I've added logging to the app to try and make sense but it merely spews a load of useless info.
Could you post some/all of this? Its impossible to do much more than guess without any logging. If there is a lot, perhaps just the stuff includeing and directly after new Configuration().configure().buildSessionFactory() is called, or any Exception message Hibernate is reporting.
Does anybody trust Hibernate enough to use it in a real world app?
Yes. Absolutely.