Ben’s photos from last three weeks up until leaving Moscow…

 http://bristol.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2134618&l=e89d5&id=193107027

We left Brasov looking for adventure - armed with a detailed walking map of the Rodneii Mountain range in the Carpathians, North Romania, and our errant Canadian, Nick.  Despite the area being a national park with lots of walking and climbing on offer the little town of Borsa that we chose to stay in appeared not to have noticed. It has high fashion shops and lots of ”super” markets but not a weather forecast in sight! This was unfortunate as we were eager to find out when the clouds would bugger off to allow us to do a bit of walking.

The great BBC was the best we got, via internet in a shed full of small boys blowing each other to pieces on screen. It looked promising so we chose to stick it out for a couple of days and tested out my (Will’s) new sleeping bag by parking in the cloud on a pass at 1400m. The windows froze on the inside and I couldn’t spread my honey in the morning, but I slept so it must work! We still couldn’t see the mountain tops, or anything else for that matter, but tried out our boots and stamina by exploring the grazing and shepards huts and then trying to find somewhere to watch a rather important rugby game. After Romania had beaten Holland in a Euro 2008 qualifier and we’d assured the patron we weren’t dutch we were allowed to watch Jonny and co punish the French over some 50p a pint beer and plum brandy.

Unfortunately for my throbbing head the BBC came good the following morning and we began our days expedition/serious hangover cure by walking UP and breaking the ice with some locals at a soon to be frozen waterfall; a school group and a teacher with Vuica (the local 70% proof medicine) . Still aching we climbed beyond the ski lift and everyone else and made the main ridge which was crisp with ice and absolutely stunning. Head recovered we had an awesome days walking in an empty landscape not disimilar from Ben’s home county of Cumbria. We’ll have to come back and do the whole lot at some point in the future, apparently it takes 5 days and is all around 2000m high!

We said a sad, or as sad as is possible at 5 in the morning, goodbye to Emily at the airport in Bucharest and had a good disagreement about where to head next. In the end the lure of the Black sea was just too much and I (Will in this case) managed to give a good case for the 300mile detour.

In hindsight my argument was a load of rubbish. The brand new, empty, straight and very flat dual carriageway from the capital to the coast was fun for about 10minutes – as were the incomplete “service stations” that consisted of a carpark and a loo block in the middle of nowhere! Luckily we had filled up with fuel before and arrived in the top Romanian seaside resort of Constanta in time for lunch. There is a huge port and an extensive promenade which I think is a little past its hay day. More Morecombe than Monte Carlo. We saw some sites but decided that the tourist brochures might have been onto something when they recommended Transylvania… A night on the banks of the Danube was followed up by one of the best camping spots we’ve found so far in the foothills of the Carpathians. Hidden away on top of a hill in the sunshine with a good spot for a fire, we cleared the extensive evidence of other visitors and burnt it. This was a stroke of luck as it turns out the black acrid smoke of burning plastic deters bears, wolves and vampires – we awoke in the morning with all of our limbs and no fanged teeth.

According to the Lonely planet Bran castle is the home of Dracula, however he seems to have been usurped by “Queen Maria” whose photos are everywhere. I really liked the small interesting rooms and hidden passageways and decided to put an offer in. The master bedroom had especially extensive views down the valley, perfect for spotting approaching guests! The mystery of the missing Dracula was solved by a particularly bubbly hostel worker when we checked in to Rolling Stone in Brasov. Apparently there are two Dracula’s castles and a very savvy tourism bureau!

Brasov has been a relaxed stop. Nevil had gearbox trouble but he mended himself on the way to the flash Mercedes dealership. The service man had great fun driving the right-hand drive banger (no offence Nevil) and weaved alarmingly in and out of the very shiny cars in his carpark! 700Euros for a clutch plate is a little out of our budget so  Mercedes Van Nevil (he’s now a dutchvan) is going to hang on for a bit. Roshan is leaving tomorrow night and we’re going to do some hiking with the bears and a Canadian from the hostel (we wouldn’t want to have another night with just the two of us, would we?!)

It’s been a little while since we posted anything particularly interesting here but to be honest we’ve just been cruising about in search of something suitably spectacular to write about. If you’ve seen the more recent photos you’ve seen a little of the beautiful and occasionally very industrial countryside we travelled through. We’ve got used to overtaking horse and traps and 12-year old scooter-riding boys along the roads now and it now seems normal to see packs of dogs roaming every part of the countryside.

At the border into Romania we impressed a border guard so much with our newly-acquired Romanian skillz (“boo-nuh-zee-wah” is something that approximates “hello”) that she asked if, when we’re back in the UK, we could send her a copy of our Lonely Planet eastern european phrasebook as apparently they have nothing like it here.

Entering bucharest was fun. Trying to locate a hostel we liked the sound of proved difficult and once again we recruited the skills of a Romanian student studying (coincidentally) computer science to help us find the place. In between having geeky computer conversations with Roshan and me (Ben) he proved to be totally useless and we spent a couple of hours driving in circles around the suburbs of the city.

Bucharest was okay, but nothing particularly special to look at. The four of us had a big-ish night out at a club and during the day wandered about. Saw the balcony/square where the dictator Ceausescu made his speeches until he was executed in 1989 and the massive (Communist) Parliament building he built for a ridiculously huge $6billion in the 80s. It’s the 2nd biggest building in the world by floor space after the US Pentagon building.

The city contrasts quite a bit with the rest of the country. As with most cities it’s a lot more modern than the countryside, more westernised. Apparently the average wage in Romania is something like 120quid a month (1,440 a year), not much at all. By the price of drinks on our night out (same as UK) there is a pretty massive variation in incomes.

Latest album from Croatia, through Bosnia & Serbia to Romania

http://bristol.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2128959&l=a4320&id=193107027

and Will’s version

http://bristol.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2128977&l=761cd&id=193106809

After a comfortable night discovering that Roshan snores in the Beograd Hostel we took a slow letsgetlost walk to the fort overlooking the confluence of Sava and Danube rivers. The dirty city traffic began to get to Emily’s lungs so we’ve decided to pursue some country air and get out via the sites.

On  my (Will’s) way back to get the van I ended up helping to push a nice Serbian lady’s fuelless car over the river Sava and into a petrol station. Alexandria gave me a very fast lift back to the van and I had an hour long battle into and out of Beograd via the Orthodox cathedral and several bombed-out buildings. The cathedral is massive and can be seen when driving into the city, what we hadn’t realised is that it is still being built! The inside is pretty much bare concrete and there was a guy with a pneumatic drill amending the shape of altar!

Roshan was surprised to hear that not only was there no shower fitted in the van but also that we didn’t have a drying rack, an in-house cleaner or a shoe rack (no jokes). Those following our blog who saw Roshan in London before he left will be glad to hear that his mat has been of great use and VITAL importance to our trip.

Not only has Roshan been moaning about our levels of cleanliness in the van (i.e. it’s not spotless), he has also been littering the Serbian countryside. Cleverly storing his supposedly smelly shoes (they’re nothing compared to Will’s) on the roof we then drove the next day onwards to the Romanian border only to find the roof wasn’t the best place to store them after all. Moral: one shoe isn’t as useful as two!

It’s getting dark noticeably earlier and we were forced to stop short of the Danube and national park in a wood previously inhabited (presumably) by gypsies. They’d kindly left us a stack of nice dry logs for our fire, a couple of wood-fired kilns and a semi-civilised toilet in the woods. Rosh beat me (Ben) at chess, but he plays like a girl and will pay for it soon.