"You should blog" they say....

After our clock adventure, we headed out of town on to our next destination. Striving to make it to the beach party in Romania. However, just a few short miles outside of Prague, we stopped for gas and noticed that the car was steaming. Uh, oh! We pulled it over to the side and decided to sleep for an hour and let the car cool off. This is when we discovered our radiator hadn't been flushed out, probably in years. After letting it cool down, we topped it off and went on our merry way.  As we watched the temp guage climb again, we knew we'd have to stop and flush the radiator. Luckily, at our next chance to stop, we met up with the Haggis Hunters (another rally team having the same issue) and the two teams enjoyed ice cream and synchronized radiator flushing.  We hadn't really gotten to know any teams yet, so it nice to caravan for a short while with these guys.   We even got in their video!
(The pic below shows their one and only map!)

The Haggis Hunters, glorious in their kilts!

Moving on, we knew wed have to make up some time, so we pushed on all the way through the czech republic and into (and out of) Slovakia - since we did this at night, i still have no idea what that country looks like. We pushed toward a tiny Hungarian town called Gyor.  Tired from all the driving and from sleeping outside for 3 nights in a row, we decided to splurge on a cheap hotel.  İ found one via Map.me (which i highly recommend if you're roadtripping without internet) and we headed straight to it, arriving around 11.  İt was a charming, rustic hotel with only a few rooms and lots of character, just the kind İ love!  The hotel clerk spoke a little english and we had the most surreal conversation as we checked in.  

Sunflower fields everywhere!

John and İ have been pretty good about taking our time and speaking with the locals, despite language barriers and our fatigue. But this one pushed us to the limit.  The conversation started innocently enough... "Where you from?", " where you go?", etc. Then took a dark turn once we mentioned we were doing this to raise awareness about violence in families.  He asked, "what should do with men who hit"?  Our answer was common....his, not so much. He mentioned something about imprisonment, torture and death. This tall, lanky, strange looking man made some comments about torture, then said " here is your room key". I've seen enough horror movies to be slightly unnerved by our check in and we definitely ensured that our door was well locked before falling asleep!

Statue in Gyor

Luckily, he was all talk and we enjoyed our first good night's sleep of the rally.   The next morning we took a quick jaunt around the cute little town of Gyor, picked up some needed items and sent a few postcards.  Then back into the car and onward!