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.
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