The long, long road to Budapest

Before I tell you about how I got our Krakow-Budapest driver lost and how everyone in the van seemed to hate me, you should know that Ron totally lied about how much underwear he brought and so he’s no better a person than I am. And in my defense, I didn’t want to stop for lunch at the roadside tourist stop – it was full of things like Trafalgar buses and travel groups of 48 people. I wanted to stop at Banska Bystrica, which I had researched, and it is a mountain town with a spectacular town square. So at first I let the driver, Will (who did NOT like to talk about license plates) stop at the rest stop and we all traipsed into the tourist restaurant and then I found my strength/resolve and asked that we move down the road and find Banska Bystrica and Will relented and we promptly got lost and the atmosphere in the van got very stressful and I could feel sweat forming all over my face as I tried to make light conversation. It is very hard to be me sometimes and it must be similarly hard to be a person traveling with me.

But, HA!, we found it and it was agreed that Banska Bystrica should be a stopping point on this route. Here’s the main square:

If you’re looking to tangle with the police in Europe, Slovakia should definitely be your destination. We had to traverse the north-south route of the country to get from Krakow to Budapest and we saw police on the side of the road constantly. Will was terrified of them, having been shaken down for a 100 Euro bribe last month (he craftily negotiated this down from 150 Euro) and his fear meant that he would not go one kilometer over the speed limit in a country where each and every town has a speed limit of 25mph and there are no bypass highways. It made for a long day. Here’s a couple of shots from the van en route, one of a Slovakian mountain town and one of a communist housing development.

Will was enterprising in that way that our drivers in foreign countries tend to be. He has a master’s degree in international business and he’s just started an enterprise wherein he takes groups of up to 10 young people on 7 day backpack journeys. He’s done Morocco and Norway and next he’s doing Iran.

We’re in Budapest now. We arrived last night and took a stroll around. It’s fabulous. I liked Krakow and all but arriving in Budapest makes me realize I didn’t know what I was missing. Budapest is elegant and visually stunning – it feels like a mix of Paris, Vienna and Barcelona. Ron is similarly wowed, I think. Our apartment is owned by an artist who used our walls as a canvas and covered the bathrooms with pictures of semi-clad women. Hopefully I’ve only captured some of the PG stuff…there’s definitely some R-rated images, perhaps even some racy XXX…ah, art…I love it!

We’re off to explore. Here’s a first shot of Budapest: