Romania

Took me a while to get going this morning as I couldn't decide on a route.  In the end, I thought, "sod the route, just leave," so I did.

Just 1km from the camping and the other side of the railway was the motorway to Budapest, so I took it, heading northeast.  Skirted round the ring road and got on the M5 southeast towards Szeged.  In the opposite direction a lorry had broken down, closing one of the two lanes (no hard shoulder) and for the next 10 miles or so, the traffic behind it was stationary.  Even the motos had no space to filter through, poor things.  After 10 miles I left that section of the route but all the feeder lanes into it were jammed full of traffic, so the tailback could have gone on for miles more.  Imagine how that felt if you were on your way to the airport...

Jam aside I found the Hungarian roads really good to ride on.  New surfaces, clear signs, polite drivers (with a perhaps hint of German autobahn behaviour) and the wide open views across the plains made riding on the motorways a real pleasure.  And there were services galore, all with much nicer interiors than their UK equivalents.  I managed to resist the magnum ice-cream today, but not the coca zero.

Around Szeged I took the east branch of the motorway towards Romania.  Very quiet along here, and brand new road - not on the updated map of my satnav.  Any traffic appeared to be touristic: Germans, the ubiquitous Dutch mobile homes, and for the first time I noticed lots of Italians.

Having spent most of the time in Hungary avoiding paying in Forints (using plastic or many places take the euro) I realised that I'd actually brought £50 worth of Forints from the UK - duh!  So I pulled in to a small town, just before the Romanian border, and tried to spend them.  A tank of fuel took up a good chunk of it, and then, I thought, like you do, why not go to Tescos? So I did:

As I was about to enter a third world country I decided to stock up on provisions.  Then it was just a few miles to the border.  The queue looked exciting

but then, disappointingly, they just waved me through with hardly a glance at the passport.  The 10 miles or so leading up to the border there was a heavy Hungarian police presence.  They seemed to be singling out the Italians to be pulled over.  Something to do with their style of driving perhaps? So I took it easy going into Romania.  It started with a very very long, very straight single carriageway, leading all the way into Arad.  For every car there were 5 trucks, and they were all going very slowly.  So I settled down for the long haul.  On the outskirts of Arad I thought I'd take a look at some shops and get an idea of third world culture:

Hmm, seems I've been misled somewhere about Romania!  

Getting through Arad proved difficult, as lots of railways cross the road.  Now this isn't normally a problem, but in Arad, each of the 5 trucks per single car made a big deal of driving over the tracks.  This involved stopping short of the rails, getting out to have a look, driving the front wheels across, getting out to have another look, then taking the next set of wheels etc.  Oh, and these opportunities to dismount from the driving compartment allowed them to have a good long natter with the chap in the lorry coming from the other direction.  Do you get the picture?  Indeed, so the traffic in Arad resembled the traffic in Budapest I described above.  Here is a church I passed at some point.

I decided to head for Deva and look for some camping after that.  It was a great road with lots of twists, marred only by the presence of all those trucks (single carriageway) and a pack of about 20 Czech motorbikers, riding sporty looking bikes.  (Wearing leathers and fat arses sticking in the air is the give-away.)  Now I don't have a problem with this, but I do have a problem with the fact that they were holding me up.  They missed countless overtaking opportunities and then timidly went past a truck one at a time - it was like being in Arad again.  I nearly rear-ended one several times as I thought - you've GOT to go past now, and got ready to follow him, only to see his brake lights come on at the last minute as he chickened out AGAIN!  Why not just hitch a ride in a lorry next time?  It'll be just as fast.  Anyway, I eventually passed all 20 of them in one sweep.  I'm sure I didn't give them the finger, I'm too polite.  I hope they enjoyed arriving at their five star hotel and that the driver of the support bus carrying their luggage didn't have to wait too long for them to arrive.  Good, I've got that out of my system!  I'm actually a very polite rider, you know.  Really!


By the time I got there it was almost sunset (now 8pm, or 9pm Romanian = UK+2) and the first camping I plugged into my gps wasn't there.  A mad dash across some back roads and through some very traditional villages and - at last - passing a horse and cart, thankfully the second campsite did exist, and here I am.

A really good day, then.  Great to be somewhere completely new.  By the way, I made 2 friends earlier, when I stopped to look at this castle.

I'm keeping an eye out for Nosferatu, or Count Dracula, but I'm not really in the Carpathians yet.  I look forward to seeing them, and hopefully the Transfagarasan pass, tomorrow.