Sopron miners' circle on the burning mountain

Itinerary

• Start from the Sopron railway station going along Mátyás király Street towards the city center, then turn left at the first (traffic light) intersection onto Csengery Street. Follow the road through the underpass, then at the first opportunity after the traffic light intersection, turn left onto Deákkúti Road.
• Proceed straight on Deákkúti Road, then turn onto the parallel forest bike path leading up to Löver körút. Cross it and continue straight on Récényi Road.
• Upon reaching the parking lot, keep left, then go straight towards the section of road closed by a barrier; this road leads to the Károly Lookout Tower (beyond the barrier at the Y-junction stay left).
• From the parking lot, keep left towards the Erdő Háza; the paved road leads straight through the forest.
• From the Erdő Háza parking lot proceed along the paved (Panorama Road), then turn left at the end and continue straight all the way to Brennbergbánya.
• Return from Brennbergbánya along the same road, not detouring until reaching Sopron. (Be careful with one bend while passing Sopronbánfalva but the route remains straightforward.)
• Bánfalvi Road clearly leads to the city center, then continues as Kossuth Lajos Street after crossing the railway. At the roundabout by the watchtower turn right (first exit), then go straight at the next roundabout (second exit), and then immediately turn right (II. Rákóczi Ferenc Street). II. Rákóczi Ferenc Street leads to Széchenyi Square, which you circumvent to reach the Castle District; turn left here, then at the first opportunity (Hátsókapu) turn left towards the historic inner city.
• Leave the city center along Templom Street, then return to Széchenyi Square and turn onto Erzsébet Street, continuing straight until you reach the train station.

Detailed route description

Leaving Sopron railway station behind, this time the direction taken is not towards the city center but first towards the forests around the city. We quickly leave the busy Csengery Street after the underpass, and a longer climb begins that continues all the way up to the Károly Lookout Tower. On the incline of Deákkúti Road, we turn from the asphalt to a parallel bike path, which is a little different than usual as it has no solid pavement and resembles a forest walking path. Its biggest advantage in summer is that it offers shade. After crossing Löver körút there is no issue with the sunlight either, as we continue on Récényi Road leading deep into the Sopron Park Forest, steadily gaining elevation.

Löverek, Lövérek, Löverek

Climbing towards the Károly Lookout Tower, one has time to consider which spelling is correct for the villa and resort district built on the slopes of the Sopron Hills – the attentive hiker can come across all three forms up to the first trees of the park forest. Moreover, it makes a difference if you write it with a capital or lowercase letter: lowercase refers to a house in the green area, uppercase refers to the area itself. The German form is Löwer (no long „ő” in German), which Hungarianized is Löver; theoretically, this is the correct spelling, but Löver is just as widespread and accepted in Sopron – it is a hard choice to decide which is right. It is worth knowing that the Löverek were long the gardens of the residents of Sopron; Lower and Upper Löverek are connected by a ring road along which hotels and sanatoriums were built, and bourgeois villas aimed to resemble the Semmering resort.

For those less interested in linguistic problems, the Sopron Park Forest offers, for example, some bird chirping to help overcome the ascent. The creation of the park forest began in the early 20th century under forest master Endre Muck, with marked hiking trails, lookout towers, and gazebos built. The current park forest was established in 1970, simultaneously with the Pilis Park Forest, and has since served locals and visitors. On the way to the Károly Lookout Tower, there is a parking lot to rest at before the last major climb, where a tasteful Trianon memorial park can be viewed during the rest, or refreshments can be purchased at the nearby buffet.

The road to the Károly Lookout bypasses the barrier and continues as a strip of asphalt leading to the elevation with the stone tower built in 1936, standing at 394 meters. Previously, there was a wooden lookout built by Károly Romwalter, a printer and publisher, who also gave his name to the hill and the current tower. The tower features exhibitions memorializing notable natural scientists on its floors, which curious hikers can explore. Most people, however, probably rush up the long stone staircase to the top, not surprisingly: from the highest level, the entire Sopron Hills can be viewed (including the iconic TV tower on the neighboring height). Naturally, the city at the foot of the mountains is visible, as well as the southwestern tip of Lake Fertő – which is also the northwestern tip of the Little Hungarian Plain – and the blue ridges of the Leitha Mountains on the northern horizon. The railing at the lookout assists orientation mainly focused on Sopron. Lookout towers also appear on other heights: Sopron considers itself the city of lookout towers; there are a total of ten wooden or stone towers offering views into the depths of the area.

Next to the Károly Lookout Tower stands the Kőhalmy Hunting Museum, which has a buffet as well as an interactive exhibit mainly aimed at children about the park forest's animal and plant life, and on the upper floor a hunting exhibition can be viewed. Our next stop is another visitor center showcasing the forest's wildlife, so those with limited time or less interest must decide which exhibition to visit. One thing is certain: the approximately 4-kilometer-distant Erdő Ház Eco-tourism Visitor Center and Wildlife Park is a larger, more complex institution than the Kőhalmy Hunting Museum. As before, we continue on the paved road leaving the previously mentioned parking lot at the third exit where the road continues. The narrow but high-quality road appears to have low traffic, which is true, but you should always expect an occasional car and therefore proceed carefully on the winding forest road, which moderately ascends almost throughout.

The Erdő Ház Eco-tourism Visitor Center is fittingly located in the forest’s center near the 522-meter-high Muck. The building, once a border guard post for Muck, opened its doors in summer 2021; inside, you can learn almost everything about the surrounding forests. You find yourself immediately in a forest section where interactive tools introduce the forest's depths and the value of the woodland ecosystem. Numerous interesting facts can be learned about the forest animals, from the smallest to the largest, to everyone's surprise: such as tricks of the animal world (wild boar males, for example, create a 'shell' by hardening and making their hair more resistant with resin), or the diversity of forest arthropods, and discussions of the rocks forming the hills and their mining. In the wildlife park, visitors may spot roe deer, deer, mouflon, or wild boar, even a pheasant possibly fluttering among bushes, and be prepared for glimpses of wild rabbits. Of course, the luckiest meet these animals in the forest, although this is less likely in the densely visited parts of the Sopron Park Forest. Nearby is the Muck guesthouse, offering overnight stays. We continue on a forest path from Erdő Ház: the bulldozer road listed as Panorama Road on maps winds through the forest all the way to Brennbergbánya.

The Legend of the Burning Mountain

Hearing the name Sopron, probably few immediately think of mining, yet Brennbergbánya played a leading role in coal mining in Hungary. So much so, that the chronicles connect the beginning of domestic coal mining to this settlement part – although at least two different stories exist about how the coal deposits hidden in the Sopron Hills were discovered in 1753. One is that a smith named Rieger’s charcoal stove failed to go out (smiths produced charcoal for workshop use through charcoal-burning): he probably placed the stove over a coal seam. The other story says a shepherd lit a fire and noticed "large, black glowing stones." Either way, the name of the settlement comes from the German "brennender Berg" meaning burning mountain, and very soon the mining of very good-quality brown coal started, initially with homemade methods, and in 1759 Hungary’s first coal mine was opened. Miners primarily came from Austrian and German territories, and settlements mushroomed in the valley, mostly near the shafts. The scattered settlement pattern remains typical for the area. The initially slow and cumbersome mining later grew so large that in the first half of the 19th century, the Brennberg mine was Hungary’s most significant coal mine (providing over half the coal mined in the country until 1849). The biggest problem was transporting the extracted coal, whose main markets included Sopron and nearby factories (e.g., sugar factories), as well as Vienna, where the city's surrounding brickworks sought good quality but relatively cheap coal. Wagon transport was difficult and expensive, so they built a canal from Vienna via Bécsújhely to Sopron, which was completed between Vienna and Bécsújhely at the end of the 18th century but stopped due to resistance from Hungarian landlords. It helped that coal did not have to be transported by wagon the whole way, but the final solution was provided by an industrial railway branching off from the Sopron-Bécsújhely line at Ágfalva, winding through the Sopron Hills between 1868 and 1952. The last trains transported dismantled mining equipment instead of coal, and after the mines closed, hundreds of families relocated: many found new jobs in other coal mines, with around 200 workers moving to Várpalota, 350 to Oroszlány, and 300 to Tatabánya.

Mining heritage remains visible all over Brennbergbánya. Turning left from Panorama Road into the Rák stream valley, we begin the ascent to Brennberg, immediately encountering a mine car and a memorial at the first houses of Görbehalom, and the Görbehalmi Mining Museum near the street corner indicates that we are in the right place if we want to trace the former miners’ footsteps. The private collection offers visitors insight into the daily life and work of local coal miners using historic records and mining tools. Continuing towards Brennbergbánya, on the left side of the road, several multi-story buildings stand out in a rural setting. These apartments are not for miners as it might first seem but are miners’ retirement homes built in the late 1920s by the Brennbergbánya Mutual Aid Society, as proudly declared by a sign over a stairway entrance.

The road winds up through wonderful natural surroundings until the first houses of Brennbergbánya appear. Soon we reach the main square where it’s worth stopping for a short rest and to look around. The biggest building in the square is the Miners’ Church (of course Saint Barbara is its patron saint), whose uniqueness is partly its wooden roof structure that recalls the shoring supports seen in mine galleries, and partly that there is a pub operating on the lower floor. This quite extraordinary, arguably nationwide unique cohabitation is said to have started when a shop operated at the place of the bar counter – but this is no everyday combination. The large grassy area opposite the "pub-church" once was the mining center with the office building, coal loading, and railway station. Today only the statue of Saint Barbara, a cool mining-themed playground, and a mine car displayed at the bus turnaround recall the past. Climbing a bit higher among the hills towards the Óbrennberg neighborhood, we can also visit a mining museum presenting in detail the mine’s establishment, development, miners’ life equipment, and a miners’ flat section – all arranged in the engine house of the first steam-powered hoist shaft. (There are some interesting details from the recent past here too: at the end of 1944, members of the Arrow Cross who fled from the Red Army relocated their headquarters to the western border, and for a short time the "nation leader" himself hid in shelters near Brennbergbánya; and the legendary "Jewish gold train" also departed westward from here after three months.) After learning everything about the local mining, a carefree ride awaits on the now familiar road all the way back to Sopron – however, it is advisable to slow down a little in Sopronbánfalva.

Religious Memorials in Sopronbánfalva

The building complex towering above Bánfalva is eye-catching from afar; probably, even those who did not plan to will deviate from the straight road for its sake. The Sopronbánfalva Pauline monastery’s history goes back centuries: before the coronation of King Saint Stephen, in 971, a Bavarian monk named Wolfgang arrived to convert people around Sopron, who was later canonized, and a chapel was built in his honor on Monastery Hill. At this popular pilgrimage site in 1482, the only Hungarian-founded monk order, the Pauline Fathers, established a monastery here, exhibiting, among others, copies of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, their most important relic, which made Bánfalva an even more popular destination among pilgrims. However, the monastery was not spared the centuries’ storms: it was burned down by Turks and repopulated in the 17th century; later the order was dissolved in 1786 by Emperor Joseph II’s decree, and attempts were made to find new owners or uses for the now redundant building. It was considered to convert it into a sugar factory, but this was not a good idea; then it became a sort of worker’s hostel for the Brennberg miners, served as a field hospital during the Napoleonic wars, and operated as a kind of apartment house popular among painters. From 1891 to 1950, Carmelite nuns used the monastery, then a social home was established, and finally the dilapidated building was converted into a hotel in 2009-2010. It is still visitable today unless there is a closed event within its walls.

Sopronbánfalva also boasts another, much more modest-sized but no less significant sacred building. The Mary Magdalene Church stands in a small garden protected by a low stone wall and is easy to pass by if not paying attention, although it is one of the oldest churches around Sopron. The XII-century building mixes Romanesque and Gothic styles on two floors: the Árpád-era nave and square sanctuary were complemented in the 15th century by a Gothic church tower.