Three Up & East
Sunday, July 4, 1999: "Bulls Blood…"
By Donald Massyn

Route for Day 2:

Trenčín (N 48°54,503’ E 018°02,373’)

Banovce Nad Bebravou (N 48°42,268’ E 018°15,557’)

Prievidza (N 48°46,428’ E 018°38,134’)

Handlova (N 48°43,297’ E 018°44,890’)

Ziar Nad Hronom (N 48°35,881’ E 018°50,658’)

Zvolen (N 48°34,233’ E 019°07,467’)

Lučenec (N 48°20,061’ E 019°39,602’)

Rimavská Sobota (N 48°23,027’ E 020°00,201’)

Král/SK-HU Border (N 48°18,867’ E 020°21,291’)

Ozd (N 48°12,975’ E 020°15,692’)

Eger (N 47°53,364’ E 020°21,954’)

Distance covered = 335 km

Two hours later than planned, the morning arrived for my trio of travellers. I don’t know when the others woke up, but for once I was the last to see the morning sun streaming through the curtains of the Hotel Tatra in Trenčín, Slovakia.
Debbie convinced me a morning shower would do me good. I’d planned to have one the night before, but somehow between the Spanish brandy and the Cuban cigars, Mark and I had only found our way to bed at around 2am. At that time of the night a shower usually waits until the next morning.
Due to the lateness of the hour we arrived for breakfast after all the good food was gone. A free breakfast at a good hotel is not usually something rough travellers pass up easily, so we made the most of the bowls of cereal and bread rolls with cheese and cold meats that were left for the latecomers. A few snacks were also sneaked into back pockets and we were ready to hit the road again.
And then we saw the Hrad again. A Hrad for those who don’t know is a castle and Trenčín had been guarded for centuries by a towering example of the walled paranoia of generations of medieval rulers from years past; Trenčín Castle dominated the skyline for many miles around.
Walking up the steep hill to the entrance to the castle, it seemed to me that only paranoia could motivate the construction of such an impenetrable structure at the top of the mountain. I guess it’s sometimes harder for us to imagine the world being a smaller place. All those centuries ago, the king in his castle being attacked by hordes of rampaging Turks didn’t have the option of sending an ambassador to the United Nations to plea for a resolution to be passed condemning their actions. He couldn’t rely on an armada of NATO warships a thousand miles away launching barrages of anonymous cruise missiles to repel the attacking Huns. His reign was as strong as his castle walls.
The walk up the hill to the top of the castle and back down again was not easy in the morning heat, by the time we got back to our little Skoda I was longing for some good modern-world air conditioning. Amazing how the mystique of centuries past can disappear so quickly as the sweat pours off your brow.

Mark had entrusted me with the GS to lead us out of town and after a few futile words in Slovakian the parking lot attendant resorted to gestured directions to guide us out of town in the right direction. In the end it was Mark’s Garmin GPS-III that lead the way to our next waypoint. I was still getting used to the language that the GPS spoke but after a few anxious moments I had began to trust it to lead the way. Still, as we drove though the towns that had been marked as waypoints, I still couldn’t help thinking that the little black dots on the LCD display in no way compared to the reality of being there. Banovce Nad Bebravou, Prievidza, Handlova, all places could now say I’d been, and I’ve got the GPS readout to prove it.
Descending down into a valley we stopped for a drink in Handlova. Country and Western music on a Sunday afternoon in Slovakia - we couldn’t think of anything more appropriate. Mark took over the riding duties on the GS and I reverted back to passenger in the Skoda with Debbie driving. Damn him, he got a tree lined mountain pass just after we stopped, he threw out some excuse about having to drive the bike through the border but I knew he just wanted to drive the bike through the mountains.

Ziar Nad Hronom, where we stopped at the Pusty (possibly one origins of the name Pautz) family Castle for a drink of water and a WC break. Then my moment of truth. With an almost imperceptible hint of anxiousness in her voice, Debbie suggested casually, "Why don’t you drive for a while". Hmmm! Driving the bike was OK - all the controls were on the same side as my bike’s back home, just as long as I kept repeating my mantra, "Keep to the right, keep to the right" I was OK. But a car! This was going to be a completely new experience for me. They had the good sense to keep the pedals in the same order, but everything else had been moved around.
In hindsight, I think I owed myself a pat on the back. My first time driving a left hand drive car on the right hand side of the road in a country where all the road signs were in a foreign language and I wasn’t doing to badly. Sure, I’d almost wound the window all the way down grabbing for the gear lever to my left, but hey, I hadn’t hit anything… yet. Today I wasn’t doing badly, tomorrow might be another story.
Zvolen. Mark decided to head off the beaten track for a while. The Communist housing blocks we drove past looked like, well…they looked like all the other Communists housing blocks we’d driven past so far. Bathing costume bedecked Zvolenians lined the sides of the narrow road, making the long trek to some unseen swimming hole in the distance for a Sunday afternoon splash. It was tempting, but the Hungarian border beckoned to us over then horizon.
Lucenec. We stopped for one of our regular democratic pow-wow’s to decide which road to take to the border and as before, the answer was the same. We didn’t really know where we wanted to end up, so it didn’t really matter which road we took anyway! Rimavská Sobota probably won out because Mark found it first on the GPS. In the end it got us to the Hungarian border at Král, and after an unexpected smile for the passport control officer, we were in.
Magyar, that confused me straight away. Sure I knew that Magyar was Hungary, but seeing it up there on the signpost made it suddenly jump out at me. How could a countries local name be so different from its English name. In my day and a half in Prague I’d managed to pick up some basic phrases. "Ahoj" for "Hello", "Dobry den" for a more formal "Good Day" and of course that essential phrase that every biker should learn before his arrival, "Tři pivo, prosim", "Three beers, please". But that sign at the border said it all, "Magyar" - Hungarian was not a language I’d be picking up very quickly.
Mark was true to his word and handed over the keys to the GS just past the border, he’d obviously never ridden on this road before else he would have known that the best ride of the day lay ahead of us. Welcome to the Bükk Mountains…
The first part of the drive took us through to Ozd - narrow road with houses lining our path on either side - but as soon as I saw the old Trabant ahead of me blowing out plumes of smoke as it struggled up the hill, I knew the road was getting more rideable. The houses faded away behind me along with the noise of the Trabant, replaced on either side by dense green forests, natural Armco barriers on the steep twisty road up to the peak. But mostly the shade, it seemed as though the forest was forming a cool tunnel around me. Breeze blowing in my face, I raced to the top of the hill. Skoda, Lada, left in my wake. Up, up, up, almost there, tight hairpin, watch those crashbars, wouldn’t want to scratch them, another hairpin, oops, that was even closer. Would Mark forgive me? Out on top, into the open space on the plateau. Sun shining above, but the air still cool in my face, maybe from the ride, maybe from the altitude. Wish it could go on forever, but down I have to go. Scoot my butt back a few inches for better balance on the down-slope. Downhills always race the adrenaline a bit more, wonder why? Concentrate, if there’s a slow car round this next corner…it’s OK, the brakes have warmed up to operating temperature by now. Wonder where the others are? Probably still stuck behind the Trabant. Twists, turns, levels out, back in the sunshine again at the bottom of the hill, straight roads and houses. I want to turn around and do it all again. All over too quickly.
Yesterday when I’d rode her for the first time, Mark labelled his GS a slut, but she wasn’t then, she was just being a friend. Today that changed, today she’d pleased another man for the first time. I pulled over and lit up a cigarette.
Eger. Big town Eger, bigger than I thought, more a city than a town. And guess what…it had a castle. Well, it did have a castle until Mark pointed out that it was actually a fort. It also had a town square, with statues of Turks getting massacred. Across from the bleeding Turks, the town hero, a certain Mr. Istvan Dobo, hand raised towards the skies, looking for all the world like he’d just done something important.
Just off the square an orchestra was warming up for an evening performance. But the verdict was unanimous. We needed a hotel, we needed air-conditioning and we needed a hotel mini-bar fridge. Mark, the hotel hunter, set off on his trusty steed and returned with news of the Hotel Flora, a ten minute walk from where we were, right next to a mineral spa with a bar fridge stocked with some Austrian Stefl beers. How could we say no?
Debbie needed a shower, we needed a bath. Mark and I headed, towels in hand, to the pools we’d seen just outside the entrance to the hotel. Unfortunately swimming past 7pm was not an option in this town. Even the hotel’s private baths were off limits after the closing hour. We sought solace in the hotel bar. My first drink of the night was something unique to Eger. The "Bull’s Blood of Eger", something completely unpronounceable in English, it was a local red wine that tasted exactly like blood. It might occur to you, as it did to me, that pronouncing a wine to taste exactly like blood might land you in some moral dilemma. "If it tastes like blood, then you’ve obviously drunk real blood before". This is one of those situations where you just have to stick to your guns and insist that the damn wine tastes just like blood. Trust me, it did. The Bull’s Blood of Eger tasted just like blood. Don’t ask me how I knew.
Although the barmaid was unable to produce the local beer, she was quite forthcoming about the local hotspots in Eger. She knew the best place to change money, where to get the best meal in town and where the best wine shops were. It was probably no surprise to hear that she had a sister who had been to Durban in South Africa and who’d enjoyed it a lot. Life has a way of paying back favours in the most unusual ways. She also produced a lot of good local wine, which saw to it that we returned to the room a lot later than we should have.
By now Debbie must have spent a good while in the shower and in front of the TV watching the 500cc bike GP from Donnington Park in England. She obviously wasn’t too annoyed with us for returning so late because she told us who’d won the GP. The nightlife of Eger awaited us.
The red-backed-golden-arches in the centre of town beckoned us like lost travellers. Big Mac, Big Mac, my stomach kept repeating. Fortunately we were there for the local experience, so we went to the Austrian restaurant instead.
Hungarian Goulash, the one thing you can probably rely on to find in Hungary? Wrong! London has the best variety of Indian Curries, I hear San Francisco it the best place for Chinese and the Dutch seem to have a Lebanese Schwarma place around every corner. Don’t go to Hungary for Goulash, you’ll be disappointed, as I was.
After our Austrian dinner the mood suggested some more exploration of the Hungarian nightlife, but after our long day on the road our bodies suggested returning to room 242 of the Hunguest Hotel Flora instead. After emptying the bar fridge to its last few bottles of mineral water we all called it a night…and a damn nice day in Hungary.