First Trip from Madrid (Part 2)
Slovakia, Poland, and Budapest (Again)
*Click HERE for Part 1 of this essay
**Five of my six books (the sixth, Disgust and Desire, is being serialized here on my stack every Thursday) are now available not only on eBook and paperback but on Audible so if you prefer to listen to books, now you can.
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Click on each for Audible:
Two Years in New York: Before, During and After COVID
Controversial: The Substack Essays
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***I am heading to Paris 6/24
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After two days in Budapest—which we absolutely loved—we walked the 25 minutes to the hotel on the outskirts of the city, with all our stuff in tow in the rugged heat, not to stay there but to pick up the rental car. After the guy tried as hard as he could to upsell us on insurance (we refused since we already had travel insurance which covered a rental car) we got into the small silver brand-new Renault Clio (a manual meaning only B could drive) and headed northeast towards Slovakia.
We’d both become entranced by and yet also sick of the city. Madrid, mostly, but also Budapest, even as we loved it. We needed the country. At our heart we’re both country people: I grew up in Ojai and B in Lompoc, both small, insular Southern California towns. It reminded me of my solo trip in 2016, wherein I suddenly last-second decided to walk 450 miles across El Camino de Santiago in northern Spain after being in NYC, Berlin, Valencia, etc. (That trip changed my life.)
We hit Highway 71 moving east from Budapest until we hit Mezocsat wherein 71 bent due north towards Miskolc and Kosice (which is in Slovakia). Beyond Slovakia lay our bigger goal: southern Poland.
The drive was lovely. Long, flat straight roads with distant epic jagged mountains mixed with flat green fields and fields covered in bursting yellow poppies. It made me think of many different terrains at different moments, including, later, even Big Sur, but for this leg of the trip it was reminiscent more of Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa than anything else. Pure flat green simplicity and beauty. People tended to drive very fast on these roads. They were aggressive and, even though B has a bit of a lead foot, we continually got bullied out of the fast lane by people going easily 95, 100, 105 miles per hour. Folks were not messing around here.
We talked a lot. That’s one of the absolute joys of our relationship: Britney and I never run out of things to say. Almost three years together now—good God between my father dying, losing our dog, selling my house and buying another, moving to Portland and then Madrid, it feels like a decade!—we can go like we did on that first incredible date on August 24th, 2022 (incidentally, two days after my first ever Substack post, which you can read here). Then we fell to listening to music. (A lot of her weird, intriguing indie music like “Mannequin Pussy,” and then our old favorite: Thin Lizzy.) We watched the land passing us by, laughed at the crazily speeding cars, bopped our heads to the music, and felt grateful we were, at last, away from the city.
Around Presov we switched onto Highway E-50 heading west. We passed the Spisska Castle here on top of a green rising hill like a massive breast. We were in Slovakia. And then soon we entered the small town of Hrabušice. We drove down a light dirt road and found our “hotel,” which was really a small, quiet, lovely Bed and Breakfast. After parking and checking in we walked three minutes, passing pleasant green pastures and fields, mountains beyond, to a restaurant. I ate Halusky, a traditional Slovakian dish which is basically gnocchi covered in sheep cheese with little bits of bacon. Delicious. I had my usual black tea with cold milk and B had wine.
Back at the “hotel” we relaxed. B has been on a “Lost” bender (remember that show, circa 2006?) because her son watched it and fell in love and she wants to discuss it when he and his five friends stay at our place in Madrid June 25-30 so she was watching that on her phone with headphones in, and I read Tolstoy’s brilliant 1852-57 collection of autobiographical fiction, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, which I’d bought at that classic bookstore in Budapest. (See Part 1.) No author on earth conjured images or made one reminisce on one’s own life experience the way that Tolstoy did. I was enraptured by his simple, deep, profound prose. He was like Dostoevsky but without the hyperactive, angsty edge. (I love Dostoevsky, too.)
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The next afternoon, heading north from Hrabušice, Slovakia to Male Ciche, in southern Poland (about an hour and a half drive, aka 80 kilometers), we took E-50 and then Route 66. (Get your kicks on Route 66!) More of the same kind of physical, geographical beauty. I felt as if we were living a new, different life now. Madrid was long gone, way back in the distance. Even Budapest felt like ancient Greece to me now. And the United States? Ancient. Portland? Where was that? We felt so far away from America and Trump and all the chaos going on politically there that it just didn’t quite feel real, as if it were all a delusional daydream which had collectively occurred only in our minds.
Soon we made it our goal: Male Ciche. Poland. The town sits on the northeast corner of the Tatrzanski National Park. Near the High Tatra Mountains. (Which are incredible and look like the Swiss Alps.) The town is right by other small towns like Poronin and Zakopane. We planned to do a hike.
Our “hotel,” like in Slovakia, was a Bed and Breakfast, only this time it was in a massive building with dozens of rooms. Only—perfectly for us—the rooms were nearly all empty. We were almost the only ones there. We quickly realized this was a mega-ski town (quite famous in Europe we later learned) and, since it was June, aka off-season, the town was 95% empty. This was just perfect for us. We wanted peace. Quiet. Nature. Calm. Hiking.
Our tiny room was a couple floors up. The building was very cabinlike, which excited me all the more. I’ve always had a very romantic attachment to anything cabinlike. I often see myself in a decade, with Britney, living and writing in some cabin in the middle of nowhere, in America or Europe (or Asia for that matter), away from “the things of man.” (Yet I also paradoxically crave the city, culture, the electricity of Art and the chaos of crowds. Welcome to my Norman Mailer inner opposites.)
We had a little balcony and below us was a narrow country road. Beyond the road were some huge cabins and green forest. Mountains rose up like glorious aesthetic knives when you stood on the road and looked further south. The Tatra Mountains. Where we would hike. But that day it was threatening rain. Gray clouds had shifted overhead, and before long it was raining.
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We found a great breakfast place in town the next morning and, after eating our Shakshuka (eggs, parsley and meat in a thick tomato sauce) we found a trail using All Trails. However, we didn’t reach the trail before getting an $80 Euro ticket for “illegally” parking in front of a roundabout. We’d pulled over for literally 30 seconds while I ran into a mini-mart to get some bottles of water when, looking back, I saw the Polish police behind the car, and a cop in a vest and uniform speaking with B.
We were nervous at first, because we only know U.S. cops, which are generally a mixed bag. (I’ve had good and bad experiences with American cops.) The officer took her license and passport, walked back to his squad car, and, twenty minutes later, returned it all and reminded us of the “offense” and said we needed to pay $80 Euro. Annoyed, B handed him our credit card and he scanned it with the portable machine. He handed us a receipt. Done and done. Lesson learned. The lesson being: Don’t drive in Poland.
Further down the road we were directed by some menacing-looking men, one who ended up being a giant Ukrainian man who explained we had to pay $10 Euro to park there, and we needed to park there to do the hike. The hike was in the Tatra Mountains, technically in Zakopane. We paid and got out and walked the twenty minutes from the car lot to the trailhead, passing through another little ski town. Before we officially hit the trail we had to pay another fee, this one for the privilege of hiking itself, and that was around $5 Euro. They really take advantage of their natural beauty!
But the hike was absolutely stunning. Green fields, jagged mountain peaks, thick forest. It seemed almost fake, like a perfect TV set. We saw several signs for brown bears which freaked B out. She was convinced they were actually man-eating Grizzlies. I slowly convinced her we were fine. At first there were very few people but then, as we got farther, more and more people appeared. Often whole families with small kids in tow. Only, everyone was coming down from the mountain, going the opposite direction as us. We were going up the mountain. This trail was labeled on All Trails as a 4.6 “hard” one. We knew it would be uphill until we peaked at around 5,000 feet. And boy did we work for that peak!
The trail was a real ass-kicker, up forest and steep rock sections wherein you almost felt like you were trudging up natural stairs. The rock sections sometimes twisted up like a spiraling staircase. The higher we got the more incredible the views were of the surrounding mountains and green valleys below. B always makes fun of me because I truly do say this all the time, but this time it was true: It reminded me of my beloved childhood home of Ojai.
We reached the peak and celebrated by stopping for water, a rest, and photos. Then we started back down going the other way; the trail was a loop. We’d learned why so many people were going down, against our uphill trek: You could “cheat” by taking a ski-lift (gondola) from a parking lot area to the peak and then walking back down. But how lame was that! It reminded me of the full week of hardcore mud and rain on El Camino de Santiago when I walked it in 2016, how some people opted for taking busses during that time, while others, the purists—like me—hiked every day through the pouring rain. (In my case while also listening to Crime and Punishment.)
It was a proper hike and we felt great. By the time we finished the loop, scarfed lunch at a local ski resort restaurant, and then walked the final 20 minutes back to the car, the lot was almost totally empty and we were whipped. B drove us back to town and we nestled into our comfy little ski resort room on the second floor, surrounded by quiet.
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The next day we relaxed again. We got local breakfast. B watched Lost. I read. (I was working on a reread of Madame Bovary in the mornings, and Tolstoy at night. I had a rhythm going, playing the Two Book Shuffle.) That evening we walked together for a little and then B went back to the room and I went off on my own for 45 minutes or so, walking along the creek which quietly gurgled through the town. The sun was low and I caught many beautiful pictures. I was not in my head, just pleasantly observing. Mild, smooth green hills and pastures. Sheep, horses and cows. I saw a Shepard sitting on the ledge of a back part of his old, crumbling stone home, smoking a cigarette, wearing a muddy yellow smock and black boots. We caught eyes for a moment and it felt magical. I looked away. I saw ski-lifts rising into the hills. The ski-lifts were not moving, not in operation in the off-season.
Walking alone in the rural silence—save for cars here and there passing me along the snaking country road—I remembered my years of hitchhiking around the States, in my wild twenties. How many times I had trudged along gorgeous summer country roads just like this one, waiting for a car to pull over for me, or sometimes not even sticking a thumb but just enjoying the walk, even with my 35-pound pack on my back. But that was a very different time in my life. Now I was 42, almost 15 years sober, married, and on a road trip in Central Europe.
There were little shallow ditches still holding water from the recent rain; they reflected the lowering red-orange light of the sun creating a kaleidoscope of brilliant color.
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The following day we got breakfast and then shoved off on the four hour drive south (237 kilometers) a la Highways 66 and 72, to yet one more small town, this one back in Hungary about an hour northeast of Budapest (where we’d stay one more night and then fly home from) called “Holloko” near Zsunypuszta. This was also a beautiful, if long-seeming drive.
We dropped our things off at another “hotel,” aka Bed and Breakfast. This town was even tinier than the previous ones. It was very quiet. We pressed a button and an older woman who spoke close to no English came out and let us in, giving us a key. She smiled and we smiled and she left. Perfect. As little interaction with other human beings was exactly what I wanted. Madrid was nothing but people. We needed a break from people. (I always need a break from people.) The room was big with a king-sized bed, lovely cabinlike walls, open windows and a large kitchen. Too bad it was only for one night!
That evening we found, via the internet—B is a wizard at this and, she being an authentic “foodie,” she always nails it—a really tasty Hungarian restaurant. We’d fallen in love with Hungarian food: Salty, tasty olive-oil-drenched salads, fried potatoes, fried onions, gnocchi, sheep cheese galore, etc. This restaurant was one of the best we’d had. It also reminded me of beautiful Ojai yet again. We sat outside. It was hot with a light breeze. The waitress, a Hungarian woman in her fifties, was surprised we’d found the place. She spoke good English. We engaged her in a lengthy on/off conversation as she brought us our plates, wine, tea and water.
We told her we were from the States and now lived in Madrid. She was from Hungary and lived here now again but had lived for 18 years in the U.K. But, she said, the migrant crisis had radically changed the country, so she’d returned to her native Hungary. Her boyfriend (husband?) lived in Scotland but was, due to mass immigration, she said, also moving to Hungary but right now was shuffling between the two nations. (Hungary and Scotland.)
She asked us our opinion of Trump. We said, basically, He’s more or less a destructive jackass. I asked her about Hungary’s contentious prime minister, the far-right Trump-adjacent semi-dictator Viktor Orban, and she said he was awful and added that there were many poor people in Hungary and that the government didn’t care about the little people and that there was no social safety net and poor people could “die in the street and no one cares.”
It sounded very harsh. I knew Orban also restricted speech, among other authoritarian-leaning things.
We ate (delicious), said goodnight to the waitress, and then headed out on a treasure hunt for tea and milk for me for the morning.
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I woke up early, around 6am, and, B still asleep, I decided to go for a solo walk. It was gorgeous out, with mountains in the distance, and nearby green flat fields and thick forest. It was dead silent. I grabbed my boots and hat and shades and a mug of hot tea and headed out. Down the way were some horses with shiny brown coats, their ribs ever so slightly pushing against their bodies, in a muscular healthy way. I walked by them, looking, silent. It reminded me of another morning I’d done a little solo stroll during our Canada road trip last year.
After I came back we packed and jumped into the car and headed out, this time bound once more for Budapest. We checked into our hotel, right in the city square (Roombach Hotel), and rested a while after a short walk. After taking brief naps we went out again, walking into a thrift store and then a bookstore which promptly kicked us out politely at 6pm. We found dinner in a nice Hungarian place. We walked back slowly in the late dusk to our hotel. I read. She watched Lost.
The next morning we did our routines, and then packed and walked to a café for lunch. We took our time and then got an Uber to the airport. An hour wait, then we boarded the plane bound back to Madrid.
