Well the conference is over
and I’m in the Aggtelek Nemzeti Park
(Aggtelek National Park) for two days. Sándor, who
works for the park and who also attended the conference, drove me up here
today. We stopped by a grocery store on the outskirts of Miskolc to pick up some food for me for
breakfasts and dinners. As we got farther from the city the villages became
smaller and smaller. The nearest village (where Sándor lives) is inside the
park and has a population of 200. We drove by the last horse-drawn cart in
town. This sure is a different world! I’m staying in the hotel in the park,
which is in the Swiss style and is absolutely beautiful. Since it’s the off
season I am the only guest here now, so I have the whole place to myself! For
the next two days Sándor will take me around the area to see several bat
roosting sites, including some in caves, mines, and churches. I can’t wait!
The view from my hotel room in the Aggtelek National Park.
The entrance to the hotel.
Now for a recap of the
conference. It began on Friday afternoon with a fieldtrip to two caves in the Bükk Mountains.
I joined 15 other participants in front of the main building of the university
and we headed off on a small bus to the first cave. The entrance to the cave
was quite a hike up a big hill, and I was exhausted by the end of the climb! The
forest was very much like forests in Ohio or
other parts of the US.
It felt and smelled much more like home than Australian forests. Once at the
entrance we learned about the cave and the bats that occupy it. Most of the
others spoke English to some degree, except for several of the older folks. However,
the presenter spoke in Hungarian first and then someone translated into
English. We learned that there used to be thousands of Miniopterus schreibersii (of which the Southern Bent-wing Bat is a
subspecies) and Horseshoe Bats (Rhinolophus
sp.) in the cave, but in the 1980s some vandals disturbed the cave and the Miniopterus never came back. Now there
are only a few bats in the cave. We got to go inside and look around (without
helmets because as the leader said “This is not America”). The second chamber was
very large and beautiful, with the highest point at 21 meters. We saw several
bat species: Miniopterus schreibersii,
Mediterranean Horseshoe Bats (Rhinolophus euryale), Greater Horseshoe Bats (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum),
and Mouse-eared Bats (Myotis myotis).
My first glimpse of European bats!
A horseshoe bat (not sure which species).
A horseshoe bat wrapped in its wings and sleeping.
Miniopterus schreibersii!!!
The second cave we visited
was much smaller and narrower, but we still saw several bats. Inside the cave
there was a slippery step down, and one of the men in the group offered me his
hand to help me down. All the men also hold the door open for the women, and
even open and close the car doors for them. It’s such an old-fashioned/European
thing to do!
Once we were thoroughly
stuffed, we headed off to mist net for bats. We joined several others who had
already set up a net in front of a closed-off mine entrance. We waited and
waited in the chilly night and finally caught two male Bechstein’s Bats (Myotis bechsteinii). That was definitely
the highlight of my day.
After our two cave visits we
had dinner in a cute little restaurant in the mountains. The food was
delicious! We had chicken schnitzel with ham and some yummy cheese, fries, and
rice, and for dessert we had a traditional Hungarian dessert called palacsinta,
which is like a crepe filled with nut paste and covered in chocolate sauce and
icing sugar. I was already stuffed when that came out, but there’s always room
for dessert!
The cute restaurant where we had dinner before mist netting.
A Bechstein’s Bat (Myotis bechsteinii),
my first European bat catch.
Saturday was the official
beginning of the conference. It opened with a welcome drink, a.k.a. champagne
at 10:00 in the morning. Good thing I had eaten enough breakfast! Then the
presentations started. Most of the presenters spoke in English and then someone
translated into Hungarian. I was a bit nervous because I had been told there
would be no translations, so I had not budgeted translating time into my talk.
My talk was the last one before lunch. I was surprisingly not nervous at all,
and rather enjoyed having my talk translated. It makes you slow down and gives
you time to think about what you are going to say next. I think it went well
but I was glad to have it out of the way so I could relax for the rest of the
conference.
Opening the conference with champagne
and bat cookies.
We ate lunch in the student
buffet and then drove to Lillafured, a very cute touristy town, to take a
guided tour of St. Istvan Cave. Our guide spoke in Hungarian and someone from
our group translated into English. The cave was absolutely beautiful. The main
chamber had a 20 meter high ceiling and a stunning “waterfall” formation, as
well as other cave formations like “cave bacon”, stalagtites, and stalagmites. In
one chamber was a pond called the “Wishes Pond.” I couldn’t understand what the
translator was saying, and thought he said Fishes Pond, and then Vicious Pond,
before I realized he was saying Wishes Pond. Ahh the joys of English! St.
Istvan Cave is used as a therapeutic cave for bronchitis patients. The park and
the local hospital have a partnership and patients are brought into the cave
twice a day for therapy. The environment inside the cave is perfect for
bronchitis patients: the air is cool with nearly 100% humidity and no dust or
particles. What an interesting therapy! Six species of bat use St. Istvan Cave.
Apparently the White-nose Syndrome fungus (Geomyces
destructans) has been found on bats in this cave. Yikes. I definitely won’t
be wearing anything I had on in any other caves!
In St. Istvan Cave.
On the way home from the cave
we stopped at an ice cream place in Diosygor, which in the summer has about 70
flavors and apparently has the best ice cream in Hungary. I got the flavor that
was voted/chosen the best flavor in Hungary: apple and poppy seed. It
had chunks of what tasted like apple pie in a vanilla base, plus poppy seeds.
Very very delicious!
So many flavors to choose from!
Our final activity of the
evening was a DVD about the bats in the region. It was in Hungarian so I had no
idea what they were saying, but the videos of the bats were amazing (one video
showed a mother Horseshoe bat giving birth upside-down, and another showed an
older pup hanging from its mother’s fur and grooming itself). After the DVD I
went with Sándor and a couple from Austria
into Miskolc to
get dinner. We ate at a nice restaurant with traditional Hungarian food. The
most expensive thing on the menu was about AUD$16, and what I got (soup with a
baguette and onion rings) was about AUD$4. Nice! We had a great conversation
about bats (of course) and then headed back to the university.
Today we listened to the
poster presentations and then had the closing celebration, with an assortment
of Hungarian and French finger food. I had a wonderful time at the conference, and
enjoyed getting to know everyone. It was a small conference, with about 30
people in total. The others were from Hungary,
Slovakia, Austria, Germany,
and Transylvania. I was the only one from
outside Europe. Today when we were all saying
our goodbyes, one of the others asked me what had drawn me to a small
conference in Hungary all
the way from Australia.
I replied that I saw it as a great opportunity to meet some European bat
researchers and see what kind of research is going on in the area (and also to
travel to a new place!). I would not have been able to attend without the help
of the Cybec Foundation, which provided a small grant to cover the costs of
attending, so I must give them a big “Thank You.” After attending this
conference, I have become even more interested in attending a conference that
focuses on ecosystem services and bats and incorporates social sciences and
policy. I’m going to have to see if there are any conferences coming up that I
could possibly attend!
Just to prove I was actually at the conference.
Note: Hungarians drive on the
right side of the road. I have learned that only a few countries drive on the
left side. So to all those who have told me that Americans are crazy for
driving on the right, you are wrong. Most of the world does drive on the right!
Several Hungarian words I
have learned:
Hi = szia
Thank you = köszonöm
Twenty (my room number at the
university) = húsz
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