Where was I?
Posted: October 10, 2007
Oh yes. Spider webs cling to your forehead when you ride from Bad Deutsch Altenberg, Austria to Halaszi Hungary.
Hungover, bad.
Like I was saying. The night before we left we were in sleepy little village Bad Deutsch Altenberg and Ron had a hankein' for a girl who had a hankerin' for him. Through an eerie amount of interloping from locals the two were kept in the First Act of Romeo and Juliet, never to be together.
Way it is.
However, in the happenings of the evening we, Ron, Me, and about a thousand youngsters from all points east Austria pounded our way through a night of filthy drinking and riotous dancing.
So by 8 the next day, Ron and I had been not so soundly sleeping in our granny flat room, oozing hoppy beer from our pores with sweat and grease and fuming hot alcohol breath, for about four hours.
It's a 60 kilometer ride to Halaszi, we don't have any provisions, including water. We figure we'll ride a little ways, pick up some grub and water and then beat more ass down the road.
Turns out, there are few spots to get water and they're farther between than I'd reckoned. I wanted to push on because I was afraid we wouldn't make it if we doddled around in Bratislava, Slovakia, so onward we pressed.
Until we stopped to get lunch in a rural burg on the Slovakia, Hungary border and I almost tipped off my bike. Ron looked me in the eye and, to freak me out a little further said, "Holy shit! We need to get some water and food in you." After I pulled off a Bonaqua bottle for a little bit and munched at some Chicken Cordon Bleu, Ron gave me the shaky hand test. Hold your hand flat in front of you. If it shakes like a vintage Norton motorcycle engine, we sit and wait and drink more water and bite at more cheesy chicken.
Had to take the shaky hand test three times before I could get back on the bike.
Once again, Halaszi proved to be the dinkiest town this tour company could find to hole us up. Which turned out to be a good thing this time. We went to bed at a moronically early hour that night, and rode on to Gyor in the morning, free of the shakes, shivers, and cold pale sweat.
Gyor to Tata, and Tata to here, Esztergom have proved fairly uneventful. Some were short runs, some longer. Up a few decent hills one day, on fresh legs it was a bake sale of ease.
We're in Esztergom now and it's the prettiest city in Hungary we've visited, stayed, or ridden through. It spreads across the Danube, has a millenia old Castle Hill and large dome Basilica, and a pizza joint where we just put down two large pepperonis with a beer and a diet Coke. (I haven't sworn off drinking forever, but it's not high on my list of priorities this trip. That thrashing I received in Slovakia, from my drinking in Bad Deutsch Altenberg was horrendous, and I'd rather not repeat it on this trip, especially.)
Well, that's my time, friends. I'm off to wander the streets of Esztergom, Hungary.
Pace.
