Bus number 7 is going at a spanking pace!

And yes, Bus number 7 kicked off! On Saturday morning in front of the Houses of Parliament more people gathered for the flag off of the Budapest Bamako rally than on a usual anti-government demonstartion. There were no Arpad striped flags, but lovely ham sandwiches yes. We managed to hit the road after a 1,5 hour of delay. Our first stop was Szekesfehervar, where the mayor would have greeted us, as the team is partly from Szekesfehervar, if we had managed to drive in front of the theatre. We hadn’t, so while Attila was shaking hands, we just caused a simple traffic jam. On our way to the border our spirit stock seriously reduced. This happened because the heating didn’t work properly.

Most of the teams in the Budapest Bamako rally just speed through the European stage. But for us and some other crazy teams (Fiat Polski, Velorex, Ural) the adventure started at the flag off line on Kossuth square. Anything can happen to a 22 year old bendy Ikarus. That’s exactly why we chose to travel with it. It worked quite fine on the first day, it was going at a spanking pace, there was no particular problem with it. We had to stop only once, because something was too warm in the engine. Or too cold? Our top speed is 85 km/h on flat terrain and pur average speed is 60 km/h if we stop in every 3 hours. The oilconsumption of our beauty is 30 litres/100 km. On the Hungarian stage on the same distance approx. 1 litre of spirit was consumed by the 7 nondriving passangers. As for now, there’s no water in the bus. No problem, tea and coffee is better from mineral water anyhow, and having a shower is a sign of weakness. The aggregator works with petrol, and it works amazingly. There is 220V, so we immediately installed the X-box.

What can I write about the Budapest-Mestre stage? There’s a motorway leading there. The Austrian motorway is much better and a lot cheaper than the Hungarian. There are mountains on the left, and on the right, and there are a lot of Austrians. Half of the crew fell asleep in the back. In the back, where the beds are, aka sleeping unit, there’s no heating at all, but it is said that it’s healthier to sleep in the cold, and one can sober up much quicker. I can’t remember the Italian motorway. Villam Geza came in once and said hello. We reached our accomodation in Mestre by 11pm, in a completely average motel, next to a completely average Novotel. We went to have a pizza. The pizza in Mestre is better and cheaper than pizza in Budapest. We went ot bed at 1am.