Week 20: Hungary to Austria

<Insert pun about being hungry for Hungary here>

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This week we headed into Hungary for Pat’s birthday. Budapest was a much hyped city, and Hungary a new country for us both. Onto the vast highway we drove towards the border between Slovenia and Hungary. 5km from Hungary, an unmarked police vehicle pulled up in front of us with a LED sign in the back window flashing, ‘POLICE’, ‘PULL OVER’, ‘FOLLOW ME’. Anxiously we followed them into a truck bay, where Slovenian police had a fairly extensivee check-point set up. Strange as we were travelling between two European Union countries which have no formal boarder, immigration or customs between them. We pulled up and were politely asked for our passports, drivers licences, international drivers licences, proof of vehicle registration, insurance and ownership. Crazy. Sitting patiently for 15 minutes while our documents were checked, an officer pointed to our bumper and said excitedly ‘Australia? Really?’ before explaining to his colleagues who didn’t speak English that we were in-fact from the land down under. We were given back our documents and the kind officers told where to get a vignette for the highways in Hungary up ahead. We thought they may be putting some internal border controls in due to the Corona Virus in China spreading but there seemed to be no worries about it and definitely no personal protective equipment.

We got into our park in the late afternoon and had an early night in preparation for some busy days ahead. Budapest is stunning, two cities merging on the river. The ‘Buda’ side has all the cool historic castles and hills, while ‘Pest’ is where all of the food, art and culture resides. We spent our week here covering as much of the city on foot as we could muster. Pat’s 29th birthday was spent enjoying local thermal baths, riding electric scooters around the city, enjoying the underground labyrinth and its pitch dark tunnels under the castle and eating and drinking too much. Budapest is the kind of place you could see yourself living easily and it was strange after Slovenia to see so many foreign tourists in a place again. We really loved the city and felt we could have have spent a month and still not seen it all. We ended our week by heading North to Vienna, a new place for us both and an incredibly stunning one at that. Vienna is an insanely clean and boasts fairy tale beauty at every corner. We walked everywhere while in the city due to the ridiculous cost of literally everything and anything in this city. Unfortunately, the end of the week we were told of the sudden death of my grandfather back home in Wollongong and made arrangements to fly back for the funeral. Thus we will not have a post for week 21 as this was a very difficult, exhausting and upsetting week.

Week 20

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