Rolling
around Europe with only a compass is proving to be more of challenge than
anticipated. Our route has rocketed from Dover to Prague to Budapest with
multiple games of twenty questions, storms, a towing, a clamping, a graphitised
ally with ‘profound’ fortune tellers and into Slovakian campsites which lock
their steely perimeters around you at eleven.
We have
started trading in the tarmac roads and regular road signs for an altogether
more remote style of getting around. Our first encounter with such a place came
after we had cooked ‘tuna rice’ for the fourth night and the boys revolted.
(Tuna rice can be cooked in a variety of ways but the essential ingredients are
rice, tuna, water, salt and pepper. The deviations of it can contain chilli!)
As you can tell the spice of life is indeed ours. So having sniffed out a
concrete block of buildings with a tattered flag outside boasting of food we
immediately stopped. In the restaurant, which had no menus so I’m
unsure of whether it was one, we had hot food! This miscommunication of
lack there of is an example of how the language barrier is becoming harder and
harder. On finishing our feast the owner of the ‘restaurant’ swept towards us
with a bottle of rather potent locally brewed wine (Raki) and the visitor’s
book. Yet another interesting way to communicate! After an awkward send
off, as I Dora backed into a wall, we were pursued by an increasingly violent
storm. The lighting was a phenomenon that not one of us had witnessed before.
Simultaneously three or four bolts ripped down through the inky sky lighting up
large patches of amber. We stopped at a campsite at midnight, set up six
camping chairs in a row and gazed until Woods whimpering climaxed with him
bolting to the tent.
The picture below is from the back of the ambulance in Slovakia.
