Bratislava to Budapest

We’re locals - the coffee shop remembered our order!!! Went to a “market” just down the street to buy some more jocks (bought a couple yesterday) and she remembered my order - locals!!!!.

Okay - hesitantly hopped in the car and headed-off. A few pedestrians but we timed the trams just right. Got to the point where we got off the pedestrian area and joined the street when a policeman 👮‍♂️ stopped us. Whew, it’s okay, he was clearing the intersection so a politician and their entourage had a clear passage. We did end up doing a couple of wrong turns, but eventually got out of the city and on our way to Budapest.

Just before the border crossing into Hungry we again got pulled over, behind a truck, by a policeman. We waited for a few minutes thinking it might a breathalyser test. After a few more minutes the policeman stuck his head out and waved us on. I don’t think he had expected us stop and was wondering what we were doing (he wasn’t the only one confused). As we crossed the border we noticed all the other vehicles had stopped at a building off the side. We hoped they were just buying a road vignette (that you need to drive in a Hungry - we got one online) and not because we were also supposed to stop. No one chased us so we kept going.

We got to Budapest and had to drive through a maze of one way very skinny streets. I couldn’t find the reception for the apartment so I walked around aimlessly for a while, while Anne waited in the car in case it had to be moved. Eventually found the reception - okay where is our reserved parking? - nowhere obvious🤔. Got given a remote control and some brief instructions. The car park is under the building. There is a small garage door to the side and of course one car park behind us on a one way road. I decided in collaboration with the driver waiting for our car park that I would do a 3 point turn rather than go around the block and drive straight into the lift - too easy - except just as we were about to drive in, a van came out of the garage and it went a little pear shaped just for a moment . All of a sudden we had horns blasting and people yelling at us to back up as we had room, which we did and then it all came together again. The van drove out of the garage, we drove into the garage and the driver got his car park and the 5 cars behind him finally got to go. That is how you stop Budapest traffic 😁. The remote calls a car lift up from underground and when the door opens you drive into the lift and push the button for the underground No 2 parking floor. Again we picked the right sized car, another centimetre taller, or wider, we may not have fitted!!!

We dropped off our gear then went for a walk down to the the river Danube - magnificent (more tomorrow). On the way we had a look at the Hungarian Parliament House.

On the way back we stopped off at a supermarket to buy some food including bananas. Here you have to weigh your fruit and print out a price sticker, that you put on the fruit yourself, before you take it to the checkout. I put the bananas on the scale but couldn’t work out how to specify “bananas” in the search tab. There was an older couple behind us so I asked the man if he spoke English - “yes”. I asked him how to spell banana, in Hungarian, so I could search it on the scale machine. His response, slow and one letter at a time, was “B, A ,N, A, N, A” . The smart-ass was from Melbourne, also on holidays, and couldn’t speak (or spell) a word of Hungarian. As it turned out it’s actually spelled “banan”, so he wasn’t that far wrong.

Back to the apartment for a rest before tomorrow exploring the city. I had the world biggest veal schnitzel to eat for dinnerRead more