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(TGA) - We are coming to Hungary to visit our daughter at CEU. We are going to do some driving in Hungary, south Poland and Czech republic. Do we need a GPS? do you recommend one that works well in Eastern europe?
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To save time and stress it might be an idea to use one, but they are expensive to hire, I believe. I drive regularly in Hungary, away from the beaten track signposts can be, how shall I put it, variable. I have no doubt the other countries are the same.
If hiring a car in Hungary, make sure it has the Matrica, a kind of road tax which you need to drive on Motorways: most hire cars are now sullpied with it, but check. From memory you also need this in the CR, (you should be able to buy it at the border), and Slovakia, which I suspect you will also drive through.
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I'd say signposting in Hungary is excellent especially if you compare it to other countris (like Italy)
If you would normally use a GPS anywhere else then you should also use it here. I personally use maps all the time but I love maps (I have one map with me right now just to "read" it if I have to wait somewhere :-) ) and also if I'm not in a hurry I love to get lost and end up exloring places I never intended to visit originally.
But this is not what you asked... so to wrap it up: wheter or not you want to use a GPS is a question only you can answer. Good maps are available at petrol stations and signposting is good.
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One should try getting anywhere in NYC relying on highway signs! They pretty much all refer only to route numbers that no one in NYC has ever heard of (who in the world knows that the Brooklyn Queens Expressway is I278???), and to directions that no local has any real feel for (is Queens North or East of Brooklyn???).
So Budapest roads are a pleasure for me by comparison as CoqueBP says.
We have been evaluating whether to provide GPS units for our apartment guests for the past two years, and have ruefully decided not to for several reasons: first, the current disruptions in traffic rules occasioned by the widespread street and metro and bridge construction projects (which change inner city traffic on what feels like a daily basis) don't really keep current on either TomTom or Garmin. Second, the sights and restaurants listings don't line up very well with my own sense of what to recommend. But most importantly, our guests who have brought GPS units (either for their car or to walk around with) have uniformly said that they found them unhelpful within the city.
So that leaves the question whether one should have one for the longer haul trips, and I would say that Coquebp nails it: if you se gps elsewhere you'll want it in Central Europe. I would take it one step further ... and that step is both a plus and a minus:
The thing about gps is that as coquebp suggests, it more or less makes you switch your head into gps mode and away from map mode ... you either follow the commands and ignore the map, swiftly getting disoriented from map position, or you follow the map and ignore the gps display and have a hard time reconnecting the two.
If your drive will take you to any locales that are not major cities and not near any of the larger highways (for instance, we went to the High Tatras in Slovakia not long ago), the GPS route may well take you over terrain and roads that (a) are barely recognizable as roads at all -- rutted dirt terrain and (b) are not on any of the major maps and you are totally lost and unable to disentangle yourself from the GPS' choices. We kept following instructions, and they worked, and it was indeed much shorter in terms of distance and perhaps even somewhat shorter in terms of time, but it took a couple of years off my life in terms of stress level. On the other hand, the map was pretty close to useless once we got to the area of the small town we were visiting and the GPS took us where we needed to go.
So it helped and it hurt, in more or less exactly the same ways that make me ambivalent about it in the USA.
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Everyone is different, some people can use maps, others prefer gps...and others still can't use either :o) Personally I like to use both. If travelling somewhere new I check out the map first to get a feel for where I'm travelling to and then punch it into the gps. When guests visit us I always tell them not to follow the gps instructions if the are in a hurry as they invariably take the highest road in Hungary over the Matra. A quicker route keeps you on the M3 for a little longer.
I definitely wouldn't hire a gps from a rental company as you could buy one outrght for the same as a week's rental and it's yours to keep. I couldn't recommend a particular brand however. Just make sure that if you do buy one it has "street level" maps of central/eastern Europe rather than just major roads.
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