Budapest northeast to Slovakia

The first time we cycled the Danube cycleway I thought it was quite exotic to cycle in Slovakia and Hungary. As it turns out, we were in a very tame and well-touristed part of Hungary. On this trip, after leaving Budapest we were really to get off the typical tourist route. However, the cycling was good, with many small and sparsely trafficked roads, great scenery, and very hospitable people. So here is how the next few days went...

Budapest back to Szentendre Island, near Vac, 44 km.
It was easy to cycle out of Budapest on the Danube cycleway, so we headed back north to Szentendre Island, back on one of the funny little ferries, and back past the strawberry stands. Although this route took us straight north, instead of northeast, it was a relatively easy exit from the big city. However, when we stopped at a tiny grocery market for dinner we were told our planned camping ground had been closed for years. So much for maps. We backtracked again, across the Danube to the west or south side to camp for the night, again in a fairly unsalubrious camping ground. Yes, the camping is getting pretty tiresome.

Vac to Gyongyospata, 83 km
Fom Vac we headed north and east, skirting the Matas hills, which are the highest hills in Hungary, although they are not that high - about 1000 meters or 3000 feet. It was raining and a little cold, and we ended up eating our sandwiches under the roof overhang of a grocery store. The manager came out and looked at us, and I thought she'd tell us to get out of the way, but she just smiled at us.
We cycled up and down the rolling hills, through farmland, getting wetter and wetter. At one point I stopped to walk up a hill, and a man came over from across the street and started speaking to me in Hungarian. I though maybe he was inebriated, but, no, he wanted to offer me some chocolate. He pulled out a big bar of chocolate from his pocket, broke off a piece, and handed it to me. Then he waved goodbye and walked back to his house. Maybe I looked kinda bleak at that point.
After a long, cold afternoon the sun peaked out and we arrived in a little town with a small market consisting of two aisles of groceries, mostly alcohol and sweets. Pasta again. At the campground, it turned out that the last Americans had been there eight years before. The owner and her family invited us into a bar area for a free "welcome drink" of Hungarian brandy and candy bars for Erich and Shea. They seemed genunely excited to have us there...great fun.

Gyongyospata to Eger, 66 km
Eger and its surroundings area in a big wine producing area of Hungary, and are famous for the Egri wines including one called "Bull's Blood." Although we did not sample that one, we have been having a bottle of wine with dinner, and 4.00 USD buys a pretty good bottle of wine.
Eger is a small town of about 60,000 people and has a castle, big churches, and a pedestrian street. We went into town for dinner as grocery stores were all closed on Sunday. Then we went back into town the next morning, when a thunderous downpour causd us to seek shelter in a covered cafe, where we had coffee and hot chocolate and waited out the worst of the rain.

Eger to Szilvasvarad, 31 km
On this leg we passed through the Bukk Hills, beautiful forested rolling hills. We were headed north and gaining altitude. The region was still rolling hills but now more oak and conifer forest with less vineyards.
We were clearly off the main tourist routes in this area, as townspeople looked at our train of bicycles Otwo tandems, two zsingles) with amusement, bewilderment, curiosity, lots of funny looks and smiles. This has been previously called the "Tandem Effect," on which pedestrians or folks on the street gawk at the tandem as it goes by, even stepping out in the street to look at it, thus stepping out right in front of the next bike, which is usually me. Fortunately there have yet to be any casualties directly related to the Tandem Effect, althoug I sometimes have to do some fancy maneuvers to avoid running over the gawkers.

The "S" town to Aggtelek, 70 km. Our last point in Hungary was the Aggtelek National Park area, which has alot of limestone karst and caves. The area is lovely. On the way to the campground we stopped at a ery small grocery store, and were waited on by a grama and her son. They clearly were not used to the amount of food consumed by hngry cycle tourists. We kept putting food on the counter, pasta, yogurt, beer, chips, apples, cereal, pretzels, hungarian waxpeppers and onions, and on and on. The Grama kept asking if that was all, and we kept saying not yet, and putting more stuff out there. Finally she decided we were easy marks, and started trying to sell us bottles of alcohol, vodka, scotch, brandy, she kept pointing to bottles and looking at us expectantly. We settled for wine and a couple of bottles of beer.
We went on a one hour tour of the caves. The tour was in Hungarian, but they gave us a small brochure in English which included the fact that there are some twenty species of bats living in the caves. The strangest part of the tour, therefore, was that we stopped in a large cavern where they played VERY loud new age rock music, much to the apparent discomforture of the bats, who flew around during the music. Wierd.

From here we headed north through Slovakia...even further off the regular tourist trail. Stay tuned. More from on down the road.