“To become aware of the search is to be onto something.”

— Walker Percy

You’re on your way to the máta – the horse-breeding center in the Hungarian village of Hortobágy – when you see them: two cows grazing by a sunflower field.

But it isn’t the cows themselves that make you pull over to the side of the road, your arms resting on the handles of your rented bicycle; it’s the old woman in a dark green apron who’s laid her own bike down in the field and is now walking towards them.

You stand and watch as she bends over, pulls a stake up out of the ground, and begins to lead the first cow – the one with patches of hair the color of dark chocolate – farther down the pasture.

You realize the cows aren’t grazing aimlessly; that they’re held there by chains on a stake, and this woman has come out, perhaps having just finished her lunch, to rotate the cows to fresh grass. The sound of her hammering the stakes back into the earth echoes through the otherwise silent air.

The image of her leading the cows by their chains, one by one across the field, stays with you at the máta, and it is this image that draws you back to the pasture after your carriage tour of the puszta, or Great Hungarian Plain. You park your bike by the side of a dirt road and spread out to sketch the sunflowers.

It’s the first day all week that the sun has been out, but what this really means is that it’s the first day all week you haven’t been cold.

Cycling in Hungary

You sit there on the edge of the sunflower field for the rest of the afternoon, sketching, sipping from a can of grapefruit beer, and wriggling your bare toes in the sunshine, until the sun begins to set and the air does indeed grow cool again.

You sit there until a rattling in the distance makes you look up and see an old man in a blue work suit – perhaps the husband of the woman in the green apron? – approaching you on a bicycle, four dogs nipping at the heels of his black rubber boots.

He passes you, tipping his baseball hat in your direction, and then turns off the road and begins heading towards the cows. You realize he’s come to send them home.

A few moments later they walk past you – first the spotted one, then the one with the mostly chestnut-colored coat; each dragging their chains behind them in the mud – and then the man himself. You realize that however insignificant it seems, this couple and their two cows will remain among your strongest memories from Hortobágy.

Travel is always doing this to you, isn’t it? Sending you off in search of one thing – the máta, for instance – only to give you something altogether different to discover.

And for this – and the sun, and the sunflowers, and the open silence of these fields – you will leave Hortobágy endlessly grateful.

32 Comments

  • Your prose is so clear and beautiful that I want to weep. It alone makes pictures (but your photos & sketches are extraordinary).

    • Thank you so much, Roberta. It really means a lot to have you reading and following along – it’s a joy to share these stories with you!

    • I’m so glad you liked the story, Lindsey 🙂 I also can’t quite figure out why it seemed so cool or memorable at the time, but the image of the cows ambling home, dragging their chains behind them, will be with me for a while. Hope all is well with you!

  • You definitely have a way with words and telling a good story. Lovely photos and lovely day it seems. That is the best part of travel though, allowing yourself to go where it takes you even when you have other plans. Although it appears a bit wet and muddy there that day. Your posts from eastern europe have caused me to go and look back on my own photos and such from travels through eastern europe.

    • Thanks so much for your kind words, Anwar – I really appreciate them. My time in Hungary was indeed a bit muddy – it rained most days in Hortobágy! – but thankfully I was able to find a dry enough spot to sketch from 🙂 I’m also thrilled you’ve been going through your own photos from the region and re-living your time here…hope it’s bringing back epic travel memories!

  • Hi Candace,

    Lovely post and a very artful sketch..My girlfriend comes from Hungary and I think mostly Budapest represents a wonderful mix of Western and Eastern. So was most of Hungary. Have a nice time. Greetings from Berlin.

    • Thanks, Vipul! That’s great to hear your girlfriend is from Budapest – although I only had one night in the city, it was beautiful to briefly explore it. What are some of your other favorite spots in Hungary?

  • That was beautiful! You can really paint a picture with words. As a writer myself, I respect that very much. Thanks for sharing. (Oh, and by the way, sunflowers are my favorite! Wild sunflowers anyway. They’re so glorious and free…).

    • Thanks so much, Elora! That means a lot, coming from a fellow writer 🙂 If you love sunflowers, you would absolutely love exploring Eastern Europe (especially during the summer) – the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Serbia have all been full of sunflower fields. Such a lovely sight!

    • Thank you, my friend! Bucolic is just about the perfect word to describe that afternoon in Hortobágy – you (and your sketchbook) would have loved it.

  • Love Hungary and really loved this story! But your sketch of the bike with the sunflowers is wonderful! We cycle so I am always on the look out for “bike” décor. Thanks for sharing your adventure.

    • Thanks so much, Kay! And that’s great to hear you cycle – I’ll have to try and include a few more bike sketches in this series for you 🙂 They’re always fun to do!

  • I love your sketching! Trying to learn to do sketching and watercolor myself and am gleaning a lot of tips from following your blog! Thank you for posting your sketches. I am enjoying them!

    • Thanks so much for saying hello, Paige – it’s wonderful to hear from you! I’m especially excited to hear that you’re starting to sketch and experiment with watercolors. If there is anything specific I can help with, please feel free to get in touch – my email is [email protected]. I’d love to see some of your sketches as well, if you’d ever like to share them! Thanks again for reading, and happy sketching 🙂

    • Indeed they are, Dana – they’ve really become one of my favorite things about travel. Thank you again for reading! I appreciate it 🙂

  • What a beautiful post. Sunflowers are one of my favourite flowers, along with roses. I so relate to that feeling of not being cold, I felt that way in Riomaggiore in April when I felt slightly warm for the first time since November!

  • Wow Candace, I’m loving this new website and rediscovering stories which you posted perhaps even before I first came across your site. Something else the other day reminded me that this place was once called The Great Affair, is that right? Anyway, I think I’m going to read one of these eighteen stories every night before going to bed, and this one just makes me want to start travelling around the world again, exploring all the little hidden corners, but this time with a sketchbook like you!

    • Nikki, please know that your comment here truly made my week 🙂 One of my key visions for renovating the website and sprucing up some of the old stories was to create a space where people could hang out and find fresh inspiration in tales I might’ve told a few years ago now — so to hear you’re doing exactly that was such lovely news! Thanks so much for letting me know that.

      And yes! You’re exactly right — for about eight years, I think, my online home was indeed called The Great Affair, after Robert Louis Stevenson’s wonderful quote, “I travel not to go anywhere but to go. The great affair is to move.” But as art became more and more a part of what I share here, it felt time to find a name that better reflected that 🙂

      Thank you again for such a wonderful note here, and I can’t wait to see what moments you capture this weekend! <3

  • Such an interesting story about the lives of these Hungarian people. Who would expect that? You’ve observed things that few people have. Your travels are very different from the normal “tourist.” I am half Hungarian and know nothing about life there. My paternal grandparents were Hungarian but were both gone before my parents married. It is nice to have this memory of yours.

    • Thank you so much, Joan! It’s fascinating to hear that your grandparents were Hungarian — I’m only sorry that you weren’t able to meet them yourself. Have you been to Hungary? While I was only there for a few days (and sadly spent only one night in Budapest), I loved my short glimpse into the country and so hope you’ll have a chance to visit there one day…especially with such strong ties to your family’s heritage 🙂 Thank you for sharing that!

  • I loved the story! I agree with what you said about how travel leads you to where you need to be, and not always where you originally planned to be. It really is the small things or the unexpected moments that make traveling such an experience and why I love it. Also, even though I only went to Budapest in Hungary, your story brought back all of the amazing memories I had of my time there! 🙂

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