Home via Lake BalatonDomov okolo Balatonu

The final stage of our very first bike trip aimed to get us home from Italy.

We wake up near Grado, in a random Italian village, with our tent pitched next to a playground. An Italian woman shouts something at us from the house right next door, I walk closer, and she hands me freshly brewed Italian coffee over the fence. WOW!!!

Kika is thrilled about the coffee, and we start the day full of energy - heading toward Trieste. A really beautiful city, by the way.

Past Trieste, or Terst as they call it in Slovenia, we pedal uphill toward Slovenia. As a country it surprises us with rolling hills, mountains, lakes, and generally very pleasant cycling conditions. We camp wherever we can, including on a pier by a local reservoir, which means we wake up with all our stuff soaked - turns out dew by a lake is a whole different level. Along the way we also visit Postojna Cave, a big Slovenian cave you reach by a little train straight out of Indiana Jones, home to tiny blind lizards.

A funny situation happens just before the border with Croatia. We turn off the road to look for a spot to camp, when a car slowly passes by, window rolled down. The guy looks lost, so I ask him "Hi, are you lost?" to which he replies "No, we are the Police. Where are you going?" 😀

Uh oh, I can't tell him we're going camping, that would get us fined, so I say we're headed to Croatia. It's still quite far and it's about 10pm. The guy clearly doesn't believe me, but just as clearly doesn't feel like dealing with it, so the car slowly drives off. Fifteen minutes later we run into them again, probably waiting to see if we'll set up camp somewhere. Oh well, no luck then, we have to keep going. In the nearest village we grab a kebab and complain to the owner that the Slovenian police are on our case and won't let us sleep. The guy laughs and shows us a hidden spot just a little way from the kebab place, where he says they won't find us. We sleep like the dead.

Entering Hungary we meet a nice couple with two kids who offer us a night's stay at their house, and then we reach Lake Balaton, which we rate as basically a giant version of the Senec lakes - same vibe.

Even though we're not far from Slovakia anymore, past Balaton we hit the biggest crisis of our trip, and maybe the biggest crisis we've experienced on a bike trip so far. Despite warnings from family and friends about a huge storm rolling in, we keep going, now through nighttime Hungary. In the distance ahead of us we see a lot of lightning and can hear thunder too, but we tell ourselves it's still far away.

Then suddenly, out of complete stillness, we're caught in an unbelievable storm. There's no rain yet, but this massive supercell is evidently pushing an incredible amount of wind ahead of it. And there we are in the middle of it, out in the middle of nowhere, suddenly tiny against the wind.

Then all I hear is a very loud cracking sound, and I see one of the trees in the avenue we're on snap in the middle and fall right about 2 meters in front of us. That snaps us out of our daze, we turn the bikes around and pedal back as fast as we can. Leaves, twigs, and even whole branches are falling around us, but somehow, miraculously, we manage to find shelter next door in a local grain barn.

After a few minutes of confused explaining with hands and gestures, the local workers let us sleep on the floor in their office, and even bring us chocolate.

With a newfound respect for nature, and grateful that we're still here, we finish the final stage of our historically first bike trip right at home in Bratislava.