Sunday 9th April        We are finally off!!

After 5 weeks (!) of saying goodbye to friends and family in Northern Ireland, England and Holland we are finally heading towards the East today.  We had a great time at John and Emmajane's wedding and Ian and Kira's wedding and enjoyed having the time to see all our friends properly before we head off for such a long time, but we are thrilled to be off at last!  Today's destination is a campsite somewhere near the Nurburgring in Germany and then we'll slowly make our way to Munich to pick up our carnet de passage at the ADAC on Wednesday.  We'll post another update when we get going...

Monday 17th April      Through Germany and Austria to Cesky Krumlov (CZ)

We spent a leisurely few days in Germany on our way to Munich.  At the Nurburgring we got involved in a traffic jam involving literally thousands of motorbikes and then spent our first night camping on the banks of the river Ahr.  Next day we headed to the walled town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  The cobbled streets and quaint shops were pretty though very touristy.  Arriving in Munich on Tuesday, we headed straight for the Hofbrauhaus (also very touristy, though the beer is good and the elderly regulars in the feathered hats and lederhosen don't seem to care).

Our visit to the ADAC on Wednesday morning went smoothly - Karina Stephani dispensed our carnet with a winning combination of friendliness and German efficiency.  We left feeling very excited - now we can take the Landy into any country we want to!

As we drove south to Austria and up over the mountains, there was snow everywhere.  It's hard to believe this is April!  We spent a pleasant few days staying at Roel's brother Bart's apartment in K3C6nigsleiten - Bart and his family joined us on the second day and we spent Friday and Saturday together.  We even managed some (very rusty) skiing on Saturday.  Roel's friend Jos (who had driven all night from Holland for a few days skiing) joined us for 'lunch' on Saturday (see photo above), which turned out to involve quite a few beers (so many that we found even the easy blue run back to the village a serious challenge when we finally dragged ourselves away).

We crossed the border into the Czech Republic on Sunday evening.  Roel was pleased to see that it hadn't changed much - every car was a Skoda and every shop we passed was either displaying 1000 gnomes (!) for sale or had red lights in every window and scantily clad girls shivering outside...  Getting away from the main road (and both varieties of 'shop') we camped on the shores of Lake Lipno.

We woke up this morning to our first technical problem - the right indicator lights on the Landy had come on in the night and wouldn't go off!  In the end we managed to sort it out temporarily by turning the hazard light on and off a few times and thumping the box containing the relay, but it's still a bit dodgy and we'll probably need to get a new relay when we get a bit nearer civilisation.

Undaunted, we headed to Cesky Krumlov and had a wander round the castle before the other tourists (and there are plenty of them) got up.  It's very pretty here and, unlike Rothenburg ob der Tauber, it still feels like an interesting place despite the obvious tourism.  Perhaps that's partly because everything is so cheap compared to London (and everywhere we've been to so far), so you don't have the usual sense of being ripped off all the time.

Friday 21st April 2006     The new EU countries

We spent another night in the Czech Republic to give ourselves the opportunity to test the local beer (well, who wouldn't at 40 pence a pint? Starobrno definitely gets our vote!) and then drove south into Slovakia.  Initially, the most obvious difference between the two countries was that the Slovakian roads were heavily congested with trucks from Poland - we seemed to have hit the main transit route from Poland as we drove east in Slovakia.  As we got further east, Slovakia began to seem much poorer than the Czech Republic.  We passed some apparently disused factories from the Communist era, but generally people seemed to be living a pretty rural existence.

The plan was to spend the night at a campsite in the Tatra mountains, which we had heard were very beautiful.  However, as we ascended into the mountains we were surprised to see that most of the trees on the lower slopes had been felled - all we could see for miles were tree stumps!  There didn't seem any obvious reason - at first we thought they were extending the ski-slopes, but we were still at pretty low altitude so that didn't make much sense.  In the end, we concluded that they were probably just selling the wood for cash.  Perhaps there's a better reason - we hope so, because it really spoiled the area.  We weren't any more impressed when we got up to the towns where we'd hoped to stay - they were all clearly purpose-built holiday resorts, full of ugly concrete hotel buildings but totally deserted.  The views over the valley below were nice enough, but there was just no atmosphere and at that altitude it was a bit chilly for camping so we decided to head down into the valley.  We found a lovely campsite just outside the walled town of Levoca, just east of Poprad.  It was the first time we'd had to pay for accommodation for a week (and the first hot shower since we left Austria!)!

Our next destination was Budapest, where we had a very warm welcome from Roel's colleague Atilla (based in HV's Hungarian office) and his lovely family (his wife Lilien and children Judith, Bernat and Nadin).  They made us feel completely at home in their pretty apartment on the outskirts of Budapest and took us out for a drive through the city by night and a lovely meal.  We spent the next day exploring Budapest on our own, wandering around and discovering some of its nooks and crannies, including the beautiful Gellert steam baths (see photo).  It is a very beautiful city and on the surface it seems very western and cosmopolitan, but we still noticed some traces of the way things used to be.  After dinner on the first evening, the police stopped Atilla's car randomly and insisted on checking all his paperwork to see if they could find anything wrong.  When they spotted that his emissions testing certificate was slightly out of date, they said he had to pay a fine of 2000 forint (approx 5 pounds).  However, they were happy to accept 1000 forint if he didn't want a receipt!  Other signs that things haven't changed that much were the tiny underground bar we visited that had run out of beer (!) and the fact that for every two guys working on the road there were at least 8 others getting paid just to stand around watching them!

All in all, we loved Budapest and had a fantastic time - thanks again, Atilla, Lilien, Judith, Bernat and Nadin!  We also called in at HV's office in Cegl3B9d, where Atilla works, and had a chance to meet his colleagues Mikl3C3s and Monica.  It was interesting to talk to them about the changes Hungary is experiencing since joining the EU.  Our next stop is Ukraine - we can't wait to see how it compares to its neighbours Slovakia and Hungary...

Wednesday 26th April 2006   Easter (again!)

We were very excited as we approached our first 'real' (i.e. non-EU) border from Hungary into Ukraine.  Lizzy suspected that Roel was secretly hoping for a re-run of the kind of border crossing he experienced as a truck driver, often waiting for days and nights at a time.  Things looked promising as we approached the Hungarian side, with a queue of lorries starting several kilometres from the border.  As a 'car' we could overtake these and there were only a few cars in front of us at the (brief) Hungarian passport check, but as we entered no man's land we joined a hundred or so other cars waiting for the Ukrainian passport and customs officials and were handed a ticket and immigration forms by a surly Ukrainian soldier - this was more like it!  The 'queuing system' pushed us into the red lane for customs before we realised what was happening, but perhaps this was just as well as a large sign stated that one of the items not to be taken through the green channel was 'cultural values'...

The Ukrainian officials, especially the customs man, did their best to find something wrong with us and the Landy, but finally after an hour and a half we escaped with nothing worse than having to fill in a customs declaration (which he didn't even check or stamp and we were never asked for again).  We struggled for a while trying to find somewhere we could buy insurance to drive in Ukraine (no chance of getting this from our UK insurer!) but eventually we found a tiny 1960s-style caravan where a grumpy Ukrainian girl reluctantly filled in a one-page form in Cyrillic script (carefully tearing off the duplicate copy underneath before filling in the form - there was no way she wanted any evidence of us if we actually had an accident) and relieved us of 28 euros for the privilege.  Hmm, not ideal, but at least we were legal...

By this time it was dark and we headed for the nearest TIR parking (essentially a car park for trucks with 24 hour security so drivers can rest).  This turned out to be an hour and a half's drive from the border, but the road was surprisingly smooth and there was hardly any traffic.

Next day we headed for Lviv.  The scenery on the way was very pretty - tiny coloured wooden houses nestled in the valleys among rolling hills.  Each house had at least one funny pear-shaped haystack in the garden and many of the fields were dotted with the same haystacks.  It was almost too much of a rural idyll to be true, especially as the roads were still perfectly smooth - not a pothole in sight and nothing like what we had been expecting.

We were almost relieved when we rounded a corner about halfway to Lviv, swung out to pass some roadworks and suddenly the road turned into a mass of potholes.  At last, the aging Ladas, Volgas and Moskvitches that made up 80 percent of the traffic on the roads seemed to fit in!  From that point on until we left the Ukraine, the roads were uniformly decrepit and potholed...  Not good for the Landy, but it definitely added to the experience!

Lviv was a pleasant city - everyone seemed friendly and the mood on Saturday afternoon was quite relaxed.   We strolled around the city and had a poke around the market, where many of the stalls were run by elderly women selling homemade products and small amounts of fruit and vegetables that had obviously been grown in their own gardens.  Bread seemed to be in short supply - we only saw three shops in the whole city selling it and each of them had an enormous queue!

Sunday was our last day in Ukraine and we were struck by the number of people along all the roads dressed in their best clothes, carrying bunches or wreaths of flowers and heading (on foot, by car or by hitching, which is very common in Ukraine) to church.  As further evidence of Ukrainian piety, we noticed later in the day that every cemetery we passed was full of people visiting the graves.  We were really impressed by this religious fervour and it was only the next day (when we were wondering why everyone in Romania was out enjoying themselves instead of working) that we realised that it was Easter weekend in the Orthodox church!

Perhaps because it was Easter Sunday, the border between Ukraine and Romania was almost deserted and we passed through within 20 minutes!  We spent our first night in Romania at a TIR parking that Roel had been to before as a truck driver and then headed south to the city of Brasov, in Transylvania.  In Brasov, we stayed at Camping Darste, a few km outside town, and had a pleasant evening exchanging travel stories (and getting lots of travel tips) from an English couple, Don and Maureen Madge, who are lucky enough to spend their retirement travelling round the world for nine months of every year!  Now there's something to aspire to!

Brasov itself is a charming town, with a lovely central square and several beautiful churches.  We also observed quite a few trendy-looking bars, although we couldn't justify the expense of trying any of them out (especially in the middle of the afternoon with several hours' driving to go before we stopped for the night!).  Generally, we have been struck by how expensive everything is in Romania - this is particularly marked for Roel as when he was here six years ago it was a really cheap country to travel in.  There seems to be a huge gap between rich and poor - outside cities there are many horse-drawn carts on the road and even in cities a high proportion of the cars are Dacias (originally developed as Romania's own version of the Renault 12, although the latest models are much more modern), but mixed in with the Dacias you see quite a few Range Rover Sports and BMWs...

Friday 5th May 2006   -   Finally an update...

From Brasov, we drove across the mountains of Transylvania, pausing for a quick look at the fortress at Rasnov, which is pretty impressive perched high above the town of Rasnov. We also passed Bran Castle (alleged to be the castle of the original Dracula, Vlad Tepes), but the hordes of tourists and many souvenir shops at the entrance put us off paying to go inside and we made do with a few photos of the outside. After Bran the next place that we wanted to visit was a truckstop where Roel used to go when he was a lorry driver, at Lotrisor, just north of Ramnicu Vilcea. Although the truckstop was on a major transit route through Romania, our route there involved cutting through the mountains, along tiny roads. As we were ascending down the mountains, it started to rain and soon there were torrents of water coursing down the road. In places, the hard surface of the road had been completely washed away. This was no problem for the Landy, but we did wonder how some of the drenched and miserable looking ponies and carts (and their equally drenched and miserable looking owners) were going to manage.  One village  we passed through was suffering really severely from the water: one of the torrents coming down the mountain was taking a course through several houses on its way to join the river at the bottom of the village.

The truck stop was very busy with Eastern European lorries.  The restaurant had changed a lot since Roel was there six years ago, with an extension doubling the space and a glossy new menu replacing the simple but tasty Turkish dishes that were previously cooked to order. After being left with the menu for half an hour, the waiter finally came to take our order and to tell us that only 3 of the 30 or so dishes on the menu were actually available tonight! The food was OK, but we didn't linger long. The lorry park was so full that we spent the night in the car park of the hotel next door instead.

Next day we headed into Ramnicu Vilcea to meet up with Monica and Tas, whom we met in London through Roel's friend Jos.  We had a lovely day with them and their lively little girl, Betty, and two other friends of theirs who were also visiting from London.  We had our first proper Romanian home cooking at lunch when Monica gave us hearty soup (with meatballs) followed by 'sarmale', which is minced meat and rice wrapped in cabbage or vine leaves.  It was all delicious and much better than anything we had had in a restaurant.  In the evening we sampled the local nightlife (and pizza, Romanian-style).  Thanks Monica and Tas for showing us true Romanian hospitality - hope to see you again soon.

From Ramnicu Vilcea we drove to Bucharest and experienced more Romanian hospitality and generosity from everyone at the HV office there.  It was great to meet Elena, Nelu, Sergei, Vasile and everyone else after hearing so much about them all.  We had a lovely dinner with Elena and Nelu (at the Romanian president's favourite restaurant) and enjoyed the performance of the Romanian musicians and singers at our table very much.  After dinner, Vasile was kind enough to recover from his disappointment at Steau Bucharest losing to Middlesbrough and take us for a drive around Bucharest with Elena.  The city is very beautiful by night and we were hugely impressed by all of it, especially Ceaucescu's Palace of Culture, which is the second largest building in the world (after the Pentagon).  We were truly sorry to leave all our new-found friends behind the next day - we hope we'll have a chance to visit again soon.

Our first destination in Bulgaria was Veliko Tarnovo, where we visited the ancient Tsarevets fortress (which used to be the seat of the Bulgarian kings) overlooking the town.  Driving south towards Plovdiv we found a beautiful spot by a lake just outside Nova Zagora to camp for the night.  We had our first campfire and fell asleep listening to the beautiful eerie howling of wolves in the distance!

We really liked Plovdiv, both the beautiful cobbled old town with its interesting Roman ruins and the lively new pedestrianised shopping street and square.  Ice cream (of the Italian, gelato, variety) seems to be very popular there, as there were stalls on every corner.  Of course, we had to sample some and we can report that it was very good (although obviously we accept that it was not to be compared with the genuine article from Catania, Pietro...).

From Plovdiv we drove past Sofia and south towards the Greek border.  We spent the night at a campsite (Zodiac Camping) high in the mountains near Rila Monastery.  In the morning, we explored the monastery, which is very beautiful.  The interior of the church is particularly stunning as every inch of the walls and ceiling is beautifully decorated.

We spent our first night in Greece at Edessa, a small town on a rocky escarpment, which is famous for its waterfalls.  When we went to the tourist office to ask about campsites, we were told that there weren't any in the area, but if we wanted to wild camp near the open air theatre the lady was sure no one would mind.  We certainly didn't mind another night's free accommodation!

Next day we headed to the Albanian border, stopping en route to have a coffee (and a chat with the friendly German-speaking owner) at the cafe in Kristallopigi (the border town - well, actually, village: we were told that there are 140 inhabitants, not counting the 150 police officers who are based there to try to stop Albanians from crossing the border illegally).

Initially, we were really impressed by how much Albania had developed since Roel was there last.  The road from the border to Korca, which had been a single lane of tarmac full of potholes, was now broad and smooth.  All along the road, we could see many houses being constructed.  However, when we got to Korca it became clear that there was still some way to go.  As soon as we turned towards town, the potholes were back.  The roads were very busy and totally chaotic as the cars were constantly weaving to avoid the potholes.  First off, we went to see if the garment factory where Roel had always had to load his lorry was still there.  It was, and we spent some time chatting with a Greek driver who was waiting to load there, who confirmed that not much had changed.  Roel also remembered that there was a Dutch aid agency, Dorkas International, which had offices in Korca and we went to see if they would let us camp in their yard for the night (there are no campsites in Albania and we didn't feel safe camping in the middle of nowhere).  We managed to find their office and they were happy for us to camp.  One of the Dutch people Roel had met before, Rob, was still working there and he invited us to his house for a drink in the evening.  We had a very pleasant evening chatting with him and two Albanian guys who were visiting Korca as part of their work for a Christian radio station and an American lady who was in Korca to teach physiotherapy.  We also bumped into Rajit, the person who deals with customs for the garment factory, who remembered Roel and invited us for a coffee and a tour of the factory in the morning.  He had changed a bit after six years - he only had one tooth left in his mouth!

From Korca, we drove on very bad (narrow, potholed and with many blind bends and steep drops) to Gjirokastra.  Luckily there wasn't much traffic! As the road was near the border, many of the concrete bunkers installed by the dictator Enver Hoxha were in this area.  It is very strange to see them on all sides watching us, like submerged daleks (for the Dr Who fans)!  We were told that there are 750,000 of them scattered around the country and when Hoxha was in power there was a man standing guard in each at all times.  That may explain Albania's low unemployment rate at that time!  Despite the bad roads, the drive was very beautiful, passing many mountains and gorges, and was worth it in itself, which was just as well as we didn't think that much of Gjirokastra when we got there (probably not helped by the fact that it was raining).

The border into Greece passed uneventfully and we drove south to Ioannina, where the rain finally stopped.  It seemed to be a very pretty town, set on a lake with many trendy bars and restaurants and a lively atmosphere, but the one campsite was very expensive so we decided to drive south towards better weather and find somewhere to camp wild on the way.  We turned onto a side road signposted for 'Ziro's lake' and camped next to the lake.  This time we fell asleep to a (very loud) chorus of frogs!

We awoke to a beautiful sunny day and (after saying good morning to the local shepherd, who was passing with his flock) drove south to Preveza, where we stayed at Kalamitsi Beach campsite, right on the beach.  As they had a washing machine, we took the chance of doing all our washing and generally tidying up the car which has been getting progressively grubbier over the last few weeks.  It was very nice to be finally somewhere completely dry and sunny - for the first time in ages the tent felt totally dry and there wasn't a cloud in the sky!

25th May 2006 - more Greece (and lots of beaches)

After our last update we decided to head south to Lefkada, an island joined to the mainland by a causeway (so no expensive car ferry required).  Our Lonely Planet guide showed a picture of an amazing beach there and we thought it was about time to start working on our (as yet non-existent) tans...

The island turned out to be beautiful, with steep wooded hills plunging straight into an amazing blue-green sea.  Egremni beach (pictured in the LP) looked gorgeous from the car park and we hurried down the (v steep) path to get onto the sand.  Only one problem - we literally ran out of path about three metres above the beach!  The last bit of the path had been a wooden causeway and it must have been washed away in a storm.  We knew that it must be possible to get down and (more importantly) back up because we had seen a Czech couple coming up from the beach on our way down, but we just couldn't work out how we'd get up again if we got down!  In the end we decided to play safe - it was almost sunset and getting stuck for the night did not appeal!  It was a long hot walk back up to the car.

We had planned to camp in the car park that night, but decided to head further south to another beach mentioned in the LP, Porto Katsiki.  This turned out to be a good move, as the beach there was even more beautiful than the one we had just (almost) been to - an amazing horseshoe cove backed by steep cliffs - and we met a lovely German couple, Manfred and Susie, who were travelling round Greece in their converted Unimog (a small 4WD Mercedes truck, for those of you who haven't a clue what that is).  They generously shared their red wine and travel tips (they had come from the Peloponnese, where we were heading) with us as we sat overlooking the sea.

After a couple of nights at Porto Katsiki (with hindsight we wish we'd stayed longer, it really was one of the most beautiful beaches either of us has ever seen), we crossed to the Peloponnese on the Rio ferry.  We spent a couple of days driving down the west coast and then across, through Kalamata (where we bought some fantastic black olives - shame Roel doesn't like olives, he really doesn't know what he's missing) and to the east coast.  Generally, we were a little disappointed with the coastline - we had been spoilt by Porto Katsiki and none of the beaches compared to it - and the opportunities for wild camping.  We spent a couple of days camping at Saladi Beach on the easternmost finger of the Peloponnese, which had a very pleasant beach, but despite the fact that it was completely in the middle of nowhere there were so many other people camping there that it didn't really feel like wild camping at all!  There must have been at least 10 German campervans there as well as the odd Greek.  We discovered the reason for this when we got chatting to a friendly couple from Berlin camping next to us and they lent us a comprehensive guide to wild camping in Greece (written by German campervan owners for German campervan owners) detailing all the possible places to wild camp and how exactly to get there!  We had already been astounded by the number of German campervans on the roads and we now began to despair of finding somewhere private to wild camp in Greece.

The next day we headed north, stopping at Epidauros to view the (v impressive) ampitheatre there and the temple ruins, crossed the Corinth canal and drove towards Athens.  We spent a very pleasant evening at Harry's truck stop at Aspropyrgos, another one of Roel's old haunts.  We met a couple of English truck drivers who still drive this far from England (almost all the other international trucks on the roads are Eastern European or Turkish), Chris and Kevin, and had a few beers while swapping travel stories with them.  The following day was spent in Athens, looking round the usual tourist sights (after spending about an hour and a half looking for somewhere to park - the parking problem in Athens has to be seen to be believed, with double-parking on major roads and parking (the whole car, not just 2 wheels) on pavements being completely the norm!).  We had a fun day, but didn't feel inclined to spend any more time in the city, so in the evening we drove to Delphi and stayed at a pleasant campsite there (Chrissa Camping).

From Delphi, we drove to Meteora and spent a couple of days exploring the monasteries there.  The natural scenery of Meteora is amazing, with huge rocks rising hundreds of metres from the (otherwise flat) surrounding countryside.  Added to this, over the years many monasteries have been built on the tops of these rocks (presumably for the isolation they offer - the climb up to the monasteries is certainly pretty daunting!).  We weren't crazy enough to try to ascend any of the rock faces (although we saw quite a few people doing this) but we climbed up to a couple of the monasteries and had a look around.  Each has a beautifully decorated chapel, but for us the most impressive feature had to be the stunning view (and for Roel, the sight of Lizzy being forced to wear a skirt over her trousers to protect the (invisible) monks from temptation).

One of the wild camping spots mentioned in our German friends' guide sounded quite promising in the LP as well, so we decided to give the quest for the perfect beach another go before declaring Porto Katsiki the undisputed champion.  On the middle peninsula of Halkidiki, Sithonia, we managed to find the (totally unsignposted) turning for Kavourotrypes ('Crab Holes') and turned onto a deeply rutted track (definitely impassable for a campervan - oh good!) leading to a series of perfect sandy beaches.  The first small cove we came to was completely deserted and we claimed it for ourselves for the next few blissful days.  The next cove was inhabited by a German hippie who had been living there since December in his old Mercedes truck (hand-painted with shooting stars) and the one beyond had about 30 small tents, left there by Greeks who spent the weekend there, according to the hippie, and had a constant stream of locals on mopeds during the day.  But hardly anyone came to 'our' beach and we had a fantastic three days there to round off our time in Greece!

Our last night in Greece was spent wild camping in the middle of the village of Dadia, near the Turkish border.  We visited the Dadia Forest Nature Reserve and spent an hour in a hide watching the birds of prey (many species of vulture, including rare black vultures, and eagle) for which the Reserve is famous circling high above and feeding.  The pikeys among you may be interested to know that this was all completely free, including the loan of binoculars.  The perfect holiday destination for those on a budget!

Our time in Greece had come to an end and, after an hour and a half at the border, our Turkish adventures began (along with a new page of this diary)...