TRips with Lara – Part 1: Börzsöny
With no big news coming up in the past few weeks, things have been quite calm around Tomb Raider. Although the new movie and possibly a new game are both underway, the usual stream of news is on halt for now. We wanted a bit more in this quiet period, so we started doing something entirely new by taking our Tomb Raider experiences to a new level: we went on our own adventure and visited popular and not so well known places, we also took Lara with us to most of them.
Let us be your guide in our series of TRips with Lara articles and let us introduce you to several wonderful locations, which offer great opportunities for those with adventurous spirit! We're hoping we can provide enough inspiration to start going on your own trips and make your own real life TR adventure. Let's do this, then! Our first trip starts in Nagybörzsöny, situated in the northern part of Hungary, near the Slovakian border.
Our journey to the village of Nagybörzsöny started in Budapest. We took an hour long trip to Szob railway station by train, where we got on a bus. Half an hour later we got off the bus in the village of Nagybörzsöny. On the way to the village, we admired the nice view to the river Danube and the mountains near Visegrád and Dömös (both are quite popular tourist destinations).
There and then we had no idea what we got ourselves into. Originally we planned to go on a 5 hours long trip, our plans have changed slightly in the end - but let's not spoil it for you, shall we? ? (I'll make a quick remark here that unfortunately, we didn't take Lara or a proper camera with us here; we didn't make the same mistake on any other trips.)
The first bus stop in the village is at the Temple of St. Stephen, however we got off the bus at the next stop in the center of the village, so we had to walk back to the temple surrounded with a wall of rock, where we were almost got locked in and therefore, trapped. We would probably have murmurred "I'm not strong enough", or would have started looking for a crowbar!
All right, maybe we would have tried Alt + Ctrl + forward and we would have been out of there.
We followed the path that started off at the temple, towards a fishing lake. We took a short break at the lake, we even found a campfire, where - after listening to our inner monologue - we acquired some skills from the XP we got on the way.
Roth, please get me out of here!
We ended up in some big, open fields with some mountains behind us, and even more of them in front. Finally, we reached the edge of a huge forest with two different paths: a big and inviting one to the left and a small and dark one to the right. Naturally, we chose the left path, though we did find it odd that the tourist signs disappeared (why do we need them anyway... they were made for noobs like us, but why even follow them? Tsk.)
These trees reminded us of the forest in the beginning of TR2013.
Marching forward relentlessly in the beautiful forest, we suddenly had to stop, as the path went two different ways from that point, with no indication as to which one we should choose. Things were starting to get fishy here, since the description of the path didn't exactly match what we saw. But why not explore the unknown? A dear friend of ours said you always need to go left in Tomb Raider, and so we did. After a long walk, we turned back - while our phones repeatedly welcomed us in Slovakia. (After further inspection of the map at a later date, we've come to the conclusion that we wouldn't have ended up in a wrong place following that path, but it wasn't a particularly interesting one.) We walked back to the junction, choosing the path to the right this time.
This path proved to be significantly more diverse, and what's even more important: we were going upwards! We even spotted a question mark painted on a tree, which expressed our confusion perfectly. Marching upwards, the terrain became more difficult to get through and we arrived to another junction where the path to the left led downwards, so we proceeded going upwards, choosing the path to the right, once again. We put a sign on the ground - a makeshift arrow sign made of fallen branches, just in case we wouldn't remember where we had come from. At this point, we caught a small glimpse of the vista to the mountains nearby, which gave us some hope. Here we didn't have to climb the side of the mountain anymore, a relatively flat pathway led us forward to a place with another high-stand and fireplace.
Lightrays of hope
The forest ended and we arrived to an open area with fields as far as the eye could see. Which is a bit deceptive, as going forward and upwards a bit we immediately realised that we're standing on the top of a mountain. We walked to the edge of it very carefully, as the side of the mountain was very steep. There were several mountains all around us, providing an incredibly beautiful view. Other people left their mark on the area (as in: trash and litter, however we didn't stop by to start looking for chocolate bars for 10% health a'la Angel of Darkness), but there was nobody at all anywhere near us. Only the two of us and all those gorgeous mountains on the horizon.
Gotta see this with your own eyes...
We took some risk and descended to the rocks embedded in the mountainside, to sit on them and stare at our feet hanging above the depths. (Unfortunately, the steepness of the mountainside is not well visible on the photos.) We took our time adminiring the wonderful vista - it was definitely worth getting lost a little for this. We didn't plan to go this way, but we discovered an unmarked pathway for ourselves, to the top of a mountain.
We took the exact same path back into the village. When we got out of the forest, back to the fields to the initial junction, we took a look at the other (dark and rather tiny) path and we found the tourist sign hiding there. We decided we would discover that way as well next time. And that we would take Lara with us for our next adventure. ?
Drlecter & Matie
The date we took this trip: October 1, 2016.
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