Two Castles and a Festival

We woke up early today with a view to return to the castle Visegrád which had escaped us so effectively yesterday. We were a little scared as we didn't know if our car would survive being pushed into another vertical climb until smoke poured out of the engine. Yeah, we really didn't want to do that twice in two days.  Our mechanic tells us that it's not good when we do that.

We thought it'd be worth trying again, however, as the owner of the hotel in which we were staying in Szentendre assured us that we had been on the wrong road yesterday and the correct road was actually a two-way paved road and was quite safe. Anyway, after breakfast and getting lost only one more time we found ourselves at Visegrádi vár, the castle of Visegrád.

 

The castle in Visegrád was first constructed at the behest of King Béla IV in the 1240s after a particularly brutal invasion at the hands of the mongols. It has been lived in and upgraded by a number of Hungarian kings over the centuries and as such it has a great importance to the Hungarian people.

Anyway, we got to the castle really early as we wanted plenty of time to explore. The castle was a lot of fun, and it had plenty of equipment and ruinous battlements for Amanda,  Iago and I to play on. We've really come to enjoy playing in castles, so much in fact that sometimes we forget that there are things with which we might not be allowed to play. When we first saw the catapults, the throne and the medieval torture cage, we just had to climb all over them. It wasn't until later, when the rest of the tourists arrived, that we saw that a rope had been erected in front of those exhibits. Woops. :)

Anyway, we made a quick exit from the castle and began our journey to the Hollókő Húsvéti Fesztivál, the Easter Festival in Hollókő. Hollókő is a small town about an hour and a half from Visegrád, it has an old village at the bottom of a hill where the festival is held and a castle at the top. Surrounding the old town are farms and the more modern town, but overall it only has a population of about 400. The town has an interesting history with a really cool story. The name Hollókő is a conjunction between the words Holló, meaning Raven, and kő, meaning stone, so the the castle is literally named Castle Ravenstone. How cool is that?

The legend goes that a rich landowner kidnapped the beautiful wife of one his neighbours. Unfortunately for the landowner, the wife's handmaiden was a witch who had an alliance with the devil.  At the witch's request, the devil transformed himself into a thousand ravens who tore the landowner's castle into ruins stone by stone and allowed the wife to escape.  The ravens then rebuilt the current castle on top of the hill. This is apparently a pseudo-etymology as the name likely has more to do with an ancient poet who wrote about ravens who hunted down on the rocks at the bottom of the hill. Whatever, I like the witch story.

The festival was already in full swing by the time we got there at half past twelve. The folk music was playing at the entrance but we were welcome to wander the old town and see what the residents had to offer. The first place that we stopped at was a traditional weaving craft exhibit where Amanda and I made rabbit dolls out of dried corn leaves, cotton wool and some strange palm tree grass. It was awesome fun although by the end we did feel like the kids that were hovering nearby also wanted a go. Oh well, they could wait.

After that, we continued down the street and pushed some more kids out of the way to have a go at decorating some Easter eggs. The technique involved applying beeswax in a particular pattern and then soaking the egg in food dye. Once the dye is dry you warm up the egg and rub off the wax to reveal your pattern. This was also quite a lot of fun, although I must admit that Amanda made a much better egg pattern than I did.

After we finished our eggs, we had some lunch and then made our way up the mountain on a small electric-powered train. I think the train was designed for kids but as the kids were still lining up to do the eggs and rabbit dolls we had it to ourselves. Even Iago enjoyed the train ride, methinks.

Castle Ravenstone was awesome fun as everyone was out in full regalia for the tourists who had come for the festival. There were ponies and horses and carts out the front of the castle and inside there was a guy who was giving axe throwing and archery lessons. Now I've wanted to fire a bow since I once squandered my chance at a Life Be In It camp back when I was a teenager so I jumped at the chance. My axe throwing skills were  fairly mediocre, but I slowly got the hang of it. The archery, however, was awesome fun. I'm so happy that I did it, and if you have a look at the video you'll see how pleased I was to give it a try. Awesome stuff.

The rest of Castle Ravenstone, I love that name, was just as good as the castle in Visegrád, so it was just an awesome afternoon. Iago really enjoyed climbing all the stairs and checking out all the nooks and dark corners. He's become quite the castle explorer!

- Daniel.