28 April 2025 – Hungarian Motorway Day

Miles driven today = 185

Total Miles to date = 4,589

I’ve got very little in the way of pictures today, so I’m going to tell you a little story instead.  Lisa has a half-brother, Michael, who we are very much looking for forward to seeing in a couple of days’ time.  Michael and his family live a little way outside of Vienna and when we went to visit them a few years ago it was just as easy (and a fair bit cheaper at the time) for us to fly to Bratislava and for Michael to pick us up from there rather than from Vienna Airport.  So we had a very pleasant day sightseeing in the Slovakian Capital and a nice lunch before heading back towards Vienna on the motorway. 

What with all the chatting in the car Michael must have got distracted because he missed the turning for Vienna and before we knew what was happening we were driving past a big sign welcoming us to Hungary.  We did a very quick U turn at the next junction and scarpered back into Slovakia and those 5 minutes were, until today, the only time I have ever spent within Hungarian borders.  So as far as I am concerned I can only now officially add Hungary as the 52^nd country on whose soil I have actually trodden.

Back to the present.  We topped up on cheap Romanian Diesel this morning before getting back onto the A1 motorway, which whisked us past Arad and on to the Hungarian Border.  There was no stopping.  In fact we barely slowed down.  The A1 changed to the M43 and the speed limit increased from 100kph to 130kph but otherwise there was nothing to indicate that we were in an entirely different country.

We continued West towards Szeged before switching to the M5 and veering more northward all the way to Budapest.  There really was very little of interest to report.  The topography was flat and the road was generally straight.  We were impressed with a number of green bridges which are constructed purely to provide safe corridors for wildlife and we had a quick chat at a service area with some Hungarian Truckers who were interested in the dates of upcoming public holidays in the UK but that was as exciting as the journey got.

I bought a Hungarian toll vignette online the other day.  Much like in Bulgaria, we are pretending to be less than 3.5 tonnes.  Outwardly there is nothing to give us away other than the “Angles Morts” sticker on the back of the van.  I know it’s a bit naughty but I did a fair bit of reading up on other people’s experiences and it seems that the digital toll devices which vehicles over 3.5 tonnes are supposed to have are difficult to obtain and the only other alternative would have been to only use non-toll road which would have at least doubled our journey time today and probably again when we head for Vienna on Wednesday.

Having gained an hour at the border, what with passing into the Central European Time Zone, we were in Budapest not much after lunchtime.  Neither of us have been to the City before and it’s been on  my must see list for a while, so it seemed rude not to have a look while we are passing through.

We are at Camping Arena which is about 5km and a 30 minute bus/metro ride from the City centre, so we will do one of our regular walking tours tomorrow.  In Euro terms it’s a whopping €46.50 a night to stay here which is easily the most expensive stopover we’ve ever stumped up for on the continent and I’m struggling to think of anywhere we have paid quite that much in the UK either.

It’s a nice site though with clean and plentiful amenities.  There is a train track which runs past but we have tried to park ourselves as far away from that as possible and the trains aren’t particularly frequent anyway. 

There’s a real League of Nations here.  Just on our row we have vans from Italy, Slovakia and Czechia and there is a Polish caravan just across the way.  In fact despite the price it’s probably the busiest campsite we have been on in the entire trip.

29 April 2025 - Budapest