Monday courtney had her first drive. So it’s cool, she’s a bit jerky in first, but now we all get to drive a little less.
And she got us to bucarest.
So now it’s almost June, and we had some difficulty finding a hostel. From fully booked, to shut down, to plain abandoned, finally just as the sun was setting, we found a nice pension.
A local meal and few beers in town and we were done for the day.
Romania isn’t anywhere so crazy as I remember from when I was a kid. I can’t judge bucarest based upon a few beers on a Monday night, but friendly people, cheap food, drink and accomodation along with a pinch of character make it a cook destination.
So early rise yeasterday, Tuesday, a I take to the driving seat, destination Belgrade. We’ve heard great things from other travellers.
After an hour on the nice highway, we veer off towards criova. I was following a navy passat, and suddenly a young police lady pull both of us over. At first it seemed that she was pulling over several cars as a routine check. But she came over to my window and said, well I hadve no idea because I don’t speak Romanian. So I ask if as speaks English, and unfortunately she says yes. No doubt my faces slumps. So supposedly I was clocked doing 93kmh in a town, 50kmh limit. What with her pulling so many more people over, writing tickets, we wait for a long 20 minutes. All the while she has my documents, and the car documents, and I’m a little worried about the possibly outcome. But she comes over with a report, and asks me if I have any objections. What can I say but “no”. So she tells me to write ‘I have no objections’ gets me to sign and she says “I am nice, no?” so I tell her she is lovely. And we are free once more.
2 hours of driving through the interesting Romanian countryside, strewn with Roma camps, giant industrial cities in decay, and green rolling hills, and we make of to the border crossing over a massive dam.
As i drive to the passport control, an old man starts screaming at us, so I pull aside. He asks for “Romanian tax? Vignette?”, to which I tell him that we were never sold such items upon entry. These first two questions were the bulk of his English vocabulary. With much arguing over the cost, mainly due to the fact that we were staying in Romania for just 20m longer, we agree to pay. What choice have we? The whole form process takes almost an hour. Then we have to wait while somebody is found to convert our euros, as she had no more lei, leaving the country.
So we follow some Dutch in an audi to the eu passport control line (did I mention that we have not been anywhere on our roadtrip and not found Dutch people???). So I present the four passports, and upon request car documents. All well apart from my passport. After 15 minutes looking at my picture, (I felt like a westerner trying to leave berlin before the wall came down) and he disappears off with all passorts. We have a friendly guard chatting to us in french putting us at ease for a few minutes, but things didn’t look too good. Then left alone at the border, stuck in place by a big gate, we make jokes to ease the situation. Maybe 30 minutes later every boarder guard come out and we are told to get out and empty the van. We don’t know whether they were making calls or just eating lunch. But the even checks inside the engine. Out came a sniffer dog and alex says, “let’s hope me or my dad never lost any hash in the van” great way to relieve the stress! So nothing found and finally we can drive away, across this enormous dam.
So at the Serbian border there are a couple of friendly guards. All passports fine, no need for visas, and we show the car documents. So a few countries back we had found out that the green card that alex’s dad left in the van was for the old set of plates, causing us trouble at borders, resulting in having to pay for locals insurance for entry into countries. Alex’s dad had emailed a black and White scan. So they say “this is not original document” to which we plead that we have original in France, and will only stay one day. But stubborn as vomit on a White wall, we were refused entry to Serbia. No Belgrade, no bragging about visiting Serbia today, and no acdc concert!
Back to the Romanian border, I am thinking about what if we don’t get back into Romania? Call the British embassy?
They look at us and say “why are you back?” an lost for a new excuse we tell them the truth. Well that worked, not!, and they say that we can’t enter into Romania on those documents. So now what? I guess they dicided that we can’t be left in ‘no man’s land’, we promise to drive straight to Hungary, no stops, no collecting 200 lei.
Free at last
We ended up stopping here in timisoara, ‘little Vienna’. It’s nice, cheap, camping, cute town, and girls to match.
I’m sat in the sun, one arm covered up due to getting burned on my left arm, driving yesterday, waiting for the others to wake up.
We hope to gain entry to Hungary today, and get to lake balaton. Fingers crossed!

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