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Tuesday, August 20th - Gyor to Budapest, 9450 km
It’s another early start this morning, with a light breakfast at the hotel and exchanging money in a bank before setting out. Gyor is a small city, probably the size of Victoria or Windsor, so it doesn’t take more than 20 minutes to get beyond the worst of the morning traffic. Highway 1, the road that brought me into Gyor, continues on to Budapest, but it swings north to follow the edge of the Danube, at least for almost the first 50 km. This is a less direct route than the expressway, and it doesn’t pass through any major town, so the traffic in much lighter. There is a bit of a crosswind for part of the morning but it is quite light. The weather remains dry and sunny, and not too hot, rather like a Vancouver summer without the ocean.
Gyor is set back several km from the Danube. The road angles towards it gradually. It takes an hour to get to the first town on the river, Gonyu. The road only stays beside the river for 10 km, then moves away from the river for 15 km before returning to it at the town of Komarom. I stop for lunch around 12:30 in the town of Sutto. I just ate food 
from my bags that I had purchased in Gyor, sitting in a park near the main square.
Back on the road, I continue eastward through the towns of Labatlan, Nyergesujfalu and Tat before the road turns away from the river just before the city of Esztergom. From this point the scenery becomes more interesting as the road passes through a
valley between two sets of hills on either side. I have to do a little climbing here and there, but nothing significant. It occurs to me that the terrain has been pretty easy on me since I was cycling through the hills of central Germany.
I am away from the Danube for forty kilometres before descending into Budapest. The late August light is steeply in the west by the time I arrive in the city. I cross the Elizabeth Bridge from Buda, the hillier west side, into Pest, the flat main part of the city east of the 
river. The evening post-work traffic is still fairly heavy and the tourist office is still open by the time I find it. They give me a list of hostels, and recommending one to me that is on the Buda side. The ones on this side are mostly full but they call ahead for me to ensure there will be space.
I ride south to the Lion Bridge, referred to as such because of the statues of lions on either side. It is the oldest bridge across the Danube and has the most character. Its real name is the Szechenyi Chain Bridge. It is ideal for pedestrians and cyclists, having been built before the age of automobiles.
The hostel looks like a university dorm. In fact it is, as I am told by the handsome, dark-eyed butch at the reception desk. It is only open for the summer when
most students are gone, meaning that it is only be open for two more weeks before school resumes, my first reminder that the good weather will soon be gone. The desk clerk’s name is Lazlo, but he says his friends call him Beno, and he prefers me to call him that. I find my room, which I will share with only two others, and clean up. I have dinner in the cafeteria and then return to the front desk to chat with Beno again.
He has the television on behind him, and given that his English is good, I ask him what has been happening today with the Russian coup. He says tensions have been building all day as troops loyal to Yeltsin and the Russian Federation and many Muscovite volunteers have built barricades around Moscow’s White House, the seat of the Russian parliament, preparing for the inevitable attack by the forces controlled by the coup. A bloodbath was expected but shortly after the coup forces began to assemble the attack has been called off and no one is sure why.
It must be an anxious, exciting time for Hungarians, I suggest. Beno half agrees. They can’t succeed, he insists. The people cannot be made to go back now that they have tasted new freedoms, he explains. They are at the barricades ready to give their lives, which is an image central to Bolshevik mythology, only now the oppressors are the Communist supporters themselves. I ask what it was like here in Budapest two years before when the communist government fell. We had been working on their demise for several years, he tells me. Beno is a grad student now, but he has spent seven years at the Budapest University. For four years he was involved with a campus program to bring in visiting speakers from the West to help fuel the spread of non-communist ideas, and sow the seeds of revolt. In two weeks he will begin his last year of Grad School.
I spend the evening talking to Beno and watching the news in the lobby with the other patrons. The excitement of today’s news and the exertion of the long ride has tired me out. I am not up to crossing the river again to look for a bar or a night club.
PHOTO 1: Gyor market street
PHOTO 2: bike path along the Danube
PHOTO 3: rape crop
PHOTO 4: valley leading to Budapest
PHOTO 5: village near Budapest
PHOTO 6: Parliament buildings, looking towards Pest from Buda
PHOTO 7: downtown Budapest (Pest side)
PHOTO 8: Grand Blvd (Pest)
PHOTO 9: early evening view of Buda from Pest
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