Our budget
391,75 EUR in total or 55,96 EUR/day for the three of us.
Our itinerary
7 days (8-14 August 2022)
As soon as we got our campervan back, we drove straight to Hungary. We had barely been gone for 3 weeks, and we were already way over our budget so we wanted to go to a cheaper country.
We spent the first night in a camping not far from the border. From the beginning, we understood that communicating would not be as easy as it had so far although the owners were very nice.
The next morning we drove to Siofok on Balaton lake, stocked up for a couple of days and found a great spot, barely a 2 minute walk from the lake. We spent a nice couple of days relaxing and getting over the stress of our breakdown – swimming, playing board games and watching the sunsets.
“Lots of love at Lake Balaton”
“Lilia’s favourite: snakes and ladders”
“Sunset at the lake”
Leaving Balaton lake, we picked up a Polish hitchhiker at the petrol station. We loved his philosophy. He basically explained that he had a certain budget. He could either travel for a couple of weeks with that budget, or work more to get more money to be able to leave longer or…third option, he could just make his low budget last longer by reducing expenses: hitchhiking, sleeping in a tent, etc. I am not sure we are quite ready for that yet but it kind of resonates with our idea that we prefer travelling with less needs for a few months than spend the same amount in a two week all-inclusive package holiday.
We deliberately drove past Budapest. As much as we like big cities from time to time, we had just spent lots of time in Vienna and Prague, and really wanted to be a bit more relaxed. We can always go back to Budapest on a city trip in the future, we have to save some things for future holidays 😊
So we went to Szentendre, a town just a few kilometres North of Budapest. We cycled round the colourful village and really enjoyed the atmosphere. There were many musicians in the street, adding to the joyful scene.
“Colourful Szentendre”
“Cute street”
“The main square”
“View from the top”
“Cycling round the village”
“Local specialty”
Our next stop was Hollókö. The village is only one street, but it is definitely worth the trip. It is like a living museum, where you can observe all the crafts.
The last place we went to in Hungary is the Hortobagy National Park. We found a really quiet next to the cemetery. We saw the most spectacular sunsets two days in a row. We went on a Chuckwagon through the steppe and saw lots of animals that only live there such as grey buffaloes
Our highlights
What we didn’t like so much
To be honest, we don’t have much to say about Hungary. We really enjoyed what we did but didn’t have any “life changing experiences”. One of the reasons we wanted to travel was to meet people from different cultures. We had quite a hard time doing that here because not many people could speak English, French, Spanish or Italian and even Google Translate didn’t seem to help. Being the summer holidays probably didn’t help meeting other travellers either. We will have to give the country a second chance another time.