Day fourteen - 15 August 2009 bad weather in Bulgaria

It starts to drizzle in the early hours, so I get Meg’s and my tent out to use as cover. We get some sleep, but the rain intensifies. By 4am-ish, we are drenched. James/JC (our driver) and Lu (tour leader) are on the floor of the inside, but Lu is awake and she helps us get everything inside. I spend the rest of the night trying to sleep on the chairs, without much success.
In the morning we travel to somewhere to see a fortress. I am wearying quickly of historical buildings I know nothing of, so I stay on the truck to practice guitar.

We bush camp near the Turkey border. Today was the first day that we had bad weather and the bus is strangely quiet. Perhaps the enthusiasm of forming new relationships has faded and people are realising which relationships are starting to become problematic.

Day thirteen - 14 August 2009, Bulgaria, chicken gizzards and a monastery

I was on ‘cook duty’ last night, meaning it was the turn of my team of three (myself, Belgian Sam and small, shy and ginger haired Caroline) to cook. This meant that we got to sleep on the truck to be there for setting up breakfast. I was late this morning apparently, although I wasn’t told that I needed to be ready for 6:30 until 6:20.

It takes us several hours to get out of Romania. The truck needs a wheel replacement, but nobody will let us stop on their land to do the necessary work.

We get into Bulgaria and stop at a monastery which has a hostel. We sit down for beers wondering whether we are camping or in the dorms. Eventually it emerges we are in dorms, although I only find out by asking.

I inspect the dorms, but the mattresses are like hammocks and the dorm I am supposed to be in stinks. This latter fact may be due to a number of old men with missing limbs sharing the dorm – it later emerges one has relieved himself from the backside in his bed. I decide I would rather sleep on top of the truck.

After a cheese infested dinner, and chicken gizzards which we feed to a cat, Tipperarian Hughie suggests we ‘going for a walk’. Despite me wearing sandals, and with Dave and Meg wearing flip flops, this walk turns out to be a climb to the top of a 250m hill in the dark, the cliff face of which faces the monastery. In daylight, this is a pay attraction featuring caves. Only Andrew (Welsh, wannabe adolescent psychotic) has walking boots, but he has the balance of a three year old.

It turns out to be good fun though, and we take a midnight swim in our underwear in an icy cold pond. This is briefly re-invigorating, although we are possibly subject to hypothermia*.

During the walk, I rip my colourful surfer dude trousers bought in Bude in Cornwall just a month or two earlier. This turns out to be the first of a number of trouser episodes on this trip.
By the time we reach the bottom of the hill, I am knackered. It has been a clear sunny day and Meg and I get on the roof to bed down.

*the next morning, Hughie goes to see the caves, and it emerges that the pond is infested with water snakes

Day twelve - 13 August 2009 Bucharest

I am woken up by dogs barking and some of our party coming back from Bucharest at 4am. JC (our truck driver) got ripped off by the taxi driver and is heard screaming out ‘I hate Romanians!’

On the bus to town, we are fined by inspectors as most of us didn’t stamp our tickets when entering the bus. I hadn’t bought a ticket at all. The episode leads to a heated argument between some locals, who defend us as the naive tourists, and the inspectors. The latter leave the bus at the next available stop.

We went to see the Parliament building built by Ceaucescu. The first word for it is massive. We consider going on the guided tour (if you leave the tour to explore on your own, it is a criminal offence according to such and such statute, it warns on the notice boards). However, we need passport ID to buy tickets, so we don’t go in.

Some of the buildings in Bucharest are not so ugly as other Romanian cities, but they are not particularly valued, being disguised behind advertising hoardings or generally decayed. Bucharesti (as spelled locally), still a wee bit communisti.

In the evening there is drinking and haircuts: never a good mixture.

Day eleven - 12 August 2009 'Dracula's Castle'

Romanian countryside can be captivating and the villages half live in a time warp. However, the cities are pug ugly. The idea of visiting Bucharest is not capturing my imagination.

We visit Bran Castle, otherwise known as Dracula’s castle, this being where Vlad the Impaler once lived. It is a spiraling building set at the top of a hill and entrance is the equivalent of £2.75 to get in, plus £2.25 if you want to bring a camera. Other than the historical story boards, it is much like walking around a Tudor mansion, although it does predate Tudor by several centuries. It seemed more like the setting of a Shakespeare play, more House of Capulet than lair of Beelzebub. The intimidation factor was also somewhat diminished by the five foot high doorways.

We get lost trying to find the Bucharest campsite and have to follow a local. The campsite we stay at is in a pleasant location, and many of the party to choose to 'upgrade' to one of the many cabins available at a cost of just a few pounds a person. However, I am following a policy of no upgrades, so it is the tent for me.
In the campsite reception, amongst the tourism leaflets are cards for the local masseurs, who all seem to like give their massages in the nude, if the pictures are anything to go by. I sneak around the campsite dropping the cards inside people's tents and cabin doors.

Day ten - 11 August 2009 Romania

Romanian villages show great contrasts. Comfortable looking homes with BMWs or Volkswagens in the drive sit side by side with crumbling cottages with chickens and cows sharing the front courtyard. Horse and carts share the roads with cars and trucks, even on motorways. The villagers are mainly older people dressed in traditional garb, as the younger populace flee from a life of subsistence farming. It’s almost as if a phone call has gone around saying ‘quick, the tourists are coming, get the peasant gear out!’

Roadside onion selling seems to be a popular occupation too.

Day nine - 10 August 2009: Electric toothbrush and a well; to Romania

Trucking to Romania: We find out today that three of our group, including Dave, have failed their security check for getting visas to Iran. There is no apparent reason, the most likely being that they chose to randomly deny a few of us visas as some sort of token gesture of political hostility toward Britain.

We camp by what seems to be a disused train station, with weeds surrounding the platform and dirty decaying waiting area, which several of us choose to camp in. It turns out that this disused train station actually has trains coming through it every hour or so, our tents bemusing the local commuters and, for that matter, the train drivers, who press their horns as they come through.

I am regularly awoken by the trains and thoughts of contacting the Inland Revenue, for some reason.

Day 8 Budapest - 09 August 2009 Budapest

I wonder around Budapest with a group of 8 or 9 of us. John has a peg leg from a bug bite and buys himself a cane with a bell and a flask holder.

After lunch, Dave, Meg - also an Architecture graduate, spiky hair, 6’0”, so will probably get lots of looks when we get into Asia - and I go off to ‘Memento Park’, a reservoir of statues and replicas from the communist era. It is a long bus journey out of the Buda side, so we see the suburban commuter belt of the city. The first attraction upon entering the statue park is an old Trabant....

Day seven - 08 August 2009 to Budapest

John nursing his sore leg with a large beer

A driving day to the Budapest campsite: we get a free beer each on arrival, and I drink a few more and then go to bed. It is Belgian Sam’s birthday, and there is a party at the bottom bar of the campsite. I can hear repeating renditions of House of the Rising Sun with JC, our driver, leading with the mandolin. At about 4 am I am awoken by a 5 minute chorus of farts from a neighbouring tent, followed by another chorus of House of the Rising Sun.

Day six - 07 August 2009 Vienna

Vienna is an haze of architectural delights, and I actually weary of turning another corner to find another stunning historical design. I start to think that it could only help if there was the occasional tacky ill conceived modern building to relieve the monotony of brilliance.

I meet up with Bibiana, my Slovakian ex, who is very quiet initially, but seems to liven up when I buy her a coke. Afternoon sight-seeing became quite fun.

It must be said that Vienna is a very expensive city. Looking at shop windows I saw a pair of trainers advertised at €379, and a casual jacket at €979. I can’t even remember seeing prices like it anywhere in London.

Day five - 06 August 2009 Church of Bones, then on to Vienna

On the way to Vienna we stop at the ‘Church of Bones’ (www.Kostnice.cz), which dates from the 15th century but whose cemetery has bodies only from the last 100 years. This is because there are the remains of 40,000 inside the church arranged into elaborate pyramids and sculptures.

Apparently the pyramids of bones are delicately balanced on top of each other to create a cavity in the middle where people throw coins….I try to start a game of jenga, but the alarm goes off…

In the morning we are told sternly that breakfast is @ 7a.m. when we need to start out the next day, and definitely not 7:30. Not something I feel that inclined to pay much attention to.

Day four - 05 August 2009 Prague

I go for a walk with one group but lose them on the 13th century Charles Bridge. I find another, 4 young(ish) ladies from the truck (Lousie, Mary, Caroline and Tracy).
Prague has become something of a tourist trap (hence the separation on the bridge) and it easy to feel you are getting ripped off. Firstly, I somehow paid £5 for a punnet of berries at the first market. Secondly, after losing the others, I decided to go up one of the towers at either end of the bridge. On the way there is an entrance to something saying ‘see Prague like you can‘t see it anywhere else‘. I paid the 75 Kr (3 Eur) and found myself watching a barely visible film of the local sites being projected against a wall. I sat there for a few minutes and decided to walk out. It was only then I discovered that I could actually walk all the way to the top of the tower without charge. Finding such heights unattractive, especially when outdoors, I skipped around taking a few photos looking over the river and the town and quickly went down again.

Prague does have many architectural highlights, some of which you can see in the pictures. You can also hire a classic car to take you around the city, or ride around on an 6-seater circular bicycle, although I think this is mainly used for tours around bars.

Meeting up with the girls, we took a wonder around the random sites, stopping at the palace and catching the marching soldiers & band and a twitching guard….not a patch on the beefeaters, and they don’t even wear bearskins.

A highlight of the day was watching scenes being filmed for a Bollywood film on the street (see video).
Oh I forgot to mention that we stopped for lunch and several times for a quick refreshment, including at a café with a walled garden, the outside of which has been turned into a homage to John Lennon. At the end of the night a count was done, and I had apparently consumed 14 glasses / bottles of Czech beer...

Day three - 04 Aug 2009 to Prague

To Prague: Lost in the city as the roads are being rebuilt and the maps are out of date. Also the campsite can’t really be said to be in Prague. A taxi driver earns a sizable fare by leading us to the campsite.

Day 2 - 03 Aug 2009, breakdown in Belgium, and a stop over in Germany

Day two - 03 August

Breakdown in Belgium: the truck has a water leak, so we are off to find the nearest Skania garage. We end up in an anonymous Belgian village in Flemish country. It is notable how the Belgian architecture of houses is very much more individualistic and quirky than in the UK, where new houses tend to be built en masse by a single developer using the same design for each house. However, this town seemed to be a main road with randomly distributed shops and commercial outlets without any centre or identity.

A group of us go for lunch and then sit down on the grass outside the Skania garage playing cards and me strumming the guitar. The day's weather is the first of many sunny days to come.

Clockwise from left:

‘Little John’ (6’7”)

‘Gaz’: Kenyan born / Brit sporty public school type, worked in city for KPMG

Rhiannon, the babe of this group, age 22

Hughie, the impenetrable Irishman with a degree in Physics and a commiserate inability to spell

Dave, Bath Uni architectural student from Wales, but no Welsh accent

Belgian Sam, our translator through Europe

We finally set off at about 3pm until we reach Germany where we ‘bush camp’ in a farmer’s field. The farmer comes out to investigate, but is welcoming after his initial state of bafflement.

I sleep on the roof of the truck as the ground is a bit spiky.