The centrepiece here, however, is Hortobágy’s
handsome Nine Arch bridge, built in the late 1820s
to replace an even older wooden construction. With
wide entrances designed for funnelling cattle, the
92-
metre bridge linked the east and west of the nation
when it was otherwise truncated under Ottoman rule.
As the location for the annual livestock fair, the most
important trade and social gathering of the year,
it would have been a hive of activity, of milling
herdsmen, traders and animals.
Csárda
(
inns) sprang up
to cater for them, as well as offering drinks, food and
shelter to the wagon drivers on the salt roads that cut
across the plains to Transylvania.
Even today, the Hortobágy remains a working
concern, where more than 200 shepherds herd some
9,000
cattle, 50,000 sheep and 350 horses. Deep
in the countryside a handful of
csárda
continue to
offer respite from the vast, windswept steppes, and
the old songs ring out around the white walls. In
Hortobágy, the Csárda Museum stands, appropriately
enough, alongside an old-fashioned csárda, serving
the traditional beef
bogracsgulyas
(‘
kettle’ goulash) –
sustaining stuff for twitchers, tourists and
csikós
alike.
FEATURE
DEBRECEN
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2012
WIZZ MAGAZINE
29
LEFT:
THE WILDLIFE PARK’S
MORE DOMESTICATED SIDE
BELOW:
THE CRAFT MUSEUM
BELOW:
DISTRICT RANGER
AND CONSERVATIONIST,
ZSOLT VÉGVÁRI LOOKS OUT
FOR MIGRATING BIRDS
The Hortobágy is geared up to
welcome visitors, and easy to get
around by boat, bike, narrow-gauge
train or one of the safari buses that
swing over its endless plains.
For more details visit hnp.hu
Hortobágy is 39kms from Debrecen.
Wizz Air flies to Debrecen three
times a week from London, and from
Milan and Eindhoven twice a week
from mid December.
USEFUL
INFORMATION
