Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Welcome to Hungary

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Welcome to Hungary

Hungary is not a new country for us. We were in Budapest for a few days in September of 2012. But at that time, we were only in Budapest and didn't really see much of the countryside. Unfortunately we're not spending much time in Hungary this trip either... just two nights as we cut across into Slovakia.

We got up early Saturday morning so that we could go for another wander around the town of Oradea, Romania.

Oradea is definitely a city we could return to.

Beautiful architecture.

And, a beautiful day... nice blue sky and a high of 24C (75F).

Central plaza.

Nice parks.

Old apartment building.

This church is surrounded by an archeological site.

We did a quick walk around the Oradea Fortress, dating back to the 11th century.

Walking back through downtown.

We had found some inexpensive wine that we like, so on our way out of town we stopped at a Lidl grocery store to pick up a few things and the wine was 9.5 lei for a two liter bottle. Both red and white. That's 4.75 lei ($1.30 CAD, $1.00 USD) per liter! I doubt you could buy a liter of water in Canada for that price. Have we mentioned that we love Romania?!

And then we headed for the nearby border.

It was very strange to see a lot of gas stations on the Romania side of the border. I guess it's possible that fuel used to be cheaper in Romania, but with fuel at least 25% cheaper in Hungary right now it would make no sense for anybody crossing the border in either direction to be buying fuel on the Romania side.

Approaching the Romania exit.

And entering Hungary.

Entering Hungary was fairly busy. We waited in line for about a half an hour. The border people were friendly, smiling, and joking around. They only seemed concerned about if there were any undeclared passengers. They had a quick peek inside Max, and didn't even look in the storage compartment.

We drove about 20 kms (12 miles) into Hungary to find the first available fuel station. A bit of a line up with mostly Romanian vehicles filling up with cheaper fuel.

Max was pretty much empty, but I didn't fill him up in case we find cheaper fuel further from the border. We will top him up again before exiting the country. Diesel was 479 forints ($1.67 CAD, €1.24) per liter. About $4.88 USD per gallon. That will get us through Slovakia and into Czechia where we will top him up again before getting into the more expensive countries of Germany and Denmark.