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After waking up after a night with our joyous money experience we had our priority to find some Hungarian Florint and fast.. We needed to pay for the campsite and get some money so we could actually Live.. The one good thing was that we stocked up on food before we left the Lakes in Croatia.. At leat we could eat.. After going back to all the banks in Town to see if it was some error the night before, unfortunately the banks in that town all sucked big time. All the ATM’s said they accepted maestro cards.. Unfortunately they just don’t accept UK cards. After hunting around I was directed to a place that would exchange our Croatian currency for Hungarian Florint.. Finally we had some cash that we could pay for the accommodation with and live with… It was time to clear out of the place and start heading towards Budapest and onwards to Romania..

After such a long day getting from Croatia into Hungary we wanted to have a fairly short day and relax in the afternoon.. We came across a little town that we later found out was about to host a Hungarian Festival. We decided to camp there for the night and see what the festival had in store.. Unfortunately when we found the campsite it actually looked more like a umm… construction site or maybe more like a ghetto.. anyway we headed back to Information to find some alternative place to stay. We ended up taking a room in a guest house just down the road from Information right near the centre of town.. what a great place to stay the room was huge with a nice balcony and free washing etc.. It was a great place for us to spend a few nights and relax and see the festival. In the end we caught up with all our chores and did the washing etc.. no more stink.. Whooo Hoooo.. The festival was very traditional Hungarian and was very local centric. It was nice to see such a display and to really recoup after our long day and bad weather in Croatia. It was such a nice change. Every day in Hungary we would have steaming hot weather with huge thunderstorms in the afternoon to cool things down which was awesome to see the storms roll in..

After this we moved on staying in the biggest mosquito infested campsite to date… I guess we can call it preparation for Siberia.. The area of Hungary we now found ourselves in was full of thermal pools and beautiful country side.. It was also our first run in with the Police.. Whoo hooo.. I was shitting myself as we didn’t know what he speed limit was in this area of Hungary.. Luckily for us they just wanted to give us some random breath testing.. This was a huge relief. They checked out our passports, bikes and then our alcohol blood level.. I think it was Heathers first RBT.. We both came back with 0.00% blood alcohol which was nice given that the allowed blood alcohol level in Hungary is 0.00%.. Onwards we went through the lakes and to the campsite. We spent the evening through the now regular storm playing cards and drinking tea.. After the storms had passed we went for a walk around the Beautiful little town near the campsite. It was nice to see that the Hungarians really take pride in their towns and everything was very neat and tidy.. Unlike Croatia…. okay enough croatia bashing..

The one thing that we have been finding as we head further east the driving becomes more “special”.. we thought that the German riders in the Alps took the cake.. unfortunately that was just a taste test of what was to come.. In Hungary we have witnessed so many close call head on accidents at 100km/hour + between impatient drivers trying to over take trucks only to realise they have no power half way through the over take.. shit there was a few moments where I thought I was about to witness a massive accident. One in particular the truck had to swerve off the road as the trucks the car was trying to over take had to break hard to let the over taking van get in.. it was so close im pretty sure it was less than 50cm between a fatal accident and a complete mess where we would have surely been hurt.. So far we have seen 3 cars that have crashed down an embankment or into a tree or slid down a slope in Hungary.. not to mention all the dodgy over takes..

After leaving the lakes and setting our destination to Zagreb the Capital of Croatia we arrived late in the afternoon. After about 2 hours of riding we found no accommodation at all. We thought we will pass Zagreb and head towards Budapest in Hungary… “There must be accommodation somewhere between Zagreb and Budapest… in Croatia”.. well we found out after riding for 6 hours that there was nothing worth talking about or even remotely worth staying at anywhere north of Zagreb towards Budapest.Although it must be said that Zagreb is a nice city and I would highly recommend going through there to anyone…

All the hotels wanted into the hundreds of euro’s per night for “4 star”.. which was more like minus 4 star in towns which would scare even clint eastwood away as dirty harry.. Many of the towns looked seriously like they are from some sort of movie set with all broken down factories and run down roads. I’m sure its not as bad as we are claiming here but at the time in storms and stuff it looked scary. We ended up riding all the way through to one of the termal pool towns close to the boarder in Hungary. The campsite was very nice and the area/town near it was very pretty. The difference between Croatia and Hungary was immediately evident. Only a few kilometers and everything was nice and tidy, the roads improved and the towns became clean. Its not that we didn’t like Croatia it just not really what we expected and the weather made it really terrible for riding. So after 4 days of terrible weather and reports saying it was to last for another 4-5 days we headed north to where the weather looked to improved.

The joys of different countries with different currencies.. It was something that we didn’t plan too well primarily because we didn’t expect to be out of croatia so soon. So we had to get Hungarian Florint.. Unfortunately no bank would take our UK cards to get money out.. and at 10pm at night the currency change places had closed hours ago. We only found this out after Heather had been left at the restraunt and ordered some pizzas and beers only to find out we had no money to pay for them about 20minutes later. I went to 9+ banks and 5 different shops etc to ask people about money. Unfortuantely nobody spoke english.. and none of the abnks took our money. It was a very embarrassing situation that was starting to brew.. No money.. lots of food and beer and no english or hungarian skills.. We ended up having a serious problem tryin to explain to the guy that we could only pay in Croatian or Euro’s.. He didn’t like that idea after intially saying yes he went back on it after we had eaten and drank all the beer… wow.. now we are properly screwed. In the end the bill was less than 8 euro’s including all the beers.. Because he didn’t have enough change and wouldn’t exchange anything we ended up having to pay 20 euro and just leaving him to sort it out himself.. We felt like real dickheads… although being a dickhead comes really naturally 🙂