Lovely day of hiking. Peaceful, the aroma of wild flowers and the music of bird song accompanying me every step of the way. Not a whole lot of traffic either. Even found a blackberry patch where I spent a happy half hour picking and stuffing, stuffing and picking like a bear with its paw caught in the honey pot.
Must say though, Hungary has embraced the 21st C in a way I hadn`t expected. While a good number of historical buildings are available in towns and cities, villages and outskirts have adopted the model of developer style housing. To quote the "Weeds" theme, "there`s a pink one and a blue one and a red one and a yellow one and they`re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same." I must`ve been spoiled by all the historical eye candy on the Camino in the past 2 years.
Sopron however is a very different story. Think of it as an architectural Prague, only on a mini scale. The streets are filled with Baroque eye candy and I`m gobbling it all up.
As recently as 1921, maps were redrawn when the good citizens of Sopron voted to be reannexed with Hungary, thus the big knot of land where the town and its surrounding regions jut out into Austrian territory. Most towns have a "plague pillar" but Sopron`s is the best example in Hungary. The monument was erected in memory of the countless victims of the great black plague in the 18th C. In fact, most plague pillars are built over the resting place of one such hapless victim symbolically buried upside down so as to prevent the spread of the black scourge. It would be ill advised for tourists to go picking mushrooms in the direct vicinity. (So this is what is meant by the expression "pushing up daisies"!)
Sopron is also home to the famous Soproni micro-brewery. Yumm!
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