Here comes the sun......

Wednesday 17th April 2013

We are getting accustomed / resigned to the manic driving style now having driven about 470 miles almost due east in Romania and after 5 days in the country we are now in the Transylvania area so here is a quick reflection on our travels here to date. Spring is in the air and the sun has finally come out .....…

 

Leaving Hungary’s we entered no-mans land between the two borders where we purchased our vignette – compulsory for all roads in Romania so we couldn’t avoid not paying this one. It cost €9 for 1 month, no windscreen stickers are issued here as they monitor compliance electronically through ANPR cameras placed on the roadside. A few hundred meters on there is (finally!!) a manned border post and we whizz past the long TIR lorry queue to the front of the car checkpoint where a cheery lady (good cop) glanced cursorily at our passports and bid us hello and goodbye whilst grumpy guy (bad cop) glanced over our vehicle, questioned if it was just the two of us in it and finally waved us on.

Arad is a huge sprawling town and the first you come to after crossing the border from Mako. We parked up in a backstreet and went in search of the Tourist Information Office where we hoped to find a warm welcome and come out with a useful selection of maps and handful of brochures. Not to be – two maps of Arad was all she had to offer. She told us to go to other Tourist Information offices for information on their areas and advised we go buy a map from the bookshop.  This was so similar to our experience in Slovenia but we have now realised the ‘service’ varies greatly from office to office. The young lad in Sibiu office could not have been more friendly and helpful, supplied local area and country maps, camping site information and suggestions on great places to go after leaving his ‘patch’. The bored girl in the Brasov office could barely raise a smile, had no maps and no clue basically. Makes you wonder what the essential requirements on the Personal Specification for these jobs were…..

Anyway we are making the most of the information we already have and that we get given and are clocking up the miles, it’s a huge country. We have driven through some lovely countryside, seen some impressive fortified churches, castle and medieval towns and are hoping to see some of the spectacular scenery, including gorges, lakes and caves, as we now head north.  

Romania is an interesting mix of traditional and modern seemingly muddling along together. We have driven passed shepherds in fields dressed in full length sheepskin coats tending their flocks, farmers sowing seeds by hand into plots of land furrowed by horse and carts, and men and women in traditional outfits in the small villages – well off the tourist route so not just for our benefit.  Getting good photos while we are on the move though is proving difficult.

We have also passed huge modern out-of-town shopping centres and four star hotels, seen the youngsters in the latest fashions with the most up to date mobile handsets and been impressed by the extensive art and culture programmes being offered at the regional theatres and venues. In contrast the Saxon walled citadels in Transylvania are beautifully preserved and you almost feel like you have stepped back in time walking along the cobbled streets.

The language descends from Latin and shares a common heritage with French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and is as colourful as their currency.

Accident waiting to happen....

Monday 15th April 2013

The sign below warns that the next 10km is an accident blackspot – that sign could be altered to read ‘next 100km’ or even next ‘500km’. Within ½ hour of entering Romania we had to hit the brakes hard on a handful of occasions. Scary stuff…

Having driven over 5000 miles to date we have found the standard of driving really good – even in Italy! We aren’t the fastest aerodynamic vehicle on the road but other drivers have been very careful when overtaking us and when needed we pull in to let vehicles past. There are very few laybys on Romanian roads though.

In Hungary we saw loads of billboards indicating they had received European Funding although we could never quite work out what it had been spent on – it’s quite obvious here in Romania, it’s going on the road network. A massive project is underway throughout the whole country to build new motorways which must be long overdue as the main roads, and consequently all the traffic including the huge TIR lorries, thunder through the centre of all the towns.

We and one German plated car were the only vehicles we saw sticking to the 50kph speed limit in towns as a convoy of inpatient irritated drivers built up behind us. They overtake with no consideration about the presence of or speed of approaching traffic, often whilst driving through towns and are generally on their mobile. 

Looks like the new roads can’t come soon enough.

Hungarian highlights

Saturday 13th April 2013

We spent 9 days and covered about 600 miles in Hungary from Lake Balaton in the East to Miskolc in the West, Szentendre in the North to Szeged in the South. The weather was very mixed – rainy mornings, mainly overcast days but occasionally quite warm and sunny. Hungary has a very varied landscape from the swollen Danube and Tisza rivers that dissect the country to the mountain ranges in the north east and the vast Great Hungarian Plain which covers half the country. 

Danube north of Budapest

Flooded Tisza river in Szeged

The Great Hungarian Plain

We avoided the motorways to ensure we saw most of the changing countryside but in doing so found the roads were often terribly potholed and poorly patched. The deliberate dumping of waste and litter on the roadsides is a huge problem and a real eyesore.

 

Vineyards in Badacsony - Lake Balaton

Airplane museum in Szolnok

Many people cycle the old style ‘sit-up-and-beg’ bikes in towns and villages as their main means of transport and there is a good network of cycle paths. The standard of driving was very good and we found the people really friendly and polite.

Art Nouveau style buildings in Szeged

Votive Church in Szeged

We stayed 2 nights in campsites (one cost £15 the other £12) – other than that we stayed free in quiet car parks on the outskirts of towns.  All the usual supermarkets were here – Lidl, Aldi, Penny Market and Tesco and food is generally cheap. Diesel cost £1.18 a litre and most garages accepted credit cards.

Car-park camping on shores of Lake Balaton

The language was impossible to fathom out with no recognisable words and unpronounceable name places. We got the grasp of the essentials – Good Day, Thank you, Please and Goodbye, just enough to get us by. Foreign tourism is still in its infancy and signposting for touristic attractions is really poor. We’ll be back in a few years I’m sure…....

Panacea - a cure for all ills....

Thursday 11^th April 2013

Hungary is famous for its thermal baths – they are everywhere and are popular with the locals and tourists alike. We’ve been keen to soak up this experience but even though the prices are reasonable by western standards they have always been above the ‘daily attraction budget’ we set ourselves after wasting our money on the disappointing Nimes roman arena.

The baths have ranged from the exclusive at Lake Heviz with its colourful lily pads and maze of treatment corridors, the quirky at Miskolctapolca in an underground lake and the uninspiring one monopolised by an ugly hotel complex at Egerszolok. Many others are just like communal swimming pools.

If you believe the glossy brochures and leaflets handed out at these places there is almost no illness that cannot be cured by either bathing in or drinking the thermal water.... here goes....neurological diseases, dermatological diseases, disk degeneration, stimulating hormone production, refreshing the nervous system, rheumatoid arthritis, gynaecological diseases, intestinal diseases, reducing blood sugar levels, stimulating the regeneration of cells and metabolism .... the list is endless…..

We have finally found somewhere to put the claims to the test. The Thermal Camping site in Tiszafϋred where we are staying has its own thermal pool and what’s more it’s included in the camping price - result! The pool water is a dirty brown colour (Dave reassures me that’s the iron in the water), smells quite sulphorous and is steaming hot at between 34 and 38 degrees.

Perhaps it’s the time of year (i.e. out of peak-season) but I’m guessing the average age of the clients here at the moment is about 70 and none of them are looking too perky - even after a few hours soaking!

Dave dipped his head under the water and massaged his scalp in the hope that restoring hair growth might be another, as yet undiscovered, cure. As neither of us are suffering with any of the above mentioned diseases we are hoping a few soaks will have future-proofed us for the next few years!