In Praise of Discovery Walks

Bloody Fields. There's no blood, but they got new foot paths.

At one of my old Toronto advertising agencies, an art director and I would go to the pub down the street with our notebooks when we got stuck with a problem in the afternoon.

After a pint or two, we would usually have a few good ideas in our notebooks (along with a few loopy ideas) and return to the office with a bit of a glow, from the beer and the productivity. This art director enjoyed his drink, so on slower days, he'd insist on "one more drink" and we’d miss a chunk of the afternoon.

The perils of the afternoon beers.

Later, at the same office but with a new, more consistent art director, a creative conundrum would take us out of the office as well. Instead of dark pubs or tempting patios we'd go for a walk through one of Toronto’s ravine paths near the office, which the city conveniently called Discovery Walks on its trail signs. The name stuck.

The ideas from those might not have been as loopy as the beer-y ideas, but they were good. The fresh air, chirping birds, and even the occasional deer sighting, was calming.

I still get in my workday Discovery Walks, in a different city on a different continent. Tobacco advertising can seem like a long, stressful grind that never seems to end, so I am thankful this office is blessed with a park on either end of its quiet street.

Even with an art director-to-copywriter ratio of 13:2, few art directors venture away from the comforting glow of their screens – the sole two exceptions being a bespectacled Spaniard and Kata.

The closest park is Városmajor. It is your basic city park with playgrounds, trees, kids, old ladies walking arm-in-arm, and old men playing chess. It's a good place for a ten-minute escape from creative conundrums. It’s also pretty, but not as exciting as the one on the other end of the street, Vérmező, or Bloody Fields.

Bloody Fields gets its bad ass name for being the place where leaders of a Jacobins movement executed in the late 1700s. At this time, politicians of that particular stripe were behind the French Revolution. Hungary being an absolutist monarchy with a comfortably entrenched nobility, the Jacobins were executed pretty quickly, in front of a crowd, so no one got any bright ideas.

Oh, just down the street is another park where György Dózsa was executed. He led a peasant uprising against the king and the nobility, which, like so many Hungarian uprisings, looked like it could have succeeded before failing. He was captured, tied to a blazing hot iron throne and given a hot crown. As he cooked, his followers were brought out and made to eat his burning flesh before he died.

The City of Budapest could have followed the tradition of Bloody Fields and given this park an equally cool name, like the Broiling Hot Death Seat Park, but instead they settled with György Dózsa Square. Missed opportunity, if you ask me.

Anyway, this is the sort of cool stuff you learn when you’re a history nerd on a Discovery Walk.

My favourite Discovery Walk is a longer one up the hill behind our office, Little Swabian Hill (Swabians were what German settlers were called before Germany existed). It’s a longer walk, but it's more rewarding. It's also a little arduous, since it's a steep hill, but once you're at the top of the hill you realize it's worth the effort.

It’s also part Nature Walk up there – since there are birds, bees, and lizards, but no deer, sadly. You get a great panorama of the Buda side of the city, there are trails in forest around the top, and  even a few interesting leftovers from the German occupation.

Budapest has its fair share of dark bars that, I'm sure, contribute to loopy ideas during creative blocks. But it's comforting to know that I can still maintain the healthy creative habits that keep me sane – no matter how far from home I am.

You never know what you will find on a Discovery Walk.

Up, up, up, you're almost at the top!

It's pretty when you get to the top.

Little Swabian Hill has a Big Swabian View.