After another soggy night at Camping Veliko Tarnarvo, we were up bright and early to bid fairwell to Bulgaria. Bulgaria didn’t let us down as we juddered and bumped the 60 miles or so to the border.

We will miss Bulgaria for its lovely scenery, nice laidback rural feel and cheap food and drink. On the other hand the poor infrastructure, in particular the shocking state of housing in some rural areas were difficult to take. On a more in depth visit, if we ever manage one, we would like to spend some time in the mountains hiking and I suppose we should visit the Black Sea coast to get a more complete picture.

It is easy to tell when you are passing from Bulgaria to Romania, because there’s a great big river in the way – the Danube. I think there are only two bridges between the two countries, but several ferries. We chose the bridge at Ruse. The bridge toll was not too expensive at 12 lev (€6), but the passage into Romania was not so smooth. We queued for an hour to get to passport control. While we were in the queue we got the most thorough search we have yet experienced. It was not particularly exhaustive, but the border guard looked in our garage, the motorhome toilet and under the beds. He didn’t find the underfloor lockers where we could easily squash a Syrian or two!

Romania here we come

Why passport control took so long was difficult to fathom, except perhaps there were not enough gates open. When we arrived at the booth we were amused to see one booth with two hatches. The first hatch had “Bulgaria” written above it and the second “Romania”. As we approached the Bulgaria hatch opened and we handed over our passports. The guard asked to see our V5 car registration document also, which we gave to him. After much punching of computer keyboard, his hatch closed and the Romanian hatch opened. We could see the documents being passed from Mr. Bulgaria to Mr. Romania, who then furiously punched his computer keyboard and eventually handed everything back to us.

Next we had to get our Romania vignette. I had been expecting this to be quite expensive, but the seller said that all campers were at a lower rate. I hope she is right and we don’t get caught out for having the wrong vignette later. The whole vignette system is more sophisticated in Romania, than in Bulgaria, Slovenia or Austria where we have previously bought vignettes. In Romania there is no physical vignette to stick on the windscreen, but rather it is all monitored electronically based on the vignette seller entering numberplate and other information into a computer system.

After we had bought our vignette Sarah and I wondered why no British government had implemented a similar system. Now all car tax is computerised, why can’t we ask foreign visitors and in particular HGVs to pay a vignette for use of British roads. Given the number of foreign HGVs on British roads it would raise significant revenue.

Once in Romania it was only 60 miles on reasonable roads to the capital Bucharest. We are not planning to explore Bucharest, because with the dogs that would be difficult. However, the only campsite I could find in southern Romania is on the northern outskirts of Bucharest and so I plotted a route right through the middle so we could at least get a flavour of the city.

Driving in Bucharest was no different to driving in London. The drivers were a little on the aggressive side and changing lanes with Basil’s bulk was not easy but overall it was reasonably straightforward. We got a view of many communist era edifices, including Nicolae Ceausecu’s much derided “Peoples’ Parliament”, the second biggest building in the world, after the Pentagon. We actually both thought it rather elegant in an austere utilitarian sort of way, but perhaps we’ve got weird tastes because we both liked Stalin’s Seven Sisters in Moscow! There were also plenty of pre-revolutionary buildings to enjoy.

The People’s Parliament

Finally we arrived at Camping Casa Alba, about 6 kilometres out of Bucharest. It is little more than a glorified aire, with holiday bungalows attached. There are about 40 of us cramped into a small tarmac parking area and at 90 Lei (€18) it is not cheap and it is not particularly nice. Still we are only here overnight and tomorrow it is into Transylvania! I’ll try to go easy on the Dracula jokes tomorrow.

Camping Casa Alba