Euro Tour: Bratislava to Gyor // Not checking my feast days

Leaving Bratislava, the Danube trail splits. Go left and carry on along the Slovakian side or go right  into Hungary. 

Hungarians invented the Rubix Cube, safety matches, the ball point pen, vitamin c, excel and the atomic bomb. I have high expectations.

There was an almost straight path from Bratislava to the Hungarian border. I didn't see a single other human for miles and I was racing rain clouds so did this trip pretty quickly.  

Another exciting boarder crossing

So I arrived in Gyor on the 21st of August. The day after St Stephen’s Day, which is basically the 4th of July to Hungarians so there had been massive celebrations. Therefore everything was closed today and everyone was hungover but worst of all, I MISSED FIREWORKS. Fireworks are my favourite. Check your feast days people.

Pretty sweet cycle lanes coming into Gyor

I stayed in the strangest hostel that was attached to a posh hotel but I wasn’t allowed to go in the nice bit. It looked on to one of those muscle gyms. One of those ones that looks really 80s, has sawdust on the floor, no cardio machines or ladies toilets. If was probably called Blitz or Titanium or Sperm or something. There was a constant flow of huge, neckless men going in and out. I’m not sure if it was open 24 hours but I am sure it was playing the worst electronic dance music really loud. That stayed with me. Even when it might of been closed, I could still hear it. 

I found an open supermarket in the basement of a mall and bought enough food to feed an army. I planned on setting off really early something that hasn’t really been the theme of this trip, mainly because i’ve been sticking around to rinse the free breakfasts. As I was in the cheap seats at the back with this hotel. I set my alarm for 5am.

The world’s worst thing happened. My plug adapter stopped working. I know this is a new age problem and i’m not usually the kind of person who needs to be online or anything but I secretly thought I would have bailed by now so I didn’t have any maps for this bit. I can follow signs and ask people to point at the direction of the town where I’m heading, but to actually find my hostel once I got there, I needed something.

In the hostel I met this Hungarian man who tried my plug like he had some kind of magic power I didn’t possess. He said he cycled to Paris in 1985 from where he was from in the countryside with three friends (before the internet) and they had this wild amazing adventure. He asked where my friends were. “In London being sensible human beings,” I answered.

He said my cycle tomorrow was far but I would have a tail wind and good weather. He also said i wouldn’t see much of the Danube from now on until I got to Esztergom and Budapest. DAMN IT.