The Adventures of Hungary

We crossed into Hungary mid morning, and already temperatures had reached over 100. We headed for the small town of Mohacs. Tonight was to be our first night of camping, and we were a bit unprepared. Not having found camping fuel in any of the communities thus far, we had no way of cooking food. Also on our to-do list was finding a bungee cord and bug spray. We soon found out however, that they spoke even less English here than in Serbia or Croatia (mostly German or the local dialect), and these items were extremely difficult to find. We resigned to eating cereal for dinner and breakfast and free-camped on a small sandy public beach.
The next morning we woke up early and rode on to Baja where we hoped to find what we needed. After wandering around for awhile and playing charades with the locals (go ahead, try acting out “I need a bungee cord” to someone who doesn’t speak English… it’s super hard!) we found one item on our to-do list in a car repair store next to the nude magazines…. Go figure.


Eventually we found our way to a heating-and-cooling store owned by a large German man. We did our little skit, trying to describe camping fuel with hand motions. He was fairly determined to figure out what we were asking for, even though he knew no English, and we knew even less German. In fact, he even called his son (who spoke some broken English) to translate on three separate occasions. We showed him the stove and the fuel bottle (which he opened and smelled intensely much like a wine connoisseur does to determine the flavor) and finally held his hands in the air in a display of defeat. He did not have the kind of gas we needed to use our stove. What he did have however, was that outstanding German stubbornness. He looked at us, standing there with our bike helmets in hand and pouring sweat, and waddled to the door of his shop, impatiently waving his hand for us to follow. He led us to an impossibly tiny smart-car-for-fat-Germans and motioned for us to get it.

So there we were, in this tiny car, with this funny German man, cruising through a small Hungarian town, listening to Black Eyed Peas “Imma be” play on the CD player. Our guide just pointed to the small car seat and said something I’m assuming meant “Granddaughter” and pumped his fat arms in the air to imitate a small child dancing. It was pretty priceless. He stopped the car at a small store and took us inside, where he spoke gruffly to the store owner, and produced two liter bottles of kocherbenzine… just what we were looking for.


The people of Hungary are nowhere near as friendly as Serbia or Croatia, but they are truly kind.

We found a lovely little “Kemping” ground on a small touristy island outside of the city, with a lovely view and a beautiful beach and set up our tent. I had been noticing some strange bruising on my arm from a fall I had taken a few days prior, and Todd was worried I had broken my arm. The accident is not that thrilling of a story, a simple equation of small sidewalk, two bikes going opposite directions and a curb. Nonetheless, I had fallen pretty hard right onto my forearm— and we were both a bit concerned about the bone being broken. The receptionist at the campground told us that the emergency room is always free and they could x-ray my arm there… so off we went.

My wish for you, dear reader, is that you never have to spend time in an ER in Hungary.

Good news: no broken arm! Thank the biking gods! We left the hospital dancin’ in the streets and went to find a pub to celebrate. Bad news: accidently prone that I am, I didn’t quite make it to a pub before I hurt myself again. This time, I fell into a pothole and sprained my ankle. Unlike my arm, I actually did some serious damage. Before long my ankle resembled the Kool-Aid man and a huge, angry red welt had tripled the size of my ankle in a few minutes time. It looked like we were going to spend a few extra days in Baja. I had resigned myself to relaxing and hanging out at the internet café across the river, but our bad luck wasn’t quite over. After uploading the blog about Croatia, the computer completely crashed.

Determined to make up for lost time and to we set ourselves a lofty goal of making it to Budapest in two days time. Had this section of the route been more developed, it wouldn’t have been so difficult, but we generally found ourselves having to choose between unpaved dike roads or riding next to high traffic on busy highways. In the end, it took us about 210 kilometers to reach our destination (including several unplanned detours and wrong turns).

The first night we found a small camp ground outside of the city of Solt just as it began to pour rain (which had been following us for awhile, and hasn’t really stopped since then). We found a hole-in-the-wall pub that specialized in that Hungarian specialty… big ‘ol crusty meaty pizzas, and dug in.

After two sticky rainy days of riding, we made it into Budapest around 9:30 at night. Exhausted, hungry and sick of pedaling, we found ourselves in a huge pickle: we have no place to stay the night.

Just as I was about to have one of my infamous temper tantrums, we asked a girl selling gyros in a small street side shop if there were any hostels near by. She came out to the street with us and walked right up to a doorway and buzzed a room several stories up. She spoke no English, and we were a bit concerned about who she was calling. Fortunately, a cute young guy opened the door and asked “are you looking for a place to stay?” We hesitated, but said yes. “We are hostel!” he replied. I could have kissed him (I resorted to just kissing Todd instead) and he led us up four flights of stairs to the nicest hostel either of us have ever stayed in (Bebop Hostel, for those traveling to Budapest any time soon, totally rocks. Go there.You won’t regret it!).

We stayed three nights in Budapest…. There’s just so much to do! Both days we rode our bikes (without gear) around the ancient ruins, old castles, beautiful buildings and tourist sites, and ate authentic dinners with good local beer and wine at beautiful patio restaurants. We splurged a bit in the cities cheap yummy tourist restaurants— one big appetizer, two drinks each, soup, entrée and dessert weighed in at about twenty US bucks… pretty hard to beat. Bottom line: Budapest freakin’ rocks.