The river Drava is the border between Hungary and Croatia
This morning's breakfast reminded my why I really didn't enjoy staying, as opposed to riding, in Croatia. The coffee was bad, the poached egg were cold, and the bread was barely edible. This is at a nice hotel! I slept pretty well till 5 am when the room got very light and got up at six AM when the sun was shining directly into my room. Tonight, in Pecs, I'm in a hot room on the west side of my hotel - three star but no air conditioning - instead of a cool room on the east side. Since these rooms have no room darkening mechanism, I'll put up with the heat this evening in order not to have the sun tomorrow morning. I love rooms with shutters so I can have both advantages, or at least room darkening curtains, but I can't find them here!
It was funny today to cross east into Hungary and feel like I was going back to western Europe. Croatia is Eastern Europe, Hungary and Slovenia are definitely Western Europe in feel, even if they have vestiges of eastern Europe, e.g. soviet style apartment buildings. Pecs, where I am staying tonight, looks like an Eastern European town, but the town's centrum, and even the feel of the town is definitely western. It is nice to be back in the west, even when language is totally incomprehensible. Spoken Croatian, and it is an indo-european language was the problem, not written Croatian, but both spoken and written Hungarian are incomphrehensible < grin > to me.
Hungarian sign near the border
Riding south east in Croatia, heading for Virovitica
Pecs
No bicycle sign on the start of 6 - there were lots of these along the way
Ignoring no bicycle sign, heading for Pecs
This is about as exciting as the scenery got on 6
Until near Pecs when you can see the big hill, in the middle of the plain
Pecs is at the bottom of that hill
When I got into Pecs, I stopped at a hotel - no tourist info place here - to ask about internet access. The fellow there was very helpful. I followed his instructions and rode into the Centrum - the center of the old town - and found what seems to be a very good place. I took a hotel room nearby and I'm rushing to finish this so I can take it, and three other reports, down there on floppies. Hopefully I'll be able to upload tonight. It is silly to waste so much time and energy on internet access, but if I don't do it tonight, it may be several weeks before I get another chance. I should be in Romania in two days, then I'll decided on my routing for the rest of the tour. It will include the High Tatra's, Krakow, Prauge, Dresden, and Hamburg, but beyond that I'm not sure. I have about four weeks left before I fly out of Frankfurt. I may spend up to two weeks of that in Romania, or I may head north much sooner.