Romanticism & Reality – Csikos: The Hungarian Cowboys of the Hortobagy (For The Love of Hungary Part 22)

The most romantic aspect of Hungary is not to be found in the beautiful women that walk the high streets of Budapest. Neither will it be discovered in the vineyards that climb up the hillsides of Villany and Tokaj, nor in the fin de siècle architecture that still soars above the Old Towns of so many Hungarian provincial city centers. Instead, the most romantic aspect in Hungary is to be found in the most inhospitable place. A land with more animals than people, a natural wonderland and wasteland ironically protected for its cultural values. That culture, despite or perhaps because of the harsh environment, lends itself to romanticism. At least that was what I came to believe after taking a wagon journey out onto the heart of the Great Hungarian Plain in Hortobagy National Park. This was an opportunity for me and my future wife to see one of the great cultural landscapes of both Hungary and the world.

Frontier Mentality – A Reverence For Tradition
Cowboys are the great icons of frontier culture. Chiefly associated with the American West, they are tough and rugged, the essence of independence and individualism. The cowboy is symbolic of a time when man was locked in a fierce struggle with the natural and animal world. The essence of this struggle was conquest, subdue or submit, conquer or be conquered. The Hortobagy is Europe’s answer to the American West. It was and to a small degree still is today another quintessential breeding ground for cowboys. Yet finding them on the Great Hungarian Plain still managed to shock me.  I had expected to see exotic animals, wetlands teeming with bird life and endless expanses of grass covered steppe. Yet finding the Hungarian cowboy alive and well in the middle of nowhere was another matter altogether. To discover these romantic characters still roaming these flatlands was cause for an afternoon of reverential romanticism.

Known in their mother tongue as Csikos, Hungarian cowboys are as much a part of the Hortobagy’s history as the mind-bending spaces that are a hallmark of this desolate steppe land. The Csikos have been riding the range in eastern Hungary for a millennium, crisscrossing the vast expanses on horseback. Stock growing and sheep herding is as much a part of the Hortobagy as the seeming endlessness of the terrain. Time and technology have largely failed to transform the region or its few inhabitants. The Csikos on the Hortobagy today carry on in much more moderated form the traditions of their ancestors. I soon discovered this when our wagon ride halted on the steppe. and a group of Csikos suddenly appeared on horseback. Rather than the blue jeans that American cowboys have helped make world famous, they were wearing looser fitting bright blue pants and shirts. Black boots and vests, along with a wide brim hat completed this fashionable garb. Watching the Csikos gallop forth and then alight from their steads was a study in frontier stylishness. With their clothing fluttered by a gentle breeze, it was as though they were unfurling themselves upon the landscape. Their unique and colorful clothing acting as an impressive response to the bland natural surroundings.

Romanticism & Reality – Csikos are the Great Hungarian Plain’s Master Horsemen

From Another World – An Incredible Amount of Determination
Silhouetted against the cloudless sky with an autumnal sun burning bright and vibrant, the Csikos looked as though they had come from another world. To a large extent they had. A world where only the toughest managed to survive the endless succession of sunup to sundown days. Where weekends meant just as much work as weekdays while toiling outdoors in all four seasons. Struggling to graze and raise the massive herds of livestock that roamed the Hortobagy. The Csikos had been shaped by the unforgiving nature of this land. Only those as tough as the natural environment could survive. Weakness had no place in a world where the elements were the real opposition. Forging an existence out of the grass, dust and periodic bogs that laid upon this land took an incredible amount of tenacious grit.

Unyielding determination came to mind as the Csikos stood before us mounted on their dark steads. These muscular, sturdy men, many with flourishing mustaches, sun baked features and faces chiseled from stone, were the human embodiment of the will to survive in the Carpathian Basin’s most inhospitable landscape. A dismounted leader of the Csikos soon moved to the fore. He brandished a giant whip which he swung with great dexterity. As the whip cracked, each of the horses and riders focused their attention. Soon all the horses were brought to heel. They dropped to the ground and sat beside a still standing Csikos. The Csikos leader made several exhortations, calls that horse and rider obeyed. It was an impressively indigenous display of historical choreography that hearkened back to the earliest roots of historic Hungary, a cultural touchstone that was being kept alive by the men who stood before us.

Each person in our group was offered the opportunity to mount a stead with assistance from an accompanying Csikos. The thrill for me was less about getting atop the horse, than coming face to face with a Csikos. The one I met up close conveyed immeasurable strength. In concert with his exotic clothing, he looked like a historical character who had stepped straight out of central casting. It was impossible not to fall in love with the performance that was put on for us. Of course, I knew that these men were more substance than style. They led a hard life in an isolated region. Independent from the modern world, they were cut off from the comforts that have made the average Hungarian’s everyday existence a walk in the park. They had chosen a life of laborious hardship filled with satisfactions that those who came in cursory contact with them could scarcely imagine. For all the theater of their short performance, I knew this was largely an illusion. Their day to day existence was one of wearisome toil.

Staying Power – Hungarian Gray Cattle

Survival of The Toughest – Life In The Hortobagy
On the ride back from our journey, the wagon took us past a herds of Hungarian Gray Cattle and Racka Sheep. The animals, like the Csikos, mirrored the landscape. They were stout, with a look of forceful determination and inherent stubbornness. While docile, I was ever mindful that they could turn fierce in a matter of moments. To survive in the Hortobagy such traits were essential. There was nothing easy in this land for man or beast. While Romanticism may inform the popular image of the Hortobagy, it is toughness which allows it inhabitants to survive.

Mysticism, Mirages & Melancholy – Hortobagy National Park: An Impossible Frontier (For The Love of Hungary Part 21)

When I think of World Heritage Sites in Hungary, I think of history, culture and architecture. Foremost among these are two places that could not be more different. Budapest, along the banks of the Danube and the quintessentially Hungarian village of Holloko, tucked into an obscure valley deep in the Cserhat Mountains. The riverfront in Budapest evokes the most splendid European cityscape imaginable while Holloko conjures up thoughts of age old traditions and images of spectacular quaintness. Budapest and Holloko are respectively the best of urban and rural Hungary. They also happen to be World Heritage Sites because of their outstanding intrinsic value. These are the places that come to mind for most of those who have spent time in Hungary’s capital as well as its hinterlands.

As for spaces, geological, biological and ecological, it is much more difficult to find world class landscapes in the country. Hungary’s most well-known natural wonder, the inland sea of Lake Balaton, does not enjoy World Heritage Site status, but there are several natural areas that do. The most surprising of these I discovered in an area one would not normally associated with natural wonders. It was to be found on the Great Hungarian Plain in the eastern part of the country. Covered by an ocean of short grass, marked by sublime flatness, dotted with shimmering wetlands and set beneath an incomprehensibly huge sky, lies the Hortobagy. It is Hungary’s first national park, as well as an International Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site. Ironically this vast and expansive landscape was historically viewed by travelers as a formidable wasteland. Today, it is sought out as a destination by tens of thousands of tourists.

A Wilderness Sublime – Sheep grazing on the Hortobagy

Magical Bleakness – A Land Without Limits

A land of mysticism, mirages and melancholy, where time and distance take on an entirely different meaning, the Hortobagy is a landscape that seems to have neither an end nor a beginning. If the infinite exists on earth, than I just might be able to find it out on the Hortobagy. A land without limits, it was billed as much a state of mind, as a place. The park inhabits what might be termed an in between space. Famously noted by travelers as treacherous to cross due to searing heat, icy winds or freezing cold, bandits and a decided lack of natural landmarks. It was a place for nomadic herdsmen to graze cattle and sheep across vast expanses of land underlain by alkali soils. Inhospitable, mostly uninhabitable and hardly worth cultivating other than for stock raising, the Hortobagy was difficult to avoid for those traveling across eastern Hungary and even more impossible to forget.

In Hungary, the Hortobagy and surrounding land on the Great Plain is also known as the puszta, a term that is synonymous with emptiness. Though remarkably bleak, it is an entrancing landscape. Out on the puszta, the sky is so large and land so vacant that it is difficult to discern where horizons begin or end. Strangely enough, this also leads to optical illusions which gives the Hortobagy a magical quality. The kind of landscape where myths are shaped out of torpid air and mirages have been known to materialize on humid summer days. Historical accounts tell of travelers dazzled by illusion and disillusion. Some have reported seeing cities spring from the clouds, while others have sighted fantastical palaces forming in the near distance. These are but a few examples of the imaginary formations that appear without warning.

Laid Over The Land – Hortobagy River in the National Park (Credit: Wikipedia)

A Mesmerizing Isolation – Outer Space On Earth

The natural history of the Hortobagy is inseparable from the Tisza River, which is now dammed and held in a large lake to the west of the national park. While the mighty Tisza is now relatively tame, it long since left a distinctive mark upon the landscape. The alkali soil, the main component of the Hortobagy’s barren landscape, was deposited over ten thousand years ago by a wilder version of the Tisza. Back then, massive herds of wild animals roamed across the area, Later, domesticated animals grazed these grasslands into submission. The same processes still take place today on a much smaller scale. To witness the timeless rituals of nature, animal and man interacting in this sublime landscape, my future wife and I traveled by train from Debrecen to the small village of Hortobagy. This was where we entered Hortobagy National Park, paying to take a wagon out onto the expansive flatlands.

My initial impression of the Hortobagy could best be summed up as “nowhere to hide.” The plain expanded exponentially in every direction. The only vegetation to be seen, other than grass, were hazy clumps of tiny trees. These were so far away as to be barely discernible. It was difficult to tell if the horizon was ten or ten thousand miles in the distance. The further we traveled, the further away the horizon stretched. Everyone and everything, whether natural or manmade, was reduced to insignificance by the sky. A few minutes after leaving the village behind, I felt as those we had entered outer space on earth. The wagon was moving, but I had the sensation that it was going nowhere. The horses pulling it were running to stand still. The openness was mesmerizing and at the same time isolating. It was world unto itself.

Heading out to the Hortabagy – Hungarian cowboy on a wagon cart

Heading out to the Hortabagy – Hungarian cowboy on a wagon cart

The Wilderness Sublime – A Land Of Illusion

The idea that the Hortobagy was in the same country as Budapest seemed impossible. This felt like the most remote frontier I had ever visited. Light years away from the rest of Hungary. This land made me believe, if just for a moment, that nothing else existed outside of it. It was mind boggling to think that Debrecen was only a forty-minute car ride to the west. The otherworldly quality of the landscape was largely due to it being filled by absence rather than presence. The wagon had transported us to an entirely different universe, one where time hardly existed. I began to wonder if any living entity could stand to live here for very long. The lack of life, like so many things with the Hortobagy, turned out to be an illusion. People and animals had been integral to the region since time immemorial. As I was about to discover, they still were.