1 Motorhome, 2 Lads, 1 massive trip: From Luzern to Budapest

Tuesday 23rd September

My last blog started with the fact that time appeared to be standing still, but I certainly cannot accuse it of that now. Since the 5th of September on that rainy day in Luzern, we’ve made visits to Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, and to where we are today: Hungary. Some of those countries were just passing visits, where we will return later on this year and the others we shall not see again during this trip. It has been a hectic few weeks and we’ve seen a lot, but it hasn’t felt rushed which is the main thing.

We headed towards the German town of Fussen - on the Austrian border - after leaving Switzerland (which for the most part was dull and rainy, but otherwise a very pleasant country indeed) where we visited the ‘Schloss Neuschwanstein’ which I’ve been told was the setting for one of

the scenes in the film “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. It’s a fairytale castle with a superb mountainous setting, making for some excellent postcards - however, it’s not quite as impressive in person as you cannot really see the castle properly until making the 40minute trek up the mountain, and when you do reach it you’re too close to take it all in. There is though a bridge a few minutes walk away where you can get some good photos and take in the views and the scenery.

We would only spend a few days in Germany (one night in Konstanz, one in Ravensburg and the other in a campsite near Fussen) before crossing the border into Austria. Germany shall be explored in much greater depth this winter. Our first of only two stop-offs was the riverside city of Innsbruck, one of the host cities for this summers European Football Championships. We managed to find a parking space in an industrial estate (classy, I know) which was only a few minutes walk from the town centre. There are no official places for Motorhomes to park in Innsbruck (as with many other major cities also) so we didn’t have a choice but to park where we did. This was no problem for us, but one English couple we met at an Aire in Ravensburg told us they would “never dream of wild camping”, which we can fully understand, but it does seem a shame as you’d miss out on so many places which you wouldn’t see had it not been for parking up wherever you could.

We found a few Irish Bars in Innsbruck (The Galway Bay and Limerick Bills), which pleased us as it enabled us to get a few pints of Strongbow and Guiness which is one thing we both sorely miss about England! Innsbruck is a very favourable town. It’s quiet, not too busy and it’s quite noticeably very clean. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t seem to improve since our time in Switzerland and we got caught out once in just a t-shirt and got drenched whilst walking back towards the Motorhome. We spent a long weekend in Innsbruck, leaving on the night of Sunday the 14th when we drove a short distance up the 171 to an aire in a nearby village called Schwaz. It was completely full so we had to park just outside the aire but we weren’t alone in doing so, so we didn’t worry about breaking any rules! There were Motorhomes from all over; The Netherlands, France, Germany, Slovenia, even Slovakia, but no other British.

Our time in Austria had come to an end as we drove on the Monday through northern Italy towards Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, making one stopover in the Italian town of San Candido (Austria being one of the countries we will see more of in the winter months). Slovenia has de

finitely been the cheapest country we have experienced so far and this was most noticeable in the supermarkets, so we stocked up on a few essentials in a “Mercator” before arriving in Ljubljana. We found another wild camping spot in the car park of a sports centre, a short walk through a wonderful large park, about the size of Southampton Common, filled with dog walkers and quite strangely hundreds and hundreds of runners, as if a race was about to start. I half expected (perhaps naively) that Slovenia would be quite a run down, poorly developed country but that was not visible to us at all. Slovenia seemed to be doing very well - perhaps adopting the Euro and losing their currency the Tolar in 2007 has helped boost it’s economy, because despite the cheap shops the parts of Slovenia we visited appeared healthy and strong.

Before reaching the capital we spent a day in Bled, if only to visit the fantastic lake which houses the pretty St Martin church on a small mid-lake Island. It is the very definition of the word picturesque! We took the time we wander around the whole of the lake which was a very pleasant few hours spent indeed. The lake is very beautiful and by this time the weather has improved somewhat, so we were joined on our w

alk by tourists by the coach load but that didn’t spoil the relaxed atmosphere around the lakeside pathways.

After a few days in the capital we travelled South down the 409 towards Postojna, home to some extremely impressive caves, unfortunately though they cost 19 Euros each to enter, so was way over our budget. There is however a good secure spot for Motorhomes to park overnight directly at the cave for anyone wanting to visit. It costs 11 Euros for 24 Hours which includes unlimited Electricity and water and we were joined by 5 other Motorhomes who told us the caves were quite stunning, if only you can afford the entrance fee!

After 5 days in Slovenia we were making our way towards Croatia, and we crossed the border at Oragonja, only a few kilometres from the Italian town of Trieste! After 3 months of travelling around, going over many borders, this was the first time we’ve had to show our passports, so when arriving at the barrier we weren’t really expecting it. We put the window down and smiled at the waiting Police officer. “Hello” we said. “Err.. This is the border.” he replied, and then looked at us, shrugged and said “So…?”. For a minute I thought he was waiting for us to bribe him, but in fact all he wanted was our passports so we duly obliged and were let through without issue.

We spent a few pleasant days travelling down the coast of Croatia, making stops in Porec, Rovinje and Rijecka. The weather increased dramatically and after a few weeks of nothing but cloud and rain, we found the sunshine again. As Brits this obviously meant shorts and t-shirts time, much to the amusement of the locals who still thought coats and hats were necessary! Apart from a power cut which sent the town of Porec into complete darkness during busy evening trading hours, everything went swimmingly in northern Croatia, and after a few days we headed down the coastal A8 road towards Split. In all the places I’ve mentioned we were forced to wild camp as there are no official Motorhome parking spaces apart from official campsites - this sounds daunting for Motorhomer’s planning to visit these countries but there are lots of places to park if you are brave enough and obviously don’t break any laws. We have found that most places are quite relaxed about Motorhomes parking freely in their towns and most of the time you’ll get away with it, as we have so far. We have still only been asked to move on once, which was in Benidorm, but even then it was the same policeman who asked us to move 3 times so he clearly just had a personal issue with Motorhomes!

Split was aswarn with activity and was very different from the other places we’d visited in Croatia. It obviously benefits greatly from tourism and we saw many tour groups and Americans dotted arou

nd taking photos and buying souvenirs from the vast amount of small outlets scattered here and there. The 4th century palace of Roman Emperor Diocletian is worth a visit, and parts of the great building are incorporated into the streets and buildings of the town itself, which gives the surrounding roads a great deal of character. The palace and the main market square is set just yards away from the port which makes a very nice backdrop for the city. (Pictured: Parked up in the centre of Split)

We didn’t make any stops in Bosnia Herzegovina, in fact at one point it didn’t even look like we were going to be allowed in as the Bosnian Police didn’t like the look of us at all and made us pull over int

o a lay-by whilst they tried to talk to us and look at all our documents. One of the officers spoke a little English, and after a while of trying to understand each other, what was actually the problem was our missing Green Card insurance, or as they called it “Border Insurance” which we were forced to buy for 65 Euros for 7 days. It was a cost we weren’t expecting, but I suppose if we’d have done our research we’d have known we needed to buy this. After dilly-dallying around for about half an hour trying to sort out the purchase of a green card, we went back to present the card to the officers who were standing by Eric who came and said to us “Okay. Fine. Err… you have some illegal stuff in your van”. We were shocked when he said this and we though he was trying to con us into giving him some money or similar, but in fact he was only trying to ask us if we had anything illegal. I guess he wouldn’t have asked the same question to everyone, only two young lads with a Motorhome isn’t a sight you see everyday, so we forgave him that. (Pictured: The 4th century palace of Roman Emperor Diocletian)

We hadn’t planned to go to Bosnia at all on this trip but it made it easier to get towards Hungary from Split rather than travelling right up through Croatia again, so we had a 7 hour road trip until we reached the border at ‘Bosanska Gradiska’ where thankfully we didn’t have any issues getting through border control. From here we travelled north into Hungary (our 13th country) making stop over’s in Okucani (Croatia) and Pecs (Hungary) to where we find ourselves today, the capital Budapest. We arrived late into Budapest and we will explore the town in the day light hours, but for now we are parked in the most unlikely of places: A Tesco car park! It seems Eric, Mike and I aren’t the only British thing in Eastern Europe at the moment!