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.
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