As a farewell to Slovakia, we enjoy Camping Lazy, one of many Dutch-run farm campsites surrounded by hundreds of happy animals.
Manuela, Siegfried and their two daughters arrived shortly before us. We order pizza together. They have left “normal” life in Austria behind, given up everything at home and are traveling the world in their camper. We meet them here on their first stop and have refreshing conversations about society and life plans late into the night.
In the meantime, we jet on to the Danube in Hungary. It is hot. Fortunately, every village here has a store and we keep pouring ice-cold 0.0% shandy into ourselves which evaporates almost immediately.
We take the Danube cycle path to Budapest which is still quite nice in the North of Budapest, but behind Budapest it is more of a mogul track on the flood embankment. We meet a few touring cyclists. Ikeman from Tasmania is cycling the EuroVelo 6 Tour from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Two months ago, he had a fall and flew home from Budapest to Australia for surgery on a broken collarbone. Now he is back and riding on, hopefully accident-free. A sporty Czech rides with a scooter(!) and tent and stuff.
Two nights in Budapest. Not very smart to visit a city in such heat. We spend most of our time huddled somewhere in the shade trying to survive.
After a hundred kilometers we leave the Danube cycle path heading southwest. The landscape becomes more undulating. Huge harvested cornfields and dried sunflower fields the size of the Saarland line the way. A quick shop before we pitch our tent in the Mecsek Mountains in southern Hungary at the cozy Máré Vára campsite with pool. Think again doll! In the two villages we ride through, the stores have already closed at 4.30 pm. But they open again tomorrow morning at 4.30 am. That does not correspond to our daily rhythm. Never mind.
The campsite has a solution for everything. There are taps and a food delivery service. At night, the deer roar in the rut, the goats ring, the walnuts fall from the trees and the fox steals half a cheese roll from us. We sleep until dawn. In the morning, a few drops of rain actually fall on our tent. Rest day.