This was not a goal of mine .
In fact, I had wanted our trip to L'viv to happen earlier. And it was supposed to happen earlier, to boot. Originally, my girlfriend had told me that we could go on Tuesday, the 20th. But that wound up being booked solid, and so we made reservations for Wednesday, the 21st.
Unfortunately, that also was to be our final night in Srednia Wies. I had wanted the earlier day in order to have a buffer day, if you will. A day to rest and recuperate from what I imagined - hell, what I knew - was going to be a long and exhausting day.
Indeed, it was exhausting, to boot.
Yet, we had reservations for the next night (Thursday the 22nd) in Budapest. So, while not ideal, we did what we had to do.
I woke up early the next morning, but since we were not in a rush, I was able to take small naps later on. There were still some things that needed to be taken care of, not least of which was packing. Plus, it also seemed like a good idea to enjoy breakfast and lunch in Srednia Wies. My girlfriend's mom is an excellent cook, and my son and I could enjoy one last hearty meal before beginning the last leg of our European trip.
And so we did. I finished packing. Made sandwiches for later meals, in the hopes of saving some money. We enjoyed both breakfast and lunch.
Then, we were on our way. Sadly, we said goodbye to everyone, who had been so very gracious to us on this trip, and to me also especially, as they had also taken me in back in 2013. While I was excited for the chance to explore more and see some new places and things, we left with a heavy heart, already missing Srednia Wies.
It was supposed to be somewhere between 1:30 and 2 pm when we left. But the expensive navigation system that I rented at the car rental place, and which has been nothing but a curse, causing nothing but aggravation and confusion, caused some problems, yet again. It kept refusing to recognize the address, and tried leading us to different cities and countries altogether.
I grew nervous, with a long drive ahead of me through three different countries, none of which I could hold my own in regarding communication.
If there was a point where worry closed in on panic, that was the time.
Eventually, it did finally find the address, after some finagling. Meanwhile, something even better, albeit unexpected and surprising, happened. My old cell phone, which I have used for the GPS for a long time now, suddenly had a connection after I plugged it into the car. We were really in business, and left Srednia Wies maybe around 10 minutes after 2pm.
Finally, we were really on our way.
The countryside we passed was unfamiliar, but beautiful. A mixture of farms and fields with wooded hills and rivers abounded.
Then suddenly, in probably less than one hour, we crossed into Slovakia.
I noticed road signs in Slovakian, Polish and in what I presume was Ukrainian, which was a level of graciousness that, truth be told, was absent in Poland, regarding Ukrainian signs.
At first, we passed through small villages, one of which had a road named after American artist Andy Warhol. Strange, but true. However, we did not stop or explore much.
Again, we had reservations in Budapest.
A little more than one hour into Slovakia, we saw some mountains in the distance. They were in the direction that we were going to. As it turned out, those mountains were our first glimpse of Hungary.
I began to suspect as much, once the roads that we drove through kept veering away from them, as if specifically designed to do so. Still, they gradually grew closer, until at some point, the GPS told us to make a right onto a tiny bridge. We made that right, and unexpectedly left Slovakia. Had we sneezed, we might have missed the sign welcoming us into Hungary.
I noticed the time. It was about 4:45pm or so, give or take. Maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later. But it had been about three or so hours since we had left Srednia Wies, Poland.
And I remembered how we had wrapped up our visit to L'viv, Ukraine, at around 4:10pm the day prior. By around this time just one day before, we had been leaving L'viv, and traveling through the Ukrainian countryside.
Hungary was our fourth country in less than 24 hours.
Unexpected, but a kind of cool fact.
But we had reservations in Budapest, and still had quite a bit of driving yet to do.
And miles to go before we could sleep.
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