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Published: June 26th 2013
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The change of time zone had a major effect on the sleep patterns of the BBA travellers last night as we grappled with the one hour change in time zone.To add to this were the 'sofa'beds we had last night to sleep on.We really must watch out for these if they are mentioned when we are checking places to stay at and avoid them if we can.Even the after effects of the incident near the border with the Romanian police which seemed to have worn us out last night still didn't mean we could get to sleep past 4.15am when it became light outside!
The temperature also remained warm during the night and this morning it must have still been in the mid-20's which at least gave us a good reason to have breakfast on the terrace,a habit that we are enjoying when we can.
With only a relatively short distance to the Slovakian border we will have been in Hungary less than 18hours.However we have a desire to push on northwards and into Poland as we had seen the sights we wanted to in Hungary on the earlier BBA V1 in 2009.
The need for a vignette
in Hungary was a vexed question for us and we should have done more research as to what roads you weren't supposed to drive on if you didn't have one.Our failure to really check it out resulted in us' wandering' the countryside a bit to avoid the roads,especially the M35 we 'thought'we weren't supposed to be without the vignette.It made for a pleasant drive through rural countryside not dissimilar to that of northern Romania.
This eastern area of Hungary is very flat and at times reminded us of Holland when we started to notice the large number of people using the cycle ways that often ran next to the road.
In our bid to avoid the M35 we went under and then over the highway but at least all the time going in a northerly direction.Once we got to Miskolc we didn't have to worry about vignettes and highways any more.
The road started to climb as we got closer to the Slovakian border giving us more varied scenery to admire.The border buildings were still in place but were rather derelict looking as we crossed over into Slovakia.Perhaps the buildings are being left in place just in
case the Eurozone all falls apart one day.No one seems to worry about the state of the road here though in that no mans land of a couple of hundred metres between the two countries and we had to dodge some very large potholes that we didn't expect to come across.
After following a valley for about 25km the land became much more hilly and we soon found ourselves back climbing a mountain pass that reached 1000 metres above sea level although to be fair we started the climb at just over 500 metres anyway.We were now into the Slovakian Tatra Mountains,the smallest alpine mountain range in the world.
We reached Spisske Bystre,a small rural village about 10km from the industrial city of Poprad just before 5pm.
Our accommodation here was superb and we had a room on the ground floor of a new purpose built property with the full use of an ultra modern kitchen,Gretchen was in heaven!Pieter our host didn't live at the property but he arrived shortly after we called to say we had arrived and after he showed us around we had a long chat about everything from how beautiful NZ was to
the Eurozone and life under communist rule prior to 1989.It was easy to pass a couple of hours and he was a very interesting person to talk to.In doing so though we missed the opportunity to take a walk through the village but perhaps we will catch up with that tomorrow before it is time to move onto Poland.
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