A Visit to the Neighbours

This past weekend, I was in Hévíz, Hungary, with my mother. It was one of my Christmas presents and when she had asked me if I would fancy going there with her, I agreed, assuming for whatever reason that this town would basically be just beyond the Austro-Hungarian border. It turned out that it was much farther away and I began to stress about it weeks before. Even though Hungary is so close by and I have been to Budapest (by train) several times as well as on grocery shopping (read: hoarding) trips with my great-aunt who loved that everything was much cheaper and according to her of superior quality ("I don't get the same results baking with Austrian flour, I swear!") at the same time, it was pretty much terra incognita for me and I had an uneasy feeling driving there by car. Possibly, it had to do with the story of a Japanese colleague at Coma HQ who caused all employees to hand in their keys because he (one of the few people to be entrusted with a master key) had literally fallen prey to highway robbers on the motorway in Hungary. I don't remember all the details of the story, but according to him, he had been stopped by fake police men, who ended up taking all his personal belongings. Including the office master key...

With this and other stories (likely urban legend material) in my head, I researched a route that would have me drive a longer part of the journey on Austrian territory and cross a lesser known border that was not along the Balkan transit route. In the end, the drive was as chilled as the stay itself (I can highly recommend a visit to this area and a swim in the thermal lake - see picture above - was a highlight) and I felt embarrassed for having such stereotypes. Since I didn't get roasted on a pit by wild natives, nor robbed by bandits in the end, I am tempted to visit the neighbours again in the near future...