We made it! 10 days on the road from Berlin to Giannitsa (North Greece) with a few leisurely days in lovely Maco, Hungary (where the pic above was taken by our wonderfully kind host, cook, tourguide, photographer and Maco misfit Taki.) Of course there’s a million stories but here’s a brief run down and a few pics.
After a lot of ‘van prep’ we finally left Berlin on Tuesday 28th July.
Night 1 we slept next to a disused railway line and lovely stream (and forgot to take photos – malakia) in Czech.
Night 2 in Austria with Schnitzel breakfast in Vienna. Our trip is full of stops, mostly for eating. We’ve had a lot of great van meals and I think food will be figuring heavily and heavying my figure.
Night 3 in Hungary in a strange field after one of our first ‘misunderstandings’, finding somewhere to stay at night isn’t as easy at it sounds.
Night 4 Treated ourselves to a ‘real’ campsite, next to the River Marosh just outside Maco. We were there because Billy has good friends there, however he hasn’t seen or had contact with them for 8 years. We got some phone numbers from a mutual Greek friend but Billy’s plan was to go to Maco, go to ‘the bar’, and one of them would turn up eventually. Unfortunately his memory of Maco wasn’t so good and he didn’t recognise so many places! We spent the next couple of days trying to get through to them on payphones, or wandering around trying to jog Billy’s memory. Fortunately Maco is lovely and on...
Night 5 we stayed in a small park in the middle of the village next to St. Stephen’s church. We arrived at dusk, got the table outside and had a superb dinner of Hungarian sausage stew in the company of loads of owls who were flying around the trees above us.
Night 6 We finally found our friends! After some help from the friendly locals letting us use their mobiles, we surprised Devro who directed us to the River park where everyone was enjoying the end of a beautifully sunny day. It’s a really beautiful spot where a lot of the community and holidaymakers gather but it feels really relaxed and peaceful. We were taken to ‘the best bar’ a bit further down the river and watched the sun turn into a perfect red disc and drop exactly in the midpoint of the river. Then we walked back up the road to Taki’s summer house where he and Billy cooked us a fantastic dinner of chicken livers and bulguri on the fire with a genius tool called a Tarcsa, which is made from part of a plough, kind of like a wok with a big stick through it with a handle one end and feet the other, the metal is really good so you can grill on the outside and cook veg, stew etc in the middle with the juices.
Night 7 we also spent at Taki’s place with more of our new-found-old-friends, sharing stories, food, beer and music. It took us a while to find them but it was well worth it, we had a superb, re-vitalising time with the Nianiats! Depi spent 10 years hitchhiking around Europe so had a lot of great stories. His sister Emese is Billy’s initial contact with the whole group so they had a lot to catch up on and it was great to meet her kids and her man Zsolti who’s re-building a house for them in the next village completely in traditional Hungarian style from land to kitchen. Emese gave us the perfect send off for part 2 of our trip the next day with a huge lunch, a jar of homemade strawberry jam and a necklace for luck made from peach stones and jade.
Night 8 and we’ve reached Serbia, we spend a peaceful night on the edge of a lovely village next to a monastery and pelicans and the loudest, biggest, angriest mosquitoes so far!
Night 9 the drive through Serbia is beautiful. We park in a not-so beautiful village next to a basketball net, lots of barking dogs and stealth mosquitoes (you think they aren’t there, then in the middle of the night they attack with deadly and violent precision). But the people we met were very friendly and helpful and we made a stop at the ‘vulcaniser’ the next morning to get the valve on the back left tyre fixed. The last bit is through Macedonia, where the landscape is stunning but our outstanding experience was getting ripped off at the border, possibly our own fault for not getting a green card, but still not a very welcoming experience. And of course we had a big argument straight after! But we cheered ourselves up and made it down to a very warm and welcoming Greece by dusk.
