08-20-2022, 12:08 AM
The Hungarian plain is already on the margin between cropland and steppe, and BBC Travel has a story on cowboy-like life in Hungary. This is not dude ranches for rich tourists from richer countries to the west. You almost might expect to see John Wayne in some of these places had Hungary not been a Communist country when he was making his post-WWII movies.
BBC Travel has a story on this:
![[Image: p023y9y3.webp]](https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p023y9y3.webp)
The costumes and the buildings would be out of place on the Ponderosa. These are real cowboys.
The Great Hungarian Plain is Europe’s answer to the American West – complete with rough-and-tumble herdsmen, horses trained to lie flat on command and a history of highwaymen.
Great Hungarian Plain, hortobagy, Hungary
For more than 2,000 years, the Great Hungarian Plain (known as the Alföld in Hungarian) has been home to a rich cultural tradition of pastoral living and animal husbandry techniques – from ancient nomadic tribes who left behind stone burial mounds known as kurgans, to the fierce Magyar warriors who arrived in the late 9th Century and founded a network of settlements along the Tisza River. The plain covers 52,000sqkm in eastern and southern Hungary alone, encompassing 56% of the country. But its full area measures nearly twice that amount, including parts of Romania, Serbia and Croatia. (De Agostini/Getty)
Great Hungarian Plain, Hungary, Hortobagy
Founded in 1973, [Hortobágy National Park](http://www.hnp.hu/index_en.php) is situated within eastern Hungary’s section of the Great Hungarian Plain. At 800sqkm, the park is both the country’s largest protected area and the largest continuous natural grassland in all of Europe. The region is especially well known for the semi-nomadic mounted herdsmen (or csikósok) who once roamed Hortobágy’s expansive alkaline pastures and steppes, collectively called the puszta. Pictured here, in traditional dress (a blue or white linen shirt and trousers with a black, wide-brimmed hat and feather), the herdsmen hold a similar place in the country’s cultural memory as cowboys do in the western United States. (Candace Rose Rardon)
More here.
BBC Travel has a story on this:
The costumes and the buildings would be out of place on the Ponderosa. These are real cowboys.
The Great Hungarian Plain is Europe’s answer to the American West – complete with rough-and-tumble herdsmen, horses trained to lie flat on command and a history of highwaymen.
Great Hungarian Plain, hortobagy, Hungary
For more than 2,000 years, the Great Hungarian Plain (known as the Alföld in Hungarian) has been home to a rich cultural tradition of pastoral living and animal husbandry techniques – from ancient nomadic tribes who left behind stone burial mounds known as kurgans, to the fierce Magyar warriors who arrived in the late 9th Century and founded a network of settlements along the Tisza River. The plain covers 52,000sqkm in eastern and southern Hungary alone, encompassing 56% of the country. But its full area measures nearly twice that amount, including parts of Romania, Serbia and Croatia. (De Agostini/Getty)
Great Hungarian Plain, Hungary, Hortobagy
Founded in 1973, [Hortobágy National Park](http://www.hnp.hu/index_en.php) is situated within eastern Hungary’s section of the Great Hungarian Plain. At 800sqkm, the park is both the country’s largest protected area and the largest continuous natural grassland in all of Europe. The region is especially well known for the semi-nomadic mounted herdsmen (or csikósok) who once roamed Hortobágy’s expansive alkaline pastures and steppes, collectively called the puszta. Pictured here, in traditional dress (a blue or white linen shirt and trousers with a black, wide-brimmed hat and feather), the herdsmen hold a similar place in the country’s cultural memory as cowboys do in the western United States. (Candace Rose Rardon)
More here.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.