Messzelátó Egyesület

Bumping up the dirt track to Kathleen and Erik’s house in Püspökszentlászló in the pitch black, we might not have been able to see anything of the Mecsek hills, but we could feel them towering above us in the dark. The morning revealed just how beautiful the area was. Nestled at the foot of the highest Zengő peak, the house is surrounded by the same forest that covers the nearby hill slopes, which at the time of our visit was all the more stunning for the mid-November autumn colour. After the noise and traffic of Budapest however, best of all was the peace and quiet, broken only by the local dogs barking and the sound of baby Hunor – Kathleen and Erik’s newborn son – waking up for his morning feed.

We didn’t have much time to enjoy the scenery though, with work on the vegetable terraces starting as soon as two more local volunteers, Gergő and Nándi had arrived. Along with myself, Bob, and Erik, our team made quick work of leveling the lower terrace, whilst Kathleen provided tea and encouragement. Erik and Kathleen are working to make their household as self-sufficient as possible. They have already significantly renovated the house itself and installed an outdoor compost toilet, and are now extending the existing vegetable patch and building an clay oven, to hopefully put homegrown food on the table as soon as next year. The garden is on a fairly steep slope, hence the need for help with what turned out to be some serious landscaping!

Moving onto the upper terrace, I retired to collect leaves from the orchard above, as the work got heavy. Only after several hours of digging did the flat shelf area for cultivation that Erik, Bob, Gergő and Nándi were cutting into the hillside begin to emerge. Exhausted after a tiring day, we enjoyed a tasty vegetarian meal and got an early night in, as Erik was due at the fire station for a shift the next morning.

We awoke the following day to my idea of perfect weather; clear, crisp but not too cold, and orangey-yellow autumn sunshine. With our bags on our back, Bob and I set off up the Zengő with a plan to cross it and then somehow find our way back to Budapest. The path was steep and muddy in places, requiring all our concentration, so it wasn’t until we stopped to rest on a fallen tree branch that I had the chance to take a good look around at the scenery, and it took my breath away. The trees and hills spread out below us into the distance and woodpeckers tapped away high up in the branches above us; it felt like we were the only people for miles around.

Continuing up to the summit, we stopped for lunch and another panorama – this time 360° - at the old viewpoint tower, before pressing on, past the site of the Greenpeace camp where Bob had lived for some weeks in the depths of winter in a bid to stop construction of a NATO radar base there. Having experienced the beauty of the Zengő, it was easy to understand what had motivated the activists and also the local people that helped them to success. The thought of swathes of the hill’s silvery birch trees being felled to make space for buildings and roads is, quite simply, an inconceivable one.

We only just made the bus thanks to some kind locals who gave us a lift to the nearest small town, Pécsvárad, having lingered a little too long to enjoy the views. Yet although perched on an uncomfortable seat rattling our way back to Budapest for the next four hours, in my head I was still sat on the top of the Zengő.