Bled

Bled

Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Summer of the Incompetent: How We Climbed Hármashatár-hegy

Every now and then I plan a post and then somehow things get out of hand and oh wow, it’s next year in March. To my excuse, our fearless outing into further urban forestage took place just before Sziget, and we kind of got busy with other stuff afterwards. Also, really, it’s only just September and the weather promises to be quite splendid in the weekend to come, so you might get inspired to follow our trail and explore Harmashatár-hegy. (In a rare flicker of knowledgeability, let me inform you that Harmashatár-hegy means mountain of the three borders and got its present name in the 19th Century,  as until 1873 it constituted the border of Buda, Óbuda and Pesthidegkút.)

To convince you of just how professional we are at doing things, let’s start with the fact that one of us was wearing flip flops on a forest trail- because, obviously, the title of worst urban explorers ever is something you must actively work towards. Furthermore, we hadn’t even really planned to go to Harmashatár-hegy, we just sort of went out in the worst summer heat, took a bus from Kolosy square (I actually had to google the stop to figure it out, and also concluded the bus must have been the 65)and it dumped us by a forest trail.

We then absolutely incompetently followed this trail until we noticed the TV tower, which is something we had always wanted to check out- except perhaps on the very day when we finally did.  The TV tower is one of my beloved running companions on Margit Island-quite naturally it doesn’t run along with me, since that is not a very TV-towery thing to do, but I like to measure my progress on the Buda side comparing it to the tower’s position. So it was great to see it up close and personal and muse on existential truths such as how at that very moment some (frankly very crazy) runners were circling the island, perhaps measuring their progress to the tower.

Once we passed the TV tower we noticed the presence of two restaurants nearby and decided to indulge in a plentiful meal. Unfortunately though our incompetence shone its dim light once again, as we did not take into account the fact that it was high season for weddings, and therefore both Hangár and Udvarház were engaged in such utterly preposterous activities.

A bit discouraged by this setback, we then looked for a trail which exists in the feverish imagination of both Google and Here maps, but fails to do so in reality. This lead us onto what was in all likelihood the mother of all detours followed by a rather steep descent into someone’s backyard. Judging by their unfazed faces, both at our arrival and that of a rowdy group of teenagers who had descended on an even steeper trail, this happens quite a lot and they really can’t be bothered anymore.
We, on the other hand, were slightly bothered by the fact that we didn’t really know where we were, but mercifully our maps could make better sense of our new location, and informed us that we had arrived in the neighbourhood of Táborhegy, which is charming albeit a bit too sedate for my tastes. The good people of Táborhegy, however, had the IKEA catalogue comfortably ensconced in their post boxes, whereas our inner city building was found unworthy of such honours.

Our trip ended here on the same note of general incompetence which characterized it throughout with the absolutely unexpected discovery of a BKK route. We thus became acquainted to bus 237, which connects Jablonka street (where we were) with Szentlélek square and dropped us off one stop earlier so we could, obviously, get lost looking for a restaurant we’d already been to before. (Namely Harapó Mókus, about which we wrote here.



























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