Early rising, leaving by eight o’clock. Leaving the Danube behind me, which I crossed at least three times yesterday, brought me to the Austrian border.
A quick stop at the tollboot, where the friendly lady sold me tickets for Austria, Hungary. Slovenia would have been an other option, but I do not need those, as I do not cross that country.
Nineteen euro for a whole month, and another eight and a half euro for a week. One ticket ‘to stick on the front window’ like in the old days, and another for Hungary electronically, based on the introduced number plate.
Even here progress does not stop, but it is still a long way from the system that is introduced at Dartford Crossing the Theems in England where numberplates are read automatically, and you have time up until midnight of the next day to pay your debt via the Internet.
After a two hour drive on the motorway, a cup of coffee at a little rest-stop, where they have wifi, which permits sending a couple of urgent emails.
Which reminds me that I do have to write a blog article about Apple and it’s Ipads guiding the way to the future in the it-world. In a way that the subject of my speech: ‘Living in a world without Microsoft’, which I held now some twenty years ago, is becoming more and more relevant.
The Hungarian border. I check at the tollgate, if I need a windscreen ticket, but no. Again a nice lady, who spoke to me in what sounded like Flemish. She even understood the question I asked her about the distance to the Romanian border. She scribbled on a piece of paper: 400 kilometers. This has to go in one trip, because I don’t like to exchange my euro into forint. I pulled to the side at a MacDonalds. They are great, because they offer free WiFi, without hassle like for instance in Germany, where you have to register via a website, to receive a text message on your mobile phone with a code embedded for one hour of free WiFi. They promise you that they will not misuse your phone number, which is OK. But they do know, by the way, which phone numbers are related to phones that do not yet have 3 or 4G, or whatever other data connection. But as long as they serve also Belgians with a free hour wifi, it is fine withe me.
No hassle with MacDonalds, even not to go to the toiletrooms. No paysystems that set you back 50 or even 70 cents, in exchange for a discount of 50 cents on a cup of coffee. 70 cents: that accounts for 28 former Belgian francs, for a pee. In the old days, for such an amount, you could get a ticket to get into a dance party, by way of speaking.
More on this trip later….
