22nd April, Day 5, Bamberg - Prague



A long day on the truck, and this is the day we cross the first significant border. Not that there's any real border formalities to go through, but this is the day we say goodbye to Western Europe and hello to Eastern Europe. The Czech Republic is former Eastern Bloc and you can still see signs of its Communist history, such as endless grey ugly apartment blocks all good Communists seem to live in. The countryside is at first similar to Germany (endless pine-covered hills) but this gives way to flatter farming country soon enough.

Today we are heading to Prague. It takes ages to drive round the ring road in the rush-hour to out camsite, which is on the northern edge of town about 10km from the touristy centre. The view from the ring road is less than impressive, the outlying regions of Prague are largely untroubled by visiting tourists and consist of endless Communist-looking apartment blocks and vast Tesco warehouses each about the size of a small town. Yes, the Czech republic's ecomony isn't bad now it's been westernised (or should it be 'Tesco-ised'?). Passing all this less-than-stunning scenery I start to fear that the campsite won't be anywhere nice, but a wrong-turn later we are there and nicely surprised.

I am on cook duty today. It's a bit chaotic cooking for 24 people but we pull it off with a very nice chicken and tarragon stew and eventually collapse into the bar at 9:30 pm.

23th April, Day 6 in Prague



It's up early (the hour is still in single figures) to negotiate the public transport into town. Pete (the tour leader) has a criteria to determine whether of not you've actually been somewhere, and that is you've only been there if you've done a poo there. Another (slightly cleaner) definition could be that you've been there if you've used local public transport. So I've now been to Prague. The public transport is quite civilised and took us round all parts of town we wouldn't normally see. It's not a bad city really, even outside the tourist area. It is noticably poorer than Western Europe and is a marked change from Germany which is clean, tidy, efficient, not a blade of grass out of place, trains run on time, but it is catching up fast.

Didn't bother meeting the others for a group meal out in town, but instead had a nice romantic meal with Joy in a restaurant we visited when we came before. Very nice.

I'll skip the description of the touristy bit. It's only a short flight away so go there yourself.

24th April, Day 7, Prague - Budapest

An early start and a long drive via Slovakia, an unofficial extra country on this trip between Czech Republic and Hungary.

It was boring for most of this drive - very flat country with nothing much to look at until quite close to Budapest when it gets prettier and hilly. But it is a significant step forward - we are now over the backbone of Europe. The river in Prague (the Vltava) flows northwards and comes out in the Baltic (I think), and now we've come to Budapest where the river Danube flows toward the South and East into the Black Sea, although we are still a long way from the coast.

The camsite here is on the Buda side of the Danube, which separated the two cities of Buda and Pest, hence the name of the now unified single city of Budapest.

The campsite is on hilly country and seems to be in a quarry - it is surrounded by cliffs on 3 sides and quite small. It's not bad though, despite a lack of grass, and it's out first meal cooked over a campfire tonight, before going on to do my duty of testing the local beers at the campsite bar.

25th April, Day 8, in Budapest



The campsite is a bus-ride from town. We get off at a place which looks nice and central and then study the map with confused expressions on our faces. Then we head off to the Jewish Museum in Pest. It it well known that Jews have a somewhat financially oriented culture and this is made very clear by the extortionate price we paid to get into the museum and synagogue. The museum was quite boring and pointless, although the bit about the holocaust was very moving. A photo of a dignified looking man standing on a platform with hands tied together and noose around his neck needs no words to describe it and really expresses the extreme evil of the Nazis 'Final Solution'. The guided tour of the Synagogue and Ghetto was OK. Apparently they even used to charge those using the Synagogue for regular worship. The mind boggles.

Pest looks like any other European city but Hungary is in quite poor shape and so there's not much tourism here. Some beautiful buildings stand derelict and scruffy.

After lunch we crossed over into Buda and it is a complete contrast from Pest. It is very hilly for a start (Pest is flat as a pancake) with steps all over the place and has a large impressive castle at the top of a hill. This bit is crawling with tourists and is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Back to the campsite for curry cooked over a camp fire. Lovely.

26th April, Day 9, Budapest - Turda Gorge



The border with Romania was the first one where the border guards came on board the truck and checked individual passports. I suppose no-one told the border guards about the EU. Either that or they were bored. I never imagined I'd ever see an attractive border guard but she really was lovely.

On crossing the border we enter a land of bumpy roads full of cars and lorries being driven by utter maniacs, and miles and miles of hideous heavy industrial installations, most of which is derelict. Eventually this gives way to open countryside which is very flat and full of small stips of land being farmed by peasants. The land is certainly fertile here, but the Romanians don't know anything about modern farming methods and so the country is full of people manually working the fields. If they are lucky they'll have a horse drown plough. A few very lucky ones have tractors.

After a while it gets hilly. We find our first bush-camp (where we camp not in a proper campsite but in the middle of nowhere. It's OK, the truck does have plenty of beer on board. It also has spades with which to dig poo holes but I won't go into that right now)

The camp is at a beauty spot called Turda Gorge. There is a ridge of high hills with a sidden gap, the Turda Gorge itself. A small river runs through it, and it is surrounded by sheer cliffs. Unfortunately, for the Romanians, the countryside acts as one big rubbush dump, especially beauty spots. It's not nice to see piles of discarded beer cans, plastic bottles, and other rubbish strewn all over a beautiful landscape, but the Romanians have absolutlely no appreciation for the beauty of their countryside and no respect for the environment.

That evening after dark a group of us pick up our head-torches and go for a walk along the gorge - there is a marked footpath but some tricky scambling over rocks is required as well as some care - sometimes the path is narrow with a sheer cliff wall on one side and a sheer drop down to the river on the other. All rather fun at night. About half an hour in we came to a large cave and went inside and looked at the bats and had some group pictures done.

27th April, Day 10, Turda Gorge - Sighisoara



Tonight we stop in our first Hotel! Looking forward to a comfortable bed. On out way there we stop at a layby where we prepare lunch and attract quite a crowd of locals who have never seen anything like us, and who try to sell us a bunch of onions an an extortionate price. They must think we're made of money. I suppose, by their standards, we are. They haven't really mastered the art of haggling. In haggling, one of the fundamental principals is for the seller to gradually drop his price until accepted by the buyer. This basic principal is completely unknown to these people, who stick rigidly to their original extiotionate price, hence no sale. Shame, because they were probably really tasty.

Arrive at the hotel. So far my opinion of Romania is not favourable, but the Hotel is decent enough. Sighiasora is a small town with an interesting looking historic citadel at it heart. The rest of the town is typically Romanian - a dump.

28th April Day 11 Sighisoara - Bucharest

This morning it is raining. Up until now, it has been horrifyingly sunny. I'm glad then rain occured while we were safely in a hotel, I don't like the idea of packing up tents in the rain.

We were originally going to Rasnov Castle today and bush-camping nearby. But the castle is closed. This is quite a disappointment, is the castle is very typically Transilvanian. It's not the one of Dracula fame, it's rather less touristy. Instead we just go straight to Bucharest a day earlier than intended. On the way we drive through some incredible mountain scenery. Here we are in the southern end of the Carpathian Mountains which from here stretch north and east into Ukraine. The road through the mountains is rather windy with numerous switch-backs around which mad Romanians overtake blindly with considerable risk of flying off the side and right down to the bottom of the valley. Utterly bonkers.

The campsite near Bucharest is not really intended for tents. It has chalets surrounding a tarmac area, with woods behind. We just had to camp in the woods.

29th April, Day 12, in Bucharest



Woke up to find that some people were sharing their tents with about 100000000000 ants. Luckily only the outside if our was infested, none had found their way in, thank goodness.

It was our turn to cook breakfast now, so an early start to set everything up and start cooking. Eggy bread for all except me. Eggs - yuk.

After breakfast some of us head into town on the bus. Last year's group, we learned, has some trouble because you can't by bus tickets on the bus, only in town. So the place to buy bus tickets was a bus-ride away. They get on the bus anyway and have a spot of bother with a jobs-worth inspector and the police, who really couldn't care less about the paradox they were caught in.
This year, forewarned, the crew all went off in a taxi early in the morning in order to buy bus tickets for everyone. It seems you can only buy tickets in multiples of 2. wtf...

So, 4 of us get on the bus armed with tickets. We have to stamp them ourselves. Then a group of about 3 thugs who claim to be ticket inspectors ask to see our tickets. "Ticket no good!" they say in broken English. "Passports!" They want to see out passports? My god, it only a F*cking bus! They then attempt to get us to pay a fine of 50 Lei each (about 12 pounds, and many times the cost of the original ticket). Apparently, we hadn't stamped it quite right. The holes were in the wrong place or something silly like that. Luckily, one of our group, an Austrailian called Dennis is a very experienced traveller and he was not going to be intimidated. After a while, the 'inspectors' gave up and got off. They were seen to start walking back again, no doubt back to the bus-stop near the campsite to try and fleece some more tourists. I really don't think they were real ticket inspectors, they didn't bother checking any of the locals.

There's nopt a whole lot to do in Bucharest except go and see Caucescu's Folly as I call it, or Parliament Palace as it is now known. It was build as an expression of extreme megalomania by the former dictator of Romania, the one who took food out of the people's mouths in order to build this huge palace, orginally (and ironically) called 'The Peolple's Palace'.

Bucharest is a city of wide boulevards and some intersting buildings, some of them suffering from neglect, and millions and millions of sex shops. I would not recommend a visit.

30th April, Day 13 - still in Bucharest

A day of resting at the campsite, and writing all this section of the blog up (from Prague to Bucarest). The wi-fi doesn't work here, so you be reading this for a few more days.

Tomorrow we leave Romania and head for Bulgaria for 2 nights and then Istanbul for 3 nights. I am looking forward to leaving Romania. As a country, it has not managed to recover very well from communism, it is still very poor, the infrastructure is shoddy and hap-hazard, the beautiful countryside is full of rubbish, they don't realise what incredible potential their country has for tourism, and as such they don't welcome tourists, they just barely tolerate them. Why was Rasnov Castle closed when they could be making money out of it? The proper way to fleece tourists is to fleece them nicely so they'll want to come back and be fleeced again, not piss them off.

Seeing Romania has given me a whole new appreciation of the UK - it is, by comparison, a paradise.