So, the last time I wrote, we were having a lovely time with George's cousins. Now we're back to the life of grime and sore legs. Although, we've been pretty lucky again. The first night after leaving Vienna, and after a fleeting visit to Slovakia, we were back in southern Austria. The rain was pouring down again, so after 129km we knocked on the door of a house at the end of a dirt track. Carson answered and to our relief spoke excellent english. He showed us where we could camp and then said "but there is another option" (any other options sounded good as we weren't keen to get our recently dried out tent drenched so soon) he led us to an old dilapidated cottage that grape pickers stayed in, but was not currently in use. We jumped at the offer. Later, we went over to Carson's house to have drinks with him and his wife. They offered us showers and gave us maps and home-made shortbread. Nice.

Over the next few nights we stayed at a dairy farm in Austria (complementary milk and slugs), a cheap hotel in Hungary - the owner was impressed with my excellent hungarian so gave us a big discount (despite George inflicting our website on her - she didn't speak english), and a toothless man's garden in Croatia. We were also chased by some dogs in Slovenia and had an exciting trip around a hungarian tesco.

Now we're in Serbia, staying at another hotel with aircon, internet and breakfast included in the very reasonable rate. We're both pretty tired after packing in the kilometers (averaging 150km/day over the last 5) but it's going to get a bit tougher as we move further south over the mountains through Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece. Awch well, it will be character building I'm sure!