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.

Hungary Heritage Moment III - Pannonhalma

You get up to the top of the wall and this is what you see...

Then you turn around and this is the view you get...

The basilica. If you go downstairs, they have a collection of Habsburgs' hearts.
That's how they were interred.

The courtyard, as seen from the cloisters.

The fancy door to the basilica

"Every fancy, gigantic library must have a gigantic globe."
That's written somewhere in the Bible, look it up. 

Catholicism has had a bumpy ride in Hungary.

Efforts to spread the religion among the Magyar tribes were intensive, but difficult at times, just ask St. Gellert, who was stuffed into a barrel and thrown from a hill that today bears his name for preaching to the heathens.

Hungary became officially Catholic after Istvan’s coronation, by order of the pope at the time. The kingdom was on the frontier of Catholicism, just before the Great Schism. The kings put non-believers under the sword and missionaries spread the word. All that work was almost completely destroyed by the Mongol hordes. Then Hungary was occupied by the surging Muslim Ottomans on their way to Vienna from Turkey.

After the Turks were pushed out things began to look a bit more peaceful. Nope! Kidding! The Reformation had begun by that time. In the coming years, uprisings against the ruling Habsburgs were more religious in tone than nationalist. The Catholics from Austria often fought Lutherans and Calvinists from other corners of the empire – who in turn sided with the dreaded Turkish heretics against those Austrian papists.

Much, much later, of course, atheist communism also had its day in Hungary, closing churches and imprisoning or executing clergy.

Through it all, the Archabbey of Pannnonhalma has stood the test of time, and withstood the challenges of, well, being located in Hungary. The Benedictines built their abbey in 996. Since then, it has added a basilica, a beautiful library, a boarding school, even a winery – building a tidy little business in the process, while also being far more socially palatable than tithes or indulgences,

The Archabbey largely was spared the Mongol destruction, but was occupied (not thoroughly pillaged, however) by the Turks. This is in stark contrast to what happened at Székesfehérvár, the kingdom's old royal capital and basilica. Hungarian kings and queens were crowned and buried there for centuries, until the Turks decided it was a good idea to use it for gunpowder storage and, unsurprisingly, accidently blew it up.

The Archabbey of Pannonhalma has even survived a state repression. The Benedictines were outlawed by an emperor looking to lessen Rome's influence in the Holy Roman Empire (he could have changed that name too) and make a little money from confiscated land. They were invited back by another emperor to be a teaching order. The Archabbey even kept its doors open for religious business during the Communist years, churning out graduates from its boarding school.

Over the Christmas holidays, I dropped by the Archabbey for a visit in my spare time over the holidays. The Archabbey sits on a hill in the small town of Pannonhalma. I took a train to Győr, then found the bus station, which took me to the top of the hill in Pannonhalma. The winery was closed for the Christmas holidays, but I could get up into the monastery and walk along the wall into the basilica, the old cloisters and the library.

The monastery closed early, at 4:30pm, but the bus was not scheduled to return until almost 6pm. This gave me plenty of time to wander the grounds, exposed to the cold wind on the high hill in the frigid early darkness. When the bus arrived I was almost frozen stiff. I could have hugged the driver. The monastery has survived foreign invasion and state persecution, but how it survives the cold was, at the time, beyond me.

Archabbey of Pannonhalma

Bits of Kanadiana in Krakow

Kata and I took a Discovery Walk when we arrived.

Where all the Polish kings were crowned and buried.
There's even some Hungarian royalty.

Wawel at dusk.

Going deep underground to the Wieliczka salt mine.

The Salt King in Wieliczka.

Oh, hi, from the ballroom of the Wieliczka salt mine. Salt mining seems pretty cushy to me.

Happy New Years!

The third Polish person I ever met was Bart. He came to my second-grade class speaking no English; fresh off the boat, as they say, from communist Poland. Luckily, Kamil, the second Polish person I ever met, was there to translate for him, since Kamil arrived with a similar linguistic barrier in the first grade.

I ended up moving away from the school. Years later I began working at Angelo’s in high school and met a fast-talking Canadian guy who looked oddly familiar. I realized he wasn’t Canadian when he switched from potty-mouthed English to polite Polish while speaking with one of the kitchen ladies kitchen. It was Bart

By the way, the first Polish person I ever met was Mike S in kindergarten. I can’t recall his last name, but I remember it was difficult to pronounce.

I drop this little London anecdote into my travel blog to illustrate the strange place I grew up in, which was filled with friends whose families came form all over the world. Many of them, due to some immigration patterns beyond my comprehension, were Polish.

That is why out of all the places I visited here, including the Britain, Poland has felt the most like home.

I don’t understand the language, aside from a few cuss words, but when I heard it in Krakow, I thought, Oh yeah, I know those sounds, not the words, but the sounds those words make! It was actually an almost comforting sound to hear – until it was directed at me, which prompted my usual awkward stare and awkward shrug response.

That whole home feeling really came out when eating. For one thing, Polish food is damn good. Most of us know about pierogi and they’re great, but a life without potato pancakes is a life not lived. And while it took a few free cabbage rolls during my Angelo’s to fully appreciate them, my first Pączki was sweet, sweet sugary food love at first bite.

But it was in a homestyle restaurant in Krakow that really brought me back to little London. Kata and I ordered some kielbasa. Aside from some homestyle peanut butter I brought back with me from Canada, the kielbasa strangely that felt like Canadian comfort food to me. 

I just had to come to Krakow to get it.