Yesterday I somehow managed to loose the one and a half liter water bottle somwhere on the last kilometers, so no tee in the morning, but an amazing sunrise, while the full moon was still at the sky. Beautiful.
It was the first nice day since I entered Slovakia, it was all sunny but there was a nasty cold wind. Can't have it all...
So I headed for the frontier. On the way there the hills got smaller and since I took all asphalt roads today (not wanting the same as yesterday happening again), these roads even went around the bigger hills. Since I took off very early (8am) today, by midday I had 50km behind me as well as the frontier. While sitting in a cafe, I checked the maps and tried to decide how far to go. I checked the routes to Budapest and noticed, that this is another 90km at least to go. So I set another point at half way I thought, I'll see how it goes and there I can decide wether to do it all or look for a place to sleep. Somehow, in my head, I was already set to arrive in Budapest today. There I planed to have a longer break, and I needed it now. This will be really sport, I thought, having five hours until sunset, this would be rather close to make it.
So I hit the road and I went fast. Somwhere on the way on a road going along a field, there was a deer that fled pretty late and we ended up going in parallel for a bit. Then it stoped close to the road, apparently it wanted to cross it. I stopped too and we looked at each other. I tried to take a photo and the deer run further to cross the road in front of me to head towards the woods on the other side. They move so graciously, these animals. When they jump, they seem suspended in midair for this fraction of a second.
So after an hour of good advancing it was clear to me; I have the wind in my back, so I will reach out to Budapest. After two hours and a couple of minutes, I had almost another fifty km. I paused, ate all what was left of food in my bag and tried to dry all the soaked cloth in the sun. A good half an hour later I was on my bike again, feeling the legs getting a bit tired. When I came to a village, there was a white dog. After I caught up with it, it decided to run along with me. First I thought it's just doing its round, marking here and there at a fence, where behind, the dog of the hous would bark like mad. It was a pleasure seeing how this white dog made fun of the other bloody barkers. I thought, great, this handsome fellow is taking revenge at my place. The village was a long one, and at some point I got a little worried about the dog running around me, corssing the street, comming back etc. Since I was closing up on Budapest it was finished with the calm roads and the traffic increased with each couple of kilometers. So I stopped, called 'come here ghost dog'. It actually came to me, sniffed my hand, I gave it a couple of strokes and padded it before telling it to go. And so we parted. I generally hate dogs, most of them have bad character, if they have some at all. But here I thought, maybe it a bit like with humans, the jerks are the same everywhere.
The last bit of road to Budapest was not so nice. In Slovakia and the first bit of Hungary, there where first of all not many cars and secondly the ones crossing me where really cool. But closer to the city it gets all crazy. All these stressed people, that are in a hurry to get somewhere and risk your life to get there five minutes earlier. One might think they are on a godly mission, ready to sacrifice your life for some greater good. But I'm sure, talking to most of these people, they would appear very friendly. Funny that these good people then go, steal for some bank or work for an industry that is messing up the environment.
I finally arrived in Budapest at dusk, I just made it. But it took me some time before I found a place to stay. The fist hostel (osmand) turned out to be a four or five star hotel... not quite in my budget... The second one was one of these appartement renting things, where you only could check in by e-mail. So I went to the next bar, had an espresso and some wifi, and finally arrived the Backpack King. Here I was offerd a Hungarian 'Zwetschge Schnaps' as welcome. That was great.
Jep, quite a day. new personaly record for a days distance: 150km (1800m gain in altitude). Furthermore I crossed the 2Mm mark today.
Now I'm exhausted, just managed to have some fast food and now I'm looking forward for a good nights sleep and one or two days relaxing here in Budapest.
click on pictures to open the albums
