First things first. Yet another lead has broken and I can't download the info from the GPS to the laptop. This means I can't look back at my day and see how lost I got. It also means I cant upload a new countries map. This means no more mileage stats until I find a lead.
So, average night's sleep, not too bad really, but raining when I woke up and the pathetic excuse for a tent is not in the best shape. The lost tent peg doesn't materialise and I'm down to five. I sent the spare ones home at the same time as the spare GPS lead. Epic Sigh, fffffff. I left most stuff on the bike and I just neck a nana for breakfast and for a change look forward to going to the McD, happy to actually buy something. I take over a table for eight people next to a power point and lay out all my tech. I also hijack another power point and charge some batteries. The manager keeps walking by and noticing the battery charger on the counter where the tills are. Its 7am and not that busy so he doesn't seem to mind. You are probably thinking I do lot of catching up and charging. This is true. However I do use the laptop quite a lot for all sorts of things so I just make the most when the opportunity comes along. Today, however, is miserable and I really don't care about the hours drifting away while I'm here enjoying yet another coffee. If the rain had been hammering down yesterday I would have been happy in the tent, but not on the rubble tip. Having experienced the joy that is arm warmers for the first time I am now on the look out for leg warmers, cycling style not 80s roller boot style. I ummed and arred about getting a big battery that I could charge from the bike and then charge the laptop and everyting else. I will definitely do this for the next trip. I don't mind popping into a Mcwifi every day to upload things to the internet but the charging takes time and apart from anything else its such a waste. Four hours later I decide to hit the streets and take the No1 road to Budapest. It's a bit boring and there is not much along it. I encounter a few hills for the first time in a while but I feel good. Then the heavens open and Marti Pellow and his band are all over me. I've not got my waterproof socks on or my arm warmers and I'm freezing. I look for a bridge or a bus shelter to hide in but there is nothing. I soldier on, getting soaked through not by the rain itself but by cars throwing up the standing water in the ruts in the road. The roads are the worst I've experienced so far (not worse than outside my house though) and channels where trucks have driven the same line have formed and collect the water, ready to soak you should a big car or lorry hit it at the right angle. A service station comes to my rescue and dripping wet I enter the foyer. It's a low key affair with a few sparse shelves selling an odd but appropriate collection of goods. Chocolates, crisps and biscuits on one side of the shop, but no shelf is actually full. Unlike a British shop where every last bit of shelf space is packed to the brim. On the other side of the shop the shelves have indicators and lights for lorries and wing mirrors. No packaging, just laid out like meat in a butchers, it looks odd. I venture into the restaurant where things are a bit more familiar to me. I order up the goulash soup and set about hanging my wet clothes from various chairs. The soup flows into my body and warms me and I add a bit of extra chilli for good measure. The sun tries to break through the clouds and the rain stops and I'm off again. Only now with a few more layers on. I decide to try my arm warmers on my legs and with my sandals and waterproof socks I look a proper sight. The arm warmers are too tight to go any higher than just over my knees and fall short of the length of my shorts making it look like I am wearing pop socks or stockings. The burly truck drivers who are the only other people in the restaurant give me some funny looks, and rightly so. I would worry if they didn't. Fancy dress on and I attack the no 1 again for the remaining 35km to Budapest. Whilst descending a hill a motorbike looks to have broken down and waves me over. I go to his aid asking if he has ran out of petrol. Then I wonder if he is an undercover cop, or even a murderer!!! He says he just wanted a chat but it's not a good place so suggests going down the road a bit. I'm so suspicious but at the same time not worried. He speaks perfect English with an American twang. He has been on a few tours himself on the bike and is just back. He offers me a place to stay but I have already got somewhere through warmshowers. I take his number and address just in case, ascertain he is not a cop or a murderer and off I go. Hello James. By the time you read this you have not seen me again or have taken me on a tour of the city. I wonder what it will be. Off I go to Buda & Pest. A few days ago I had received an answer back from a warmshowers host that If I turned up on Thursday instead of Wednesday I could stay. This has worked out perfectly. When I received another reply from the host to say that she would have a nice dinner and a beer waiting for me as motivation my natural response was to be sceptical. I thought something was a bit wrong, too nice, too good to be true but I would roll with it anyway. A few more communications over the days had revealed that a French guy with a recumbent bicycle was also staying and was cooking dinner, the plot thickened. It was when James the motorcyclist said that the street where the host lived was part of the red light district all sorts of thoughts started to go through my head. Was this some sort of set up where I would get fleeced into paying, was she really a prostitute, was James winding me up and I hadn't really realised. I was all of a dither now and wondered if I should accept James' offer and go to his house instead. On the 30k ride into the city I ummed and arred with the ramifications. Was I just making something out of nothing? Kitti the host had been so nice in the emails we had sent each other, it felt wrong to let her down at the drop of a hat. Besides, Roman the French recumbent rider was cooking. As I came into town I passed by the road that James lived on. I stopped as I said I would give him a call when I got near but then a bike shop and leg warmers took my train of thought away and I forgot to call. Next thing I know, I've gone acrooss the Elizabet bridge and up the street to Blaha Square which was just down the road from Kitti's flat. She had said if I had difficulty finding it I should meet her outside the big McDonalds in the square of all places. I hopped on the wifi and emailed her, she replid to say she would be another hour before she finished work and would meet me here. Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound. Instead of exploring I take a seat and catch up on a few days worth of blog and have a relax. During this time unbeknownst to me until the next day, James had txted me to see if I was ok and everything had gone according to plan because I didn't call him. Seven o'clock rolls around and a smiley face is greeting me through the window. My host has arrived and my first impression is that she doesn't look like a prostitute. As we chat pushing the bikes up to her flat she doesn't come across as one either. We leave the street through a large wooden door into a courtyard and Kitti points to the top floor where her apartment is. It's a lovely old building set around a big central courtyard with a turret at the top of the entrance way where we have entered. You wouldn't know anything like it lurked behind the entrance from the front. I unpack the bike and carry it up the stairs and am greeted by Roman, the French chef for the evening. He doesn't look like a pimp. He's cooking potato dauphinoise and pork loins but has bought the wrong cream in Tesco of all places and is a bit worried how it will all work out. As soon as I sit down at the kitchen table with them both all thoughts of cosly sexual encounters, stitch ups, passport thieving and kidney disappearing antics float away out of my mind. I couldn't hope to spend a Hungaran evening with two more agreeabe people. Our host's kind, warm, laid back manner permeates the room as she starts on preparing a blueberry crepe type desert. This is because Roman insists that once he has finished cooking no one should lift a finger. I liked his style and immediately offered to do the washing up in the morning and so putting me at my ease. A few beers and few bottles of wine are consumed over dinner and the pleasure of being entertained by easy going people leaves me most relaxed. A accidental flash of my tash leads to all sorts of japes but the most hilarity comes from pumping up my mattress. The two bedroomed flat has one person in one room and our host the owner, sharing her small room with me and Roman. She in her bed, Roman on the sofa bed as he had already been there a night so I would take the floor on my mattress. A nice change from rubble and bricks. My two other warmshowers encounters had supplied me with my own room, but now I was sharing with not one but two people. I wasn't sure how I would find it, having spent so long in my own company at night. My mattress, in case I have not mentioned it before, is probably my number one piece of kit. A 10cm thick airbed with down insulation that allows me to get a good kip if other things don't allow, on even the most nasty surface, see tree roots, bricks and rubble. To inflate the bed you do not blow into it like a lilo becaues the moisture from your breath would get the down wet and the insulation properties would be lost. Instead the mattress has an internal pump. You unplug the stopper and two palm drawings indciate where to put your hands, you then gently pump air into it to inflate it. This normally takes about 100 pumps or about 2 to 3 minutes. At first it seemed a real faff versus the usual sort of self inflating type of matress but the return on the 3 minutes pumping is definitely worth the investment. There is, however, a rather emabarssing side effect. The best posture for pumping the mattress is to kneel on your knees and put your palms down over the pump and rock yourself up and down above the pump. If seen from behind or even the front this looks rather sexual. Add the gentle air hissing sound of the mattress as it is inflated and it makes for quite a comedy moment. My host and fellow guest are in stitches as I “pump” the mattress. Kitti decides she must try it as looks like fun. In mid pump a neighbour comes round and looks through the open window from the landing and asks Kitti to keep the noise down a bit. The scene that greets her through the opening is her neighbour bent over double, pumping away to wheezing noises whilst two strange men look on laughing.
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