We're on the road for 20 days now. After a quick stop in Vianden, Luxembourg we spent the night in Mannheim, and stopped over in Nuremberg before heading to Prague, our first actual stop in a country that was new to me. We stayed at a campsite 3km south of the city, along the river. I was not very exited about the city. But that has probably to do with the fact that in general I'm not a big fan of cities. Just before arriving in Prague my friend decided to open the front window on top of the camper while I was driving on the highway. I heard a big bang and she told me to stop...the window was scattered around all over the highway in a hundred pieces! Good thing we found a campervan dealer kind enough to help us out right away. With a piece of plastic and parts gathered from other cars they managed to make us a "new window"!! :) After 3 days we left the city and spent the night under a starry sky on the Czech/Slovakian border after stopping at the beautiful Unesco town of Olomouc.
Around here the scenery changes from wide open farmland into mountainous forest roads. We had to get to the eastern part of Slovakia to a town called Presov where I would join a 121k race two days later. The start was about 200m from a hostel where we had to pick up our racepack which also included a peace of paper on which we had to write down passwords that we had to find at certain points along the race. There were only about 80 people at the start that included the relay runners! At 06:00 sharp we started. 90% of the trails were permanent marked routes mostly through forest. Which means: a lot of shade, but on the other hand no views! like usual I got lost a couple of times and in the end I ran 127km instead of 121 according to my GPS. So I just missed another trophy by 10 min. The day after the race we drove to the high Tatra mountains on the Slovakian side where I would do some more running, but no race. We stayed 2 days. It was amazing! I could easily stayed a week or more.
Someone told us to stop at a little town on the way to Krakow, which would be our next destination, where they were having a folk festival. We did. It was raining and cold so we did not stay too long, but had a great meal! :) After 2 days in Krakow, where we went to a, believe it or not, dumplingfestival! we stopped in Auschwich on the way back to Slovakia. That was a weird experience! It reminded me of when I visited Hiroshima. Before crossing the border again we had lunch ( beetroot soup, a stew and dumplings) in a small village. The dumplings here are nothing like the chinese dumplings which are way better! Back in Slovakia we stopped in Banska Bystrica for lunch and a little shopping. We then continued to a little town in the middle of nowhere near the border with Hungary, where we would spend the night in an airbnb. That place was realy something! we met some interesting people in that town.
At this moment We're in Budapest. Man...What a great city! It beats Ljubljana as being my favorite city in Europe! Sooo much better than Prague! and...easy accesible trails in the Buda part of the city. :) Ok, that's about it for now...My favorite country so far was Slovakia. no real bad experiences so far! I hope we can keep it that way. Next stop retezat mountains in Romania!