a few more pictures and happen to see our advisor walk through one of our pictures. We instantly start yelling at him and talk for a few minutes. He happens to mention that we should head up to see the TV Tower at the very top of the Mecsek Mountains, that it was a “straight shot.”

We decide to just walk to the top of the hill overlooking Pecs to get some pictures. On the way I stop at a stand in the wine festival and get some of this fried bread, equivalent to a funnel cake. It is a hollow cylinder that is cooked over a grill, then covered in either coconut, chocolate, cinnamon sugar, or plain cinnamon. After being cut in line by Hungarians (who are notorious for being really pushy in line), I finally get some with everything on it in separate sections. It was soooooooooo good. I have to bring this to America…seriously. My favorite was the coconut and chocolate, which I could eat for the rest of my life and would be happy.

We come to a fork in the road and decide to take the road on the left because it was more uphill and we thought we would get better pictures. At the top, Laura convinces me to take a journey to the TV Tower, since we had already made it up the first hill and had nothing else to do that Sunday, and that it was just a little farther. I reluctantly said fine.

We walk up some really steep hills, past absolutely beautiful houses with gorgeous gardens full of roses and decks overlooking all of Pecs. We continue walking all the way to the top of the main hill, look to the right, and realize we are on the wrong mountain. The TV tower is across the giant ravine on the other mountain. I wanted to just turn back because the TV Tower was still really far away, but Laura just kept saying, “oh, it’s just a little farther…we might as well go now since we are already halfway.” We were not already halfway. We had been walking for about an hour, and I thought we still had another 2 hours to go, plus the walk back. “Oh no, it’s just a little farther.”

I give in, since we really had nothing else to do that day and I was feeling in the mood for a hike; so we continue onward. We find a road crossing the valley, coming upon a campsite. We ask if anyone spoke English and everyone shook their heads. I just decide to say, “TV Tower?” and the woman pointed down one of the paths. I was still arguing with Laura (pretty much the whole time saying it was still a long way, but whatever), but we decide to go down the trail.

The main trail loops to the right, with a tiny trail continuing on upwards toward the top of the hill. We decide to take the mini trails…At first I thought they were just dried up streams or rivers, since they were not flat, had a ton of rocks and roots, and were not clear of trees/bushes. We walk for what seemed like a mile before we came upon a road crossing our path, with the trail continuing on the other side. Fortunately it was marked with a red triangle, so we knew that it must have been at least some kind of a path, just not a good one. I hardly ever get eaten by mosquitoes, but that was the worst time of my life. Whenever you stopped for just a split second, 10 would swarm you and start biting. It was as if they had never been near a human being before and I was their last and only hope.

Every 50 meters or so, we would come to a fork in the path, and would just have to make a best guess and go uphill in a direction we think would work, even thought the little triangles would be going down a different path. After walking for another mile or so, we finally see that we are getting much closer to the TV Tower, but the trail had also gotten more uphill and dangerous to walk on. After about 2.5 hours, we come to a turn in the path, clear the trees, and find ourselves at the base of the TV Tower. We were finally there!

And it was closed…

We thought at least, since it was Sunday and the main building was deserted. But fortunately, they were still taking people with tickets up an elevator to the skydeck. The wind was ferocious as we cleared the forest, making it cold. We tried just going straight into the elevator, but the guy asked for our tickets, so we just jumped off. We bought tickets, after being cut in line as usual, and proceeded to the elevator and went up.
The museum part was closed, but the skydeck and restaurant were not. We take a step out onto the skydeck and are immediately blown away by the cold, strong wind. We suck it up and walk out onto the 360-degree decks with plain, old railings and take in the most absolutely amazing views of Hungary. The mountain was over 500 meters taller than Pecs and the TV Tower was another 127 meters on top of that. Even though it was cloudy and hazy, you could see for miles (or kilometers), possibly even Croatia. It was spectacular. The southern side was Pecs, sooooooo far away, and the rolling hills spotted with farms, vineyards, lakes, and villages. The northern side was the Mecsek Mountains.

We found out that we had gone completely around where we were supposed to go when we started our lovely hike. We thought we had traveled so far on our runs around the city, but realized how short it seemed compared to the hike we took to get up to the tower…no joke. This was when Laura realized, “yeah, that was a lot farther than I expected.” The clouds begin to roll in under us (yes under us, that is how far up we were) and we see rain beginning to fall of course. It turned into a monsoon as the wind was blowing the cold rain into the deck. Once we heard thunder, we thought we should get off the giant metal tower and decide to go check out the restaurant and see if we were going to be allowed to get in with how we were dressed.

We stand outside the 360-degree restaurant, looking in to determine if we could get in or not, and everyone starts staring at us. Everyone was wearing collared shirts and just nice clothes, and you had us in our workout clothes all sweaty and gross. We came all that way and were probably never coming back, so we run in and sit at a table by the window. Of course no one in the place speaks English, so our waitress was already frustrated when we start motioning for a menu that no one else was ordering from; everyone was just getting drinks and ice cream.

I order the vegetable risotto, which was fabulous, while taking in the incredible views of Pecs. Fortunately, after we finished eating we see the rain begin to clear up, so we decide to head back up to the skydeck to take in the last view before we left on our journey back. We plan out our route carefully from above and head down.

The bus would not be coming for another 1.5 hours, so we head back into the woods to trek down the mountain…and since their was a torrential rainstorm, all the trails were muddy, slippery, and even more dangerous going down than up. After sliding halfway down the mountain with some very amazing saves from falling, Laura falls very gracefully into the mud. I cannot stop because the mosquitoes have gotten even more vicious, but make sure she is ok. The only good part to the rain was that it made everything sparkle brilliantly in the forest. We continue onward and finally come to the campsite and decide to follow the main road down the mountain.

It takes us on the correct side of the mountain to Pecs, but since we knew where we were finally going, we stop to take pictures on the hill overlooking the city. After breaking into people’s yard to get better pictures, off-roading into some fields with prickly plants, and Kujo ramming a gate we were passing by trying to eat us, we head back own the mountain to the city of Pecs.

After about an hour from the TV Tower, we come to the very first fork in the road where we decided to take a left. Yes, only an hour later (it took us two to get up the mountain, and we were going even slower down the trails because of the rain), we find out that the correct path to take was on the right. Oh well, it made for a great adventure and story.

Since I was starving again, I go to the bakery at the end of the street and get some more snacks for half off (so everything was $0.10 instead of $0.20. I use a lot more Hungarian I learned, to which the woman smiled and said my Hungarian was becoming “super.” She never smiled any other time I went in, but this time she gave me a huge smile. I came back to the apartments where everyone was sleeping and uploaded pictures and waited for my parents to get back home so I could wish my dad a happy father’s day. I finally fell asleep at 11 for our first official day of work the next day when we would be placed on our projects and meet with our clients.
It was an unplanned adventure, but that is what makes it the best. I have always said the best part to any trip is to get lost, but I still would have liked to at least plan out the route we were supposed to take. I like to get lost when there are other people around, like a train station or city in Japan, but not in the mountains of Hungary. I just loved how when we would tell Hungarian students that we hiked up to the TV Tower, they immediately so, “oh my, I would never do that” and were still confused as to how we actually walked/hiked up there. Oh well, it was amazing. Everyone else in our group is jealous and wants to go up. Most want to take the bus, but there is one other that we might hike again with, but take the correct road at the fork…just remember to go right.