Day 6 – Hungary – Romania

Friday 21st September

The first Friday of our trip began with some surprise visitors to camp, as we were all packing up and making breakfast a camera crew from Hungary’s premier commercial television network showed up to film us. It also turns out this same crew had been trying to find us in Budapest the day before but with little success. After some group shots and interviews we loaded up and headed out once more, next stop Romania!

Our first stop off in Romania was just a quickie for lunch but was an opener to say the least, from being refused service for no apparent reason through to locals spitting on our bus it showed a side to Romania that many of us were not expecting.

Once we were all loaded back on the bus we headed on to Cluj, our destination for the night and our first hotel of the trip. On route we played OzBus trivia, a game where each OzBuser had revealed an interesting and/or embarrassing about themselves and the game was to guess who belonged to each fact. This was certainly interesting and revealed many little games of info, including donkey ownership, an award winning pastry chef and one guy who had once shook hands with Princess Di!

After this pleasant distraction we pulled up at the hotel. In ordinary circumstances many of us would not have been to impressed with this place but even after less than a week on this road this seemed like luxury! The tatty showers, the hard beds, the flaky paint and the uninspired dinner choices failed to dampen anyone’s spirits. A few comfy sofas, a TV playing the rugby, electric lighting and running water made this paradise, 5 star all the way in my book! It really does make you appreciate your home comforts!

The night ended on a high and everyone went to bed happy an contented (apart from the Irish who the next morning when asked what the score in the rugby was all seemed to have conveniently dozed off before the end of match or simply forgotten).

This day was also our first OzBus birthday and I would just like to say happy birthday to her once more and hope that she had an enjoyable and memorable day x