2 Days in Hungary

Thursday, August 10th
My alarm was set for 5am today, I wanted to do a short jog in the morning before driving to the Frankfurt airport for my 9:10am flight to Budapest. Unfortunately, when I looked out the window at 5am, it was still very dark and raining hard…I made the easy decision to go right back to sleep!
30 minutes later, I was awake again to meet Manny, John, Jarrod, and Alicia at the rental van (thank goodness we had loaded the BIG bike boxes last night!). We all slept most of the drive to the airport, since I’d already seen that part of the countryside, I didn’t feel like I was missing much:)…and as soon as I got onto the plane, I did some more sleeping…and then after we got our luggage and loaded into the Triathlon vans, I slept the whole 2 hour drive to Tiszaujavros!
Backing up a little bit in my story…I forgot that I had my bike multi-tool in my rolly bag…and I tried to carry it onto the plane! Fortunately, since it’s the ONLY bike tool that I own, they allowed me to check my entire rolly bag at the gate! It was only after we landed in Budapest that we started hearing all about the arrests made in London of the terrorists plotters!! Surprisingly, all the events in London did not have an effect on traveling in Germany or Hungary…we will see how things are during the return trip…right now, people are only allowed to carry their ticket and passport onto planes in London.
The drive from Budapest to the little race town was quite long…but since I napped the whole way, it was just a bit uncomfortable. I checked into my hotel room…paying for my half of the room for 4 nights was not very painful…it came out to 16,000 Hungarian Franks, or about $81:), that’s about half of ONE night in the USA! But, then you have to take into account that I AM in a $20 a night hotel room…yikes!
I went for a nice run workout on a dirt path along a levy on the edge of town, it was sunny outside but not to hot…no matter what the temperature, getting into the pool after my run sure felt nice! There is a beautiful 25 meter pool that costs about $3 to enter and about ¼ mile from the hotel.
For dinner, I met up with Manny and Timmy…they are two and three doors down from me on the 6th floor…and we walked to a DELICIOUS Italian restaurant for dinner. I think I might have paid $8 for appetizer, meal, drink and tip. After dinner we stopped a the grocery store for some snack foods and water…I’ve been told that the tap water is okay to drink but I don’t want to take too many chances, it tastes a bit funny too.

Friday, August 11th
I’m sound asleep (which is a gift in itself on these ‘beds’) and suddenly I wake up because the TV has just turned on! So I roll over and there’s Leanda (my roommate) trying to figure out how to turn it off! She is from England and was supposed to fly from the London/Heathrow airport…but if you’ve seen any of the news, all flights there were canceled because of the terrorist threat! So she bussed over to London/Gatwick and caught a flight to Budapest…arriving around 1am and then taking the 2 hour drive…which explains why she was trying to turn off the TV at 3am:)! As soon as we got it off, we both went right back to sleep until around 10am…just in time for the free continental breakfast in the lobby!
After breakfast I went to work on unpacking and building my bike…5 minutes later, I was ready to ride:)! The bike box that Jessica Jones let me borrow for this trip is amazing…if I didn’t have to pay $500 for my own, I would buy one! Leanda and I headed out to ride and she took me down to the swim start and then we rode the course back into town. (Short version of the bike course: we swim in the river outside of town, get on our bikes, ride 10k into town, and then ride a 5k loop through town 6 times for a total of 40k). It’s very technical and very flat (my two favorite descriptive words for a bike course…least favorite are ‘hilly’ and ‘out-and-back’).
Along with checking out the bike course, I made sure to check out the town and take mental photos for myself…who knows if I’ll ever visit Hungary again! It’s NOT America, that’s for sure…there is a very strong Soviet and Communist influence about the town, cars, food, dress, etc. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON smokes cigarettes…it’s awful…I wonder if they are educated to the dangers of first and second-hand smoke?!?
After snacking in the room for lunch, I biked over to the pool for a short swim. This time I couldn’t sneak in and actually had to pay the $3…but it was worth it to feel better in the pool today than I did yesterday (I actually thought I was going backwards yesterday after all that traveling:).
Back in the hotel I grabbed a shower while Leanda got a massage. When she got back, we headed across the street for the ITU Pre Race Briefing. Nothing really exciting in the meeting: basic instructions, race course details, time schedules, etc. I picked up my race numbers and had a nice surprise…I made it into the “teens” with number 19!!! That’s the lowest number that I’ve been in a World Cup (remind you…this is only my THIRD WC and I was in the “twenties” for Ishigaki and Corner Brook:)… I hope to finish lower than my race number because that would mean I had a great race!
I’ve finally caught up to ‘present time’ and I’m sitting on my ‘bed’ and typing…unfortunately, there is no wireless internet access so I think this blog will be one massive post upon my return to Germany. I’ve got dinner reservations at 7pm with Leanda, Timmy, Matt, Haven and Manny at the Italian restaurant…chow!