Two months and Hung(a)ry/ Hung(over)y for more :)

It is really cool when you bump into a lake on top of the mountain, with a couple of simple restaurants and a lot of space for free camping. And in Slovakia you can still make bonfires! So we got to this place and we stayed, had dinner and beer with the fishermen and their wives (yeah, you could somehow see them under their make up) and went to our tent and decided to start a fire just to be able to look at it before going to sleep. There were a pair of broken chairs behind a tree and we sat down there in search of the ghosts that manifest themselves in the flames. We only saw the Devil. There were shooting stars and a couple of drunkards that broke the otherwise too nice silent night by singing their lungs out.

 The Devil and meeeee...

It has been a good two months now on the road and it starts to feel like home and we start to wonder how home will feel like when we are back. Maybe we shouldn't go back at all, fabricate some kind of trailer- caravan to our bikes and just pedal the rest of the world happily ever after.
The only problem would be the money, we guess. I was thinking about some fraud or pyramid scheme that we could do along the way, but not speaking the local languages makes that idea a bit hard.
Maybe we should work, euh, brrrr, hell no!
I think i would prefer to adjust my systems to eating grass and leaves, like that guy from Into the Wild. I know it didn't end very well for him, but I guess he had a good time for a while and anyways Maria is not pedaling with me through Alaska, she says, so we would always have a doctor to heal us closer by than that poor guy…

People in Hungary seem to be more friendly for the moment, but we are in quite touristic areas next to the Danube, so you are never really sure how sincere it is.
The only way to go to the heart of a country is going deep into the wastelands of despair, where people don't see tourists yet, and they need to wake up @ 6 in the morning for their morning shot of vodka and then start to work the fields, construction sites or the streets in the case of some.
The friendliest people that we have met these last weeks were gipsies, in Slovakia. Marginalized,  crazy and spontaneous. They lived above the reception of what once maybe was a camping (we camped there) and shared the place with other men that lived there because they found no wives, as they said. We shared beers, cigarettes and a good laugh with the only help of a girl who spoke very basic English and the strong will to understand each other. One of the girls screamed in our ears and all of us had to explain her that we were not deaf, that speaking louder does not turn unknown languages into common ones. She made us believe she was pregnant and we were a bit shocked by the amount of beer and smoke she was swallowing down. It took her two hours to say that it was not true. Then she asked us if we fucked in the tent and other personal details that were considered just too much by her sister, who made her shut her mouth with the same killing glance she dedicated to her boyfriend when he tried to sell us the worse looking weed in the world. Nice people. Wishing them a lot of luck in their trip for work to Germany.

Hungary since yesterday. We crossed the border in a town called Komarno, which is divided by the Danube and each shore belongs to a country.

The Slovakian side was quite depressing. The Hungarian one was definitely more cheerful, had English speakers and bicycle lanes for a while. The river looked beautiful and we followed it directly to our nice camping spot. It was nice to wake up in front of it this morning. And we washed our clothes, which was a while ago now. One could say even a bit too long, I couldn't take my t-shirt off anymore without Maria''s help and mosquitos and flies don't even bother anymore to come to us. Maybe they are a bit confused as we smelled rotten but weren't quite dead yet.

Wondering what to do until SUN, still four days to go and just 55 kms. Maybe staying in this camping to be a bit lazy or pedaling 30 kms to see Ezstergom, which apparently was the former capital city in Hungary and it does not even look pretty in the postcards, but people talk quite a lot about it :)

Maybe we should add some fun facts about our trip, some figures like the things we have lost or given away or thrown away:

LOST THINGS: one sweater, money, a pump, ten kilos of body fat, morals, my passport, Maria's underwear, Maria's flip flops, Maria's shoes, Maria's earring (one), hopes, dreams, expectations, a knife and all the spoons...
GIVEN AWAY THINGS: the bicycle trailer, camping lamp, some spare tires, a book, Dafalgan, Atarax, money...
THROWN AWAY THINGS: lots of torn apart clothes, teapot for making coffee, cutlery, campinggas thing, money, rain ponchos, Kim's soup bowls (sorry, Kim)...
GAINED THINGS:muscles, stamina, fluorescent vests, friends all over this part of the world, pocket lamp, headlamp...

We crossed 6 borders (2 more to cross, really looking forward to Bosnia), went to 3 festivals (still 2 more to go to, not counting the unexpected ones), had 3 flat tires until now, 2 new gearboxes, 2 new rear axles, 3 weeks of rain in Belgium, Holland and Germany (including floods), never got lost anywhere (ok, we did, even with a gps), had 1 terrible accident, crossed uncountable mountainranges, survived starvation, beeing sucked dry by mosquitos, terriefied by lots of trucks and spoiled by extremely kind people: THANKS Annett and Mich, Frank the couchsurfer, the man that lives in Buggenhout and let us sleep in his garage, gipsy friends, Celine and boyfriend, the vikings, Ramed, Mad Max Zukh, God, Baby Jesus who hangs around everywhere by the roads, opened arms and looking quite uncomfy in his cross and their counterpart the Devil...

Thanks to all of you for the shared moments.
Hey, we are just a bit emotional here, this is not a farewell. More blog to come :)