Hungary
The morning saw us find a bike shop and a new axle, so celebrated with ice-cream and crossing the bridge into Hungry. Hung
out on the other side of the Danube for a change, then when it cooled down got some cycling under our belts. Took a ferry
over to a rather large Island in the middle of the river and found a nice quiet spot to camp.
Friday and we got up super early - 6am - to beat the heat. Bit of a mission with a bad map but made it to Budapest for
lunch! Already really darn-tooting hot again and just managed to make it to a park before it really got bad. Lazed about
and kept to the shade until time to meet our next wonderful 'warm showers' host, Janos. Willing to take the three of us in
his small yet compact apartment, and was a great help with bike repairs and local knowledge. Muchly appreciated. Will turn
you over to Tabs and her Budapest report now me thinks.
budapest
hello from budapest! its our last of 3 days in the capital of hungary. we had a really good
time in the city, of course because its brilliant, but also because we had
a great host. we stayed with a hungarian cyclist, jonas, contacted
through warm showers, who didnt mind the three of us taking over his small
apartment. as well as giving us a place to stay he hung out with us and
showed us some cool, unique aspects of budapest that we definitely wouldnt
have found otherwise.
on the night of our arival we took a walk through the streets and squares,
ate falafal at a turkish restaurant and visited an island on the danube
where we stumbled accross a drumming circle. during the rest of our stay
we picniced in the park, watched free outdoor cinema on the lawn of the
parliament and swam in the grandest outdoor swimming pool i've ever seen.
the three pools were thermally heated to the temperatures of warm, very
warm and hot. who would have thought that bathing in hot water with the
sun beating down on you would be so pleasant! another highlight was
bargain hunting at a big flea market on saturday morning. there was loads
of interesting tat to look at, some spontaneous live music and we bought a
useful hungarian-english translation book, a useless box of ink stamps
depicting characters from a hungarian cartoon from 20 years ago, a small
radio and a squeeky tiger for claires bike.
jonas' help was also invaluable when it came to sorting out problems, bike
and health. ie, communicating with bike shop staff in order to find the
bike parts needed to fix saskias bike. i learnt in bratislava (when it
took me 45 minutes to purchase a chain whip) that even if the staff speak
some english and even if my miming skills are good, that without the
specific words communicating exactly what you want can be problematic!
also sorting out a doctor visit for claire, so now we know she doesnt have
limes desease from a tick bite.
the weather seems a bit cooler today, with the temperature dropping from
nearly 40 degrees to a poitively chilly 36 degrees. we are riding out of
budapest today, but will wait for the heat to die down a bit so we dont
frazzle. we got a few errands to run, then lunch with jonas at a place
that makes good hungarian food and maybe up to the castle.
Hungry after Budapest
So, we are a little behind in the writing stakes unfortunately - sorry to leave you all hanging out there
but going to attempt to re-cap Hungry after Budapest.
Getting out of the city was a mission, one of the hardest places to get out of so far - got on to a big busy
road and went back again thinking we were wrong but it was actually the quiet route out! Didn't get too far
out before we found a place to camp in a field, oh yeah, still hot but it was cooling down by then too.
Next day was a biggie - ate strudel for morning tea to keep us going, got really into that stuff along with
sour cherries :) Got to a fairly big place and had ice cream in the main square, then continued on in the
heat of the day climbing up into the vineyards region. Lovely big wide open views of the plains below slights
tainted by a huge power plant we still saw for days. Had a late lunch in amongst the grapes - very idyllic.
Then Shock Horror!! It rained!! Didn't know what to do with ourselves! Only a short shower but great to cool
everything down. Found a old fallen down stone house thing to camp beside. Ate yummy Dahl whilst watching the
most spectacular light show ever - the whole of the plains below us were flashing with amazing fork lightening
for hours - the sky would light up in incredible bursts of white - sooooo cool!!
Next day we headed into Eger, famous for its red wine. Stopped at a cool bike shop in the way in, then to get
picnic ingredients and ate in the park. Then to the weird fun park come wine cellar area called 'the valley of
the beautiful women'.. found a nice cool (in both senses) cellar to go into an try the local tipple. A bottle
to take away and cycled a bit to find another vineyard to sleep in - very nice!
Next day we went down onto the plains again and after all the hills nice to have some straight flat roads. Began
to see what would be a common sight - Storks nesting on top of the lampposts. To a nice quite lake that night to
camp and the next morning we went to meet our Budapest host Janos who came to cycle a few days with us. Nice ride
into Tokaj, this time to sample the white wine! to a couple of cellars, one was really full of character. Swim and
picnic by the river and then set off to find a spot to camp. Great to have a native speaker with us as Janos was
able to chat to locals who pointed out a place by the river to camp - saying lots of people are down there at the
'free beach'.. went down to find a whole campsite of people just hanging out at the river, pretty cool! Found a
quite spot for us and made yum stuffed peppers on the fire.
Nice days ride the next day, through little towns and lots of fishing lakes, I got my first puncture just before
we found a big reservoir to free camp just along from the campsite ;) Mornings ride the next day to a bigger town
for lunch and to say goodbye to Janos - great to have the company and learnt a lot more about Hungry, not so much
about their strange language though!
Three of us continued on to very close to the Romanian border, failed to find the river so just camped on a field,
did the trick.
Monday and it was time for a new country!! Stop off in a funny border town then over to Romania!! Easy as to go
through the border and bumped into 4 other tourers from Czech going there for a ride also. Sprinted it down the
motorway to get to Satu Mare.. and here I think I'll end the Hungarian chapter.