Harmanli, Bulgaria
Originally, we were going to include Romania in the previous Blog, but after spending 6 nights in Romania, we decided that it warranted its own Blog entry. So here goes…
When we crossed the border into Romania from Hungary, we were in the north-western corner, which is an incredibly poor agricultural area. We were struck by some similarities between Romania and Russia, such as drab villages, dodgy-looking construction and bad drivers, as in pushy, performing dangerous overtaking manoeuvres and totally ignoring and flouting the speed limits. In the countryside, especially in this part of the country, horse and cart still seems to be a fairly common form of transport.
Another thing that we noticed were the different style of hay-storage. Instead of the normal haybales, or hay rolls, they have hay stacks. But they aren’t cleanly stacked and looking all neat. Instead, they drive a post into the ground and this acts as a central pin to stop the haystack from slipping sideways. When the stacks are completed, they then prop a number of long sticks around the stack to keep it in place. This area was originally settled by Saxons and today, the Romanians still differentiate between Saxons and Transylvanians, etc.
Once again, we had overestimated the time needed to drive from Budapest to our planned destination, Bucharest. So, after the beloved GPS took us over a second-rate mountain pass, and we were driving over some very dodgy roads in the dark, we found a parking area where we could pull off the road and sleep the night. All I can say is “Thank goodness for being in a motorhome”! Have I mentioned that it snowed overnight and according to the Apple Weather App, the weather in the morning was “Snow Showers” and 1°C.
We decided that instead of rushing down to Bucharest, we would take a bit of time to explore around Transylvania. So our second night in Romania was spent in Sighisoara which is the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. Admittedly, he wasn’t known as Vlad the Impaler as a kid, he only gained that nickname after he died. His official name was Vlad III, Prince of Walachia, which is another province in Romania.
From our visit in Sighisoara, we learnt some interesting things about Romania – the language isn’t a Slavic language like Czech or Polish, but it is a latin-based language. And when you hear Romanian being spoken, you can be excused for thinking that you’re hearing Italian. It turns out that the Romans invaded that part of Europe and made it part of the Roman Empire. The area at that time was called Dacia (or Thrace) and as a result, most towns will have a statue of the She-Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus (founders of Rome) or just the She-Wolf and the language that remains today is a Latin language.
From Sighisoara, we drive down to a place called Varnesti and found the most delightful Pension which was also a Stellplatz for motorhomes. As it was the “off season” we were offered use of the indoors facilities (bathroom, washing machine, kitchen, fireplace, heated lounge room) and spent a lovely evening there. It was also convenient for our planned visit on the next day to Bran Castle. Bran Castle has the reputation of having been the home of Vlad. Sadly, the myth was greater than truth, but having said that, Bran Castle was certainly worth a visit. It is a really old castle that was originally built as a lookout and customs point for the main travel route from south to north.
During the early 20th Century, the Castle was presented to Queen Marie, wife of King Ferdinand I and grand-daughter of Queen Victoria (yes, the UK Queen Victoria). She restored the Castle and turned it into a family retreat and it remained one of her two homes after her husband died. Bran Castle is now displayed very much in the style that it was when the Queen lived there.
From Bran, it was time to head down to Bucharest for a couple of days. We had managed to find a single campground in Bucharest, that was still open and I think that we were the only guests there. We can add Bucharest to our list of cities where we have used the local public transport to get around. And can I just say that was a real challenge! You can catch a bus just outside the campground, but you can’t buy a ticket on the bus. But you have to have a ticket to travel on the bus, so you can’t buy the ticket later when you get into town. So you have to try and locate a ticket booth (not a machine, but a person in a box) and get a swipe card and then load it up with credit. This would be a fairly simple process if the person in the ticket booth spoke even a few words of English, but sadly, this wasn’t the case! We eventually get the necessary swipe card with 4 trips and 10 Romanian Leis loaded onto the card. We understood that we had to “validate” the card, but sadly, all the instructions are in Romanian and also without helpful diagrammatic instructions. We had also been warned that the “Controllers” are “bad people”. We gathered that this meant that the Ticket Inspectors were very strict. However, we had purchased a card and kept the receipts to show that we had loaded enough credit onto the card for two people to use over 2 days.
By now, I think you have worked out what happened – we were pinged by Bus Inspectors, and it turned out that we hadn’t validated the ticket correctly for our ride. Instead of two people riding on the card as we thought was the case, only 1 person was registered for that bus ride. We explained our difficulties and maybe we were being naive when we expected that they would cut us some slack. No! We were supposed to ask all the people on the bus until we found someone who spoke English and could explain what we had to do. And we had to pay a fine of 50 Lei (12 Euros) . If we didn’t pay the fine on the spot, then it would become a fine of 150 Lei (36 Euros). Obviously, we paid it on the spot, making sure that we got a receipt from the Bus Nazi, i mean Ticket Inspector and then continued on our way. As you can guess, it left a very sour taste in our mouths.
I believe that the Romanian Ticket Inspectors are either ex-Romanian Secret Police or were trained by them!
Apart from our unpleasant experience with the Ticket Inspectors, we did enjoy our couple of days in Bucharest. We visited the Palace of the Parliament, which was the recycled monstrosity built by Nicolae Ceausescu, the deposed (& executed) Romanian dictator. Everything about this building is over-the-top, shabbily constructed and blatant grandstanding on the part of Ceausescu. I do have to say that the points of interest are very spread out and there isn’t any tourist bus, eg Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus which transports you between points of interest, so you walk and you walk and you walk, and it was freezing cold and very windy. But the Romanian people were very friendly and couldn’t help us enough.
When we entered Romania, it was with the intention of crossing it as quickly as possible, but after one day of driving and seeing how different it was, we ended up enjoying our 6 days in Romania. We had no problems (apart from the Ticket Inspectors and the police who stopped us for an illegal U-Turn – but that’s another story), never felt under any threat, didn’t encounter any Gypsies (the real Roma) and can encourage you to visit Romania if you are in this part of Europe.
Now, about that illegal U-Turn…
On the morning that we were leaving Bucharest, we were having a disagreement with the GPS. She wanted us to drive, from north to south, right through the centre of Bucharest and yet, from looking at the map, we knew that there was a ringroad which we wanted to use. However, none of the road numbers agreed and we ended up driving in the wrong direction on the ring-road (which isn’t a full ring-road as the two ends of it don’t meet), so we had to turn around and finally, in desperation, Nick found a spot where he thought that he could do a U-Turn safely, which he did. About 30 seconds later, there was the “whoop-whoop” of a Police car and we knew that we were sunk! Nick got out of the car and went back to talk to the two policemen… after much acting dumb, he managed to escape without a fine. He still isn’t sure if the figure of 100 Euros that was written on a scap of paper was the amount of the impending fine or the suggested bribe to get out of the fine. However, Nick “played dumb” like he had years of experience at it (LOL) and managed to escape without a fine or paying any bribes.
Now how quickly can we get out of Romania? Next stop – Bulgaria.
What can I say about Bulgaria?? Compared to Bulgaria, Romania is picturesque! Yes, Bulgaria is the epitome of a Soviet satellite state – I wasn’t surprised to learn that Bulgaria actually offered to join the USSR!
The landscape is drab and ugly, the villages appear deserted with many abandoned factories and businesses. The farm land is unappealing and generally has no redeeming features. The drivers take many dangerous risks in their driving (overtaking, speed, etc) and the condition of the roads is abominable and their idea of a motorway is … beyond description!
But, after a long day of driving towards the Bulgarian-Turkish border, we just couldn’t reach it and looked around for somewhere to park-up for the night. We stopped at a petrol station which was also a Truck Stop and asked the boss if we could park in the yard so that we could sleep. This seems to be a common practise for travellers crossing Bulgaria – in the absence of campgrounds, you can ask to camp for the night in a TIR (heavy vehicle rest area) park or in a 24-hour service station.
Thank goodness, this was the last of the “Iron Curtain” countries.
Nick & MJ On The Road 
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