Buna zuia (hello) from Romania
We have seen and done so much in the last 5 weeks or so. We had 3 great weeks with Tracey & Geoff on board with us, travelling down France into Barcelona, and then into Italy. We left them in Venice (along with our sheets in the campsite dryer). A lot of fun was had, a few hours lost on the Pyrenees and a few laughs shared over the boys mistaking a dog show for an automobile museum in Turin. We have visited some fabulous towns, and look forward to going back to some them again later in our travels.
We had a few days in a town called Aqueilia, in Italy near the Slovenian boarder were we just rode bikes, walked, swam and chilled. We then drove to Slovenia and meet up with Nick & Rosie in Ljubljana. We had an overnight stay there before heading north to the mountain lake district called Bled. This by far has been the most beautiful and picturesque place we have visited. Nick & Rosie had us out bike riding, hiking and swimming in the lake, it was just magic. After a few days we left Slovenia and drove through to Salzburg, Austria – once again a beautiful city and country. We took a couple of days to then drive through to Budapest. We were on a mission to get there for Nick & Rosie were flying out to London on the 21st and we wanted a few days there before they left. We had a lot of fun and Nick was an amazing tour leader. He introduced us to a fantastic map app for which has been a life saver (Tracey & Geoff, we could have done with it when you were on board). Budapest was fun, really really hot, lots to see and do, so much history and lots of yummy Hungarian food.
Tuesday morning, 21 July we dropped Nick & Rosie off at the airport for their next part of their journey and we on ours. We drove about 120km (still in Hungary) to a wee town called Szentes, which had lots of swimming pools at the camp. Camps with a swimming pool is currently on the top of the list. Not many days have been under 39 degrees. Fortunately the night temp gets down to 24/25 and with 2 fans going flat out we manage to have good night sleeps.
In Szentes, we spent time to plan the next stage of our trip and since we were this far over in Europe, we decided we should carry on travelling this side and do Turkey, Greece, Croatia and then come back up through Croatia, Switzerland, The Nederlands, Germany, etc. before probably settling in the south of Spain for winter. We thought we would do a fairly quick drive through Romania & Bulgaria to get ourselves to Istanbul. To be honest I was not particularly keen about going through Romania, John was quite insistent saying “we are here we should do it”– thank goodness he won that discussion.
We had a spot of trouble at the Hungary/Romania boarder with John’s passport because when we crossed the Eurotunnel entering France back in June we did not go through any security and therefore did not have our passports stamped. They wanted to know why we had no stamps and wanted us to prove that we entered France on that day. We were escorted back to the Hungarian boarder, had to sit in the police station for 2 hours before all was sorted and we were then back on our merry way. When we hopped back into gypsy girl she was reading 49 degrees!! We had a wee giggle to ourselves, prior to being stopped I had put some heel cream on my heels, wrapped them up in gladwrap and had put socks on to give them a bit of TLC – I must have looked a real sight to the boarder patrol! We wondered if they thought I might have been trying to smuggle something in my socks!!
When we arrived at our campsite in a small village called Bajel, in Romania we were welcomed by the owners with a beer and a wine (our kind of people) and within 10 minutes we were invited to dinner at a neighbour's farm for a traditional Romanian meal and a tour of their farm plus the experience of their Romanian life. It was a real delight, no one could understand what was being said, however we managed to communicate extremely well. The camp owners put up a flag for each country their visitors come from whilst staying with them. They did not have a NZ flag and offered to fly either an Australian or their friendship flag. We offered them an All Blacks flag – so they hung both the friendship and the All Blacks flags. They said it was a first for guests to have 2 flags flying.
The roads in Hungary are terrible. They are patched upon patch and there are massive pot holes everywhere. It makes travelling very slow. Hence why I am writing this email now. We are currently in Transylvania (Dracula country) with a flat tyre probably in about 40 degrees heat waiting for roadside assistance to arrive. We are on our way to Bran Castle (Dracula’s castle).
As you can imagine there is a lot of poverty here; very poor roads, horse and carts, unemployment, overcrowded houses, Romas (gypsies), unfinished homes and derelict buildings. However the people are just so friendly and appear to be happy. They have the most beautiful smiles. There is something about here that has really appealed to us. We are now day 4 in Romania and a quick trip through will now be at least a week and a half. We plan to travel over to the Danube Delta which will take us about 3 days and then we will follow the coast (Black Sea) down to Turkey, through Bulgaria.
An update of the service repair – 3 hours have passed and we have just been advised they are on their way – about an hour away – thank goodness we are on a camper with plenty of shade, toilet, food and water on board. Also thank goodness we decided to buy a Hungarian sim card yesterday – it could have been much worse.
Well I think that’s about our news for now. We are having a fantastic time. The time is going very fast and we are currently really living our dream.
Trust each and everyone of you is well.
La revedere
With love
Lorraine & John,
the kiwi gypsies
