The surroundings were all white when we woke up. Our room was at the rear of the hotel and as far as we could see the fields as well as the small roads had all got a christmas like snow cover and it was still snowing. Wej went to a vacant room on the other side of the corridor and took the following photo of the main road which showed to us that the cycling conditions certainly could be a lot better.

At the breakfast table we discussed the situation. The big road looked good and rideable but it is in a direction we don’t want to go. We want to go southeast towards Debrecen and the staff at the hotel told us that those roads had most probably not yet been cleared from snow.

The hotel we stayed at had three major problems that we didn’t like and that influenced our decision.

1 – A bit expensive

2 – Poor internet connection

3 – Rock hard beds

If we were to stay for an unplanned rest day we think a cheaper place would be good, a reliable internet would be very useful and softer beds a requirement. The beds in the hotel was so hard that we thought they had put a sheet on a piece of plywood. In order to get a nice sleep we pumped our own mattresses and put them on top of the beds. We will happily sleep on those mattresses in our tent later on, but why pay for a hotel and still need to use the camping equipment?

We checked around on the slow internet for other hotels and found one only 12 km away. It was 25% cheaper and that matters to us who have no income this year. The problem was that it was 6 km off the main on to a smaller road.

We took off at noon and the first 6 km on the main road was perfect. The wind was strong, but OK to ride in. There was no traffic due to a national holiday. Once on the small side road the situation changed. There were lots of snow and ice and we had to cycle very slowly and be cautios about invisible pot holes.

The place we stay at now is a lot nicer. It is cheaper, more cosy, the internet is a little bit better and most important, we don’t need to use our own mattresses.

Last weekend the forecast for the eastern part of Slovakia and Hungary looked worse than for the western part of these two countries. As you might remember I put up the question if we should take the western route through Budapest rather than this eastern route that we finally took. Now it appears that it wouldn’t have been better to go the other route. On TV they show how they use military heavy vehicles to pull cars out of the snow not far from Budapest so we are happy to be where we are. It is an experience to witness this mess from close range and the locals here are surprised. A week ago they had nice spring weather and now this.

Our friend Kalle said in a reply to yesterday’s post that he was eating shrimps as Friday night supper and asked what we had. I replied fried cheese and beer, and below you find the evidence.

We will stay the night here at our new hotel and we will decide tomorrow if we should move on or stay another day.

Yesterday we couldn’t upload any pictures due to the slow internet, so here are some from yesterday that we uploaded today.