Die Fahrbahn ist ein graues Band

We have already driven over 2,000 miles on this trip and will probably pass 3,000 before we get home to Greater Manchester.  In those miles we have travelled on roads in six different countries outside the UK.  These countries are all in Europe but the differences in their infrastructure has been very marked.

Both Germany and Austria appear to be building new roads and repairing old ones like there is no recession and of course it may be no coincidence that in these countries the economy has remained more stable.  In Slovakia too, although many of the village roads were in a poor state, new sparkling motorways were being built so that lorries can hurtle across the country to Ukraine and Russia.

Living in Greater Manchester in 2013, we thought we had got used to potholed roads, but Hungarian roads have given us a new perspective.  The motorways we used in Hungary were good and not heavily used but many of the roads in towns and the countryside were so potholed and broken up that the bouncing of the van forced our CD player to give up and it refused to play any more music until we were back on terra firma; we soon learnt that the only way to deal with some of these roads was to weave around the potholes, stick to the middle of the road, which would sometimes be less eroded or drive on the wrong side of the road, if that surface was better.

In the Czech Republic the town and country roads were either not too bad or we had now decided that pot holes were normal.  However, the motorways were built out of concrete slabs and we bumped our way rhythmically across the country back in to Germany ... where we could mention the cobbled streets in the old DDR.

Getting older, looking back, still the fact is nothing changed at all

I visited Levoca in Slovakia 21 years ago, with a very young Matthew and Mark and loved the faded grandeur of the town square.  On that visit we arrived by bus from the Tatras and met a waitress in a cafe who spoke English and was vegetarian and helped us find a suitable lunch.  Renovating Levoca after the years of neglect since the 17^th Century was going to be a long process but I knew I would be back to see the progress.

This time we got to the town by walking along the valley from the campsite 2km away.  The campsite is terraced on a steep grassy hillside and as readers may have heard there has been heavy rainfall in central Europe that has caused floods along the Danube and so the field was muddy in places.  In adversity, campers help each other and on our last site in Hungary, we became comrades with couples from the Netherlands and France, as we sought pitches that were solid enough for a van on the otherwise empty camp site.

In Levoca, there were already two caravans from the Netherlands and a German camper in a VW and they all wanted to help us find the best pitch.  Together, we identified a suitable route through the site to a pleasant pitch only to find our 35m of electric cable would not reach a vacant connection.  After a considerable amount of discussion in various languages, I was dispatched to ask the Slovakian camp site owner, who spoke a little German, if he had a longer cable, although I didn’t know the word for cable in either Slovakian or German.

The beautifully decorated Renaissance houses in the square of Levoca are now mostly restored to their former glory, although there is still scaffolding on one of the churches in the centre and improvements to the road surface being made.  The town walls are still splendid, the cage of shame for local wrong doers is still there and there are more cafes than there were in 1992.

Campsites in Austria, Slovakia and Czech Republic

Karlovy Vary

Wolfgangsee

Wolfgangsee Romantik Camping, St Gilgen, Austria
A gravel and grass site with marked pitches on the shores of the lake.  The site has a small shop with a good choice of bread and free wifi.  The sanitary facilities are plentiful and the showers are good and hot.  Cycle routes in both directions go from the site and there is plenty of walking too.

Campingplatz Paradise Garden, Kaumberg, Austria
A pleasant and quiet site in a rural position.  The site is grassy and has a cafe and bakery.  The sanitary facilities are newish and the showers are large and clean.  There is a 50c charge for hot water for washing up.  There is cycling and walking from the site.

Camping Levoca Dolina, Levoca, Slovak Republic
A terraced site on a steep hill which would be challenging, if not impossible, for large vans, although there are a couple of pitches that vans 6-7m could access.  Hook ups may be some distance away, even with our 35m of cable, we had to borrow extra from the site.  The facilities are clean but limited; the shower heads do not hook on to the wall and you have to hold them, the toilets had very little leg room, the showers had no doors, in the Slovak style and there is only one washing up sink in the kitchen area.  The site is the nearest to the lovely town of Levoca which is about 2km away; there is a footpath or cycle lane in to the town and there are other marked paths for walking and cycling from the site.  Very little English spoken by the owner and only a smattering of German.

Camping Hana, Veverska Bityska
A friendly and welcoming site with excellent English spoken.  The facilities are clean with hot water for 4 minute roomy showers with a token.  The ground is grassy but well drained.  The site is on the edge of a village and there are plenty of walking and cycling opportunities from the site and the owners will happily provide information.  Very popular with campers from the Netherlands.

Mini Camping, Karlovy Vary
An idyllic small, grassy site with 35 pitches and a pond.  The owner spoke German and Czech, but not English.  There are only two toilets per sex and one shower for everyone, which was excellent and had plenty of hot water, there are two washing up sinks, but no hot water at these.  The site is clean and homely.  A large shopping centre is nearby and there are buses in to the town or it is a 2km walk.