Romania To Hungary - Back It Up!

I've been back for a few days now but I realized I never circled back to my 6 hour Romanian drive! It was part adventure/ part speed racer / part tour of the countryside/ part really annoying.

As mentioned, Romania doesn't have a real highway system so this was literally the road the whole way - two lanes, some fast, some slow drivers, growing through little villages.  Quite interesting.  And a mental and physical challenge with my pukey little stick shift.  Well, it wasn't a little car, but it had the energy level of a 90 year old (forgive me if you're 90:).
You'd get behind a truck or a car going super slow and you'd try to pass it - first you have to try to see around it on the two lane road that was dipping up and down and curving.  When you finally did think you saw a chance you'd put your blinker on and pull out and then TRY to speed up.  Through little choking coughs and frantic shifting and literally standing on the floor with the accelerator pedal... Maybe just maybe you'd get past the offending vehicle in enough time to miss the oncoming speeding car.  Nerve racking - but kind of speed racer exciting! :)

And then there were the random farm animals that meandered onto the roads.

And then - like the roads couldn't worst, we went from two lanes to a 5 miles detour on a one lane gravel road.  I guess technically there wasn't even a lane - it was just a random road.  No chance to pass the tanker in front of me going 5 km an hour.....

Here's another interesting little thing that I noticed.
Romania is Orthodox so all of the churches have this look to it - kind of domey and crossy.  I know I made those words up, but I think you can get the idea looking at the pictures.

And then you cross into Hungary and the churches are Catholic and have that churchy look about them.

So here's the border.  Again, because Romania is not part of the EU pact that allows open commute between borders, you go through the border patrol going in and going out.

 And if you're not from Romania, they make you pull over to this lot and they hold onto your passport and does who knows what with it while they make you wait for 15 minutes and then saunter over to give you back you passport with a heavily accented "you can go".

And then pulling out, on the other side, this is the line of trucks as they have to go in a separate lane going in than cars.  Its FOREVER!  We passed it coming in as well but it was raining and it was night so we were just trying to figure out which lanes we were actually supposed to be in for cars with non EU passports.

 And this was the best part of coming back to Hungary!  Paprika sausages! Oh my word I wish I could bring them home for all of you so - so sad!

I miss paprika sausage..... 

I miss strudel.....

I miss the Danube....

I miss Corvinus....

I miss trams....

I miss all my Hungarian friends...

Sigh