.jpg) |
| Szeged, Marg |
After the fabulous trip we had in Romania, we began
our homeward journey, heading west toward the Czech Republic.
This took us
through Hungary. We had been in Hungary in 2011 and loved it but had not been
to the south-eastern area, so we were looking forward to this leg of the trip.
Our first stop was the city of Szeged.
.jpg) |
| Szeged University |
We had a
lovely walk around to discover it was a rather attractive place with a lot of
beautiful buildings and a nice feel to it.
Plus…we happily found a money changer open on a
Sunday, and he was able to change our Romanian and our Serbian cash into
Hungarian Florints, which we could not do in Romania.
.jpg) |
| Wee horses at Kecskemét camp |
Moving on, we entered GPS coordinates for a camp in
the Kiskunság National Park which is a UNESCO protected park that is part of
the Great Hungarian Plain.
We wended our way through small villages then onto
a sandy road which was very narrow went on forever!
The only things that kept
us going were the regular signposts to the camp.
Eventually we got there and found that it was part
of a horse farm called Camping Somodi Tanya.
.jpg) |
| Kecskemét architecture |
There seemed to be lot of places called ‘Tanya this
and Tanya that’ so we started to think that Tanya was a popular name.
Then we discovered that Tanya, in Hungarian means
farm! Suddenly it made sense!
.jpg) |
| Tanyacsárda horses |
There were a lot of horses at Camping Somodi
including some little characters roaming loose about the van – very cute.
But they seemed to attract every darn fly in the
place, which was very annoying!
Trying to ignore the flies, we headed to the
farm restaurant and had a very yummy Hungarian meal.
.jpg) |
| Tanyacsárda horses |
There is no English spoken at all in this neck of
the woods. By now we are quite used to that and are really good with gestures.
But ordering a meal is always a challenge as you never quite know whether
you’ve ordered steak or something like tripe!
After a lovely evening we headed back to Vanni,
dodging the horses, before retiring to the quietest night’s sleep for ages.
.JPG) |
| Tanyacsárda horse show |
The next morning we drove off back down the narrow
sandy track, not meeting any oncoming traffic thank goodness, and stopped in
Kecskemét to explore.
We found it to be a lovely town, with interesting
architecture.
As this is horse country, Leigh was keen to see one
of the local horse shows. So we popped into the local tourist office after
lunch to get information.
 |
| Székesfehérvar clock |
Unfortunately, the one we had heard about had a show
starting at lunchtime - bummer……missed it.
Then they told us about another one that had a show
at 3pm and that they also had camping there. So off we went.
We drove to the village of Felsölajos to find
Tanyacsárda, a large horse farm with camping, good facilities, a restaurant and
horse shows, plus the usual flies.
.jpg) |
| Pápa town square |
We paid our money, got Vanni parked up, and
joined the bus load of people who had arrived for the show.
It began with a glass of local apricot brandy and a
hot scone – very yummy!
Most of the horses were the grey Lipizzaner - what
magnificent creatures.
.jpg) |
| Pápa camp towel brigade |
The display consisted of horsemen in traditional
costumes cracking their whips and showing their riding skills, followed by a
ride in a horse-drawn carriage to an arena, where we were treated to a fabulous
show of horsemanship.
The horsemen demonstrated their skills at driving
carts and did some trick events with their horses.
.JPG) |
| Pápa camp bread van, Marg 8am |
It was a well presented show which we really
enjoyed. Even though no English was spoken we still understood most things.
We had another quiet night’s sleep and next
morning, drove to the town of Székesfehérvar.
A local Penny supermarket
provided an ideal parking spot, and it was a short walk from there to the old
centre of the town.
 |
| Vanni |
It was a nicely laid out place of narrow cobble
streets, lots of pedestrian ways and squares, attractive Austro-Hungarian style
buildings, plenty of churches and cafes, and clean and tidy – lovely.
After enjoying the sights of a few towns on the
way, we eventually stopped in Pápa, a small spa town with what sounded like a
modern camping place.
.jpg) |
| Vienna |
It turned out to be a good choice as it was lovely and
clean and well looked after.
We spent some time wandering around Pápa, and
although it had a lovely town square, it gave an impression of a quietly dying
town.
.jpg) |
| Mlada Boleslav on the rocks! |
The shops weren’t fantastic and there was no sense
of vibrancy. There were some attractively done up houses but also lots of
run-down ones as well.
Meanwhile, back at the camp there were lots of
Germans and Austrians and we had a giggle or two each day as a steady stream of
terry-towelling robed figures walked to and from the spa next door.
Pápa gave us a good break with reasonable wifi for
a week or so.
.jpg) |
| Stará Oleška house & skinny road |
We decided it was time to move on when the camp told us that 100
Czech Caravan Club members were arriving and filling up the camp. More
competition for the showers and wifi – time to go.
Interestingly, we have not found the Hungarians, in
general, as friendly or with a good a grasp of English as the Romanians,
Bulgarians, Serbs and Bosnians.
.jpg) |
| Rosalka dinner and dancing, Marg |
While we were at Pápa, we consolidated out thinking
about how to sell Vanni.
We had done a lot of work in April and a lot of web
searches throughout the trip to figure out what she might be worth and where we
might sell her.
.jpg) |
| Benešov nad Ploučnicí castle, Leigh |
We had also made stops at campervan places in other parts of
Europe looking at the price of comparable vans.
We now had 1 month to go and needed to act.
In the end, our choices were to see Patrik, a
campervan dealer we had met in 2012 in Děčin north of Prague, see a dealer in
České Budějovice south of Prague, or rent her out.
.jpg) |
| Pension Rosalka, Vanni |
We decided first, to go north to see Patrik in
Děčin. To get there from Hungary meant driving through beautiful Austria.
We
whizzed on, driving through the outskirts of modern Vienna and kept trucking
north into the Czech Republic.
We finally stopped rather late in the evening at a
camp in the small village of Štoky.
It was a fairly basic camp but with
friendly people.
That night, we reflected that we had enjoyed
breakfast in Hungary, lunch in Austria and dinner in the Czech Republic – only
in Europe!
Next morning we drove around Prague towards Stará
Oleška in Děčin.
We went through some amazing towns with incredible
castles, including one that was built on a huge rocky crag towering over the
road.
Places we had never heard of but each lovely.
The last bit of road our
GPS took us on was extremely narrow.
It wound its way through very cute little, little
villages and all of us (including Vanni) were holding our breath and hoping not
to meet anyone coming the other way!
We made it after a couple of very tight
squeezes!
We eventually arrived at Rosalka Pension and
Minicamp in Stará Oleška, to be welcomed by Oskar who remembered us from our
visit there in 2012.
It was Friday night so we decided to have a meal in
the Rosalka restaurant which happened to be hosting two small birthday parties,
and had live music from a duo!
What a fabulous time we had as we enjoyed
wonderful food and joined in the dancing.
Only one young woman spoke English but we had a
great time and communicated with lots of laughs, smiles and gestures!
We slept quite well that night after all that
dancing and being in an incredibly quiet neighbourhood – lots of wine helped
too!
We visited Patrik the next day to talk, and left
with some ideas as to what we might do.
On the way back, we wandered around the delightful
little town of Benešov nad Ploučnicí which had a very attractive upper and
lower castle.
This place barely featured on the map but was a real find.
Further on, we stopped in Děčin city for a walk
around and found places there that we had missed in 2012.
Finally, back to
Rosalka for another night.
Next day we were on the road again to České
Budějovice to see what we could do there about selling Vanni.