The Ham Nomads

3 Jul 2015. <BG> Bjala; Ruse; <RO> Bucharest —

Today we made the break. We drove through Bjala (Бяла) and up to Ruse (Русе) — a total of about 70km, to our last stop in Bulgaria. We found a shopping centre to try to get CampinGaz in a Carrefour store. No luck! The shop assistant, when we asked him if they had the larger cylinders said "No", and then added "My country sucks!". Let's hope his opinion gets a chance to change for the better!

Ruse has trolley-buses!

We then crossed the Danube Bridge and into Romania. The toll on the bridge for campers is usually 12 Lev, but they charged us only 2. When we got onto the bridge, we understood why — normally a two-lane bridge (one lane each way), we found that the bridge was a virtual parking lot. Half-way across, we saw that one full lane had been closed, and they were building the roadway, from the concrete supports upward to the tarmac surfacing. Traffic was being allowed across in trickles from each side. And at one point, the whole roadway seemed to be rocking and shuddering — a railway train was passing through on the lower level of the bridge. The whole bridge dates from the 1950s and, although they are making it structurally sound, they aren't upgrading it at all by adding extra lanes, or anything like that!

We got across and into Romania, where all the border control lakes place. Why is so little care taken with the appearance of border areas? But at least the throughput of the trucks was far quicker than what we saw at the Turkish border. We gave over our passports and vehicle papers, and the man told us to park over in the side. He disappeared for about 15 minutes, then came out with our papers, returned them, and waved us on. We bought a one-week vehicle vignette at the border — if we need more, we'll get it on our way, but we suspect we will be out of Romania and into Hungary within the week.

We drove up to Bucureşti (Bucharest), and out the other side towards our campsite. Just short of it, we pulled in to a huge shopping complex, to visit a Carrefour store with the same mission as before — and the same result! But Warren was able to get a new MP3 player — the stupid Philips one he has been using has no way of recognising the sequence of the files in audiobooks, so Warren has had to go hunting for the next piece each time a track ended. The new Sony Walkman is a lot more intelligent!

A rain shower welcomed us into Bucharest — but look — a trolley-bus!

We had a traffic snarl-up on one of the tunnels.
Why, we never found out, but we did hear ambulance
sirens ahead of us!

We had a little difficulty finding the campsite, but we spotted a van-load of Jandarma, who were very friendly and most helpful — all the more surprising, as they were armed to the teeth, and were obviously keeping certain premises under surveillance. As we were leaving, they were making a move, leaving the vehicle and crossing towards the building. We wish we knew the outcome, but we thought it more judicious to make a quiet departure.

Got to the campsite, which is well set up, clean, with good bus transport into town. The chap at reception, Stefan, also helped us with out gas problem, which is getting closer to critical by the day. He phoned an Englishman who had just left the site, who was able to tell us who might be able to help us with CampinGaz. But when he saw our cylinders, Stefan told us that the local Lukoil petrol ststion might be in a position to refill them from its automotive LPG supply.

The WiFi in the general campsite is down, but the office is comfortable, and the WiFi there is functional — so Warren spent some time in there working out out Romanian itinerary. Tomorrow, that will be how the blogging will be done!

Distance driven — today, 110 miles ( 177 km ); to date, 23,273 miles ( 37,455 km )