the great plain

We left budapest campsite amongst the cavalcade of austrian campers who were going south. There was a lot of waving and auf wiedersehen-ning ! Our next stop was for gasole and the local aldi (called hofer in germany and austria for some reason) for more lunch provisions. Then the drive east over the danube and on into what i discovered is called the northern plain. A vast area almost entirely devoted to growing three main crops as far we could tell from the motorway. Corn burnt gold by the sun and sunfloweres blackened by it. The wheat had been harvested and some bails were still on the fields. Others had been burnt to get rid of the stubble and some ploughed already. Where they were ploughed we noticed how black the soil was. After debrecen we were on ordinary roads and liked the signs that forbad cyclists, tractors and horses with carts ! The romanian border approached and i warned lou that the guide books reported long waits. Huh ! We drove straight through with hardly anyone else around. It was sunday, of course. The customs looked at our passports and waved us on to the 'gas' station where we bought our vignette, 4 euros. Then into oradea to find an atm. Much easier converting romanian lei into euros after the hungarian florints, 4.25 to the euro as opposed to 285. prices look so much better when not displayed in thousands !