Hello everyone!
I’m still on the road, as you should all guess, and tonight I plan to be driving eastward. Unfortunately, my phone battery died shortly before the Bulgarian border, so I didn’t get any little videos or photos of Bulgaria at all, nor any of coming in to Istanbul. But my Turkish cell number is +90 545 3027037 and I’ve been at a mall for a while here in Istanbul charging everything.
Anyway, about where I’ve been. Germany, Austria, and the Hungary (west of Budapest) were fairly non-eventful, and had good roads. No complaints. I spent several hours resting in Budapest before continuing on my way east at around 5.30am, where the traffic was already terrible. But I finally made it on to what seemed to be a highway and on toward Oradea.
Unfortunately, the Hungarians seem to think that no one wants to go to Romania in that direction (in retrospect, I think I should have gone via Szeged), so the only things on the signposts are the next 3 towns – and with my handy shell map (showing the entirety of Europe, some of Russia, some of Africa, Turkey, Georgia and a few other small countries), it was difficult to determine sometimes if I was heading in the right direction.
In addition to the lack of signs pointing to the border, the Hungarians don’t seem to have both the international and state highway numbers on the sign – they only have the state highway number (so, for example, the map shows the international one, in this case the E60, but the Hungarian signs only say H5…) After a few turn-backs due to me not following the correct fork in the road, I made it to the border some time around the middle of the day.
In a small town about 30km from the Hungary-Romania border, I stopped to pick up a couple of people who I thought were hitchhikers – of course as it turns out, it seems they were just looking for a good time (if you know what I mean), though money was never mentioned. I decided against such a thing (more for the reason of “I’m not taking any risks right now, thank you” rather than “I’m going to take the moral high-road today”).
After reaching Romania, it was very evident that I had stepped backwards about 20 years. Lots of old cars, old buildings, old roads… but 3G cellphone service. things like horse-drawn carts along the side of the “highway” – and by highway, I’m talking more along the lines of state-highway 30 from Mangakino to Te Kuiti, rather than even State Highway 1 South after Turangi.
I didn’t realize how mountainous the terrain is – in Romania it starts shortly after entering and shortly before leaving that country. What was weird was, that there were a bunch of towns whose names I don’t really remember where there were these palace-like residences. Either real estate is DIRT CHEAP or something dirty is going on with the people who own those places – actually, probably both. But it sure was weird to see these in contrast to the rest of the country and its situation.
The first set of mountains which would lead me to my first significant stop at Cluj Napoca were nice – picturesque even – and definitely not what I expected. Of course, that was pretty much the last time I saw any of the scenery in Romania because the fog set in – and stayed.
Getting out of Cluj Napoca was a task and a half – winding up the hills, avoiding trucks and small towns along the way, not to mention extremely foggy, bumpy and windy roads for about 300km. I stopped at one point along the highway at a rest stop for a few hours of shuteye, and continued on my way shortly before dawn, mostly because it was so damn cold.
For the most part, I was only able to do about 60 km/h until I hit some town about 100km before Bucharest (I think it was Brasov), where the little winding road turns in to a big, fast, long, straight highway. Still, even doing 120km/h felt like I was doing a lot faster than when I was doing 140-180 km/h in Germany and 200 km/h in Hungary.
The roads in Bucharest itself are also quite bad – there are some streets that simply can’t be good for the car! Potholes all over the place. Uneven surfaces. And paving (as in, 1 brick at a time paving). Of course, there is paving in Paris, Rome, Helsinki and a bunch of other European cities, but here the paving doesn’t seem to be maintained.
It seems that Bucharest is also very easy to get lost in – there were signs pointing to Guirgiu (Romanian border town) from the point of entry, but for some reason they always seemed to point to the right, leading me to believe that I was actually spiraling outward from the center (I guess) to the roads that would finally lead me further south. I made it out eventually, but the roads weren’t nearly as good going out as going in.
After hitting the Romania-Bulgaria border, determining that I wasn’t smuggling people (!), checking the paperwork for my car and letting me out of Romania, there is (unlike every other country whose land border I’ve crossed) about 5km of … well… I assume nothing. Apart from the fog blocking me from seeing anything except the road, there is this amazing (very imposing) bridge that must have been over 1km long. All Iron. Very Soviet. But fantastic. Oh, and it cost 7€ in “bridge tax” to cross. After passing through Ruse, Bulgaria and picking up some gas, I continued on my way toward Turkey.
Bulgaria still has a very “I’m a Soviet Country and PROUD OF IT” stench to it – not that its particularly bad (the people I met were nice enough, but didn’t really understand even my best efforts at rudimentary Russian, probably because they don’t seem to speak it either), and there was a lot of snow from end to end.
Bulgarias roads were about on par, maybe *slightly* better than those in Romania. The whole country again very mountainous (with lots of excellent scenery). I picked up a couple of hitchhikers about 20km before Veliko Tarnovo (who weren’t asking for a good time) and took them to that town – I had hoped to make a stop, but it was on the side of a mountain, making traversing the roads there a pain in the ass, so I ended up ditching the idea after driving around for about 10 minutes.
Again, reading the highway signs proved… interesting. The vast majority of them were written only in Cyrillic, so driving past them at any speed meant that I couldn’t read them. If there was no one behind me, I did slow down to about 40km/h so I could take in the lettering and translate it in my head, but it meant that a couple of times I got a bit lost for a short while. After a while, I found it easier to determine if I was going in the right direction by the numberplates on the trucks. If I was following a truck (or in front of one) with a non-Bulgarian plate, I figured I was probably heading in the right direction – and as it turns out this was a pretty good strategy for a while.
Again, the fog set in as darkness fell (and it set in very quickly), so speeds were reduced and all that. At several points along the way, I saw wild (?) dogs and a few wolves on the roads. Otherwise, if it wasn’t for the highway signs indicating that I was on the right track, I think I might have assumed that I had gone off the highway – more unmaintained stone-paved roads leading through small towns and even normal roads that appear to have suffered significant wear and tear meant that I had to take it very slow through a decent portion of the country.
In addition, much of the roads had large, hard sheets of ice (not invisible, but almost like going up a gutter to get over) which for some parts of the drive very much kept the car on a driving line not unlike the way there are pre-determined grooves on a ski jump or almost like railway tracks (only in reverse). A little bit scary, but was able to handle it ok.
It wasn’t until I hit the highway that follows the southern border of Bulgaria (next to Greece) from Sofia to Ankara via Istanbul that I was able to go at anything even approaching the speed limit. My truck-following-theory fell away once I hit Svilengrad, which is about 20km from the Turkish border, where I found myself alone on the highway. I thought for a while I was going in the wrong direction (no signs to “Turkey” until I hit some construction, which had a sign pointing to Turkey.
I made it to the border at around 8.30pm, having entered Bulgaria at about 1pm (I think) so a drive which I thought should have taken about 5 hours took closer to 7½ or 8. Oh well. I left Bulgaria and continued through no-mans land to the Turkish border police.
Who at first refused to give me a visa due to the state of my passport (yes, I will replace it as soon as I can stay in one place for long enough) and told me to go back to Bulgaria. The Bulgarian border guards are then telling me “Oh, we can’t let you pass… the computer says your car has left” and blah blah blah, and pointed me at the management place where I had to go and make the computer change (I wasn’t the only one).
So they made the computer change, blah blah blah, all is well. But I got an idea. Border isn’t very busy right now… I’m going to go and chat to the Turkish border police (since I was already on the Turkish side of the border thanks to having to visit the management office). So off I went.
I walked up to the window and the conversation was basically “Yes, hello. I’m the guy whose passport you rejected before… I really want to go in to Turkey because I promised friends I would meet them in a couple of days in T’Bilisi – is there any way I can get you to just give me a stamp, so that I don’t have to go back to Bulgaria and figure out what to do”. “Where is T’Bilisi?” “Georgia – next country over.” “How long do you expect to be in Turkey?” “3-days or so” (they look at my passport for about 10 minutes) and then guy says “Ok, fine”. And they gave me a stamp, and a small piece of some sort of chocolate cake.
Then after reversing the reversal of my car papers, I was on my way to Istanbul at about 10pm. Woohoo! I’m in Turkey. There are a lot of very… old style monuments (read the kind you would expect find in countries led by dictators) – I think they are legacy from eras gone by, but they are still very… well, words can’t really describe. Again, big giant iron things. I wish I’d been able to charge my phone.
Turkey (so far), has very well kept (especially compared to Romania and Bulgaria) highways, and at that time of the night, they were very quiet. About 20km in to Turkey, all the snow magically seemed to disappear, and the thermometer in the car showed +1.0 C for the first time in a couple of days. I appreciate the Turkish highways for one other reason – they are black, rather than a greyish colour (as they are in some parts of other countries), making it far easier to see the lines in the fog.
Otherwise, it was a fairly uneventful drive until shortly before Istanbul (where I stopped for a bit of shuteye due to a drive that required high levels of concentration) before I got back on to the highway to continue in.
Driving in to Istanbul is… almost magical. You’re coming very much down hill and you can see the first part of the city, then you go behind some hills and then some more city appears, then tall buildings and so on. Then you come to an absolutely massive bridge – I crossed in the “slow lane” so that I could see what was over the side (no fog!). Water. (Huh?! You kind of forget that Istanbul is a seaside city). Buildings. The sun. And a sign at the end of the bridge which says “Welcome to Asia” in about 4 or 5 languages.
I was pretty taken aback by that. Anyway, after that you pretty much keep going until there is an exit which you need to take to continue on – otherwise the highway dumps you in the middle of the city. I found that out the hard way, mainly because I couldn’t move to the exit that would have allowed me to continue on. Kind of reverse logic going on.
So here I find myself in Istanbul. Oh well, might as well get a few postcards (but where?), a SIM card (but where?) and breakfast (easy.) And I’d like to go and have one of those famous Turkish baths. As of now, I’ve managed the SIM card and the Breakfast (and subsequently lunch) but so far I still have no idea where to buy postcards (neither do any Turks), and the public baths are seemingly impossible to find in midday traffic. I’ve been told where to go (and have been there) but bugger if there is no parking or anywhere to even stop and ask.
Then, as it turns out, the turks just stop randomly on the side of the road anyway, so I thought I’d do that. It worked, and I was able to ask a parking attendant where there are “Hamam”. He told me, but of course, traffic and lack of more specific directions (apart from “that way”, as he pointed in the direction from whence I came, where there is even less parking and no sign of the place I’d been told to go at a petrol station) has caused said task(s) to remain unaccomplished.
After giving up on being in that particular area of town, I drove around, looking for maybe a mall or something (postcards are there, maybe, and Wikipedia says that there are a bunch, though Istanbul is a pretty big city). I eventually found one (with what I hope is free parking!). And here I am. But now its night-time so I’m going to be staying in Istanbul tonight before making my move further eastward.
We shall see if Turkeys highways in the eastern part of the country are as well maintained as they have been so far. Neither ViaMichelin or my handy shell roadmap are promising anything spectacular. So long as they are better than Romania and Bulgaria, I will be happy. I’ve also discovered tonight that I *could* have driven on nicer highways through Serbia. As it turns out the Visa requirements for NZers to that country were updated on the 27th of December, and the roads are far better. D’oh!
Oh well, there is always next time, I guess. I did enjoy the scenery (what I was able to see of it) in both countries, and I would like to revisit and explore them a lot more fairly soon. Next time maybe I will try and bring a GPS navigator doodad, a far better camera, more money and more blankets with me (if I’m driving in winter).
But for now, I’m going to sign off. I’ll try to post some videos that I’ve taken with my phone on my website or something.
Catch you all later.
Mathew
