Word of advice, never be too keen to hand over all documents at a border. Give just your passport, if they ask for car docs then give just reg papers. The reason why I say this is the more you give them to look through the longer the border crossing will take. We spent a good hour and 15 minutes at the border as our green card was about to expire. We simply lost track of time and as a result some of our paperwork was lacking.
Eventually we were on our way,but only with a 5 day transit visa as result of simply rocking up at the border and showing the British resendency visa. Nice that saves us a couple of Euros. We planned to extend these in Bucharesti. Now as we entered at a minor border we ended up driving on the most forgotten roads in Romania. So there we were along with the horsecarts, cows and goats negotiating our way along these precarious roads (part brick, part tar, but mostly pothole) when along comes a Dacia 1310 haring past us and narrowly missing a oncoming traffic in the form of horsecarts. Nows it’s not a trip until you’ve brokien some rules. 1st rule of overland driving is to never drive at night Well we broke that rule in Romania and it’s not the best counrty to do it in. Drivers here view every road as a rally track, but we find out later that this is the norm in east European countries. Late as could be we made our way to a pre-determined meeting place with our contact Serban. Only 3 hours late we met up, had dinner and he quickly put us at ease. After good company and food we made our wy to Paula’s lovely place. Thank you guys for opening your home to us for a while. The next morning we had our first school visits to Cluj Napoca International School, after a brief intro by their English teacher. Neil went straight into teacher mode and had the little ones entrigued in minutes. A bit of chat and down we got to the real business of showing them the car. Then the questions started. After Neil almost burning the tent down with . we were treated to homebaked raisin bread and cooldrink by the kids. They also presented us with a gift, 3 of the students had compiled and translated a book of poems in English, Romanian and German. We got our very own copy and had a good laugh trying to pronounce the Romanian and German words with them.
After this we headed to the second school, Gheorghe Baritiu School. This school although more disadvantaged than the previous seemed to be a hive of positivity for the youngsters. They were keen and as it is with all youth their shyness was soon overcome by their inquisitvie nature. We had every little kiddy from what looked like the age of 4 up to 16 taking various degrees of peeks into the tent. Some were in the car and some under the bonnet. It was definitely an honour to brighten up their day. The entire school came to a standstill and with the excellent translation skills of Paula, we were answering all sorts of questions from the little busy bodies.
After this we parted ways with Paula for the afternoon. We had lunch and met up with her later. We were pretty tired so it was a welcome relief when Paula mentioned that we should just stay in that night. Paula prepared a meal and once Serban got home we shared a lovely meal together with some homebrewed white wine and their local brandy (moonshine), sort of something to warm you up before you eat. We enjoyed supper tremendously and had a lovely stroll through Cluj Napoca with Serban as our guide. He truelly had a wealth of information, not only on Cluj itself, but architecture and history was a good point of conversation. On our return to the house, we fell into bed and slept soundly. The next day would be one of our first to adventure Romania.
This day we said our goodbyes to Paula and Serban. We would like to really thank Paula and Serban for welcoming us to Romania and giving us so much information on their country. You have a beautiful country and have good reason to be proud of it. You guys are astoundingly good together and we’ll be in touch as often as possible. Of course I won’t forget to send you something from Tanzania.
The next day we ventured out to Turda Gorge. It’s quite a busy place as far as nature reserve go. Nevertheless, we put on our hiking boots, packed in water and some lunch and were off to see what this was all about. It was stunningly beautiful. You get the feeling of Aeons of time where water washed through this Gorge and sculpted the smooth rock walls of mountain on each side. Ending up on a rolling hill where the River runs out through a plain. We sat and had lunch on the hill, watching the river winding it’s way through the land. Did I mention that you actually get to cross the Gorge in a bushwacking kind of way. Very cool since you’re only about 1 metre above the river torrent.
Feeling everybit the adventurer, we headed out of Turda Valley and headed to the Apuseni Mountains in the West. By this time we had decided to try again for proper Romanian tourist visas, hence our decision to go back to Hungary. More about that later. We were astounded by the natural beauty of these mountains. Since skiing season hadn’t yet started, we were lucky to find a campsite still open and really cheap. The campsite was a little derelict with no showers, but the scenery was magnificent.
The next day saw us back in Hungary and being a Sunday we settled into a camp near the Romanian consulate in Gyula…red tape, red tape…. First you have to have all kinds of hotel bookings, then they insist that our travel insurance is not valid (Campbell Irvine take note) as insurance starts on day of issue and not day of departure. For anyone travelling, please, please, please, make sure that your insurance policy states that it commences on day of departure. As visas are valid from date of issue, any consulate will assume that everything else works this way. In the campbell irvine policy it does not state in plane English that the date of departure is the correct date to use…. Much trouble ahead I’m afraid… We really didn’t need this and wondering if anyone else has had this problem… Feel free to comment on such an occasion. Anyway, we needed all kinds of hotel “vouchers” or as we say reservations. We tried to explain that we don’t use hotels, and the official was quite kind in reducing the number of nights to be booked, but insisted that they had to be hotels. He directed us to the nearest tourist information, which in turn showed us how to get to the local tourist agency. By now we were quite fedup and returned to the camp. I called Campbell Irvine and spoke to Matthew, he simply could not change the policy for us, so sent us an email to state that the departure date was the correct date to use. Hopefully this will work. Still we had the problem with the official and he would only give us a 1 week visa. We had it with the red tape and that same day decided to go straight back to the border and get a free 5 day transit as we had originally done and to hell with the officials.
We set our GPS to fast route to Bulgaria/Turkey border near Edirne. So off we drove quite happy on the much improved roads from the main border. Not more than 3 hours later, we saw some serious lights across the road and signs indicating border. It seems our GPS was quite happy to have us drive through Serbia enroute to Turkey. The officials were checking us out when we decided to do a U-turn right there and then. We were just watching to see if they had guns. Never trust your GPS, it’s far to naive and optimistic in its routing. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful with a nice wild camp on a farmers field.
The next day we spent a lovely day in the forest region of Romania. It truelly was another world from this border crossing. First impressions are everything and we’re glad to say ours was improved the second time around. We did some birdwatching in the morning and stopped at the nearest biggest shopping centre to spend the last of our Romanian Lei. An hour later we were at the border to Bulgaria. This was our first ferry border. and all in all took about 2 – 3 hours to get across in Bulgaria. Before we could get into the Ferry port, we had to pay some or other tax. Only afterward did we realise that this was the Romanian road tax which we had already paid at a local garage upon arrival in Romania. So we paid it twice, nice… Then you go through the booms and pay the Ferry Tickets. 23 Euros for the car and 3 Euros per person. Then you need to have you passport stamped out. (N.B. Make sure you check your stamps, the official didn’t stamp mine and only Neils, this could have been quite a pain, since we were crossing a ferry and not simply driving to the Bulgaria entry point). We hoped Bulgaria will be a bit more organised on our part.
