Secret Soviet Statues & Giant Pumpkin Festival 🎃 Cycling Into Budapest Solo Bike Tour

Day 230. 50km (91,755kms 8yrs)

A chilly night by the lake! Uh oh – I have two more months of increasingly cold weather before I get home! But the sun shining low on the glassy lake made me hopeful for a warmer day than yesterday. I paused at the empty resort of Velence. I bet it’s popular in summer – it’s a lovely beach – but for now it was eerily quiet.

Though now no longer on eurovelo 14, I followed bike paths to the town of Martonvásár where Ludwig van Beethoven stayed and wrote “Für Elise” in Brunszvik Palace. Today, in the palace grounds the town was having a pumpkin festival with a colossal 832kg pumpkin surrounded by numerous pumpkin-themed dioramas.

Rain began to fall a few kilometres out of Érd but I made it into the Maccas just before the real downpour began. For the first time in my life I was kicked out for taking up a seat without eating (#boycottmcdonalds!) by the very friendly and apologetic security guard. He’d been lenient enough with me though that most of the rain had passed before I really had to leave.

In Tesco I tried to get a refund on the bottles and cans I’d cleared from my campsite but learned that system works by barcodes, which were long gone from these discarded recyclables. So I didn’t make a profit in the end, but tidying the lakeside is its own reward 😇

By now I was nearing Budapest so a patch of forest 10kms out was my destination. Nearby was Momento Park which holds a collection of discarded soviet era statutes. I love this stuff so had planned to visit but quickly changed my mind where I learned the entry price to the small park was 3000HUF. However at the entrance I found statues of Lenin, Marx and Engels, and the boots of Stalin which i thought was pretty good for free. Incredibly though, on investigating the huge concrete plinth which held the boots I found more brutalist artworks lying in the grass behind and an open ‘Storage Showroom’ which held yet more statues and busts of Lenin and Stalin! Absolutely stoked.

Heading into the forest now, it was still light enough that a few dog walkers were on the trails so I headed deeper down increasingly tiny paths until I found a ridge which would offer cover from even this last unfrequented path. My tent was set up by dusk and all was still in the forest as I ate dinner in the dark.

If you enjoy my vlogs, blogs, and photogs please consider joining me on Patreon 😃
https://www.patreon.com/helsonwheels?fan_landing=true

#hungary #biketour #travelvlog

Goodbye. Good morning. a chilly night, which is making me a bit nervous for the next two months of cycling. Um, I don’t know if I have enough proper warm clothes for that. Um, time will tell, but the sun is out this morning. There’s no wind, so it’s looking like a nice day. I’m only about 50 km from Budapest. I could obviously reach there today, but I think I’m going to stop um 10 km short and camp in the forest, save myself a night in the hostel, and then arrive to pick up my mom tomorrow in Budapest. If you watch my vlogs regularly, you’ll know that I always try to leave my campsite nicer than I found it. And I know that you get a deposit back on recyclable cans and bottles, so I might make a profit at this one. See it? No, that’s not a functional. It is October and that is the first evidence of Christmas. That’s interesting. The town is collecting plastic bottle tops also. No, they’re not. The gaps are too small to put any in or take any out. So it’s just decorative. too. [Music] It seems according to the sign that that is an 832 kg pumpkin. Good work. Whoever grew that there’s a Beethoven museum behind me, a hotel Ludwig ahead of me. I’m going to say that Beethoven is from this town. Martinbasa Martin martas Martin in English Just in the nick of time, it’s really coming down now. First Mackers I’ve ever been kicked out of for not eating anything because boycott McDonald’s. But I think it’s because they have like a private security guy here. The actual mapping staff don’t do stuff. I’ve got a little uh couch and a we table inside the shopping center and it’s warm and there’s Wi-Fi. Uh is that a warning or a prohibition? There he is. Uh, I wanted to visit this um museum of repurposed Soviet statues, but they want a mad amount of money to go in. Unfortunately, there’s there’s a few on display outside. We’ve got Marks and Engles here. They want 3,000 Florence to go in, which is 14 Australian dollars. These boots appear to be the remainder of a Stalin statue ripped down in 1956. Martin Lennon and Stalin’s boots. Whoa. I was not expecting to be able to catch so much free stuff here. No way. What? I think I’ve broken in. It’s a storage space. It’s Len as a child, I think. It’s a pretty creepy statue. Lenin again. And it’s mad that you can visit this, but it’s storage showroom. So, I’m not breaking and entering. What an absolute result. Just sitting on some old pallets. Incredible. dog on the track. So, I’ve got to be quiet and stay away from the tracks. Um, so I can’t be too picky. This is not entirely flat, but it’s sunset in half an hour, so this is it, I think. Cheers.