Across the EU to Hungary

Well here we are in Sunny/Rainy/Windy/ ‘Somewhere in Europe’ - can’t be much more specific as by the time you read this we could be anywhere.

Our best laid plans were to cut across from France, via Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria to Italy. So of course as I write this I am sitting in Hungary. I forget who it was, someone famous I think, who said ‘dentistry’ when asked what the most significant thing that had been produced by modern science. So when Cathy’s teeth started to ache we needed to do something about them. A week before we left UK, Cathy sent a tentative email to a Hungarian dentist based in Mossonmagyarovar, a gnat’s whisker from the Austrian border and home to over 300 dentists (at least one for every day of the week) to provide top quality dentistry at low prices for Austrian and German patients. Apparently ‘Dental Tourism’ is a thing.

So this might explain our route across Europe, but I’m getting ahead of myself here – as far as this blog is concerned we have yet to leave England, so here are some of the highlights of our trip so far.

Thanks to Rick Box who, even when otherwise occupied, gave us the use of his very nice drive to spend the night in Kent, within half an hour of the ferry. Once on board we really felt that retirement /holiday had really started as we watched the imposing white cliffs of Dover receded into the distance. 

The defenses around Calais against possible illegal immigrants were formidable and worrying, this is a problem that won’t go away and won’t be helped by Brexit. 

However, the motorway system between France – Belgium and even half an hour zooming through Luxembourg are free and easy. Although, quite a few of these come a poor second to the A14 in terms of number of carriageways and their width. We hit Germany as our 5^th country in a single afternoon and camped out on the beautiful Moselle river. We overlooked a river cruise station with a huge but majestic cruise-liner. Our helpful host, who had directed us to the very last place on the site was also a local wine producer, so it would have been rude not to try his actually quite nice Riesling wine. The downside of this was that we were kept awake by his accordion and chorus of gently but loudly singing Germans. The temptation to break into ‘Lilli Marlene’ was overwhelming but resisted. 

 

Day 2 … Blimey, still only our second day in EU. You know the Germans have wonderful, free, well engineered motorways … Bollocks – we never traveled far on any part of their system without major road works and delays. Fortunately we were on the right side of the road when we passed 50k of stationary nose to tail lorries who must have just settled in for the night. Very little warning and no remedial action for these delays. 

Our next stop was Dinkelsbuhl on the romantic road. We parked up 100yrds away from the old center and it was very classically quaint and surprisingly relaxing to wander around the streets. 

Next day we thought we’d go to another classic and ancient town but found that alternative route, that got around the closed road we wanted to take, also had a closure. After twice the time it should have taken we managed to get to Nordelingen, which again was delightful. 

We headed off to Austria and Heiterwag, which was just over the boarder from Germany in Austria. Interestingly we found that Austrian cars on the road were less than one in three, with most of them coming from Germany. We were on the edge of the Tirol and very pretty and perfectly kept it was, although a bit ‘Stepford wives’ for us. A enjoyed a lovely walk around a lake surrounded by mountains, which blew away some of the accumulated motorway dust. 

A long and very ‘wiggely’ trip into the high tyrol over the Gyrlos pass took us, via some very unhelpful route finding from our Garmin GPS (a.k.a ‘Maisey’) - good job we had Mr. Google to help, took us to a wonderful site overlooking the valley. We went what was suggested as a simple 1hr round trip to a ruin, and found that we climbed over 700 feet on scrabbly paths but the views and the still atmosphere of the native woodland were wonderful. The place we were staying was a guesthouse and we had a typical meal along with some typical beer… hic!.

The next day we wandered into Neiukirchen (or ‘new church’ as we would say). It seemed deserted as we arrived at lunchtime when everything, apart from a very nice coffe shop, was closed. This was a nice relaxing day after a lot of traveling.

Traveling on from here we spent a night at Liezen in a free overnight parking area for three, yes count them, THREE, motor-homes. We were really smug at being the third. This did not deter the fourth, fifth, sixth and eventually with a certain amount of re-arranging based on time of departure a seventh van, all happily parked for the night.

From here it was a straight-forward run to Hungary and the Aqua Thermal Spa Hotel, which also had a camping area attached. Our camping fee also included entrance to the public thermal baths which provided swimming and hot mineral spa pools. A little run down in places but charming, friendly quiet and relaxed. We wandered into the center of town, which was unsurprisingly quiet for a Sunday afternoon. Actually it was still quiet in the middle of Monday morning – as common for these sort of places the real life of the town was outside the very calm and beautiful ‘old bit’ in the middle.

We had a great meal of duck with pasta and chutney (no really, it did work) and a surprisingly nice Hungarian wine from the ‘Portuguese’ style of grape.

Next day we went to the dentist and were really impressed with the quality, capability and professionalism. 

We have now both enjoyed the rather faded 70's style of the spa with hot tubs, swimming and mineral pools. Cathy has also enjoyed two sessions of teeth fixing, which will mean several days of sore gums and a repeat visit to this town as we leave EU in mid October.

 (apologies for the rather poor layout of this blog - hotel wifi does not seem to work so hot-spotting off my mobile and trying to save some data allocation for the rest of the holiday)