“We got an American car, with an German engine, surrounded by Italian spaghetti.”

- The line Per used every time we showed off our car and engine. It worked perfectly!

Waking up in Budapest. Rushing off to breakfast and on to the press conference. We made Hungarian TV + quite a few newspapers - hopefully we will get a link to the spot we are on. The hearse and we where getting a lot of attention. Making new friends that will be struggling with us trough the desert. I specially want to mention Attila a Hungarian that is going to drive a Zastava the east European version of the Fiat 500. He helped us out a lot trying to figure out where we could fix our car. The press conference was quite a spectacle. The worlds smallest man got a lot of attention and really overshadowed us. We where supposed to follow him to some mechanic, but he probably got enough of all the attention and took off without us tailing. So we ended up following Attila to the highway and drove down to find a Norauto.

The people at Norauto gave as a rather awesome service! This even if fixing our car is not the kind of thing they usually do. Hopefully we have gotten rid of our overheating problems as we fixed a leak in our cooling system. We got a good look under the car to see all the magnificent rust that is supporting us. We also found that one of the shocks of the car had come loose - that is a thing that could cause truly serious problems. We got all that fixed.

The Norauto people did not have the parts to fix our exhaust and sent us searching for an exhaust repair shop. Armed with an address and a description of where to drive we set out on the hunt for the thick tubing needed for our exhaust. Kristian was left behind to get our GPS updated - so we missed the misdirection of Garmin. Trying to figure out the house-numbering system in Budapest was a small challenge and at some point Per said, “Turn left here”. I had a real quick glance in the mirror - saw nothing - the mirror was, as usual slightly out of alignment and almost broadsided the police. They pulled us over. They looked into our car seeing two guys in top hats and suits saying “We are, so, very, very sorry.” - they let us go with a warning to follow the traffic laws.

We finally got our exhaust fixed by the second exhaust place we got to and got back to the hotel using the good old map-navigation trick - Per complaining that I am just as bad as Garmin when it comes to navigation. It was time for a quick rest and on to the meet-and-great. Me and Per who had been standing around in garages all day watching people work had only eaten the hotel breakfast and two snickers bars from our supplies. The beer hit Per a little harder then me and he is still a bit knocked out from last night. I am hoping today will be rather uneventful (famous last words?).