Fields and meadows, wavy ears

An acquaintance of my team leaders who trained one of our horses over the summer invited me spontaneously to her camp, for the weekend.

One Across-the-country, please

Tornabarakony is a 27-people-village up in the very north of Hungary, very close to the slovak border. Half of the hohuses stand empty and are used as community homes for summercamps which take place in this idyllic piece of land at the Barakony creek year after year.

One station of the more than 1.000 km long distance hiking trail Országos Kéktúra through Hungary can be found here, directly opposite of the church and next to the actually regularly frequented bus stop of the village.

A little like the Youth Exchange

The camp I was invited to so spontaneously runs from Friday to Tuesday or Wednesday, but I will only stay till Sunday afternoon. It's a camp for young families, most of them from Slovakia, and - like our Youth Exchange - focused on getting close to handcraft and nature.

Eszter, who has trained Tüske over the summer and invited me to come is here with five horses and one filly. I help her and their owner (most of them are Hucul horses, just like ours) to prepare them for the riding sessions.

In the breaks in-between Eszter explains a few things about training the horses and writes down - with very nice drawings - the different words for saddle and bridle and horseparts in Hungarian - so I might learn the words a little faster.

Friday evening we also found time for a small ride together, just the two of us, and we see roe deer, pheasants and bigger deer in the forest, watching us suspiciously for a while and then running off.

They say it will rain on Sunday which makes riding harder, but I don't regret at all coming here with an 6-and-a-half-hour trainride for not even 48 hours of stay. It really is very beautiful here.