László Varga

First I have to say I am sorry for the long time span during which my blog has been in the same state. Think this is what happens when someone goes on vacation for a week before another busy week at work.

So… where was I? Well, I went skiing. And this post is going to tell the first part of my experiences (Yuppieeee, back to posts about traveling ). In this post I would like to talk about the road to our destination: Maribor, Slovenia. About Maribor and the ski-slopes I will tell in the next part of this double article. That story requires a bit more writing and my fingers right now are not suitable for that great task… In this article I am going to talk about something much more important than the skiing itself: how to get there? (After all, there is no skiing if you can’t get to the slopes).

Since I decided to go by car, I had planned a simple route using Google maps. This is what the plan looked like:

This meant a simple drive from our sluggish roads until I got to the Hungarian highways. From there on it was a piece of cake. I must say the Hungarian highway system is quite good (so far I have tried driving on M1, M3, M35, M7 and M70). The roads are new, consequently still good and the traffic was always acceptable. What I didn’t like was the fact that Budapest’s highway-ring was… well, practically unusable: M0 has such a big radius, that it is better to use one of the inner circles and drive through the city. I also noticed the annoying fact, that after entering from Slovenia (M70->M7) if you do not buy a vignette in Slovenia, you have to drive for a couple of kilometers until you find a place to buy a vignette (basically driving illegally in that period).

After Hungary, the portion which worried me a bit was the supposed break of the Slovenian highway (A5). On Google maps it looked like this (I made a snapshot because this might change soon):

I have actually printed the map in high detail in case I got lost on the side-roads which connect the two loose ends of the highway. When I got there, surprise-surprise: the A5 was ready entirely and I just had to follow it until Maribor (shame on you Google )

A few more things about prices:
Hungary: Vignette for 4 days: is 1170HUF (€4.5 or 18RON). Despite this fact, I have payed cash at the entry in Hungary from Romania and they told me I can use RON, too. I was not paying attention to the conversion and they charged me 30RON for the vignette (nice busyness…). A small fine (like forgetting to turn the lamps on, after re-fueling and driving like that for a few kilometers): 10000HUF (~€35 – if you can explain yourself to the policeman). The gas price was around €1.14 (at a Shell pump).

In Slovenia I payed for the Vignette for 7 days €15. I did not have to re-fuel so I have no idea on fuel prices, but I am guessing a little over the Hungarian prices.

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