On horseback through Eastern Europe

Currently this part of my site carries limited information, owing to the difficulties encountered in finding out about riding facilities in many of these countries. Not that this is a bad thing for riders - far from it! It merely means that instead of the overly-restrictive environment we find ourselves suffering from in the UK, we have the freedom in much of Eastern Europe to use whatever tracks and lanes and paths are available, sharing them with walkers, cyclists, horse-drawn farm carts, the odd lorry or car and even an occasional ox-wagon. The greatest difficulty is going to be in finding maps of good quality - until the collapse of the Iron Curtain, accurate maps were produced for military and security purposes only and kept under lock and key. Any maps which were made available for ordinary people were lacking in important details and even carried deliberately misleading and false information. Accurate mapping is happening now, but maps of the quality and scales produced by the Ordnance Survey (UK) and the IGN (France) can still be hard, or even impossible, to acquire.

Austrians and Slovenians may quibble at their nations being included under the heading "Eastern Europe". I could have divided Europe still further;  Eastern, Western, Southern and Scandanavia  could easily have become Northwest, Baltic, Balkan, Central, Southwest, Southeast etc etc etc.  Any divisions - even those between East and West - are arbitrary. Shifts of population and of borders throughout Europe over the centuries have ensured that significant minorities of different ethnic populations  are firmly established within the present-day borders of many countries. The continued expansion and, hopefully, success of the European Union will play an important part in stabilising this region and in bringing prosperity to the many states, previously part of the Communist bloc, where poverty and deprivation is commonplace. However I had to divide the site somehow - it was either like this, or alphabetically!

Horses have until very recently played an important part in the economic life of many of these nations, and in some cases they still do. The equestrian heritage of Austria is, of course, well-known - the Spanish Riding School of Vienna and its Lippizaners still maintain the heritage of classical horsemanship prized in the courts of Europe. Less well known, perhaps, is the fact that Lippizaners are also bred in Lipica, Slovenia at a stud founded in 1580, and in studs in the Czech Republic at Kladruby and Hostau, where they were transferred during WW2.Haflingers still pull sleighs in Austria, although nowadays for tourists rather than for necessity, and Hungarian horsemen still take pride in their skills on the wide-open puzsta.

All in all, Eastern Europe is remains a very "horsey" part of the world, albeit one still largely without many of the modern accessories and services often considered necessary here in the English-speaking world. Austria and Slovenia, of course, have the same level of veterinary and medical care available as at any equine or medical practice in Germany, France or the U.K., but in  poorer countries such as Romania, where a horse and cart may be the usual means of transport in rural villages, local people wonder why on earth a westerner would want to travel by horse, when surely everyone knows that he can well afford a car ... Gypsies ("roma") and other itinerants may be an irritation in some countries, although levels of horse-theft are probably no greater than elsewhere.

Austria has a similar system of "reitweg" (riding paths) to Germany; in some of the poorer parts of Eastern Europe there remain many miles of unsurfaced paths and tracks, and some quite major highways will still have a "slow lane" intended for the use of horse- or even oxen-drawn vehicles. Unfortunately, that certainly does not mean that horses receive any greater consideration from other traffic on the road. Road accidents are more common in some parts of eastern Europe than in western and, particularly, north-western Europe, drink-driving laws not being so widely imposed nor obeyed, and both veterinary and medical care may be of a lesser standard than the Briton, Dutchman or Irishman, for example, has come to expect. It would be as well to have a comprehensive medicine chest if riding independently in the poorer parts of Eastern Europe, and access to an easily-contactable insurance company - at least for yourself, even if it is not available for your horse. Take your doctor's and your vet's advice on the drugs and equipment to take with you, making sure you tell them just how far off the beaten tourist track you intend to go.