Discovering contours and causing crashes

Geography is important. Take the Slovak Republic as an example, there isn't a contour line anywhere to be seen. It's flat. From end-to-end, just flat. Flat is boring. It's straight roads. It's bland horizons. It's not at all conducive towards anything remotely creative. And it is, perhaps why Slovakia is so utterly crap. All the buildings, including the little houses in the villages in the countryside and square blocks, have not an angle in them except at the square corners. A splash of paint wouldn't go amiss either and graffiti doesn't count in this regard. In fact, even the graffiti is dull; it's neither creative nor colourful. Just meaningless words (admittedly, they often carried those strange adornments mentioned before), but they all in the same black paint. For heaven's sake, you just wish someone would make an effort. Then there's the main city, Bratislava, which is also crap. Call it the capital of bland if you will. Just tall, square, grey buildings. There's nothing that can remotely be described as architecture - except, of course, the Castle, which can be seen for miles before you enter the city, but just didn't seem worth the effort. Dumplings; that's the staple diet of the country. And they're dull too. Properly dull it was. Then there's the countryside; even the trees look as if they've given up trying. Not that there are many trees; just ones planted next to the road, others to partition fields. The fields appear equally demoralised by their own existence. It's not as if Slovakia is incredibly huge; it's probably about 100 miles across - but that's just too much space for so much blandness. Immediately driving into Hungary, you notice a difference. The first are the hills, right there on the horizon, not that far away at all. Then there's the houses, someone's making an effort - they aren't all the same and there is definitely an attempt at gardening going on. You can see it in there language too, they don't have to dress it up as much as the Slavs (is that what one calls folk from the Slovak Republic?) do. Sure, there's a the odd dot on top of some letters, but there are no obscure v's above every vowel. Then there's the road that heads up into the hills; it gets all curly-wurly. Suddenly there's just forest - because you can't plant fields on slopes like these. There's contours everywhere. Paulo was in his element; all that revving and braking. Lilith, who at the best of times can be described as melancholy, had been positively morose in Slovakia but didn't say much in the early part of Hungary. She might have been upset with the sudden excitement; or, admittedly, it might have been that there were no turns that she is programmed to mention as this was simply, one long - delightfully windy and hilly - road to all the way to Bood-a-Pest, as she likes to pronounce it.