Budapest to Zagreb

Day's Summary
"Left Budapest in rain and had to replace headlight bulb at a garage after filling up. Fortunately the rain stopped and we made a number of stops at tourist towns along Lake Balaton. It was still relatively quiet and most of people we encountered were locals. Then we turned on to the road to Zagreb and crossed into Croatia. My passport was stamped at the border and tolls were basically what we were used to. In Zagreb we went to Lake Jarun where we only paid for entry to the lake and not for camping. Cycled around the lake and explored the islands after supper."

We were woken by rain on the roof at about 3 am and I jumped up to close the “roof lights”. It was still raining when we woke up in the morning. Our next door Germans left quietly shortly before us and we were on the road at about 8h45. We stopped at a service station to get fuel and as she walked back to the camper after paying, Marianne noticed that one of the headlights wasn’t working. Manfred had asked us to keep the lights on whenever we were driving, so it had to be fixed promptly, even if we didn’t drive at night. Fortunately we had spare bulbs. The friendly assistant who could speak excellent English told us that as it was very quiet, I could work under the forecourt roof since it was still raining. We had to refer to the handbook – five bolts to remove plastic grill, four bolts and then a clip to remove the light fitting, then the bulb could be replaced as usual. As the assistant said “Fiats are always more complicated!” But the headlight was working and we could continue to Zagreb.

We were travelling quite close to Lake Balaton. We had visited the west shore in 1994 so we could not resist having a look at the eastern shore. We first drove into Siofok. The rain had just stopped and everything was wet. We parked next to a large luxury marina – everything was very white with no ore dust staining. We were very jealous thinking of the manganese dust in our marina!. Marianne walked about while I stayed at the camper. The area was obviously very much a tourist area, but it was still low season and there were only locals about. What was interesting to me were the two masted tourist boats pretending to be square rigged. With absolutely no wind their diesel engines were running with lots of black smoke. We still had some Hungarian florins and Marianne managed to spend them on some lovely fresh rolls from a Lidl along the road. Our next stop was Balatonoszod. Here we managed to park very close to the water. There was a campsite here, but it was still closed in the off season. It was a lonely beach and we had our fresh rolls for lunch under some trees, while we watched fishermen hopefully watching their lines. The fish obviously were not biting after the rain. Our third stop was Balatonbogbar. This had quite a large marina and an operating campsite on the far bank. There were a number of restaurants and museum ships on the shore. Balaton really is the Hungarian water escape. It would be a great lake to circumnavigate by bike.

After this lovely interlude we had to get back onto the motorway, in this case the M71. Although it was no more than 2 km from the lake the area between it and the lake was mostly densely built up and could only be accessed by suburban roads.

We continued on the M71 to the Croatian border. (It became the M7 in Croatia.) Here we had to stop and my passport was checked. The Schengen visa was fine, but the immigration ladies took some time over it. I even got a stamp! We also checked how the toll system worked. No vignette, but one stops at an unmanned toll booth and collects a ticket. This is handed in at a manual toll booth further on and you then pay for the distance travelled. Rather like what we are used to. From here the road led straight to Zagreb. We once again made a coffee stop at a service station. They were very similar in all the countries we visited and generally very neat and tidy with usually free toilets, sometimes charging a euro and sometimes there was a voucher with the coffee or meal that gave free access to patrons.

Park4night indicated an overnight parking place in a public park that was very reasonable. It was quite difficult to find in a very busy area. We also had to pay to get through the barrier so had to find an ATM to draw Croatian money. There was a lot of manoeuvring to get out of the way of the cars trying to get in behind us. We asked some contractors where we could find an ATM and got very precise instructions. So we drove into a dense residential area, drew Kuna and then went back to the gate and got in. It was obviously very normal to spend the night there.

We discovered that Jarun was an enormous water sports park that had been developed for the Eastern Bloc University Games held in Zagreb in 1987. It was Sunday and there were lots of people enjoying picnics and music, but it soon quietened down. We parked in a parking area with a number of other campers, one an oversized ex Australian overland truck. After we had made supper we went for a ride around the park and then went to explore the islands. It was a lovely evening and a delightful ride. What was very interesting were the posters along the road of Croatian sporting greats. There was quite a lot of sporting activity, people running and cycling as well as rowing and canoeing. Some idiots in a car parked close to us insisted on playing their loud music which was very annoying, but when they left it was very quiet. While riding we had discovered good toilets on one of the islands (there was a building site type toilet obviously for camper use that was a bit disgusting), but there was no paper. So we rode back to the camper to get some. We were certainly getting a bit of exercise on the bikes, probably 10 km in the park. There was no opportunity for showers, although riding around we did find the clubs that Park4night indicated allowed their showers to be used. Maybe we should have moved, but it all worked out OK in the end.

Geschreven door Leartravels