Day 61 Thursday 21 July 2016

Back to a 6am alarm, today is the start of our travelling back to Australia. Bag packed & everything else sorted & Evike is here at 7am to have breakfast with us. We have another great breakfast of Hungarian sausage, smoked pork, cheese, fresh tomatoe & lots of chatting & laughing before Katica has to leave for the hospital again. We say our sad farewells & drop in at Evike’s house on the way out of town, call Bela to confirm our departure time so that he knows when to expect us & then farewells with Evike & her family. The drive to the Hungarian border was uneventful thankfully, a crazy bus driver overtook some cars so he was heading straight for us, Ron was braking hard & I had my foot down on the passenger side too, there was nowhere to go on the side of the road, there was a big ditch but thankfully we are here to tell the story, a few farmers with horse & dray to avoid, a few large trucks stopped on the road for no apparent reason, a few tractors, then in the little villages, lots of people on bicycles, to Serbian standards the drive to the Hungarian boarder was uneventful thankfully. The farms & fields are green & yellow, looking beautiful stretching out to the horizon. At the border it took around 20 minutes to get through Serbian passport control, pass through the no-mans land with its shabby collection of refugee shelters then around 14 minutes for Hungarian passport control. All the boots are opened & checked.

The motorway through Hungary is superb & it is 170km from the border to Budapest, more beautiful flat farms & fields, then a few small hills as we get closer to Budapest. Thankfully our Google Maps navigation takes us straight to Bela’s front gate & it has taken us 4 hours from Kikinda. Bela & Gyorgyi have been busy preparing BBQ food & Bela fires up the small charcoal brazier & cooks the delicious feast of csevapsz, marinated chicken & Hungarian sausage, with marinated paprika & potato salad. We all eat more than we can fit, my belly is bursting, then Gyorgyi brings out a plate of delicious Hungarian treats, poppy seed slice & cottage cheese slice. Time for a siesta after all that & we surface again at 6.30pm only to be treated again to another delicious Hungarian meal, plus wine plus palinka & more chatting & laughing. At 10pm I call it quits & pack our bags for tomorrow’s travelling back to Australia. It will be hard to get back to reality after all the wonderful hospitality we received. Another great day.