Saturday    10.08.2013
  466km Total: 2557km

We're still lucky with the weather. It just slightly overcast with a nice temperature.
We load the gear on the bikes and head out on one of the longer highway legs of the journey without any scenic routes planned.

We march on pretty good and after a very nice dinner at a hotel along the way it's time to fill up on petrol.
Even though we saw the queues to the pumps riding in we didn't dare risk it since we weren't sure we'd have enough petrol to take us to the next station.
The reason for the queues where some sort of digital communication mishap between the pumps and the register and that an enormous amount of people where getting a Vignette for Hungary before riding through the tolls.
I took an hour and ten minutes to get 14 litres of fuel. It felt like a rationing line in the communist days of old.

We continue towards Budapest in side winds that are just crazy.
It's bad enough with the turbulence in 130km/h on the Tiger, with intermittent side winds it like crosstraining just keeping on the bike but at least it was easy keeping focused.

We check in at the Palazzo which is even grander than it looked in the photos.
The name is very suitable since it felt like entering a palace.

We get installed in the room and shower before heading out in search of supper, since it served us well the last time we ask around again for a nice place and head there.
Being geographically challenged we unfortunately fail miserably in locating that particular restaurant but our wandering led us onto some sort of restaurant/bar street so we still manage to find a nice place and get a couple of traditional Hungarian dishes.
I had beef stew with noodles (I'm a bit suspicious about how "traditional" noodles are in Hungary).
It was really good and the whole meal for both of us including beer was only 5000 Hungarian forints which is about €14.

It is after all Saturday so with the eatery out of the way we venture on in search of a suitable drinkery (is that a word? if it isn't it should be).
Finding somewhere to enjoy to enjoy some local brews without being forced to listen to music that makes you suicidal proved to be harder than it seemed.
For some horrible reason most places tried to lure customers into their locales with jazz music.
The horror. The unspeakable horror.

After walking the whole of the strip back and forth it seems like the most rocking place we're likely to find is Hard Rock Café so we take a seat at the bar.
Barely halfway through the first beer a gentleman takes a seat beside us and asks us where we're from.
Turns out he's a Norwegian called Øystein and a metal head like us so finding common grounds for conversation wasn't difficult and for some reason it just got easier the more we drank.

We eventually get a table with the Norwegian we're we continue our binge until the staff more or less literally throw us out.
I can't speak for anyone else but I'd had at least one beer to many at that point.

Øystein said the taxi rates where quite reasonable and a cab ride back to the hotel would be about €5.
Bear who usually never agrees to cab rides just out of pure principle relents and we get a cab from what was supposed to be a reputable company.
But upon payment the driver pulls a fast one on us and replaces a 20000HUF note for a 2000 and he even has the balls to do it twice and we realized nothing until after the fact.
In total we paid about €60 each for what should have been a €5 cab ride so I guess he didn't have to drive any more customers that week.

I was annoyed but we where easy targets being as drunk as we where and I take it in stride, travel long enough and someone's bound to take advantage of your naivety eventually.
The Bear on the other hand was livid and fuming, the devil himself would have be both proud and envious of the pure hatred he expressed for Hungarian cabbies.
I see no more joint cab-rides in our foreseeable future.

As if the trickster cabbie wasn't bad enough we need to do some washing when we get back to the hotel but at least we sobered up some before getting to bed.

No it's not the bread-cue, it's the petrol-cue

Budapest. I'll keep this even though it makes no sense in English. Fiktiv in Swedish means Imaginary.

Charles bridge and the castle.

The parliament building.

Øystein, a really nice guy!

No, doing the washing when drunk doesn't make it any more fun.

Sunday    11.08.2013 

We force ourselves out of our beds after six hours of sleep.
I can definitely feel the consequences of yesterdays bad decisions as I'm tired as hell and I feel like I'm aboard a rocking boat but at least I don't have a migraine.

We get ridiculously small portions of the breakfast buffet and hit the town, specially the old town called Buda.
The two parts of the town Buda and Pest are divided down the middle by the river Donau that flows right through it.

Eventually we end up at some sort of cable car/elevator thingy that takes us to the area around Buda Castle.
After walking up an appetite in the beautiful surroundings we get lunch at Budapest Terrace with a spectacular view of the city.

After checking out the castle, the parliament building (we managed to arrive just when there where a changing of the guard) and St. Stephens Basilica we head back towards the new town which amongst other places takes us to the city hall.

Now the blood sugar and caffeine levels are getting ridiculously low so we stop by an ice cream parlour before we walk the few kilometres back to the restaurant street.
For once I don't complain about us not taking a cab. I pick my battles.

We sit down at a restaurant called Paprika for some traditional Hungarian grub, Bear had goulash yesterday so today I guess it was my turn and my goodness what a soup that was.
It was so hot and spicy that the tears flowed freely along we the sweat beads.

As mains I had chicken and pasta in tomato sauce which doesn't sound very Hungarian but they assured me it was and I fell for it.
No matter the origin it was very good, regretfully I couldn't even finish it after the goulash.

I try to be gentleman when I can so I don't usually comment on these things but I do have to say that Hungarian women are the most beautiful I've ever seen. Anywhere. Ever.
If there are any aesthetically challenged women here at all they must have kept indoors throughout our stay.
Just sitting at an open-air café was how it must feel like for a juror at a miss universe pageant.
And if you stand on the street with a map in your hands looking confused for a minute a Heidi Klum lookalike will stop and give you directions so they're not only beautiful, they're friendly and helpful too.

I guess touring gets in the blood in some way because even though it's great being able to scatter belongs all across a room for a longer stay it just takes a couple of days before the urge to move on sets in.
We head back to the hotel and plan a bit and a book the hotel for Bratislava before chilling in front of a movie on the pc and that's all she wrote.

The life as a vagabond is truly glamorous.

An der schönen blauen Donau

St. Gellert statue, it was a hard walk up on the mountain but the reward made it worth the effort, the view was spectacular.

The strange cable-car/elevator up to the castle area.

Changing of the guards.

The area around the castle and the view of the town.

Matthias church

Monday    12.08.2013
  236km Total: 2793km

We only get about 60kms from Budapest until the Bears spider-sense tells him there's something wrong with the bike.
We turn of at a petrol station and start looking for the fault. It's turns out to be the master link on the chain.

While Bear removes the chain I go inside the petrol station and ask if there are any bike-shops near by.
An attendant says in broken English (eg. worse than mine) that he knows a mechanic that can be here in ten minutes.
When something sound a bit too good to be true it usually is as the "mechanic" turns out to be a tow-truck driver.
He wants to put the bike on his flatbed and haul it back to Kawasaki in Budapest.

It wasn't a very appealing proposition either time-wise or money-wise for such a simple fault so while Bear negotiates the fee for the non-service with the tow-truck driver I get on a restaurant wifi and start looking for bike-shops where I can get hold of a new master link or a new chain.

Said and done, Bear gets hit with a fee of €30 for the tow-truck and I head of towards Budapest.
Meanwhile the tow-truck driver (whose English was even worse than the petrol-guys) hunts me down on the highway and signals me to follow.
At this point I had no idea what he had planned so I just blindly followed the guy hoping I wasn't to become a crime statistic.

Turns out my instinct was right and he was a good guy as we eventually end up in a small town called Tata at a bikeshop called Pink motors.
The woman behind the counter even though she couldn't speak a word of English managed by looks alone deliver the message loud and clear that Bears Biltema chain wasn't the quality of product they sold here and that her top quality master link would be just as incompatible with that crap chain as a cast-less and a maharaja.

So she wanted to sell me a new DID chain which I obviously accept gracefully as I'm assured it will fit the bike and reach for my Visa since we're all out of HUF:s.
Turns out cash was a word she knew so I need to ride a couple of miles to a Tesco to get money from an ATM.
There I had to wait for a couple of guards to load the machine before I could get any money.
At least I think they where security guards but judging by tempo at which they worked I can't rule out that it was a couple of sloths in G4S uniforms.

I get that cash, pick up the chain and head back to the Bear where we mount the chain (or Bear did, I was just moral support at that point).
Since it now about lunch time we get some food before riding on, in total we've been at this spot for about three and a half hours.

We arrive in Bratislava at about 5PM.
We check in with a very helpful receptionist and hit the town after the usual routines.
Since we had a late lunch we thought we'd at least go for one of the main sights before supper and since you couldn't miss the castle on the hill overlooking the town it felt like a given.
On site we sit down at the café on the castle grounds and get a couple of apple and cinnamon lemonades, apparently Slovakians are very fond of lemonade since you could get it most anywhere.
The Bear had an ice-cream and I had an espresso. A real caffeine bomb in a thimble format.
I really need to try and wean of caffeine because at this point the next logical step will be injecting it straight into the bloodstream.

After exploring the castle and the grounds we by means of a real intricate system of stairs get back to town and tonight's restaurant tip, Bratislava Flagship.
It's the biggest restaurant in town with 500 seats, they've pretty much built in a whole city block.

I ask for just about anything dairy-free and get a recommendation of pork and dumplings.
I seems to be pretty much white bread with some kind of sauce with the main ingredient being cabbage.
Let's just say that it had an "exotic" taste and washed down with a pint of beer it was edible.

After supper we wander around town aimlessly but end up at a "rock café".
We where real suckers to fall for that since they had a repertoire that even makes Hard Rock Café seem hardcore but the at least the beer was good.

After that we head back to the hotel to get some much needed rest for tomorrows long leg of the trip.
 

Our saviours. 

A Bear with its paws dirty is a happy Bear.

Bratislava

The castle and the view from the hill.

They had some fun statues scattered through the city.