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Looks like an interesting read! Slightly jealous as we'd not have enough guts for this sort of thing. Or would we...
Good luck and enjoy!
______________________________________________________________ Full details of our 1000+ nigts away in the van in Europe, Morocco as well as backpacking in Asia, with hints/tips/costs and GPS POIs see our blog at http://www.doyourdream.co.uk
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This seems to be a natural progression for a lot of people once you run out of land in Europe! Personally I think your slightly mad taking an A-Class to Romania, we've just spent 3 weeks there in a panel van and have the scars to prove it!
I don't know Ryan, I think you'll warm to the idea
This seems to be a natural progression for a lot of people once you run out of land in Europe! Personally I think your slightly mad taking an A-Class to Romania, we've just spent 3 weeks there in a panel van and have the scars to prove it!
I don't know Ryan, I think you'll warm to the idea
Scars? Nothing too bad. Bizzarely Adam I just emailed you his link. Didn't know you would be on line so early.
Our plans still seem to be "forcing" us to buy a house next year which changes things somewhat. Spent last 2+ weeks area hunting in UK for nice areas. Not many left lol!
______________________________________________________________ Full details of our 1000+ nigts away in the van in Europe, Morocco as well as backpacking in Asia, with hints/tips/costs and GPS POIs see our blog at http://www.doyourdream.co.uk
Our Home & Small co IT support business for Chippenham/Bath area: http://www.yourithelp.co.uk/dream (discounts for forum members)
Our medium/large corporate IT consulting business in UK or beyond http://www.pqservices.co.uk
This seems to be a natural progression for a lot of people once you run out of land in Europe! Personally I think your slightly mad taking an A-Class to Romania, we've just spent 3 weeks there in a panel van and have the scars to prove it!
Yes indeed, Romania is a rough place - in every sense of the word - for motorhomes, fragile beasts as they generally are. Everyone should give it a go though, it gives perspective. In the week or so we were there we only saw two others and both sets of occupants looked haunted and drawn. I'm betting that they thought that of us too. It was a bigger culture shock for me than some 'developing' countries I've been to.
Trucks as bases are becoming more popular it seems. If readers are interested and didn't already know, http://www.theoverlander.org is a good place to have a browse.
Yes indeed, Romania is a rough place - in every sense of the word - for motorhomes, fragile beasts as they generally are. Everyone should give it a go though, it gives perspective. In the week or so we were there we only saw two others and both sets of occupants looked haunted and drawn. I'm betting that they thought that of us too. It was a bigger culture shock for me than some 'developing' countries I've been to.
I'm not sure we agree.
We loved Romania and didn't think it at all 'rough'. Culture shock, certainly, but the people were some of the friendliest we've met anywhere. We wild camped near the painted monastery along side Romanians in their tents and 25 year old Dacia's and they came up to chat in perfect English - asking if we wanted to try their whisky etc.
We did the Transfagarasan Pass which was excellent but the worst road was on the other side of it heading of the Vidraru Dam.
If I was doing it in a coachbuilt / a-class I'd want to plan my trip carefully to end up at a campsite each night and take a Wild Camp if available (we found several).
We only wild camped - as we do everywhere, we're not fond of sites. I'll have a look at your trip link after work, cheers.
I agree that Romanians are pretty friendly and we had no general problems with the people either, apart from the one who tried swiping our bikes off the back of the 'van in the middle of the night. He even had the nerve to come back for a second go with some huge bolt croppers. I also agree about the road to / from the Transfagarasan - we went over it from the dam direction, but we did also encounter worse roads than that one.
I guess 'rough' is very subjective but given the roads (including the open chasms caused by missing metalwork), bewilderingly crazy driving, and packs of roaming feral dogs (I was, as is fairly common, attacked), we genuinely felt we were fortunate to get out without personal injury / vehicular damage. Photo is of a road with missing ironwork in Hunedoara.
There were also the innumerable rotting roadkill dogs, omnipresent crumbling 'eastern bloc' infrastructure, ubiquitous open landfills (formal and impromptu), general disregard for any civic pride, and unrelenting poverty.
I think the experience was magnified because we were unprepared. If we'd have been heading into India for example, our mindset might have been different. We just didn't anticipate an EU country being quite so ‘unwesternised’. I completely understand why so many Romanians are now setting up a life in other EU countries.
I’m glad we went though and we will go through again. Last time we missed the Danube Delta and the ‘living fires’. Maybe ‘rough’ seems a little snobby, it does however reflect our subjective experience – and we are pretty grounded.
What's interesting for us is we found Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania exceptionally clean, roads generally good and those which weren't were in the process of being upgraded. Plenty of communist era buildings awaiting demolition or otherwise but a very big sense of civic pride - we saw abandoned streets being swept in Karosta.
Contrastingly, we found Poland to have a terrible road network, terrible drivers (although the new toll motorways will help ease this and at least the drivers said thanks when you drove down the grass to avoid a head on!) and just as many ferral dogs and impromptu roadside dumps as we saw in Romania - but I think we had a particularly poor experience of Poland maybe due to our route and time of year. Likewise with Greece where we are presently - we have seen packs of stray and aggressive dogs roaming (two attacked our van while moving!), terrible driving and some awful roads!
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it wasn't what you anticipated. I think we blogged along the lines of "it was hard to believe we were still in the EU..." however Romania was exactly as we expected to find it.
I don't think it is civic pride, we found Romanian's to be incredibly proud in every instance, but there just isn't the infrastructure there yet to support for instance the removal of rubbish. Have you ever been to a park in the UK during a council strike? In 48hrs it starts to look a lot like Romania especially if you ad dogs foraging through bins - likewise with ironworks being removed for scrap value - we just have the infrastructure there to replace them faster. Poverty is an issue faced by all the communist era countries and Romania suffered needlessly in the years following under bad management.
We saw plenty of campers though (admittedly no a-classes) and when we did hit campsites they were all full. GB Privilege are taking a group of crinklies there on a tour next year!
We intend to visit The Balkans and Ukraine next and I'm not sure where you intend to take your truck but I suspect some of those countries will trump Romania in the 'rough' stakes although I suspect you have better chance of getting out without injury in a truck! We're looking at a 4X4 panel van next.
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