The Danube Bend

Szentendre at sunset

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A nervous day beckoned. Leaving the safety of Western Europe behind we were to travel into Hungary where our prized rental car was uninsured. So first job was to find the nearest hardware store and pick up the sturdiest car lock and chains money could buy. Yesterday when asked, Christof didn’t help our shattered nerves by claiming Budapest was the home of all things categorised as theft.

A short drive to the Hungarian border had us embedded in some big queues. After half an hour waiting we were shunted into a queue that did little to inform us of any of our requirements. We were even less clear when we were waived through to the other side without being given a stamp. Foolishly we soldiered on unperturbed and stopped off in our first Hungarian town (Gyor) for lunch.

The luge as Visegrad

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Surprisingly Hungary seemed fairly westernised to what we expected. The massive supermarket we stopped at was far from third world and we used the opportunity to fill up at a cash machine busily trying to calculate the exchange rate as we introduced ourselves to the Magyar forint. I’m not sure whether it was the self fulfilled paranoia but the rest of our journey toward the Danube Bend was filled with hairy moments. The highlight was on the open road, travelling at a grandfatherly 80 kilometres and hour we had to evade a pickup that decided to stop dead bang in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. Another fan of French plates we presumed.

First stop on our drive was Eztergom where a mighty basilica dominates the town that overlooks the Danube. Next up was Visegrad housing a ruined fortress but more importantly a luge track! Despite fears of no car in the car park when we got back we took to the potentially unsafe luge track for our hit of adrenalin before moving on. We finished in Szentendre, 20km north of Budapest. It is a beautiful old village with a lively café scene. The Danube sits impressively wide along the eastern edge of the town. Here we sat and enjoyed a great dinner whilst the boys enjoyed some of the beautiful Hungarian women.

The basilica at Ezstergom

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As darkness loomed and the boy racers started to do their laps we were again on the search for a campsite. Half way between Szentendre and Budapest lied Jumbo's who looked ecstatic as we offered to partially fill up his empty lot.