Day 14: Gabi's world

Who is this Taiwanese child? And why am I boarding his boat?

Sozopol, Bulgaria. The beard-growing competition is hotting up. Steve and I are neck and neck, while Jeff's is so pathetic he's clinging desperately to claims of 'most stylish growth'. He's like a teenage boy doing a Craig David. Meanwhile he's decided mine makes me look like a Flump - 'because they had big lips poking out of their flumpy faces'.

We're supposed to be heading to Istanbul today, but we figure it too special to enter without everyone on full form, so with Steve still suffering we're going to stay at the campsite one more night and let him recover. This frees us up to chill out. The trip hasn't been the same since his body turned weird, and things have hit a little lull. But suddenly being able to forget about going anywhere and enjoy where we are makes us appreciate that we're actually in a pretty interesting place, and one where I can once again bust out my trump card of being 'blatantly the palest person here. By miles'.

We head down for a dip in the Black Sea, which marks a special moment after crossing the whole of Europe, which is pretty exclusively solid. We're not too into a day in sweltering heat on the beach and are about to head back to the campsite when the whirlwind Gabi and his family show up, and then as usual we're swept along into his world. He's calling me over: 'Dave! Come! We buy beer.' I'm really confused, because as he says that he's ushering me into a motorboat - which is being driven by a small Taiwanese boy. At whom he's waving a 50 note. What's going on? Who is this boy? And where are we going to buy beer out to sea?

I wave a helpless goodbye to my peers, and head off across the ocean. The boy seems as confused as me that fate has deemed him part of Gabi's plans. In the end we just take the boat right to other end of the beach, being waved in by a 60-year-old German called Holger. Turns out the boatman is Yo Yo, his son. None of this makes any sense.

Steve, the man who's been out of it since we arrived in the country, has to walk the mile and a half across the sand to meet us. As does Jeff, and Gabi's wife Laura, who's carrying all their beach stuff. Gabi is definitely mental. And we still don't have any beer. So he sends his two under-age sons, Meh and Cosmin, off in a boat with Yo Yo to go and buy us a few bottles.

When they get back we get stuck into a game of beer-fuelled beach footie, in the sweltering heat, fulfilling the ambition we had back in Romania of having a kickabout with the kids in the name of international harmony. The only snag - I'd never imagined that game being interrupted by a middle-aged Bulgarian man jogging across the pitch wearing nothing but a red baseball cap. That's the trouble with imagination: it doesn't prepare you for such brilliant detail.

We head back for more prison food and a mong, and before the sun sets we go for international football round two, again in the sweltering heat, this time on the campsite's run-down concrete court. Gabi coerces two fear-struck Russian kids to play with us. Then a grown man appears on the touchline, trainers in hand, waiting to be asked to join in. He's Bulgarian, and utterly mental - he's so into his football he's running at Mario, the chubby eight-year-old Russian, full pelt, steamrollering him out the way so he can show off his back-heels and clever little flicks, before unleashing full-welly blasts at Steve's face from about four yards. He may be taking it a mite seriously. It's unbelievably hot, but we play on till it's pitch black, like summer nights long gone.

The exertion has totally destroyed Steve, so he crashes out again while Jeff and I explore the beach bars. Friday night, beach resort, height of summer - there's bound to be something happening. Also, since witnessing the effects of illness on our bretheren and noting the importance of keeping your fluids up, I've spent all day drinking beer and coffee and running around in the sun, so it's important to carry on.

We go to a bar where we saw a bird with a pointless rat-dog earlier. She'd scowled at me for sitting near her laptop. The bar is completely empty, save for the two people working there. In fact all the bars we passed on the way there were empty. It's a weird resort.

The staff turn out to be husband and wife. They tell us how it's the bar's first summer, and that with business as it is it may well be the last. The guy's name is Jorge - his Engish is ace, and we enjoy the chance to get to know Bulgarians. The couple aren't happy here - they like the winter, when they work as ski instructors. And we get on really well - despite knowing them for only an hour or so, they're already inviting us back to check out the snow.

Turns out the bird with the weird dog is the incumbent Bulgarian Playmate - she's on the cover this month. Jorge tells us she's mental. Later we catch a look at the screensaver on his laptop. It's a sultry brunette posing in the shoreline in a bikini. We figure it's the Playboy woman. No, he says, it's my wife. Jesus. She looks pleased at our reaction.

We say our goodbyes, and his wife offers her hand for a shake. Jeff wants more. 'Can I kiss your face?' he asks. He's being overly polite because she's foreign, but still it makes no sense and he just ends up sounding weird. I'm quite taken with the phrase, so I ask it too. 'Can I kiss your face?' We walk back up the beach laughing. Can I kiss your face? She must think we're mental.

When we get back to the campsite, Gabi's light and TV are still on, but we can see him lolling on his airbed. We're really quiet, fearing that if we wake the giant we'll be sent spinning yet again into an increasingly familiar world of weirdness. But he stirs and stomps about a bit, and is soon inviting us over. 'Sit'. We sit. Then we're treated to more home-made wine, and a great long chat till the depths of the morning, about life under Ceausescu, and Big Problems in general. At one point he sits there graphically imitating someone with mental illness. I'm not quite sure why.

Gabi decides I'm the biggest idiot of the three of us. I can't really argue with that. Then he looks at Jeff, who's having a quiet moment. 'You have problems,' he says. 'What kind of problems?' asks Jeff. 'Problems in general.' How can a man so clearly mental be so astute?

Gabi is getting increasingly into learning about our trip, and once we get the maps out and show him the plan in all its gruesome detail there's no stopping him. 'Big Problems, Big Problems.' He dubs it the Idiot Rally. Pretty soon he's uttering dire warnings about what we (or more specifically Steve and Jeff) can expect to happen in Turkmenistan. Suffice to say I'm not upset at my random exclusion. Gabi is so pleased with his observation he keeps folding into childlike bursts of gleeful laughter. He is mental, but he's brilliant.

**SMS update 6**

Left at 30th July 2009 at 19:24

Recieved by SMS (Location: Plovdiv - Bulgaria)

not at plovdiv really. Actually sozapol. Dave and jeff lost the car while i was 'mal dans le mer'. The black sea will never be the same. Happy boozey local family feeding dave and jeff fire water. Ill stick to dioralyte for now me thinks. Fwarp.

Day 13: I'm sure this is where we parked the car...

When your whole life is inside a Fiat Punto, best not lose it.

Sozopol, Bulgaria. I wake up early to the sound of 4 Play Nice's Skoda pulling away from the campsite. They're heading to Istanbul ahead of us, which makes us prime candidates for being last again. Ace. We make vague plans to meet there and cover the Turkish coast in mini-convoy, like Kris Kristofferson, the Rubber Ducky. I give them a big 10-4 and they sod off waving.

All plans depend on the condition of our team. Which is buggered. While I'm over at Gabi's family's table, getting fed a bleary-eyed early morning shot of plum booze, Jeff emerges from the tent saying we need to get Steve some drugs, as he's suffering debilitating headaches and stomach cramps. That's not good. We'd figured he'd be past it by now. Maybe it's food poisoning, not a sun thing after all. Top theory is that it's the rotten slice of pizza those bastards gave us in Romania. Gabi's wife is a nurse, and she gives Steve pills she reckons will sort him out. They're such a friendly couple, who keep giving us stuff. What's particularly handy is that this stuff is exactly what we need to hamper their countrymen's attempts to see us off.

I talk more to Gabi and Laura, asking why we had such an unfriendly experience in Romania, while trying to force their drink down my throat without ending up with a face like the campsite's loo cleaner after one of Steve's incidents. Gabi doesn't seem surprised by the reaction we got in Oradea - he suggests the area isn't really Romania, that the Hungarian influence is strong, and that if he went to that area himself he wouldn't even be able to speak Romanian.

It's hard to tell whether he's exaggerating. Everything with him is 'problems'. Big Problems.
Hungaria - Big Problems. His caravan's electricity supply - Big Problems. I ask why he does for a job. My job? Oh, Big Problems.

He keeps banging on about Prince Charles. Diana was a great woman. I ask what he thinks of Camilla. 'Phhfff! Problems. Why when there are millions of women in the world, why Camilla? She is horse princess.'

Meanwhile Steve has discovered the pleasures of shitting in the ocean. Failing to find a loo that isn't an old-school squat job, he makes a beeline for the Black Sea. 'There's something really nice about crapping in the sea,' he says. 'You can't miss, like you can with a squatter. And it washes you at the same time.' Just like a swimming pool then.

Steve's still out of action, so the other two thirds of us drive into Sozopol for a mooch about. We park on the street outside a hotel, next to a big wheelie bin, and wander in. It's essentially a tourist resort, but one where pretty much everything is written in Bulgarian. Imagine Newquay invaded by the number 3 and weird right angles. Jeff is tempted to buy a towel with a print of a phenomenally-breasted naked woman on it. That'll go down well in Azerbaijan.

A few hours later we go back to the car, and get a bit of a shock. Looking at the space outside the hotel, next to the wheelie bin, we discover it's filled not by a Fiat Punto covered in idiots and containing everything we own, but a small clapped out green Lada. That's not our car. The Fiat is not there. A clapped-out green Lada. Where is our car? A clapped-out green Lada. That's definitely where we parked the car. A blue Fiat Punto, which contains everything we own and is fairly essential for getting to Mongolia. A clapped-out green Lada. Tits.

I have to say I can't help finding it quite funny. I figure it has either been towed, which means we'll get it back, or it's been nicked, which means getting to Mongolia is going to be incredibly interesting. The only genuine problem is having no passports. Then Jeff points out they're at the campsite. Oh, that's all right then. I start looking forward to seeing how we'll wind up making it to the finish line.

We go across to the hotel to ask if they saw anything. The receptionist is friendly - as the average Bulgarian seems to be - but he's only just started his shift. He goes out to ask the chef, who says he did see a truck come along earlier and scoop up a Punto. Brilliant. The receptionist books us a cab to take us to the pound, which turns out to be only five minutes down the road.

We get there and quickly realise it's basically a car-park scam - the dude in the booth points us to the other side of the car park and tells us we have to speak to the guys under the umbrella.

We walk over to find a load of shirtless blokes sitting around playing cards. It couldn't look less official. Feeling pretty gormless, we give them the £20 for the fine, they laugh at us, and then we ask if we can have the Punto back. Ridiculous. I point to a huge speedboat parked on a trailer next to our car. 'That's ours too,' I say. He doesn't laugh at that.

We get back and Gabi gives us shit for not listening to him. Apparently this is a scam the police have with tourists - plucking easy targets from the street and getting them to cough up fines - and he reckons he warned us about it yesterday. He's livid. Big Problems. This convinces him that we're idiots, and he won't let up on that for the rest of our stay.

The day ends with Gabi coming over and slating our gas stove cooking - 'Prison food: Big Problems' - before closing a rant about Afghanistan by deftly waving a huge knife around and nearly dropping it through his foot. When we've finished our slop he and his wife insist we join them for dinner, which means more wine and ace sausages, and his dad's home-made goat's cheese, while Steua Bucharest play Motherwell in the Europa League on his telly. His son Meh is getting quite into it: 'Fuck you!' he shouts at the screen when Bucharest are denied a penalty. Gabi just laughs. Soon Gabi is teaching me the Romanian for performing a certain deed on a certain area of a certain relative.

He is convinced we are cretins.

Day 12: the Black Death. I mean Sea

Sozopol, Bulgaria. Making our way across Bulgaria is all fairly event-free, just enjoying the tunes and more sun as we wind our way through gentle forest climbs, with the sea veering into view every now and then below us to our left. I haven't seen that big wet beast since I left Cornwall. Of course there's plenty to keep the bored motorist entertained - loads more insane overtaking on blind bends, and the occasional game of layby whore-spotting. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with: 'hello handsome, fancy a good time with these mams?'

Steve's still out of it, but we have to make up a load of miles, so we have decided to plough on and hoof it from the Romania/Buglaria border to the Black Sea. He says he's fine in the back, as long as we can stop for him to throw up. Bloody backseat drivers.

Another team from the rally - 4 Play Nice - have been in touch via this blog, saying they'll be on the Black Sea coast around the same time as us. In one way this is a pain - we'd really expected to be last by miles by now, so they've kind of stolen our glory. But given that we haven't spoken to any Fellow Rallyers since the Czech party last week we figure it'd be good to hook up. They say they're heading for Sozopol, a small beach resort towards the border with Turkey, so we agree to meet them there.

The good thing about Bulgarian billboards is that they seem disproportionately weighted towards Bruce Willis. He's in all these vodka ads, declaring - or, I like to think, defending - 'the truth about vodka'. In one he does so by resting his elbow on a sword and looking very bald. This seems to be the key to selling products in Bulgaria, judging by the other ads. One features a bald man in a huge fur coat, surrounded by dogs. Forget sex. Selling here is all about war, hunting and hair loss.

It's not such an epic drive, and we turn up in Sozopol by five, seeking the campsite. Turns out it's way easier in the light. We find the campsite without any trouble and drive around a bit looking for a pitch, before settling for one next to a caravan with about three porch extensions. The owner waves hello, then gets up and comes over to advise us where to set up, making all sorts of Steve-style calculations about where the sun will be at what time. Then he gets stuck in helping stick the tent up. And brings out some tools to help us. And blows up our airbeds. Of course he does. He's Romanian.

Turns out his name is Gabi, a big gregarious tanned chap in a white vest who's here with his family. He's really chatty, but his English, while good enough to understand, is patchy, so as he gets deeper into conversation he keeps calling on his wife for help. She's in the caravan. So throughout our chat with him he keeps pausing, then you hear the odd word - 'chicken', 'plum', 'war' - roaring out with a Romanian accent from a slit in the caravan curtains.

Jeff wanders over behind the tent and suddenly throws up. Then he feels better again. This trip is still weird. Once he's recovered, he makes the point that he'd never considered the concept of Bulgarian caravaners before. He'd only ever thought of it as typically English. But they're all here. Most of them have brought TVs. Gabi's rigged up his own satellite dish. So basically they're all squashed in, in confined rows, having brought all their mod-cons, deftly recreating for their holiday all the realities of suburban life. One guy has a huge flatscreen TV in his two-man tent. I'm surprised no-one's brought a lawn mower.

We take a wander along the beach, which is peppered with open-sided bars playing house music. There's not more than three or four people in any one. It's a bit odd. Pete Tong was apparently playing here last week. We wander back via a shortcut, which leads us into another area full of little wooden shacks. I wish I had the balls to walk up to people and stick a camera in their face, as this place would make a wonderful photo essay - holidaying Bulgarians and their little colourful boxes. We sit around chatting to the guys from the other team - they actually brought chairs. One of them has a gran who lives in Hemmick, the stunning beach down the road from where Jeff and I live.

They're a bunch of engineering graduates from Nottingham University, doing the rally, in a rusted Skoda, to get some fun in before they start work. Makes it all sound so ominous. We're way older than them and we're out doing the same thing. Looks like someone has a mistaken perception about the working world. I'm not sure whether it's us or them. With one man still well and truly down, and another been all weird and pukey, the night is another quiet one for us. Budapest nights seem so far away. I lie down to read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance, a book recommended to me by Steve Roe, lord and master of Hoopla impro. With the way things are going with the team, it's looking increasingly prescient.

Day 11: have you seen our lion?

We get the maps and internet out and plan our way down towards Turkey, which involves a massive day of driving. It all starts in the Casa Delureni drive-way, where we pass an old Romanian guy carrying a scythe. He eyes us from behind yet another of the countryside's impenetrable poker faces. At least he didn't try to kill us. He must like us.

Romania has been a little odd. To be honest it's all been a bit sour. Apart from Christina bringing us our delicious breakfasts.

But the countryside is beautiful. Weaving round mountain roads we watch in awe at the Romanian deathwish, expressed through reckless overtaking at high speed on blind bends. Several times we find ourselves driving with a guy on our side of the road heading straight for us, then tucking in at the last minute. Whores wait in laybys next to fields, wearing skimpy bikinis. Cows wander around in the road.

We make what turns out to be a several-hour detour to visit a castle that may or may not have had anything to do with Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration behind Dracula. Not that anyone cares about its claims - the tourist vendors are out in force peddling crap vampire masks.

It's an ace castle regardless - dating back to the C13, and up on a massive hill. Then we're off into even more amazing mountain scenery, Jeff behind the wheel, forests stretching off everywhere. Then suddenly into Bucharest - rude boys wheel-spinning a u-turn in a huge beemer. Chaos. No road markings - massive junctions. Jeff belts it round. Grey apartment blocks everywhere. One guy comes over to give us cards flogging a strip club. 'You don't like?' he laughs. It's the first warm chat we've had since we arrived in the country. It's the opposite of England - everyone in the city is full of warmth, and people you meet in the countryside are humourless pricks.Then we hit the straightest motorway ever towards the border. Or as it should be known 'the road with the bend in it'. We pull in just before the border. We stop off at a little change money shed to see if we need one of those motorway tickets to get through Bulgaria. The bloke there grunts at us. Jeff tries to ask him a question. He shoves him off the step. Okay then, let's just get back in the car.

We're lost. With a man down in the back. Steve's babbling incomprehensible shit from the back seat. Slight sense of urgency here - need to get to a campsite on the other side before the sun goes down. But the sun's almost down. And now another border crossing, which in Romania is bound to be a huge pain in the arse. We crawl up to the little booth. This could be a nightmare. 'Hello! How are you?!' Ah, it's the chirpiest official we've ever seen, just as we're leaving the bloody country. Maybe he can afford to be happy, knowing we're on the way out. 'Have a great trip!'

Nothing makes any sense. We roll into Bulgaria, get stuck behind a load of trucks at a weigh-in. It's now dark, and Steve is talking to the goblins. It's down to Jeff and I to get this man to a campsite as quickly as possible. So I promptly get us hopelessly lost in an alien border town in the early night.

We're totally lost, and on the few signs that are there everything's in cyrillic writing that looks like 3s. right-angles and the symbol for pi. Jeff comes to a junction, with no idea about anything. Left or right? Right. He takes us right. HOOOOOOOONK! Uhm, left. I gather right's a one-way street. Laboured u-turn, including stalling. Soon we're stuck. I decide to ask a family for directions, pointing at the map and asking for the road to Varna. They do better than tell us - they jump in their people carrier and tell us to follow them, and drive us 15 minutes across town to deliver us to our escape route. Of course they do. They're Romanian.

We follow the road out of the city, which should just be a straight road, the E70 all the way out, until it suddenly turns into the E87 with no warning. We go to a garage for help, and the girl there turns out really friendly. She tells us how to get back on the E70, and writes down some town names in cyrillics as well as the bulgarian for please and hello. All we need now is for her to give us some money and we'd have it all locked down. We heed her directions, going down another potholed lane and coming onto the E70. Just then I realise we're where we were trying to get to all along - opposite a little lane marked on the map with a campsite symbol. Wow. It's easy when you're not trying.

We check it out, it turns out not to be a campsite but a hotel. The owner comes out, with a girl who's translating for him. He's trying to get us to stay, and willing to let us set the price. It could be a con, but the girl insists he just wants to help us out. The price for three in a room is usually 45 euros. He asks what we'd be prepared to pay. We say 45 is fine. He haggles us down to 40. I try to get him up to 50. He won't take anything above 40. He's one tough customer. Done.

By now Steve seems to be mumbling whole diatribes at the pixie folk, so he's just happy to have a bed. And in a hotel too. Turned out way better than driving round for the next hour looking for a campsite that doesn't exist, and then struggling to whack the tent up in the dark. Instead we've got a room with aircon and showers, and what turns out to be a massive hotel all to ourselves.

The girl shows us to our room. On the way she asks a simple question. 'Have you seen our lion?' Uhm, no... Oh, yes, there it is. There's the lion. In its cage. In the hotel carpark.

We talk to the girl, Niya. We tell her about the rally. Her eyes light up. She's genuinely taken with it, and makes a note of the organisers' website. She seems a little sad. Who knows? I get the sense she wants to talk more, but can't because of her boss. Either that or she's fucked off with working in a hotel and would rather sod off halfway round the world just for the hell of it. If we hadn't ripped half the back seat out to accomodate more of our crap, she'd probably be leaving Bulgaria with us.

Jeff and I spend the rest of the night at the bar by the pool like a couple holidaying in Majorca, being waited on exclusively by the bar staff and serenaded by the Bulgarian band. I accidentally make eye-contact with the guitarist as he launches into his saccharine solo on 'We Are Sailing'. He marks our moment by giving the neck of his guitar a little rock lift.

This rally is weird.

Day 10: rotten luck in Romania

Modern travel is weird. Have a problem? Just ring up your local Cornish vicar. No-one at the retreat speaks any English, and we're the only guests here. It's all a bit of a mystery. Apparently our room's already been paid for and everything. So I ring Pat the vicar, back in Cornwall, to ask her a few things, not least what the hell is going on. Not in those exact words. She's a vicar. So I slip a couple of expletives in too.

She tells me that, as we knew, they'd been expecting us three days before, but adds that most of them have been away at a wedding. The English speakers should be back soon. She also confirms she has indeed paid for the room, to save things getting confusing. Which is ace, and very nearly worked. But at least we can expect a bit of banter soon - it'd be nice to get the lowdown on the retreat and the area in general, to see what it's all about. For now Pat recommends a woodland walk nearby, which leads you to a waterfall you can chuck yourselves into, which sounds like the perfect thing to do after yet another blisteringly hot day in a row (sorry England). Also, she says, if you want to pack a picnic, pop into the shop on the way and pick up some bread and stuff. That sounds ruradyllic.



We jump in the car and head to the shop, which gives us our first taste of the Romanian countryside. In through the beaded curtains to find a tiny timewarp grocery, stacked with packets of incomprehensible things. And Pringles.

There is no humour here. One poker-faced punter pushes me out of the way with his beerbelly. Then the similarly squat owner comes round and stands about six inches in front of Jeff's face. He just stares at him. Jeff smiles. Nothing. Jeff waves. Which looks ridiculous. 'Pizza,' says the shop owner, pointing into the cabinet. We leave the shop carrying our pizza. Jeff succinctly describes the experience as: 'Romanian as fuck.'

It's good to be out in the countryside. Again, there's too much for the eye to take in. Driving through valleys with steep hills on either side, overtaking more old country women, and men on carts carrying sticks. It's a beautiful area, even if we'd really rather be out walking in it, not driving again to go walking in it.

We follow Pat's directions, down a dirt track next to the railway line, and follow the river. The dirt track is nothing but a dusty lane full of pot holes, but that doesn't stop people coming the other way driving massive trucks. The faces covering our car take a proper pasting (sorry people).

We can't help noticing that people seem distinctly indifferent to the sight of a rallified Fiat Punto covered in the faces of lots of pale people. Not that we're expecting a huge reaction everywhere we go, or for people to react differently because we're English, but given the looks, laughs and winks we'd got in countries on the way, we'd have thought that would only increase when we got out to some proper countryside.

It's not that people are negative necessarily, they just couldn't give a fuck. As Jeff points out, they're probably a bit miffed to have gone from an entirely traditional rural existence to having a big main road shoved through with massive billboards advertising Lexus. Or Lexi, for Partridge fans. Steve, usually an immovable rock of understanding, sums it up by saying: 'I would call it ignorance, if they weren't so stupid.'



We totally fail to find the waterfall, but pull up at another part of the river. Steve gets out to guide us in, walking past a house that contains the worst smell he's ever smelt. He figures there has to be a dead body, of human or cow, inside. Then we go to tuck into the pizza which the kindly shopkeeper had passed our way earlier. I tuck in. Steve points out that it's rotten. Oh shit.We drive back. Again, we're blown away by the countryside. We pass more Jesus statues, and an old woman completely crashed out in a hedge.



When we return, the staff are all back, and they serve us a delicious meal of pork cutlets and incredible herby potato. But not a single word beyond the basic pleasantries. Is it shyness? Or is it aggressive? Are they just tired, or is it just that they can't be arsed? Does a group of English blokes abroad have a reputation preceding them? Or is it just that our time-keeping is appalling? The hard part is just not knowing, which means you can't do anything about it. You start thinking you don't deserve friendliness, or that we're doing something wrong.
The ones who speak English are the worst. It's like they've learnt our language so they can ignore us more fluently.

We recover our sanity by lounging in the grounds of the retreat, taking in the views.





Then Jeff skips about the meadow and gets the horn over nature again.



We end the day with an evening kick-about among the hay bails. In a perfect world we'd now be surrounded by a load of Romanian kids, helping to foster international understanding through the language of visionary through-balls and sweetly-struck volleys. As it is we have to suffer our inelegant hoofs alone.

**SMS update 5**

Left at 27th July 2009 at 07:23

Recieved by SMS (Location: Oradea - Romania)

60k in from oradea at casa delureni retreat- please look online for this place as its very special. Nearly a week late for breakfast. Beautiful. Gonna go get lost now and take some photos.@

Day nine: Romania is weird

We really have to get out of Budapest, so we get high on more of Marta's coffee and pack up to set off. Before we leave, we chat to Mary and the Manchester Mob, a middle-aged hippyish couple on on a month's family driving holiday to Greece.

They understand where we're coming from, but Mary is mock despairing that we've just pulled another 6am finish. And that we lost one of us. 'Do you think Ranulph Feinnes stopped off for action on his way to the pole?' she asks. It's a good point, especially when we're still about 9,000 miles from Mongolia. Steve points out that Ranulph probably would have done if he'd found any. Mary seems more approving of our time spent grooving. 'You don't get old and stop dancing,' she says, 'you stop dancing and get old.'

Steve volunteers to drive, which is brave after a second consecutive night of three hours' sleep. Still, not as brave as letting me drive. Jeff's in the back sleeping. I navigate, helping to get us lost on Budapest's highways trying to find a park of Communist-era statues, and then Steve sorts us out again by using the sun. Clever bastard.

And so for another long haul, covering hundreds more miles down the E60 under the still glorious European sky. The good news is the driving hasn't become boring. Jeff points out it's actually nice to get back on the road after a couple of days in one place, and the Punto is still proving remarkably comfortable. Decent tunes and Steve's wired brain power us ahead. I'm awake the whole way, but at I'm so tired I keep drifting into that strange place between consciousness and sleep, and at one point my mind delivers me a crystal-clear image of Price's mum amending a pair of trousers. Weird. In six hours or so we're at the Romanian border which, especially when you're in that state, is far far weirder.

As soon as we cross it feels for the first time this trip like we've entered an alien world. The road is bumpy and full of potholes, and the needle on the littlecommiecarometer is whizzing round in circles. The 'tiny men in big hats' count also soars. Steve weaves cautiously ahead, crawling past decrepit power stations and giant refineries, and we gawp at the crumbling apartment blocks built right in their shadows. Imagine the estate agents who have to shift those.

Pretty soon we're past that and into a series of villages, which are full of so much ramshackle stimulus it's impossible to take it all in. Old women walk down the road in headscarves and scratchy tunics, fruit stands line the roadside beneath lamp-posts topped by giant stork nests, and every mile or so there's a large image by the roadside of Jesus, our lord and saviour, nailed to a cross. Then a horse and cart trots past. In an EU country.

We drive for 60km or so, eyes out the window the whole time, through the 'cosmoplitan' town of Oradea and on to the village of Borod, and Casa Delureni. This is the retreat/guesthouse that my parents suggested we visit - it's co-run by Pat Robson, the vicar from Gorran, and was set up by the White Cross Mission, a Cornish charity to help support the orphans of the Ceauscescu regime.

It's an utterly beautiful place, a series of chalets dotted about with views stretching across a beautifully etched valley, and complete with its own meadow. We meet one of the staff, Christina, a smiley youngster who's outside pushing her mate around in a wheelbarrow.

The only snag is that we were meant to be here on Thursday, and it's now Sunday. Bloody Budapest. We're the only guests here, and apparently the chef only comes in when needed. The guy who greets us seems pretty blunt, and no-one speaks much English, so we're left fearing they've been twiddling their thumbs for two days while we were pratting about in Hungarian night spots.

There's not much we can do about that now, we shrug, and chalk it up as just another case of our genuine cluelessness. I'd always assumed we'd end up doing some research on this trip, but that hasn't happened yet. We've been rolling across borders with no idea of what currency people use, or how to say thank you, or even what time zone we're in. It's shocking really. When they ask us what time we'd like the chef to prepare our dinner, we say 7.30, thinking that's in an hour and a half.

So they're probably a bit pissy when they have to come and get us at 8.30 because we haven't shown up yet - for a dinner we've actually given them only 30 minutes to make. Three days late to the place, one hour late to our first meal. Later Steve sets the alarm so we can make the next day's breakfast at our suggested time of 8am. It doesn't go off, as he's set it for Monday 3 August. So very nearly a week late for breakfast too.

It all sounds like the worst case of Brits abroad. Pretty soon we'll be smashing people's heads in with bits of pavement. In our defence it is tricky when you have 15 or so countries to get through and you're spending most of the time in the car. But having learned the basics in Romanian and seen the effect it has, we vow to take a different approach and look them up for each country from now on. Steve starts with the Bulgarian for 'my hovercraft is full of eels'.

Still, Christina seems happy enough. She brings out a delicious meal and warms us with her 'your welcome' and 'finish?', and her shouting of 'hello' when she means 'goodbye'. She's a lovely kid, but she clearly walks with the fragility of someone who has had to learn how to be happy.

We round off the day on the guesthouse veranda, watching the sun set over the stunning valley, sipping fruit tea and water. The contrast with Budapest is perfect. Nothing but the sound of dogs barking in the distance, and the promise of our first night in real beds. So if Mary's reading this, she'll be pleased to see we've stopped dancing - now we can start sleeping.

**SMS update 4**

Left at 26th July 2009 at 08:47

Recieved by SMS (Location: Budapest - Hungary)

the web of budapest may have caught a fly, can only give it 4 out of 5 and a half now. Coffee on. Drive on. We may still win this race yet!

Day eight: what the hell does driving slow have to do with being in the Mongol Rally?

We've just heard from another Cornish team, the Penzance Pirates, that they're in Kazakhstan already. That's mental. We're still back in Budapest. They'll be at the finish in no time, toasting Mongolia with weird moonshine supped from a yak-herder's pelt posing-pouch, and we're still here trying to work out how many euros there are in a florence, which doesn't even exist.

We really are trying to leave, but driving a huge lump of potentially lethal Wazboobleyoid isn't the wisest thing to try after a debilitating birthday do. Which means we have to stick around. Oh well... We manage to wake up after three hours kip to snag the free breakfast, then shuffle over to the campsite's bar to upload some more of this self-indulgent blog nonsense. At around 12 Steve half-jokingly asks if I want a beer. Yes. And so we do absolutely sod-all all day.

While Jeff sleeps, we force more booze down ourselves and go over the events of the previous night, repeatedly watching the videos and giggling like idiots. Then Jeff joins us, and we get gradually more wired there till the evening, missing out on the Turkish baths again, and failing to watch the travelling Belgian minstrels doing a gig in the street. Looks like we could be rounding off our first week away with the first uneventful day of the trip...

Then the Dutch girls get in touch - they're heading to an outdoor club on the banks of the Danube, in the centre of the city. We decide to meet them for a couple of quiet beers. That way we'll be in decent shape for getting back on the road and driving to Romania tomorrow.

After a sensible pizza, we find a bar that's covered in sand, where a Belgian rocker shares with us his love for Black Sabbath. I'm almost asleep, but it's obligatory we plough on with the beer and the fruit polenkas. 'I've totally given up on water,' says Steve, in a rare moment of lucidity. 'It's bollocks.'

It's weird going out at midnight on the back of a mere three hours' kip, especially when you're still an hour's walk down the river bank from the party. But we yomp there and arrive to find this huge fairground-style promenade full of carnival game stands and dancefloor areas. Standing in the middle you can hear a naff house remix of the Beastie Boys in one ear, and naff house remixes of Billie Jean and Nirvana in the other two. It's great being abroad.

We also suffer another barrage of fine eastern European figures, but these are controlled by brains that are young enough to be my daughter. (Is it possible to have a daughter who's just a brain? I'm 32 now and need to start thinking about such things. It would be pretty ace.)

I notice that while all the women are dolled right up, the blokes look like John Travolta and Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction when they get blood on their suits and have to borrow shorts and t-shirts from Quentin Tarantino that make them look like volleyball players. 'You look like a couple of dorks,' he says. I'm happy when I notice this, mainly because it's good to see guys succeeding while wearing what is essentially my wardrobe. Steve's advice: 'Be that dork.'

Before long we realise the Dutch girls aren't here. They're in Rio, the club across the road. This turns out to be the best-club-I-blatantly-hate that I've ever been to. Right on the river, serving G&Ts in real glasses, and about three quid to get in. And populated by that increasingly pleasant and characteristic blend of mellowness and attractiviticity. At one point I suddenly imagine the little man whose job it is to drive my penis. I picture him sitting in a tiny pilot's chair, wailing as he repeatedly smashes his head into the steering wheel.

We spend most of the night pretending to be into house music. And blowing half the trip's budget on Hungarian gin. Turns out the previous evening's conversations went down well with the Dutch girls. They'd bought me a birthday present - a tub of butter - but it had melted. I ask what they did last night, and Tess, the brunette, replies that she'd had 33 things which also relate to what we spoke about yesterday.

Pretty soon Jeff's wowing her with his dancefloor prowess. Which is an improvement on the day before, when he'd had to offer her an apology. 'Sorry,' he'd said in response to a look she gave him. 'When I've had a few beers I get a bit starey.'

The night ends with Steve and I leaving the club with no idea how to get back to the campsite, and we embark on that hour-long walk back up the Danube as the sun comes up. Jeff reappears in time to pack up, which is lucky: we'd concocted a plan to eradicate all traces of him from this trip - wiping out any mention of him from the blog, and replacing him with dwarf-shaped holes in the photos.

Budapest has been a real laugh, and given us an unbelievable weekend, but we really have to leave soon - we've got a race to win. We will exit the city in a happy daze, and for that we've awarded it the Stenalees Surf Club maximum score of five-and-a-half thumbs up.Apologies for the continued decent into tedious hedonism. There's probably plenty of proper adventure to come...

Day seven: birthday mess in Budapest

It's around 10pm, I'm at a beer garden built from an old playground, complete with swings, in a rundown part of Budapest. Queueing at the bar, I step on a local bloke's flip-flopped foot. Twice. I apologise, he asks where I'm from, and a brilliant night begins. In the words of my former colleague James Taylor: incredible scenes. Come the dawn of the new day, I've turned into this...

The day starts with Marta's incredible free breakfast, and as much coffee as we can physically handle. We remember the episode of Futurama, where Fry decides to spend his tax rebate on 100 cups of coffee, and by the end of the day he's gone beyond the shakes to the point where he can actually control time. We get close, but we're not there yet.

Back at the tent we meet an English couple who are on a month's tour of eastern Europe. They've been here for a few days, and have worked out where to go at night. The guy recommends an area full of decent bars, and marks on the map the street where we can find the one made from an old playground.

This makes me confident that our time in Budapest will be spent well. When you've only got one night in a city, you can very easily end up passing the whole thing in some tacky tourist hole that you'd never go anywhere near if you were back at home. My criteria for a decent stay: by day, go up to the highest point you can and check out the city from above, then spend the daylight hours wandering around, ending up where you end up, and walking so much that your feet feel weird and heavy like deathbed Elvis. By night, somehow find your way to pubs that make you feel like you've had a genuinely ace night out. And that's it. Pretty simple really.



Still, when we set out in the morning on a chair lift up the mountain next to the campsite, for an amazing panoramic look at the city sprawling out amid miles of forest beneath us, it's hard to picture how the night could possibly be anything other than the superficial norm. Only that tiny glimmer of faith in how stuff always sorts itself out stops us digging out the hawaiian shirts and bum bags there and then.



We head into town for an incredible lunch, based almost entirely on meat. Then on the classic city bimble in the 37-degree heat, Jeff gets the shits, which dictates our direction for much of the afternoon. We amble around the historic Pest, and marvel over how mellow everything is. Then we scale a load of steps to check out some castle, where we watch a bloke rinsing tourists for cash playing that game where you guess which cup is hiding the ball. One bloke strides over, announces that he knows where it is, and slaps down a $100 bill. He doesn't know where it is. What a twat. Steve gets it right five times in a row, but just didn't want to play. We try to encourage Jeff to have a go - he's renowned for having the fox-like mind of a shrewd gambler.



(As I type this the sounds drift across the campsite from the tuba and squeeze box played by members of an 11-piece Belgian merengue band who are driving the length of the Danube, busking along the way).

Soon the heat is getting to us, so it's time to cool off by jumping in a really hot bath. Unfortunately we get to the spa 10 minutes after it shuts, which means we don't get the chance to lounge around looking furry in a moist loin hanky. And that means more time walking around feeling clammy, as if we were in a hot Fiat Punto. Hot sticky sucks, hot sticky sucks.

We stop for a beer at a random cafe, where Jeff is convinced he's getting the eye from this brunette at the next table. We don't believe him, but then he agrees to go and speak to them if we stay for another pint. We're impressed when he actually does so. Turns out they're Dutch students spending a month inter-railing. We get on well, even if they're unsure of my comments about my experiences riding the trains in Poland, 'with the cabin door open, naked and covered in butter'. But they warm to it - by the time I'm requesting 32 cocks for my 32nd birthday, they're on board, and when we're discussing the fact that Steve's been aged by smoking (he's only six years old, he has mortgage and he can't even read), it looks like we've properly made friends.

We go our separate ways, and the three of us take a long walk to find the bar we'd been recommended, leaving the tourist drag to wander off into somewhere far more dilapidated. Oooh, the 'real' Budapest. Soon we're walking down an alleyway, flanked by elegant crumbling facades, in total darkness. Real travelling, man - yes, we're in danger of getting raped, but at least we don't feel like tourists. Until we get the map out. Yep. Then a lovely woman in a long black dress comes over from the other side of the crossroads to see if we need help. She gives directions to her favourite pub, which turns out to be the playground one we were looking for anyway. Suddenly I picture God looking down at us, flopping back and forth on one of those little kids' cars on a spring, laughing.

The bar is ace. It has the feel of being somewhere decent, surrounded by locals. It's the Budapest equivalent of somewhere like Shoreditch, but without the need to express your individuality in exactly the same way as everyone else. The people are just being themselves, which is lovely.

And so we come to the part where I introduce myself to the dude by stepping on his foot. Turns out his name is Tomasz, a Hungarian who now lives in Warsaw and is back for a holiday. He also lived in Shepperton for a couple of years, to improve his perfect English. We offer him a gin fizz.

Tomasz takes us over to his table, where we meet his mates and neck black cherry polenks. His mates are an international bunch - which seems to be the way in central Europe. We talk about the history of the region. As a representative of Great Britain, I apologise profusely for fucking the whole thing up. The guy in the stripey top is a TV chef, the white Hungarian version of Ainsley Harriot. His girlfriend is an olympian pistol shooter. I spend most of the time talking to Anya, a beautiful down-to-earth 34-year-old Polish mother, who's over with her French boyfriend. She is a delight, and says the word 'fuck' in a brilliant way.



Memories of Dortmund - we're bowled over by how this group take us under their wing and make everything ruddy special. We get royally trashed together and say our goodbyes, and then Tomasz and Kabo take us to get a kebab. Steve says it's the best he's ever had. He chats to Kabo, who drops in the fact he is product manager of biggest vehicle parts distributor in Hungary. Which is handy when you're driving a 1.2-litre Fiat Punto to Mongolia. He says he'll give us anything we need. We're picking up one of his fuel filters in Romania. All free. Kabo, that's ace.

Jeff spends a while explaining to Kabo and Tomasz what we mean by the words 'mental' and 'ace'. They crop up a lot apparently. I hadn't noticed.

I'm making demands for more birthday beer, so Tomasz takes us on - into a totally anonymous iron-clad, sound-proofed grey block in the middle of the city. It looks the kind of place that, had you entered 20 years ago, you'd never have come out. It's certainly not the kind of place you'd walk past and think, 'let's pop in there for a boogie'. We go up endless flights of red steps to the top two floors, and emerge into what Steve describes as:

'The best club anyone's ever seen, full of people from every nationality going mental to decent funky techno coming out of the best soundsystem you've ever heard.'

Yep, the vibe and everything was ace. People friendly, open, attractive, and having a good time. We dance till 5.30am, stopping every now and again to get a view of the city from the roof. Surrounded by honeys.



We go outside and say our goodbyes to Tomasz, who is an absolutely brilliant bloke. As Steve puts it: 'I've always thought of myself as quite open-minded, but these are levels of openness and human acceptance and a love of life I've never seen before. And I never want to forget.'

I told Tomasz he had given us an amazing evening. His response:

'The really amazing thing is to meet three guys who are volunteering to drive to Mongolia, for charity. This is my volunteering - everything will go much better if they drive away from here with a smile on their face.' I'm starting to think this is all turning a bit gay, but then Steve points out how, embarking on a nine-hour drive after a night out with Tomasz, it's not smiles we'll have on our faces.

We decide to stay another day.

**SMS update 3**

Left at 23rd July 2009 at 19:36

Recieved by SMS

Yeah. Its cold and doug is dead. Must. reach. sword....... :) x

Day six: here's to chance

Woke up at Stalins. Went for a run round the lake. Jumped in the lake. Packed up. Got lost driving round Bratislava, for this is a city that doesn't believe in signs. Went to Tesco. Drove around 200km to Budapest, en route picking up our first fine, from a Slovak border guard with a brilliant sense of humour: 'I can give you the minimum fine, which is 20 euros, or the maximum, which is 95. Are you happy with the 20?'

Jeff's tired.

Approaching the city, and realising we'd need to operate somewhat more effectively than the previous night in Bratislava, at least if we didn't want to end up with another night of commie headbanging, Steve asked for an idea where to go, so I pointed at near random to one town just outside the city. Once you've randomly picked one place there's no point in trying to drum up another one, so we went there, and were guided by a giant red squirrel to an amazing campsite at the base of a mountain, full of rustic wooden buildings centred around an old railway house.

I am now starting to get properly excited about how chance is guiding us. This is what the whole trip is about: being open and seeing where it leads. Within reason of course. I have very little interest ending up chained to a wall in a Hungarian S&M den, for example. I'll leave that to Jeff.

The campsite is run by a motherly middle-aged woman called Marta, who knows how to make friends - offering a free welcome beer. And decent facilities and quiet, all 20 minutes' bus ride from the centre of Budapest. She even gives her guests free bus tickets for their first trip to town. We're stunned that you can camp in such tranquility within a stone's throw of a European capital. So here we are - delicious goulash soup and gypsy pork for dinner, a few beers, a wi-fi connection for media Dave - and shitloads more mosquitos.

The plan is to have a couple of days in Budapest, take in the odd Turkish bath, and then hit the town for the big birthday celebration tomorrow night. I'm 32.

I sit typing this outside the tent, in the media Punto, thinking how things couldn't have gone any better. It's been a really good laugh already, and luck has played a beautiful part, here in the pleasant pedestrian lands of central Europe. Now for another night of sweltering heat in an MoD-issue sweat bag...

**SMS update 2**

Left at 23rd July 2009 at 09:19

Recieved by SMS (Location: Bratislava - Slovakia)

stayed in local equivalent to butlins. Had a rock band on until late - crazy swines they are! and dave got drunk on local medicinal cola that contained no alcohol. By a big lake so swimming this morning was v nice. Scorchio.

Day five: hallo Comrades, hi-de-hi

We kicked off Wednesday by packing up and waving goodbye to the serenity of Paradijs. But it soon got all Carry On Camping again - the day ending with us getting shamefully over-excited at the shrieks of Slovakian girls taking cold showers together at Bratislava's version of Butlins. Or Stalins, as we named it. And then a band busted out hours of classic rock.

How do we end up at a place like this? It makes no sense. Coming off a long road trip to wind up there was like the scene in Apocalypse Now where they float out of the Cambodian river darkness into a party full of booze and Playboy bunnies.

Zlate Piesky, a Communist-era relick nestled just off one of the main flyovers leading out of the city, next to a chuffing great lake. Views of the water, nice trees and plenty of perfectly-toned and bronzed locals to subject to the farmer-tan. But it also has this strange fug hanging over it - its grey past leers out at you everywhere, from the derelict concrete BUFET building to the spartan crazy golf course:

'You are permitted one hour of hitting ze ball through ze hole in ze concrete block. Oh what a krazy fun time you will heff. And then you must toil in salt-mine bureaucracy until death.'

We were up for that, but it was shut.

We were sitting at one of the outside bars there into the early morning, having a few beers, utterly agog. The band was absolutely tearing up the rock - ACDC's Highway to Hell, and some local Slovakian metal that involved repeatedly shouting what seemed like the word 'A-hole' in the chorus. Things were more mainstream over at the other bar, where the band was busting out a patchy Slovak rendition of Agadoo: 'push ze pineapple... uhm... tree'.

A crowd of souls clad in vests and small shorts (men and women alike) joined in with the keyboard player's exuberant hair-swinging. Who are these people? Who actually holidays under a motorway? IT MAKES NO SENSE. But holiday they did, and party they will.

I was queueing for a beer when an irate man stormed over and asked the massive barman when the music would stop.

'The music doesn't stop,' he replied.
'But this is a campsite, not a nightclub. How do we stop the music?'
'You can't stop the music.'

Indeed. If those dirty Commies couldn't prevent these crazy east Europeans from partying, it'd take more than a stroppy bloke in a pair of flip-flops to do so. And so the band rocked on.

It's hard to get a grip on the people here. One girl at the bar is breathing helium from a balloon, and her tattooed boyfriend is laughing and smiling over at us. I figure it'd be funny to film her on Steve's phone, whereupon the boyfriend suddenly gets incredibly aggro and shoves me aside with an outstreched palm to the face. Ok, fair enough. I start walking away. But then her and her other two friends say it's ok to film her. Oh, ideal. Oops, there's that hand to the face again. That's perfect.

Later we take a bottle of wine to the side of the lake. A few people are sitting by a table there, under a gazebo thing. 'Do you want to come and drink?' asks one guy in English. Ideal. We walk over and his mate just grunts what we discerned to be a 'no'. Ok, fair enough. About five minutes later, we're down by the water, and he suddenly runs in naked and goes for a swim in front of us. Then he emerges from the depths, Godzilla-like, an absolute beast of perfectly-toned man. 'What does this all mean?' I whisper.

All I know is that him shielding his modesty with his cupped hands is quite ridiculous - he is bound to be brutally built down there, and would only gain more of our respect by striding over and waving the thing in our faces. We've decided it was an apology. But I still don't get it.

And that's the only flaw with the incredibly attractive healthy-looking Slovakian women: they tend to be attached to utterly well-built and healthy-looking Slovakian blokes. We imagined a conversation:

'I see you staring at my girlfriend. Would you like to have try with her?'
'Yes please.'
'Well you can't. She think you're an idiot.'
'Ok.'
'I have big hands and can make fire with my eyes. You are small and pale and clearly have small dick.'
'Oh-keeeey.'

The Brit abroad look is one that's only enhanced by having about 900 mosquito bites. Two nights' camping has provided quite the probiscal feast, and all three of us have taken a decent caning. At least we're in disease-free lands for now. Steve was initially the front-runner - he has a weird reaction whenever insect teeth come near, swelling up like a loaf. But it looks like I'm now the firm favourite among the blood-suckers. My back looks ridiculous.

Other news: we're now very much in the land of the toilet shelf. This is something that I first marvelled over many years ago with Barn and G-Man when we went interrailing. I like the idea that the toilet has a shelf on to which you distribute your effluvia, before a press of the handle sweeps it all away. Could this be another Communist echo? Stern figures from the Politburo inspecting your stool for insubordinate sweetcorn before granting you licence to flush.

I'm aware of this blog's shamelessly base tone, the constant references to toilets, and the total lack of culture, or any interaction with locals beyond grunts and minor acts of hostility. It's pathetic really. But it hasn't been that kind of trip, at least since the antics of Dortmund and the Czech party. Days are spent on the road, perhaps seeing a place, then getting from A to B and setting up for the night. It's the Easy Rider rhythm - long stretches of cruising around to an amazing soundtrack, giving each other long meaningful looks, and then eventually pulling out into a place that has stuff in it that we can eat and drink and put a tent on.

But it has all been a real laugh, especially as we're shifting ourselves without maps or guidebooks. Reliant entirely on chance. Even navigating by the sun half the time. Steve says stuff like 'that's south' a lot. It worked for Paradijs, and if weird campsites that throb to the rhythms of Bratislavan dregs are your thing, as they are for us, it worked again this time.

(As I write this, incredibly weird stuff has just happened again, and an entirely arbitrary pointing at the map has guided us to the perfect campsite on the edge of Budapest, run by a wonderful woman called Marta. But that's tomorrow's update).

So how did we find ourselves at Stalins? After spending the morning at Cesky Krumlov, a stunning Unesco heritage site based on a Medieval citadel on the bend of a river...

... where we took a funny picture of Jeff:

... before the rest of the day built around getting hopelessly lost. Mainly thanks to Czech roadworks and a complete lack of signs. But getting lost is ace, and we ended up driving through an hour's worth of sun-bathed Czech countryside that we'd never have seen if we'd been blessed by the gods of satellite navigation.

We found the Bratislavan Butlins in similarly seat-of-pant fashion. After a long drive and one near-death experience, courtesy of moi when driving around Vienna, we decided we'd need to camp in Bratislava, which is an incredibly tricky feat to pull off in any strange city, especially against the pressure of the setting sun. After cruising round the town a bit, we found a reservoir on the map, and had a hunch we should camp near there. We ended up in a weird little suburb, which we drove around for ages lost like a bunch of rems until we saw a girl cycling towards us and asked her for directions. Her sister was the family's English speaker, so she went to fetch her out of the house, and she told us to head a few kilometers to Dannubia. This we did, and found ourselves asking a load of kayakers for a camping place. They pointed us back to the north side of Bratislava - and to an oh-my-god middle of city waterpark lake Soviet version of Minehead Butlins. All a perfect example of what Douglas Adams described as 'Zen navigation'. Clueless but effortless.

I genuinely love how this stuff works out, especially given the place where we've just arrived. To be honest we're going to need a lot more of such freak luck the further into the trip we get. But I trust that it'll work - it has to - and I look forward to seeing how it pans out.

A quick word from our sponsors. Steve has fallen in love with his Finisterre base layer, despite his initial misgivings about the homosexual overtones of the sky blue colourings. After a week of wearing these things, they still don't smell. Steve says that one day in a regular t-shirt showed how impressive they are - he was humming. That car is starting to get properly warm. 'I fucking love this top,' he said earlier. So to Eric and all the chaps at Finisterre, you have three happy customers. Now you just need to get round to emailing us and we can start earning our keep.

We'll keep you updated on all manner of manly stenches as they develop.

**SMS update 1**

Left at 22nd July 2009 at 15:58

Recieved by SMS (Location: Vienna - Austria)

Austria on. Doug doc is lovin it. Heading to nr bratislavia for the night. No car dramas thus far. 33 degrees cold and all digging the tunes thrown down by shuffle machine. Steve wore finesterre top until last night- no smell at all! But covered in beer stains from castle mega sesh so will wash this eve and wear again for as long as poss. Peace all. X

Day three: holy shit. Sesh on.

Czech Republic. My final faint memory of day three, Monday: in the depths of the night, in the fall-out from the Rally's Czechout party in a castle in the middle of lush Bohemian countryside. I'm back at the campsite, outside the Punto, and absynth has left Steve and Jeff too hammered to play the two chords required to perform De La Soul's Magic Number. I'm doing a similar job of murdering the verses, aiming most of my absynth-damaged raps directly at some drunk bloke's mankini-housed testicles. I then make several attempts at buffing his exposed arse cheeks with a Johnson's Baby Wipe. Yes, the sesh is definitely on.

The day started pedestrian enough. We made our first epic drive of the rally, leaving Dortmund after a hot shower in Alex and Moni's equally epic double-wash-basin bathroom, and cruising nine hours across Germany to Klatovy in the south west of the Czech Republic. All we knew was to expect a free G&T bar and generous lashings of pain, in the ruins of an old castle.

Castles turned out to be the order of the day. We drove through miles and miles of verdant Germanic forest, spotting schlosses.

'Sir, my wife tells me you have a particularly impressive schloss.'

'Your wife is a canny woman.'

'I really must come and have a nose around that schloss of yours some day.'

'You very well may.'

Bavaria. Lederhosen. Alpine horns. Die Autobahn. Shame I've done so little research into this trip. I have no idea where we are or what it means. Probably nothing. But Jeff and I did find ourselves in adjacent toilet cubicles at one point, in a motorway service station. It was piping some trippy Jean-Michel Jarre synths into the room, to ease you into a state of release. Jeff heard me laughing so much he had to check whether I'd been looking at myself in the huge polished silver toilet roll dispenser which, when I did notice it, I found to be reflecting my exposed groin. That made me laugh even more. Then I pressed a button on the back of the toilet that sent the seat spinning slowly round on an oddly eliptical whirry cleaning cycle. Exit bathroom in tears. Brits abroad.

And now I've just added that fact to the internet, so that Google can use it to tell companies that I find the sight of my own cock funny. Blogging is weird.

By the way, I'm writing this on day four. I have to just point out where we are, driving through more of these unbelievable vast Bohemian landscapes. Go to the Czech Republic, it's stunning. The sun's out and everything's ace, booting it round rolling country roads past lakes and forests, to Parliament and the Raconteurs. Then emerging into duffed up little towns built on Soviet concrete and big men squeezed into tiny Skodas.

Back to day three, we made it to the Czech border fairly peacefully - stopping to buy some token thing that lets you drive on the motorway. Unfortunately this gave us chance to develop a theory on a weird breed of Fellow Rallyer. Most are really friendly - you're in a foreign country, you see another bunch of idiots in a stupid car, and you beep your horn, and wave like gurning lunatics out the window. Ideal. But some people are a little weird - like the car that pulled in at the border, and the bloke comes out and just goes:' How much did that set you back?' Well hello to you too, you bell-end. Luckily the vast majority of people are way better than that and get it.

This trip has an interesting rhythm. There's hour after empty hour of absolutely nothing. Like this...

But you know at the end that things are guaranteed to turn incredibly weird. Coming to the end of that long drive, we started getting really excited when we pulled off the motorway, and began a long meander through all this amazing scenery. Miles of it. I can't explain it properly. Big. Green. Beautiful. I have to warm up to evocative prose. Then we pulled in up a lane to another weird oasis: a view across the valley, loads of rally cars dotted about, and people putting up tents and running around dressed as spacemen and Victorian gents in tophats and 'taches.

One guy was dressed as a breathalyser, and had designed his costume so the blowy tube bit was down by his winkie. Then our mate Dave treated us to a live pottery demo, on the roof of his Punto. Such scenes are becoming far too normal...

From then on, it turned into slow-burn carnage. Sipping on potent Czech spirits and waving our Tribute around, before heading up to this stunning old castle on the hill and queuing for hours to get a drink rocking the Stenalees Surf Club Finisterre uniforms (and Scott's genius Par Market cats and dogs t-shirt). Jeff waited for ages for a sausage. In the wrong line. Then he waiting in a scrum for hours to get us our free gins. Cheers Jeff. Absynth and tequila had us leading the charge on the dancefloor to a Belgian band of which I have no memory. But they were absolutely ridiculous (see the picture at the top of the blog).

One of the organisers, Andy, said he saw Jeff being asked on camera what he thought of the band: 'Fucking ideal' apparently. And he agreed that it was.

I wish I could remember more, but that is one of the downsides of an evening of tequila and absynthe. One of my few memories is of this little motorised trolley thing, which myself and Jeff were determined to drive around on. Only we couldn't get it started. And then we got told off.

A magical evening - great entertainment, full of people putting the effort in to have a good time, wandering in and out of the castle's myriad corners and everywhere discovering a genuine sense of camaraderie. All round aceness, and a welcome righting of the 'decent people to bell-ends' see-saw.

Then it was back to the car to carry on - Steve was wandering around with the remains of the Tribute slung over his shoulder, opening the tap and sending it pouring down people's throats. A group of local Czech musicians were sat on the back of the Punto, incredibly moved by our dedication to our local brewing heritage. 'I dunno, I just drink it,' says Steve.

Then there was the incident with the terrible gig and guy in the mankini. Party till light, then up for a fry-up. We said goodbye to Arthur, the sleeping bag-less dude who for me sums up the entire ethos of the trip better than anyone. 'Cheerio,' he said, in a way that couldn't have been more mellow. Apparently his dad read this blog the other day and identified his son from my description, despite the fact I didn't use his name. Hello Arthur's dad. I have a feeling we'll be seeing Arthur again. Arthur's team is called Cuddy Munters. Look out for him.

We rounded off what was close to the perfect party with a game of barefoot and intensely hungover international six-a-side football in the morning sun, with a load of Swedish and Irish guys, and tunes floating across the field from two speakers sitting on the roof of a Swedish dude's car (the lunatic has packed two massive stereo speakers and nothing else. Brilliant). It felt like a Vietnam flick, when they get a bit of downtime. Stenalees Surf Club combined sweetly for a perfectly-worked backheeled one-two corker.

And then it was a case of repacking the Punto and sodding off again into the sunshine. The potters suggested a town down the road that's a Unesco World Heritage site, so we headed in that direction. It looks amazing - we're checking it out tomorrow before heading to Bratislava, where we should be meeting up with the pottery team, Around The World In 80 Clays.

For today we were happy to find somewhere decent for a relaxing night's camping with good facilities. So we were intrigued to stumble upon a place called Paradijs. It came amazingly close - a long drive down a bumpy lane leads you to a few houses in a huge forest, next to a fast-flowing river, with the sound of goats in the background.

The site was empty when we arrived, save for two girls sunbathing in bikinis (they turned out to be about 15, but the image was a strong one). Later, while we sat and had dinner of tuna pasta, two more girls in bikinis came paddling past in a kayak. Followed by Sid James and that big goony bloke. Carry On To Paradise. Then a load of Aussies pulled up in canoes and gave us a hacky sack, which is ace. One told us about their mates cycling across all the -stan countries, so we'll be looking out for them. They're called Steppe by Steppe (www.steppebysteppe.com).

So that brings me to now. I'm in the car in the dark, under incredible stars, the others are asleep, and we're getting eaten alive by mozzies. I'm supposed to be repellant, but it's not working. If all goes to plan you'll be reading this on Wednesday morning. Ideal.

Day two, pt. 2: SSC stadium rock gig on German TV

The trip's gone weird already. I remember when this realisation hit me: day two, somewhere around seven in the evening, I was playing the drums incredibly badly, on a stage in front of five enthusiastic Germans, and about 50 more disinterested ones trying to eat their dinner, singing in French about how my name is Mr Bertillon and I work at Orly airport as a customs officer, while a guy from Dortmund's local news shoves a camera in my face.

Yes, we made it on to Dortmund local news. Watch the clip here - scroll down and click on Engländer auf Durchreise. It should be up until July26ish.

Jumping back a bit, the promised 'special sausage' turned out to be very special. Traditional German Weisswurst, dipped in a tasty sweet mustard, and eaten in a way that would make even a Par Docks prostitute a little self-conscious. While holding a huge hunk of salty pretzel. All this took place at Alex and Moni's beautiful pad, once we finally found it. They had to come and get us from the petrol station, after our lack of maps had once again proven particularly shit.

We arrived to a small crew, many of whom Jeff and I had met a few years back when the Massive Firefox did a gig in nearby Wuppertal, a night famous for terror wasps and the English going to bed early having expelled huge amounts of vomit, into pint glasses and the backs of taxis. Rock n roll.

So they were understandably keen to have us back, and followed the lewd sausage-fest with a couple of hours spent up on Alex and Moni's veranda overlooking Dortmund, where beer was drunk. Then they shipped us out to the city's best landmark - Borrussia Dortmund's football stadium - for our first 'gig' of the trip.

It's ace meeting people like this. Everywhere in the world there are these little pockets of people who are not only incredibly welcoming and hospitable, but they get what you're trying to do and take time out of their day to make it way better than it ever would be without them. So Alex and Moni, Christof, Holger, Moni and everyone - thanks so much for helping out with our ridiculous venture. As we said, you all have to come to Cornwall so we can repay the favour. And the invite's in writing now, so it's all official.

So what did they do? Even the drive there was ridiculous. They had their mate Christof along - he's a roving reporter for Dortmund's version of the BBC local news, and he was keen to film it all properly. This meant we were suddenly driving around our first European city doing a little dance with a camera car - speeding on, pulling back, cruising alongside - with three or four cameras shoved at us.

They sorted out a proper venue for us - a beer garden next to the stadium, a huge space with a proper stage, and a load of families sitting around the outside eating their lunch and enjoying a few quiet beers. They were then subjected to three English idiots shuffling out in funny red hard hats and matching coats, doing their first gig with no amplification, having not bothered practising that set-up before. I think they were expecting something good. It really was crap.

It went as badly as it possibly could have done. Perfect. The simple task of singing in public without a microphone was enough to make me forget when I was supposed to hit the snare drum, which is the most ridiculously regular part of the kit you'll ever hit. Jeff said he was too pissed to remember how to do anything. And the drums were way too loud for Steve's intricate guitar picking. Brilliant. Anyway, we shuffled our way through a few songs, laughing at the fact we were even doing it at all, and then went outside to perform Magic Number by the Punto outside the stadium. That went far better, as you can see from the reaction of the (massive) crowd. Moni's brother, a total lunatic, made his feelings clear with a heartfelt belting cry of 'I like you!' Absolutely perfect.

What a ridiculous day. Then we got to drink more, eat pizza and sleep in an amazing house, with an amazing shower. Oh momma.