sprocket i/o

Hungary is interesting in that the language spoken (Hungarian, or Magyar as the locals call it) is unlike any other language in Europe. It’s most closely related to languages spoken thousands of years ago in Siberia, which makes it slightly similar to Finnish. The fact that the language is so different makes it challenging to guess at anything. Even if you know French, German, Polish, and Italian — Hungarian may as well be a klingon language.

Once we passed through the massive yet unmanned border with Slovakia, we stopped for gas and the requisite ‘vignette’ (proof of highway tax payment). I paid the 1,170HUF ($6US) for a 4-day pass, but after later inspecting my receipt, they had a typo in my license plate number. I hoped this would not cause any issues.

In Budapest, I was a bit over-eager to listen to my GPS, and off-roaded through a section of the city nearby the hotel that was closed off for construction. The workers there were clearly not amused. Outside of the hotel, I was treated to the sight of a Trabant in perfect condition!

Trabant’s were made in East Germany, and were the most popular car in this part of Europe a few decades ago. The engine is particularly infamous, being a smoky two-stroke, similar to a chainsaw or an old dirt bike (listen to it here). I saw Trabants everywhere I went in Hungary, and everyone seemed to hold them in a great nostalgic regard.

Our hotel was outside of the Ferenc Korut metro station, which isn’t the glitziest part of town. After wandering for 15 minutes, we did find one of the famous tourist-infested pedestrian zones where all of the good food was hidden:

The best culinary surprise here had to be the Hortobágy Pancakes, filled with meat and spices, surrounded by a surprisingly yummy sauce. As far as food went for this trip, it was the highlight:

The next morning, I walked toward eastern Budapest to visit my office. My back had been hurting for a few days, so I thought the hour-long walk would be recuperative. I found it quite amazing to see the difference between the living part of Budapest and the tourist part of Budapest. In the China-town area near the tracks, I saw people just sitting around and relaxing. Keep in mind this photo was at about 11am on a Monday morning:

I worked in Budapest for two days, and didn’t do much in the evenings other than explore the local cuisine and drink selection with the help of my local coworkers. By Wednesday, it was time to hit the road again. As the usual for this city, traffic was a nightmare, and the drivers were ruthless. We were ATGATT, but we were roasting in our clothes. We looked so uncomfortable that not even the beggar’s wanted to talk to us.

One of my coworkers recommended that we head north from Budapest, toward Esztergom. The scenery was pretty, with enough curves to keep things fun. The poor condition of the roads kept me from pushing the bike at all, because I was quite paranoid of the pavement suddenly running out on me:

Here you can see the Danube river, with Slovenia on the other side of it:

I’m glad we headed up to this part of the country, because I was beginning to fear that Hungary was all just boring and flat. There was plenty of semi-rugged terrain to go around here, and even a few castles laying around:

Riding back town toward the South, we ran into a horse-drawn carriage carrying hay down the road. These weren’t Magyar Luddites, just people without a tractor or pickup truck:

After playing around for most of the day on small rural roads, we hopped onto the interstate to head into Austria. My coworkers warned me not to be surprised if I was pulled over near the border because of my license plate registration. One deep breath later, I was in Austria.