Horny Bar

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This post is about a 23km walk from Gabcikovo to Bac. We walk through a village called Horny Bar, and we are excited about it.

It was still raining when we loaded up the Caboose and got ready. This wasn’t ideal, but we put on our ponchos and started walking anyway.

the town sign

We left the bike path for a regular road. There was no sidewalk and hardly a shoulder to be on, but it didn’t feel so bad: it was a Sunday, and there wasn’t that much traffic anyway.

It took us about three hours to reach the town sign of a village called Horny Bar. We had noticed it on the map a few days earlier, but actually reaching it still felt a bit unreal.

Horny.

Bar.

We took a bunch of pictures with the sign.

tourists

There was a bar in Horny Bar. For some reason it wasn’t called Horny Bar, though. Maybe that would have been too easy. It was called Piano Bar.

So we went to the Piano Bar and stepped in the door, dripping from our ponchos. There was woman behind the bar and a man in front of it. Both looked at us in a mildly curious manner.

Hello, I said to them, we are tourists.

“Hello,” they replied.

We had seen a bunch of cocktails on their online introduction, and we wanted to try one.

Do you have cocktails? we asked them.

“No.” they replied.

Do you have drinks?

“Yes.”

Can you recommend a drink?

“No.”

a shot of Unicum

I had so many questions. According to Wikipedia, more than a thousand people lived in Horny Bar, almost all of whom were ethnically Hungarian. They referred to their village as Fel Bar, which was Hungarian for Horny Bar, with both “Fel” and “Horny” meaning the same thing: up (or top).

I wanted to know what “Bar” meant to them. And what did it feel like to be from Horny Bar? Did many tourists take silly pictures with their town sign? Did they know why Horny Bar was such an epic name? Why was their bar called Piano Bar if I couldn’t see a piano anywhere?

But our conversation never went there. Neither did we know each other’s languages well enough, nor did they seem to be very interested in my questions.

In the end Brad and I each got a shot of Unicum that made us instantly very tipsy. This was when I had the great idea to eat a chocolate bar in the Piano Bar in Horny Bar.

And so it was done.

pictures

the walk from Gabcikovo to Bac:

the rainy road to Horny Bar

Hungarian wreaths

Brad in Horny Bar

I sit in Horny Bar.

Piano Bar in Horny Bar

a shot of Unicum in the Piano Bar in Horny Bar

a chocolate bar in the Piano Bar in Horny Bar

doggo in Horny Bar

The Longest Way in Horny Bar

the bike path along the Danube

ferry terminal

camp near Bac