I Could Do This Forever – Burgenland: Canvas For Curiosity (The Lost Lands #42)

I could do this forever. From the armchair or preferably on the road. At some point while developing my itinerary for the lost lands beyond Hungary’s borders, I became entranced by the idea of spending weeks, months, years, going from one place to the next and finding anything of interest related to the multi-ethnic history of Burgenland. The idea of doing this has brought me to a point of complete intoxication. All I need is curiosity and a map. There are an infinite number of places, people, events, and topics waiting to be explored. A multiplicity of details worthy of investigation in the pursuit of greater truths past and present. Burgenland is first and foremost on my mind at this moment. That is bound to change whenever I step across the next border. The languages and cultures may shift, but my focus remains the same. To experience and learn everything possible while on this ever-expanding journey.

While the history I am pursuing is very old, it is all new to me. I have no prior association with the lost lands other than the few months I have spent in them over the past twelve years. And yet I feel a deeply personal connection with these regions. An intuition that makes my curiosity come alive. The only way I can explain this urgent obsession is to say that it feels like the first time you fall in love. It is unlike anything you have ever experienced before or ever will again. You cannot imagine what it was like before falling in love, and you cannot imagine what it would be like to fall out of that love. You are smitten. Only later do you realize that the object of affection is something you cannot live without. This is followed by the perpetual fear that one day you could lose it all. And that day you will lose it all.

Golden path – Birch trees at a park in Burgenland

Visiting Rights – A Canvas For Curiosity
The lost lands are a vast canvas where my curiosity is set free. While maps make the lost lands look finite, in the mental makeup of those who long to have them back, they go on forever. Officially, they are all the lands Hungary lost due to the Treaties of Trianon and St. Germain-en-Laye. Another, way of defining them is that they are all the lands surrounding the borders of present-day Hungary, and then some. In certain places those lands expand, such as from the Crisana to Transylvania in Romania or from the Danube in southern Slovakia to the Polish border. In the Burgenland, they are a narrow strip of land stretching from the edge of Bratislava all the way down to the Croatian border. Not unlike a defile that empires, nations, and peoples have fallen into. They have spent over a century trying to pull themselves back out of that defile. Try as they might, the force of geopolitical gravity pulls them back down.

Everyone has their limit, but the lost lands do not. Their spiritual existence is much larger and stronger than their physical one. Imagine living in a country that is besieged on all sides by its own past. They get to see their ex being repeatedly ravished by someone else. The European Union has given them visiting rights, but even that has prolonged the suffering. The relationship between past and present never made a clean break. Rather than a fresh start, there is a festering wound. One that no amount of fury, resolve or romanticism will ever cure. Time does not heal all wounds. In the lost lands it has hardened them, except in a couple of unique cases. The most noticeable of these is the Burgenland.

On the border – Map showing the location of Burgenland

The Happy Face – Well Above Average
Burgenland is the closest thing to a happy face that anyone could put on Trianon. All the boxes have been checked by Austria. Minority rights, check. Prosperity, check.  Assimilation and allowance for differences, check. If the ethnic minorities they inherited cannot be Austrians, at least they will be good Europeans. The situation is as good as it will get for ethnic Hungarians and Croatians. The Austrian government implicitly asks nothing more than that they abide by the law, work hard, and enjoy the benefits that the creation of wealth bequeaths to all the citizens of Austria. Why make trouble, when there is none. Go about your business and everything will work out for the best. I doubt many ethnic Hungarians or Croatians in the Burgenland care to dredge up the ghosts of Trianon. Where would they go with historical grievances except back across the Hungarian border. That is a chance few would care to take. This is the paradox of being part of the ethnic minority abandoned by force of a treaty. The country which adopted them was better than the one they were meant to call their own. .

The Austrians made a beautiful world out of the Burgenland. It is also different in many respects from the rest of the country. Burgenland comes with wine rather than beer, castles and palaces that look like they were built for tourists rather than wars, Hungarians and Croatians who speak fluent German and do not mind doing so. Burgenland ranks last in GDP per person in Austria, and the standard of living is well above average. The mountains are low, the forests are tame, the ground fertile. This is a part of Austria that defies its popular image. One where foreigners are few, and the wanderer is left to their own devices. A lost land that no one is looking to recover. These paradoxes and contradictions are sources of exhilaration that inform my latest obsession. I long to make a separate peace with the Burgenland.

The unknown Austria – Water well and thatched structure in Burgenland (Credit: Corradox)

The Outlier – A Breed Apart
I never cared for Austria before the Burgenland. It was a nation that adhered to the straight and narrow. Stiff, stodgy, and snobbish. The finer things in life honed to their sharpest image and then ground down to extreme dullness. Burgenland is a breed apart. Something about it does not feel completely Austrian to me. I suspect it has something to do with the lost lands. A legacy it wears so lightly that it barely ever gets noticed. It is that legacy which is luring me onward to a place called Parndorf.

Click here for: Kuruzzenschanze – Tracing A Path To Parndorf (The Lost Lands #43)

The Places In Between – Journey To Kittsee (The Lost Lands #41)

Twenty years ago on a single trip I managed to visit Havre, Harlem, Inverness, Kremlin, and Zurich all on the same day. These visits occurred over a four-hour period. I did not even need a passport because I was in Montana. As the story goes, when the American railroad baron James J. Hill was trying to decide the names for towns that would spring up on his Great Northern Railway he came up with a novel idea. Hill would spin a globe and whatever place his finger landed upon would be a town name along the Great Northern. This name game was a sales pitch. Exotic place names would help immigrants to settle one of the remotest regions in the United States. The Great Northern Railway made Hill’s vision a reality. The exotic place names still mark tiny towns on US Highway 2 across the aptly named Hi-Line.

I had Hill’s innovative approach to creating place names in mind as I started scouring the map of Burgenland (Austria’s easternmost province) for places to visit. These would be part of my itinerary for the lost lands beyond Hungary’s borders. Picking out random spots on the map would help me resist the urge to follow in my own footsteps from an earlier trip to Burgenland. As much as I enjoyed that trip, new discoveries must be made. I want to find places that give me a sense of the region’s multi-ethnic character both past and present. 

Hidden away – Road sign for Kittsee (Credit: Izmaelt)

Hungarian Influences – Searching For Signs
My previous visit to Burgenland left me baffled. I found it hard to believe the region had been part of Hungary only a century ago. Burgenland was so thoroughly Austrian that anyone without knowledge of its pre-1920 history would have believed it had always been that way. There were just a few Hungarian reminders to jog the memory. One was the bilingual road signs with the city, town, or village’s name listed in German on top and below that in Hungarian. I later discovered that there are also some signs that have the Croatian names of towns and villages. What a thrill it would be to find a few of those. Speaking of road signs, they also announced Hungary’s presence by pointing the way out of Burgenland to cities such as Sopron and Szombathely across the border. When Austrians see these signs, low prices begin dancing in their head. A drive across the border for bargain shopping in Hungary happens frequently. Austrians have been known to refer to Szombathely as the discount store.

Another reminder of the Hungarian historical legacy is what I call the Esterhazy effect. The family name needs no introduction for Hungarians. The Esterhazy’s were one of the country’s most famous aristocratic families. They managed to stay on good terms with the Habsburgs by siding with them over the centuries. Sometimes this meant going against the broader interests of the Hungarian people. Staying close to the Habsburgs helped the Esterhazy’s acquire massive land holdings. With their wealth they built castles and palaces, many of which can still be visited today. A couple of the Esterhazy’s most famous holdings are in Burgenland. The previously mentioned Forchtenstein Castle, and the delightful crème colored Esterhazy Palace in the center of Eisenstadt (Kismarton). These are among the most obvious signs of Hungarian historical influences. Finding others requires more detective work.

Destination known – Finding Kittsee

Action Packed – An Inspired Choice
Searching a map of Burgenland for a place to start my journey began by looking beyond Deutsch Jahrndorf, which was the last place I listed on my lost lands itinerary. I had traveled several of the nearby roads on previous trips to Bratislava and the Roman ruins at Carnuntum in Lower Austria. I noticed one road in particular – Number 50 – that had eluded me on those earlier journeys. This road went through the town of Kittsee. I have virtually no knowledge of the German language, but Kittsee did not sound very Teutonic to me. Its Hungarian name, Kopcany. did sound intriguing. That was enough to pique my interest. My hopes were not high for Kittsee, but I had to start somewhere. The choice proved to be an inspired one. For a small town, it had much more going on historically than I could ever have imagined.

Kittsee had been the marshalling ground for a crusader army, the site of a royal wedding, a treaty signing, the meeting place for one of Hungary’s greatest military heroes and a visit from a future Holy Roman Emperor. Kittsee had also been in the path of Ottoman Turkish forces on their way to besieging Vienna. It is common historical knowledge that the Ottoman Turks failed twice to conquer Vienna in 1529 and 1683. Along the way they destroyed Kittsee both times. The Esterhazy’s ended up gaining title to the town. Later, the Batthyánys – another of Hungary’s most exalted aristocratic families – took ownership of Kittsee. Hungarian connections extended into the early days of Burgenland. In the province’s first year as part of Austria, a Hungarian physician and member of the Batthyány family founded its first hospital which still serves today as a medical center in the area. For a town of 3,100, Kittsee packs a historical punch far beyond its size. 

A rich history – Rendering of Kittsee Castle in 1680 (Credit: M Greischer)

Going Deep – Needle & Vein
Kittsee serves as a reminder that the present often disguises the depth of a place’s past. Just because Kittsee gets bypassed by travelers rushing between Bratislava and Vienna, does not mean it lacks interest. Kittsee is an example of Burgenland’s multi-layered history. Do a little bit of digging in a small town or village and the surprises will start cropping up. All of us would do well to remember that there are hundreds of Kittsees in East-Central Europe, The cumulative weight of all that has happened in them serves as a counterweight to the more popular places which dominate historical narratives. We should never forget that there are more needles than haystacks in history. Kitssee is one needle worth sticking in a vein to see what can be drawn out. I will take the Kittsees of Burgenland any day over all the cities such as Vienna that monopolize the past. A town like Kittsee is only anonymous to those who have yet to discover it. 

Click here for: I Could Do This Forever – Burgenland: Canvas For Curiosity (The Lost Lands #42)