September 20, 2014
Mosonmagyarovar - Gyorszentivan
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We checked out and while so doing, enquired as to the pronunciation of Mosonmagyarovar. It's Mosonmojorovar. I'd been researching a little about the Hungarian language before going to bed, something I should have done, I admit, a lot, lot earlier. However, the web page I was looking at, more or less said, if you're not going to live there, forget it. Nouns have seventeen different cases.I remember, former CGOB contributor, Carsten Hoefer, descibing his first experience of riding through Hungary, saying in effect, that, whereas in most countries he could have a stab at what street and shop signs meant, in Hungary everything seemed to be impenetrable. Hungarian is out of the loop as far as European languages are concerned, it's not in the Indo-european family, which includes Italian, German and Russian. Finnish and Estonian are loosely tied to Hungarian, that's not a lot of help.
Another thing I discovered, while on the browse, was that Mosonmagyarovar's main source of income is connected to dentistry. With a population of around 25,000, Mosonmagyarovar has 150 dentists, whereas Vienna with a population of 1,750,000 has 23.* Austrians come here for cheaper dental work, stay in the hotels and presumably, eat in the restaurants, if their mouths aren't still frozen.
After the chat at the desk, in English, by the way, this morning's receptionist spoke good English. [I checked in, in German, of which more later], we rode into town. I withdrew some of the new currency from a cash machine. The Forint, at the time was just short of 400 to the pound. I meant to take out £200's worth, but when I saw the figures on the screen, up to 100,000, I panicked and pressed the button on 15,000, thinking I might take out more than I knew what to do with. I went back to Barbara and the bikes and then twigged I'd withdrawn about £37. I went and spent some of it in a branch of Tesco, disguised in Hungary as S-market, then withdrew more cash.
I had loaded a route onto the GPS, which took us along the river through Slovakia. We had decided to ignore that and stay in Hungary. We had no map and so far, had relied on Danube trail signing. Leaving Mosonmagyarovar, we were relying on pure guesswork. I had the idea that as the sign I had seen the evening before, meant that the trail would have gone round the town to the west, we would therefore catch up with it some way out of town, if we left by the main road, highway 1. Wrong.
There was a parallel bike path to the edge of the town, after that a wide but very rough, stony track for horses and carts, tractors and bikes, all of which are prohibited from using the road. I tried a turning to the right which ended up in a field. Back on the track until it ran out, we were allowed back on the road for a short stretch, until the track resumed. After what seemed like a very long, bumpy time we turned left to Kimle. At least this was on tarmac. We'd sort the direction out later. We continued on the road through Kimle to Herdevar, where we caught a glimpse of two more cyclo-tourists heading in our direction, followed them and caught up with the Danube signed route, proving my follow the nose instinct to be complete bollocks. At least now, we had a following wind.
We followed the route through Asvanyraro and Dunaszeg on a mixture of road and roadside path, not as complete as the Austrian or German variety. On the edge of Györladamer. I stopped to wait for Barbara. And waited. A young German guy, from Hamburg, also on his way to Budapest, stopped to talk. Still, no Barbara. My phone was out of battery. Fuck, she's taken a wrong turning. I turned round and found her some way back pushing her bike. A puncture. No problem, soon fix that. I found the cause, a small, sharp piece of stone from that track we hadn't wanted to be on. I patched the puncture, put the tyre and tube back, blew it up. The tyre went flat immediately. I started again and found another hole very close to the one I'd just patched and repeated the procedure. This time the tyre stayed hard, until we had reloaded the bike and were about to set off. Flat again, unloaded the bike etc. etc. I found another small hole close to the first two holes, so gave up and put on the spare tube. Three attempts, nearly two hours and I left my long-nose piers in the grass. In between tyre changes, a local, Hungarian man asked if we needed help, as did a Dutchman on his way to Turkey.
Back on route, we followed the signing as far as a roundabout in Györ, took a wrong turning to a football field and watched the game for 10 minutes. Eventually, we reached the city centre, where, outside the tourist office, we bumped into the couple, Johann and Birgit, we'd seen in Herdevar,. They had booked a room in Gyöyszentivan, about 12km away. We decided to do the same. It was around 5pm. The guesthouse did not serve evening meals and Johann and Birgit had been advised to eat before arriving. They decided to look for a restaurant, while we had a picnic in the park near the City Hall.
It was almost dark by the time we got to Gyöyszentivan. The way out of town wasn't immediately obvious, but in the end we got on it. The guest house is right by the cycle path. We almost missed it. We sat up talking and drinking beer with Johann and Birgit until around 11pm. They told us they had started their trip from their home near Ulm at the behest of their daughter. After four days, the daughter had had enough, so they all went back home. Johann and Birgit then decided they hadn't had enough, so went back, by train, to where they'd earlier stopped and continued their journey; a plus for the old'uns there.
*Not a statistically accurate survey
Today's ride: 63 km (39 miles)
Total: 1,641 km (1,019 miles)
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