Famulus Hotel Gyor

... was very limited reference to Halloween. Drats!

We make it to Bratislava with no problems. As typical, it is a cold night (below freezing). Sharon prefers for a drink & eat evening. We go to the Slovak Pub, very close to our hostel. As when I was in Bratislava before, the pub is packed with backpackers. The British Ryan Air groups are rowdy as usual. The food here is basic Slovakian done surprisingly well and $2 for .5L beer. We are at the hostel by 10.

... of buildings from the 1700s plus and a river that sits at its walls. Nothing remarkable but a decent place to chill for a day or 2. Very few people makes it a little dreary. Since we can't find any nightlife, we go to a very nice restaurant (no English menu) then call it a night. Sharon is filling queasy so it is probably the right move. We are staying at a nice hotel which makes for a nice change.

... very industrial. Others are quite picturesque with farmhouses and town squares that look like they would have looked in the middle ages. Most of these towns have little iron crosses with a silver or gold Jesus hanging on them. Our guide said these were put up in the 1800's, and some of them had to be taken down during communism, but they were put back up again afterwards.

The highlights of our bike trip have been the little picturesque town of Telec, which was ...

... girlfriend sandra will be opening a coffee house / bar in a few weeks. They are taking over ownership of one already running, so we went there for drinks later in the evening. About 8 friends came, and most of them did not speak any english... i am used to it by now! There was a fuse ball table, and i have never seen anyone play like them. Apparently the men in town are much better, which I find hard to believe!

... last 1,000 years or so and as such the artistic and architectural styles run the gamut from baroque and rococo all the way back to romanesque statuary in the cellars that was defaced by the invading Ottoman Turks.

It's also one of the biggest wine producers in the region, making some pretty tasty stuff.

... som sa poducil tajom 'Petrzalskeho parkovania'. Povodne som si myslel, ze sa ideme len tak previest do mesta ako to robievam, ale Fero navrhol hradzu na lavom brehu Dunaja, kde som bol naposledny pred vyse piatimi rokmi. Co som ale netusil bolo, ze do obeda prejdeme na korculiach 24 kilometrov a posledny kilometer bude naozaj ako na maratone - neuveritelne dlhy. Na zaciatok to bola samozrejne velka sranda, lebo sme isli povetre a sil sme mali na ...

... is like a book with a very interesting cover... and blank pages inside. Finally, we decided to end the day with a soak in the thermal baths in Komarom. That was wonderful. We soaked up the waters with a handful of robust Hungarians in Speedos and bikinis (the only people I have seen in one-piece suits are tourists) in water that smelled like rotten eggs. We capped the day with dinner on a garden terrace back in Tata.

... Dochádza mi batéria v PDA, čo vsak uz nie je problém, nakoľko cestu poznáme. Do Szákszendu prichádzame v tme, no cesta konečne začína klesať a tak dedinou prechádzame rýchlosťou takmer 40 km/hod. Proklamovaný 11km dlhý úsek medzi dedinou Szákszend a prípojkou na státnu cestu č.13 má nakoniec kilometrov 17. Je úz takmer úplná tma. Po príchode na prípojku cestu č.13 vidíme, ze do Komáromu ostáva 11km ...

... but it was not Papa...we were on a far eastern border at a place called Sopron...supposedly the closest Hungarian city to Vienna. Well, that's great and all, but it was not where we needed to be! Luckily, there was a train heading back to Gyor that we could jump on, and then we took a bus on to Papa. As we were running short on time to catch our train back to Budapest (some of these trains are few and far between!) We got to use ...

... which was a very popular place for visiting Austrian and German tourists - they came by the busloads, enjoyed the fellowship of standing around in hot pools of water - then they had no modesty about showering together, men and women - naked to the world, yet it all occured so routinely that you hardly noticed the nudity when they showered and dressed for departure.

Overnight in Mosonmagyarovar ...