Eastern Danube, Day 9: Belgrade to Budapest

Sunday, August 2, 2026

We got up extra early this morning to put out our bags for collection, but then had ample time for breakfast and a bit of lounging before boarding our bus at 9:00. We expected that there would be plenty of space to spread out on the bus, but somehow we ended up in a seat surrounded by a family group that left us little room to move.

After driving for about two hours, we made a rest stop where I was surprised to find they had Dr. Pepper in the store. It’s not a common sight in Europe.

Because our group comprised four buses, we split up to try to minimize our time at immigration. Two buses took the more heavily traveled route through the border crossing at Szeged, Hungary, and our bus and one other took a more rural crossing near Subotica.

We arrived at the border around noon. We first needed to be “stamped out” of Serbia, which took a little while. We then needed to enter Hungary, which as part of the EU had more process associated with it: first a pre-screening where they looked at us and our passports with a small camera device, and then a second screening where we were “stamped in” to the EU. Three randomly selected passengers had their bags inspected. We also had to empty our pockets and pass through an airport-style screening device. I can’t understand the reason for this, because if there was anything we shouldn’t have been carrying, we could just leave it on the bus. We finally made it through the border at 2:30.

We were told that we would stop for lunch soon after entering Hungary. But it was almost two hours (i.e., 4:30 pm) before we stopped, in desperate need of a rest stop. We all wanted to make a brief stop and continue to Budapest. However, we were told that we needed to take our time to so all the buses didn’t arrive at the hotel together.

We finally arrived at our hotel, the Parisi Utvar Hotel in Budapest. The bus ahead of us was still emptying out, so we had to sit on our bus a little longer until it left. Kenna and I planned to stay a couple of extra days in Budapest, and are pleased that the hotel was able to combine our two reservations without having to change rooms. Otherwise we were exhausted and frustrated after almost nine hours on the road.

The hotel and our room are beautiful. We joined the rest of our tour group for a buffet dinner, which was much more food than we wanted after our late lunch. We returned to our room, unpacked a bit, and crashed.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to the Eastern Danube. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.