//Day 10 /21-03-22 /Kecskemét-Szeged

I doubt that Hungary, the Hungarians  and I will ever become friends.

The landlady of the pension where I stayed  last night was the exception of the rule on how I experienced the Hungarians the last week, she was  ; warm, interested, communicative, a visible ‘joie de vivre’ and a look to the broader world. I’m aware that it is not possible to build a correct view on people and a country based upon a brief cycle trough of a couple of days. I decided to run  a little test today to investigate the Hungarian social skills: I waved and said hello to every person I met - Roughly 75 % ignored me, 20 % actually looked me in the eye but did not give any further reaction and 5% waved back, or said hello - the test population was more then 100 people, with a mix of women and men. Rest my case.

But it is  not only the people, it is also the landscape ; monotonous, flat, little or no trees, grey-brownish, crossed by electricity lines, straight lined roads, empty streets, …Except Budapest, with it’s buzzing centre, all other cities I visited seem to be barren of any pleasure, frivolity or cityheart.If renovated it is as the aim was to included it in the Faller miniature product collection ; clean but without any soul. 

My plan of today was to avoid the regional road between Kecskemet and Szeged by following smaller, often unpaved roads. Not that I wanted to take unpaved roads, but anything smaller than the regional road (M5) and the highway is just not paved. I learned quickly that the unpaved roads are very difficult to cycle ; the soil in the region is sand, so the unpaved roads are  like sandpits (certainly now when it didn’t rain for some time) which are  similar to ride on as to ride on rice ; at te moment you turn left or right the wheels slide away. In addition the unpaved roads did sometimes stop although the map indicated that it would not stop. So after riding around 15 K unpaved I decided to head back to the regional road…

The regional road was not as busy as expected. A new highway some kilometers parallel to the regional road has absorbed most of the traffic since a couple of years. The highway also absorbed all the related traffic business and forced the closure of most of the petrol stations along the regional road. 

30K before Szeged I joined EuroVelo route 11 and a silk paved cycleway. Asfalt as smooth as babyskin.I kicked Black Horse into turbo and galloped with an average of 26 km/h towards Szeged.

I checked in into a hotel where I could securely park my bicycle and made a walk around the village (see the beginning of the post) and visited the local newly renovated museum which had a mix of 19th century paintings, stuffed animals and craftsmanship objects, but no soul on display.

As mentioned in my previous  post Szeged is the 3rd largest town of the country, known for paprika and Goulash. I asked the hotel reception if there was any restaurant to taste good goulash and the answer was that she could not recommend any restaurant. I also did not encounter any restaurant this afternoon where they seem to serve Goulash, except if it had a hamburger or chicken in it….Tomorrow I will leave Hungary for Romania to head to Timisoara.The Balkan. 

Lessons learned 

• Sand equals Ice. 
• No goulash to be found in the city of goulash. 
• I do not think I will ever visit Hungary outside Budapest again
• There is a very friendly pension landlady in Kecskemet.

Song of today : Where is my love - SYML