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After a really long day travelling south along the black sea coast, we expected to be easily able to cross the boarder into turkey. Unfortunately there are very few boarder crossings with Turkey. The crossing that we ended up using meant that we travelled a few hundred kilometres back west so that we could cross just north of Edirne in Turkey.

The scenery on the side of the road heading towards Edirne Turkey

The scenery was beautiful but in the heat of the day it was starting to get too much doing the additional 250km. Eventually we got to the boarder crossing.. Finally leaving the EU and moving onto the next stage of our trip.. We arrived at the boarder crossing at 6.15pm and ended up leaving after 9pm.. only three hours. At least we now have some idea of what to expect when we go through other more serious boarder crossings.

First of all we exited from Bulgaria, yet again our papers all got checked for the bikes, Then we got checked again by Bulgaria for some unknown reason while they let all the cars just drive on past… We then sat in one of about 30 queues to get through to the Turkish Passport control.. There must been at least 2000 other cars in the queue.. Because the queues moved only one car at a time we pushed the bikes for the 500meters from the first gates to the passport control.. This was our “Fitness Program” of the moment. We would think that pushing the bikes may have been embarrassing.. well actually the vast majority of people were pushing their cars too…At Passport control we had to go and organise our visa’s which cost $20US each… Then we went on to Customs where we had to buy local Turkish third party motorcycle insurance which cost $30US for 30 days (per bike).After that we finally had all our stamps that we required to finally enter into Turkey at the third gate. YAY.. we are now in Turkey and its already dark. We hit the motorways heading towards Edirne where we took the exit to look for somewhere to stay. We found a campsite just outside of town on the D100 called “Omur Camping”.

Omur Camping… well lets just say a few things about this “special” campsite.. Its location was perfect for us to be able to go into Edirne and do some bits and pieces like organise accommodation in Istanbul.. It is by far the biggest rip off campsite that we have seen to date. They charge in Euro even though the local currency is now the Turkish Lira.. Not only do they charge for the tent, bikes and people like most campsites they also charge to use all the facilities.. 5euro to go for a swim, 3euro for a dog, 5euro to use the washing machine etc.. It was all very expensive given that we could have used the pools etc for free at all the campsites we have stayed at previously… No suprises that the place was dead quiet and people only stayed the absolute minimum time possible.. The other value added “feature” of the site was that they a huge population of killer mosquitoes just waiting for you in the showers, toilets, bathrooms, tent, outside, anywhere actually come to think of it…

Having a break in the heat.. with out taking your helmet off..

The temperatures are now sitting around 30-36c which is a big increase to what we got used to in Romania and Bulgaria. The roads in Turkey are much more civilized and people are much more aware of what is going on around them so far… Its a nice improvement but riding in these temperatures is definitely not for the faint hearted. We will need to start planning our days around much longer lunch breaks to take advantage of not being in the heat of the day…

Edirne is a beautiful city which we had to stop at not only for our organisational tasks but we had to have our first Turkish Kebab… How could we resist.. especially after such a long day previously getting out of Bulgaria (10am until 11pm).

So after a long day riding from Transylvania down through some beautiful mountain scenery

A Romanian Alpine Dam in Transylvania

and fruit orchards. Where we bought some fruit and vegetables from a few road side farms, we bought 1kg of red cherries for 1lei (about 20p).. Still amazed me, the farms scales only did 1kg so we had more cherries than we could ever eat before they went bad… We ended up finding a hotel in a place called Sloboza. The hotel was excellent with a nice restaurant. Just after we sat down for dinner a huge thunderstorm which had been threatening to hit us while we rode came in. It knocked out all the power in the area including the hotel. This was rather amusing as the restaurant couldn’t give us our bill.. the solution was to have a few more drinks while the electricity came on.. Unfortunately with no electricity and no wind, lots of still water the mosquitoes came out in force…Heather then wanted to go inside where it was all dark.. Unfortunately its not so great to be drinking in the dark.. We ended up moving seats out closer to the open area’s hoping that the mosquito problem wouldn’t be so bad. It

One of the Vallies in Romania where we had a break

was to great amusement of the other customers watching heather trying to keep the mosquitoes from biting. After a long night we managed to do many of our internet and maintenance tasks in the morning. Then we finally left for our final leg of the Journey through to the Black Sea at Constanta. The ride to the coast was more boring flat roads with almost nothing of interest to see. Some of the river crossings and looking at some of the lochs for huge commercial shipping lines to use made for interesting interruptions to absolutely boring scenery… The one constant that we did have was the same friendly Romanian people everywhere we stopped..

In Constanta we found a Supermarket and bought some food for Lunch and dinner, the hope was to find somewhere that we could stay along the coast.. When we stopped at a beach to have lunch the stench of the industrial black sea was horrendous. It was like the sewerage was just brewing for about 150km along the coast. While we looked for accommodation… we kept riding south then all of a sudden we found that we had arrived at the Bulgarian border which was much closer than we had anticipated. This meant it was the end of our Romanian stage of the trip and we entered Bulgaria.. The first boarder crossing where we had to show that we actually owned our bikes. The boarder was rather confusing and it wasn’t so easy to understand how it all worked. Our passports got taken only once and our bike paper work got checked out.. Then they had a stop sign just down the road with a Bulgarian flag.. However there was nobody there.. Odd.. Let us hope that it won’t cause problems with us getting out of Bulgaria and into Turkey.

After crossing the border with Bulgaria you don’t have to buy the Vingette if your on a Motorcycle, however cars and other vehicles are all required to buy the tax. There is a tax stop about 500meters further on from the border. With all the now familiar rip-off exchange shops… We didn’t exchange any money there and ended up riding for about an hour into Bulgaria to find a bank. The police presence that we had in Romania was immediately blitzed by the cops in Bulgaria. It seems that they take road rules very seriously and the speed limits are all over the shop.. Going from 100km to 40 or 30km per hour for no apparent reason. The road quality in Bulgaria has so far been terrible, much worse than Romania and I would recommend anyone to ride with care if they do travel here, they have loads of fine dust on the road which can be like riding on wet glass.

The campsite in Bulgaria.. Finally at the Black Sea

After we got some funds we bought some petrol and went looking for a camp-site or some accommodation for the night. We ended up finding a “camp site”.. well that’s where the fun began. The stench that we could smell at Constanta was actually the water. The campsite was pretty nasty but it was great to go to sleep on the beach with the sounds of the water and the nice cool sea breeze. Unfortunately our stay was to be only one night… At about 4am James was woken with an emergency run to the loo.. The joys of Food poisoning most likely from some dodgy water despite being very careful. Heather was soon to follow with the awful stomach cramps and loo runs.This was what sealed the fate for the campsite. We made a hasty exit to find a hotel where we would have immediate access to clean toilets. As we travelled down the coast to Varna we went through a few resort towns and nothing really caught us despite the desperation of needing to fnd something QUICK!!..

We ended up finding a 4 Star resort that had some availability called the Edelweiss Hotel near “golden sands” on the Bulgarian coast just north of Varna. The hotel room was such a relief.. After finding an ATM and supermarket we stocked up on reserves so we could hibernate while we let the food poisoning pass… A terrible day was had by both of us feeling quiet ill. Every cloud has a silver lining..

One Bulgarian restaurant with "ASDA Price"

After spending a day to get over the first onslaught we managed to go exploring and found the resort and around the town and beaches to be a really nice surprise with loads of great restaurants and shops all along a very nice long beach.

The touts trying to get business into the restaurants have some ingenious ways at their disposal. One of the restaurant touts was a true classic.. She was singing a song “yummie yummie food in your tummie.. go and eat and drink here and get the best food in your tummie that’s really yummie”. It’s funny when the same guys recognise your on a return trip or walking around aimlessly looking for something and try every time despite knowing that your not interested.. I guess no harm in trying. While we walked around the beach area we heard a big crack sound and a whole half side of a tree just fell over.. It was very lucky that nobody was hurt/crushed by the tree coming down so unexpectedly.. It was really unusual, Unfortunately we didn’t have our camera or phone on us to really take in the scene.

If we had raced through Bulgaria like we had planned to after the first two days experience we would never have been able to really appreciate what Bulgaria has to offer. I think that the black sea coast resorts can really offer more for your money with good multi-language skills in absolutely everywhere. I would come back here rather than going to many of the Spanish resort towns…

After the mosquito infested campsite we decided that we would make a quick exit from Hungary and head into Romania.  Hopefully to warmer and mosquito free weather.. It was a good plan.. We got to the boarder with Romania with ease… It was rather amusing to see how long the queue space for the boarder crossing was.. It must have been 5-10km long.. eventually we arrived at the crossing and had our passports stamped and made a quick exit from the boarder crossing.. After crossing into romania you see immediately that there are all these people trying to attract you to their “booth”. However the Romanian Vignette (road tax) is not required for Motorcycles so we sped past. Don’t listen to any of the scammers who are waiting for you at the boarder to 1) change your currency, 2) get you to buy a vignette.. Its cheaper to buy the fuel, currency and vignette (if your driving a car or truck) away from the boarder.. You can get them about 5km up the road at a service station for a better price with less hassle..

As you travel further into Romania the price for fuel drops significantly.. I think they expect everyone to think wow this is cheap and then buy.. The price difference can be around 20cents/litre away from the boarder.

The road from the boarder into “greater Romania” was pretty boring across a huge flood delta where there was nothing at all worth seeing.. There are ATM’s to take cash out about 5km from the boarder too so you can get the money for your stuff there without paying the crazy exchange rates.. often 25% less in your favour.

After hearing that the roads in Romania are really really bad we found that the main route in from Hungary to Romania was actually just recently fixed, with freshly painted lines. It was really nice riding despite being boring and flat across the flood delta. We headed further into Romania and found that there is a real shortage of camp sites.. Or at least there are no camp site signs. We eventually found one really nice camp site which is run by a Romanian man and his Dutch wife. The money from the camp site goes to a local orphanage (childrens home) which is a great cause, the kids also help run the site. Everyone was really friendly and I would highly recommend it to anyone that is travelling through Romania and wanting quality affordable accommodation. Their web address is www.routeroemenie.nl. Fundatia TDS, Cornel en Anna Tarniceri, Minis 298, 317137 Minis – Romania. Telephone 004 0742768111. Email : Camping.route.Roemenie@gmail.com. There is a huge list of things to do in the surrounding area so you can stay for several days and really enjoy the area. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay for more than one night as we needed to get to Istanbul for the 6th of July. While camped we met a dutch couple that had spent the last few months (may and June) travelling around Turkey in their VW camper. They gave us some awesome tips and places to stay while travelling through Turkey. Its one thing that has been really good. Friendly campers at many of the sites giving us tips and tricks to avoid being scammed or show us where to go or not to go.

Another break on the side of the road in Romania

At the campsite we also spoke to a Belgian guy who had been spending his summers travelling around Romania for the last few years. He was telling us about the wolves, bears etc and how its not wise to camp in the forest in Romania. We also read more in the news about people being mauled by Romanian bears.. not something that we wanted to really experience so we have decided its going to be only proper campsites for us.. at least until we get to the coast.. We have never heard of bears swimming in the black sea.. although maybe they do! who will know until we actually get there…

After heading out of that campsite we headed to Deva and onwards to Sibiu in the heart of Transylvania. We found a wonderful campsite just outside of the main city where we have decided to rent a cabin and stay there for a few days to take in the area and explore (read meat drakula.. aka DrakHeather). Unfortunately its not a full moon.. dammit maybe next time.

In the previous post we made comments about the Hungarian Drivers.. Well that is nothing.. since getting to Romania they must seriously have a death wish their driving is horrendous. We have seen so many completly wrecked cars and several accidents where cards have swiped eachother.. Everyone tries to drive in the centre of the road which is horrid as they just try and push motorcycles off the road.. not by intention I hope but its crazy. And the over takes are shocking.. We just have to give them space and let them past so we don’t get caught up in their shit driving skills. At least we are staying carefuil and hopefully it will improve as we head towards the coast and Bulgaria and Turkey..

Romanian Scenery near Sibui

Michelsberg Burg Tour

The Romanian Countryside has been very beautiful. With many people waving as we ride past and everyone has been super friendly so far.

Michelsberg Burg view

I think the Romanians are very proud people and their history is very rich. So far Romania takes the cake as being our top country so far on this trip. While staying we visited the Roman Basilica Michelsberg Burg.

After waking up after a night with our joyous money experience we had our priority to find some Hungarian Florint and fast.. We needed to pay for the campsite and get some money so we could actually Live.. The one good thing was that we stocked up on food before we left the Lakes in Croatia.. At leat we could eat.. After going back to all the banks in Town to see if it was some error the night before, unfortunately the banks in that town all sucked big time. All the ATM’s said they accepted maestro cards.. Unfortunately they just don’t accept UK cards. After hunting around I was directed to a place that would exchange our Croatian currency for Hungarian Florint.. Finally we had some cash that we could pay for the accommodation with and live with… It was time to clear out of the place and start heading towards Budapest and onwards to Romania..

After such a long day getting from Croatia into Hungary we wanted to have a fairly short day and relax in the afternoon.. We came across a little town that we later found out was about to host a Hungarian Festival. We decided to camp there for the night and see what the festival had in store.. Unfortunately when we found the campsite it actually looked more like a umm… construction site or maybe more like a ghetto.. anyway we headed back to Information to find some alternative place to stay. We ended up taking a room in a guest house just down the road from Information right near the centre of town.. what a great place to stay the room was huge with a nice balcony and free washing etc.. It was a great place for us to spend a few nights and relax and see the festival. In the end we caught up with all our chores and did the washing etc.. no more stink.. Whooo Hoooo.. The festival was very traditional Hungarian and was very local centric. It was nice to see such a display and to really recoup after our long day and bad weather in Croatia. It was such a nice change. Every day in Hungary we would have steaming hot weather with huge thunderstorms in the afternoon to cool things down which was awesome to see the storms roll in..

After this we moved on staying in the biggest mosquito infested campsite to date… I guess we can call it preparation for Siberia.. The area of Hungary we now found ourselves in was full of thermal pools and beautiful country side.. It was also our first run in with the Police.. Whoo hooo.. I was shitting myself as we didn’t know what he speed limit was in this area of Hungary.. Luckily for us they just wanted to give us some random breath testing.. This was a huge relief. They checked out our passports, bikes and then our alcohol blood level.. I think it was Heathers first RBT.. We both came back with 0.00% blood alcohol which was nice given that the allowed blood alcohol level in Hungary is 0.00%.. Onwards we went through the lakes and to the campsite. We spent the evening through the now regular storm playing cards and drinking tea.. After the storms had passed we went for a walk around the Beautiful little town near the campsite. It was nice to see that the Hungarians really take pride in their towns and everything was very neat and tidy.. Unlike Croatia…. okay enough croatia bashing..

The one thing that we have been finding as we head further east the driving becomes more “special”.. we thought that the German riders in the Alps took the cake.. unfortunately that was just a taste test of what was to come.. In Hungary we have witnessed so many close call head on accidents at 100km/hour + between impatient drivers trying to over take trucks only to realise they have no power half way through the over take.. shit there was a few moments where I thought I was about to witness a massive accident. One in particular the truck had to swerve off the road as the trucks the car was trying to over take had to break hard to let the over taking van get in.. it was so close im pretty sure it was less than 50cm between a fatal accident and a complete mess where we would have surely been hurt.. So far we have seen 3 cars that have crashed down an embankment or into a tree or slid down a slope in Hungary.. not to mention all the dodgy over takes..

After leaving the lakes and setting our destination to Zagreb the Capital of Croatia we arrived late in the afternoon. After about 2 hours of riding we found no accommodation at all. We thought we will pass Zagreb and head towards Budapest in Hungary… “There must be accommodation somewhere between Zagreb and Budapest… in Croatia”.. well we found out after riding for 6 hours that there was nothing worth talking about or even remotely worth staying at anywhere north of Zagreb towards Budapest.Although it must be said that Zagreb is a nice city and I would highly recommend going through there to anyone…

All the hotels wanted into the hundreds of euro’s per night for “4 star”.. which was more like minus 4 star in towns which would scare even clint eastwood away as dirty harry.. Many of the towns looked seriously like they are from some sort of movie set with all broken down factories and run down roads. I’m sure its not as bad as we are claiming here but at the time in storms and stuff it looked scary. We ended up riding all the way through to one of the termal pool towns close to the boarder in Hungary. The campsite was very nice and the area/town near it was very pretty. The difference between Croatia and Hungary was immediately evident. Only a few kilometers and everything was nice and tidy, the roads improved and the towns became clean. Its not that we didn’t like Croatia it just not really what we expected and the weather made it really terrible for riding. So after 4 days of terrible weather and reports saying it was to last for another 4-5 days we headed north to where the weather looked to improved.

The joys of different countries with different currencies.. It was something that we didn’t plan too well primarily because we didn’t expect to be out of croatia so soon. So we had to get Hungarian Florint.. Unfortunately no bank would take our UK cards to get money out.. and at 10pm at night the currency change places had closed hours ago. We only found this out after Heather had been left at the restraunt and ordered some pizzas and beers only to find out we had no money to pay for them about 20minutes later. I went to 9+ banks and 5 different shops etc to ask people about money. Unfortuantely nobody spoke english.. and none of the abnks took our money. It was a very embarrassing situation that was starting to brew.. No money.. lots of food and beer and no english or hungarian skills.. We ended up having a serious problem tryin to explain to the guy that we could only pay in Croatian or Euro’s.. He didn’t like that idea after intially saying yes he went back on it after we had eaten and drank all the beer… wow.. now we are properly screwed. In the end the bill was less than 8 euro’s including all the beers.. Because he didn’t have enough change and wouldn’t exchange anything we ended up having to pay 20 euro and just leaving him to sort it out himself.. We felt like real dickheads… although being a dickhead comes really naturally 🙂