From the European luxuries to the Balkan fields

Sunday August 11, Long way up, again… (816 kms)
At the breakfast room we meet another Greek guy.

Efthimis, with a GS800, is getting ready for a Balkan Tour. We share some information (last year I did the same route that he wants to follow), then we attack the breakfast buffet, load our bikes and we are ready for Bratislava.

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Today the route includes hundreds of completely boring kilometers on an endless highway. Two things get my attention in Serbia… On Sunday the roads in Belgrade are empty …

The highway from Belgrade to Hungary borders is now completed by 98%. Only the bridge over Danube river has not finished yet.
The road is very boring but we are moving fast covering lots of kilometers. Soon we arrive at the borders with Hungary. There isn’t much traffic and as we are waiting at the line, we notice some custom bikes with Slovak license plates. I guess that the following one will not pass the border control…

Surprisingly, after a superficial search they let him pass. Ok, I thought, there is no way that he will pass the Hungarian control. I remember, that in the past they were even checking the motorcycle side cases!

Surprisingly again, although with a delay, due to the search, they let him pass too. Him and his “machine gun”…

As soon as we pass the borders, we buy the toll vignette (8€) and continue through an endless straight highway to Budapest. Near the capital, Dimitris, nods to me to make a stop at the first parking place. Ι thought it’s strange, since he never getts tired, so something must be going wrong. We pull over at the first gas station and he tells me that the KTM oil lamp is on. We check his oil and the level is quite low. After the engine had cooled down we added some oil and continued.

Our thought is to reach our destination and tomorrow,Monday, we will try to contact the official dealer in Greece. Soon we are above the city of Budapest οn a new (Ι think) highway, avoiding the capital’s traffic. The highway, strangely, didn’t have any signs (only some coded markings as M1, M2 etc).

Just before Slovakia, we finally exit the highway and we continue through secondary roads towards Bratislava, finally crossing the impressive bridge Apollo.

The 854 meter long bridge was opened to the public on September 5, 2005. It is named by the “Apollo” oil refinery which was situated on the left river bank in this area before World War II. Its curved lines, inclined arches and virtual absence of right angles make the geometric shape of the bridge very sophisticated. The Apollo Bridge was the only European project named as one of the five finalists for the 2006 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

We cross the empty city and park in front of our hotel Apollo. Outside the hotel looks old, but inside it’s great. Check in and we are ready for sightseeing.

The truth is that we are a bit tired, due to the ~1800 km of highway that we covered in two days. So we decide to just take a look at the commercial pedestrian street Obchodna, located north of the historical center and leave the main attractions for tomorrow.

The pedestrian street is empty, since the shops are closed, but the restaurant-brewery Mestiansky Pivovar is open and absolutely great. Delicious food and tasty beer produced by them.