1 Motorhome, 2 Lads, 1 massive trip: 5th October - Southern Romania & Early Bulgaria

Sunday 5th October

It’s an odd feeling knowing that we’re almost finished with Eastern Europe, it only feels like a few weeks ago that we were getting stuck in sand in Northern France, or running away from the Bulls in Pamplona (almost), but in fact it‘s been 3 months…3 bloody months!

Well, we now find ourselves right on the edge of Europe in Bulgaria; and here’s how we got here from Northern Romania.

Before venturing to Bran Castle, to visit Dracula, we made a few stop offs. Our first one came in a town called Sighisoara, which we visited only because our road map claimed it to be a ‘place of interest’, and our second being in Brasov - around 170 kilometres from our last city Cluj-Napoca. We spent 2 nights in Brasov which is pleasant and peaceful by day, and lively by night. The city is centred upon the large square, which is home to what appeared to be half the worlds population of pigeons - perhaps they all moved here when they were banished from Trafalgar Square a few years ago. A pint of beer in one of the local bars cost 6 Lei (£1.20) which made a hell of a nice change from paying the equivalent of 9 Euros for one pint in central Switzerland.

Brasov is only a short drive to Bran Castle, which I must be say was a huge disappointment. We were travelling there expecting a superb structure on top of a large hill, but in fact found quite the opposite - yes, a meagre building on a mound, but they were still charging an entry fee of 10 Lei. The cheek of it! We didn’t bother going inside as it would have taken around 5 minutes to explore the whole building, which we weren’t that impressed with anyway to be honest. There was a large market at the foot of the mound which we stumbled across, but unfortunately this was quite as disappointing as the castle itself. All the stalls sold were Dracula tat. Dracula hats, Dracula t-shirts, Dracula mugs, Dracula water pistols, Dracula pens, Dracula masks… all absolute rubbish which wouldn’t be good enough to use as fuel for a bonfire. Needless to say we didn’t stay long and later that evening we made the 160 kilometre drive to the Romanian Capital, Bucharest.

Bucharest was nothing like I’d expected it. Everywhere we’d travelled so far in Romania was deprived and run down. Stray dogs wandered the streets, beggars were commonplace and the whole country seemed somewhat underprivileged - however, Bucharest couldn’t be more different. Let me tell you know, it is a very, very rich place indeed. Mercedes and Ferraris whizzed past at 100mph, and important looking men and women waltzed along wearing ex

pensive Armani suits - it’s almost as if there is actually money in Romania but all of it has fallen on the capital alone, which notably is not a tourist town, but simply a place of work for the masses. This doesn’t mean it’s not a fine place to visit however, in fact there are some stunning buildings and plenty of good bars, it just isn’t your typical tourist location like Budapest was, for example.

We parked right next to the Hilton Hotel, which is in a fantastic central location for exploring the city, perfect for Motorhomes and only cost 8 Lei for the day, and they didn’t mind us staying over night. You’d have to arrive in the evening as we did though, as during the day it’s too busy for a Motorhome to manoeuvre easily but it starts to empty as the workers go home at around 6pm. We decided again to ask at a Petrol Station to hook up to their electricity, and the gentleman (who spoke perfect English) was more than pleased to allow it, and told us we could stay all night if we wished! We didn’t need to, but it was very kind of him to offer, and of course this allowed us to recharge all our batteries before moving towards the Black Sea.

We left the Petrol station in the evening, and were too tired to drive anywhere far so we parked up for the night in a Carrefour/Ikea Car Park which was colossal so nobody asked us to move on. However, what we didn’t expect was to be woken up at 8am by the sound of knocking and shaking at the Motorhome. I was instantly up (I’m quite a light sleeper, I think I get it from my Dad) and woke Mike up as soon as I knew what was going on. I looked out the window and saw it all in the shadow from the street lights. “Mike, wake up, there’s someone on the roof.” “What the….” was the censored version of the reply I received. We were a little concerned obviously so ran outside straight away to find the culprit a small child, who witnessed two extremely tired Englishmen gifting him with shouts of anger and orders to get down. He was only a young guy, and clearly homeless too (there are many throughout Romania) so when we realised this the shouting subsided but he still ran away as fast as he could after climbing down the steps at the rear of the Motorhome. After a quick inspection, what he was doing was trying to steal our bikes which are housed on the roof; all the ropes were untied and the top bike had been moved as if he was prepared to throw it to the ground which would have no doubt rendered the bike useless anyway. Looking back it was quite a funny event, but if I’d have lost my bike I’d have been fuming - so I’m just thankful I woke up in time to scare away the little scoundrel.

This wasn’t to be the end of our troublesome events in Romania unfortunately. Later that day we drove along the number 3 main road towards the city of Constanta, but we didn’t make it. A

fter crossing the River Danube just before a town called Cernavoda, our rear right side tyre burst and we came to a sudden halt on a roundabout after just exiting the Motorway. Although we were frustrated at this, we suddenly realised how lucky we had been. If that tyre had burst just a few minutes earlier when we were doing 65mph on the Motorway, who knows what would have happened?

We were stranded on the side of a busy roundabout, so we knew we had to act quickly and instantly got out our warning triangle, traffic cone, fluorescent jackets (by this time it was late at night), torches and relevant tools for what we thought would be a simple tyre change. It turned out to be anything but. We’d managed to change the tyre without incident, in about 15 minutes, but it was ensued afterwards which caused us problems. As we went to drive away again, the wheel appeared to be locked

and we couldn’t move, we could reverse about half a foot but that was it. We were sure we’d done everything right but not being mechanics, we had no idea what the problem was. We tried looking and fiddling for a few minutes in the hope that something would give, but to no avail. We had no choice but to walk in the dark of night to the next town, which was Cernavoda, and seek help. By some miracle, the first person we came across spoke perfect English. “What do you need?” he asked us. We weren’t exactly sure, so all we said was a telephone number for a breakdown service, but instead he kindly offered to drive us back to the Motorhome to inspect the problem first, which we accepted. He made a few telephone calls to a mechanic friend of his, but by this time it was very late, gone midnight, so nobody could come out. We tried to take the wheel back off, but one of the bolts was stuck; no matter how hard we tried it just wouldn’t budge. We had no choice but to try and get some sleep by the side of the road, and our new friend (whose name is Adrian) said he would come back in the morning and bring along the mechanic and try and get us sorted. We were extremely grateful for his generosity and we exchanged telephone numbers so we could meet up again the next morning. What we

didn’t expect was for him, half an hour later, to return with a basket of food and drink for us, including hot Pizza, Cheese, Bread, Fruit, Milk, Orange Juice and Chocolate! We hadn’t asked for this at all, but we were absolutely touched by his kindness - it was probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for us - especially someone we had only known for about an hour!

To cut quite a painfully long, tedious story a little shorter than I could make it, Adrian’s assistance was incredibly helpful, and his Mechanic friends were able to sort the problem, which was partly (or perhaps, completely) our wrong doing as we’d used the wrong bolts for the new wheel. We’re stupid English kids, what can I say?! We were only charged 30 Euros for the mechanics time - I can’t imagine how much it would have cost in the UK - which we were more than happy to pay. What is more important than getting our problem solved however, is that we have made a fantastic new friend in Adrian from Cernavoda. We swapped email addresses and he was even keen to hear about our travels, so I gave him the link to this blog. The compassion he showed to us that night was invaluable as it saved us having to call out what would have been an incredibly expensive Breakdown company, and if you are reading this now Adrian, we are very grateful. Thank you!

As I write this, we are currently parked up at yet another Petrol Station (a ‘Shell‘, this time) hooked up to the mains. I absolutely recommend this to all Motorhomer’s travelling in Eastern Europe. It’s exceedingly helpful and, as we’ve experienced, if you ask nicely the staff are more than happy

to allow it. The station is located in the Bulgarian town of Razgrad, in the North of the country. We’ve just spent a pleasant few days in the coastal town of Varna, where a pint of local beer cost 2 Leva, which is the equivalent of, wait for it, 70 English pence! 70p a pint! Well it seemed wrong not to have at least three... at least I think it was three!