Romania & Serbia - Week 24

We couldn’t come all this way without visiting Bran castle, the alleged home of Dracula. Loved it! Loved all the secret passages and all the information boards that were written in English as well as Romanian. A must visit castle in our opinion.

My boss has a dentist called Vlad. She calls him Vlad the descaler lol.

We drove back to Sibiu that evening as we’d had a message that the courier had delivered the paperwork we were waiting for.

When we entered Romania over a week ago, we were driving on a motorway. Not knowing the roads we stayed on it. It was pretty boring, just flat brown landscape for miles. Then, at one point, we were diverted onto a normal main road, as that part of the motorway was still under construction. The road deteriorated quite a bit but when, like us, you’ve driven on Lithuanian roads and use them as a bench mark, it wasn’t that bad. We were glad to get back on the motorway though later on. Luckily the road from Bran & Sighisoara to Sibiu was a decent road.

Driving through all these countries, you do notice the differences between them. Apart from all the stray dogs, litter (so much litter) and idiotic drivers that were about, what stood out the most, were the amount of flocks of sheep being looked after by shepherds. Wow what a boring job to have, standing around watching sheep nibble grass all day.

The villages looked very poor in places, with crumbling and derelict buildings in amongst some that you could see were looked after. All of them though, were painted in different colours and quite a few of the towns and villages had Romanian flags flying from every lamp post. They were obviously proud to be Romanian.

Arriving back in Timisoara, we (meaning Andy), negotiated the crazy traffic and called in to collect the paperwork at Autoklass. We must say a huge thanks to Rachel at Hymer Eriba for sorting this out for us.

We slept in the same secure car park and visited the same Starbucks to upload last weeks blog.

Before leaving Timisoara, we stopped at Lidl to stock up on essentials as we were heading for Serbia (for the second time). A guy pulled up in the car park next to us and said hello. He was Romanian but had lived & worked in London for 15 years. He’d spotted that Harriet was a right hand drive vehicle so wanted to talk to us and ask how we found his city. Told him we thought it was good but the traffic was crazy. He agreed and laughed.

We’d already downloaded the offline map of Serbia as our EE contract doesn’t include internet for the country & google maps has been an excellent sat nav so far.

So, Drum Bun Romania, farewell.

We headed for Novi Sad and as we arrived at the Romanian border, we handed the guard the V5 & passports and after checking them he let us through. We crossed the 200m of No Mans Land and had to do it all over again at the Serbian border. This time a lovely border guard asked if he could look inside. His English was excellent and after 2 minutes looking around the van he was happy and said thank you. We had an entry stamp in both passports and were on our way. Not only had we crossed the border but we’d crossed another time zone - again! This time gaining an hour.
Further down the road we found a garage selling LPG. The pump attendant ran inside to get his colleague when he found out we were English. What a lovely man he turned out to be. He’d been learning the English language in the hope of getting to Australia. He filled Harriet with gas for us (Andy usually does it himself), and told us that his English lessons cost him €10 an hour and his salary is only €250 a month. He’s got 2 children but only 1 wife lol. He seemed genuinely pleased to practice his English.

We carried on to Novi Sad passing lots of farmers fields covered in a couple of inches of snow. It’s the first of the white stuff we’d seen since leaving the Arctic circle.

We parked in the castle car park and the next morning, after making a chilli for later, we went into town. We needed to get some Serbian Dinars from an ATM.

Novi Sad is a nice town. Nothing really special but better than places we saw in Romania. It was strange though that every third or forth shop was a currency exchange. But when we tried to change some Romanian notes they didn’t want to know.

There was a small Christmas market in the centre of town just like many others we’ve seen.

The following morning, we walked around the fortress in the sunshine.

Leaving Novi Sad we headed for Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The traffic going into the centre was horrendous but we found our camping spot outside the Yugoslavian Museum. We spent a quiet night there but struggled without internet. Having no paper maps or guide books we had no clue which way to go. We walked to the train station but the trains didn’t go any further into the city. It was cold and I felt pretty miserable. So it was decided we would head back to Harriet and visit the museum. Feeling a bit happier, we walked back up the hill. Problem was, the museum was closed for repairs. Defeated, we set off for Nis.

The main route through Serbia is a motorway and as it gets dark early at this time of year, a good road to drive. We pulled in to a service station with a McDonalds for a break and to use their free WiFi. Getting back in Harriet, the unthinkable happened, she wouldn’t start. It wasn’t the battery as the engine turned over fine, it just wouldn’t fire up. We did notice the amber management light on the dash though.

Serbia is one of the few countries where there isn’t any Fiat Assist, so Andy went to ask for help at the fuel station and 20 minutes later, a recovery truck turned up.

The mechanic told us there was a problem with the ECU and would have to be recovered to a garage to be plugged in.

So, not having any option we agreed. By the end of the evening, and quite a bit of money lighter, Harriet fired up and we were back on the road.

We slept on the motorway services that night and in the morning drove 270 miles into Bulgaria as we weren’t 100% sure it had been repaired. We didn’t want the headache of it happening again with no Fiat Assist as a backup.

Romania - Week 23

We drove to the Hungarian Serbian border from Szeged, filling up with water on one of the motorway service areas. We’d read all the info on the Camping & Caravan Club website about driving in Serbia and what we needed to do to cross into the 18th country on our big adventure.
We needed to make sure we had an entry stamp in our passports plus all the vehicle documents. (We were covered by our vehicle insurance luckily.) We didn’t need a vignette and we’d found a campsite open near Subotica so we didn’t have to find a police station to register ourselves.

We got to the border, but they wouldn’t let us through as we didn’t have the original documents for Harriet the Hymer. The border guard called for a more senior man who explained, in brilliant English, that we were welcome to enter, but poor Harriet couldn’t. I must admit, he was a really nice chap, just doing what he was paid to do.

Feeling a bit deflated, we about turned and headed for Timisoara via Arad in Romania.

We had to show our passports and vehicle documents at the Romanian border too. “Have a nice trip”, was the reply when we told them we were on our way to Greece, and we were waved through. We pulled into the kiosk car park, a bit further along the road, to buy a €6 Romanian vignette. A lot cheaper than Hungary! It was easy for us to cross the border but not so easy for the lorries. I lost count of them all lined up waiting to get through. What a nightmare for the drivers.

So we continued on our way. The roads were good but the closer we got to the town, the busier it became. Andy did an excellent job as always, negotiating all the traffic and the few idiotic drivers. Google maps is a great sat nav and hasn’t let us down yet.

There were no campsites open so we managed to find a secure car park in the centre of the town. The guard waved us through the barrier and pointed to a large “bus” space. We parked up and had tea.
The noise of the traffic didn’t bother us too much but the builders over the road were making a right racket all evening.

Timisoara is nick named little Vienna. We went to have a look around and could see why. The architecture around the squares looked amazing. Shame it was dark. The next day it rained so we stayed in the warm and caught up with some TV we’d downloaded onto Andy’s iPad from Netflix. The rain stopped later on in the afternoon so we were able to put on our coats and go walking back into town. After a quick look at the Orthodox Church we sat in Starbucks and used their free WiFi to finish last weeks blog post.

Rachel from Hymer Eriba messaged us to let us know that she had sent Harriet’s V5 and letters of authorisation to us via courier. This was just the news we were waiting for. It meant we could go to Serbia. We had to hang around Timisoara for a few days though as they were being sent to the Mercedes dealer, Autoklass.

We were in need of water and some peace and quiet. We’d found a place on the park4night app that sounded just what we were looking for. The write up said ...
This is the most fantastic stop, we had the car park to ourselves. We parked under the walnut tree and have been having a few fresh nuts ... delicious! There is chanting over the tannoy in the early evening and again from 6 am to 8 am but it's lovely. It's part of the appreciation of different lifestyles. Fresh water available and toilets. No security concerns, easy to get to, highly recommended ...
So we drove the 20 odd miles to it and filled Harriet with water.

The next day was spent doing housework and generally chilling out. We did have a wander around the monastery in the afternoon, but apart from that, we were just being lazy.

We got the map out and decided what to do while waiting for the vehicle documents. If there had been a campsite open, we would have probably stayed put but with no electric hook up or solar panel, we had to do some truckin to recharge the batteries.

So a plan was made to visit Sibiu, Sighisoara and Bran castle as, according to google and other trusty sources, they seemed to be the main tourist destinations in Transylvania.

Sibiu is a nice place to visit as Romanian standards go. They had a Christmas market and ice rink in full swing. It was so nice to see the people enjoying themselves.

It’s a few years since I visited Romania. 1980 to be exact and Ceausescu was still in charge. Thank god they shot him. I think it’s come a long way since then. When I was there last, they had Dollar shops next door to Romanian shops. The Dollar shops were full to bursting with everything you could think of, but the Romanian people weren’t allowed to shop there. They were only allowed in their own shops and if they had 3 items on the shelves, they were lucky. That image has stayed with me since I was 16. Thank heavens it’s changed.

One of the things we’d not seen before on our travels are the little bread shops they have that you get served through a little glass window. Lots of people were buying what looked like Cornish pasty’s made from dough and filled with with sweet fillings such as chocolate and pink cream. We didn’t try any.

After wandering around the old part looking at the buildings, we found a small restaurant for lunch. Good old fish ‘n’ chips twice, Romanian style. It was delicious!!

We drove to Sighisoara and parked up for the night at the bottom of the Citadel. The old town of Sighisoara is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s full of narrow cobbled streets, a very old clock tower and 190 covered steps that were built in 1642 to reach a really old church at the top. It’s steeped in history that goes back as far as the Romans.

It was full of tourists even at this time of year and even the Dotto train was still running. Unfortunately the tourist information was closed, which was such a shame as it would have been so good to have a guided tour around this place.

Our 7 day vignette runs out tomorrow so we renewed it online. It only took 5 minutes using the Halifax Clarity Card. Harriet is 3.5t so we chose the icon next to the car

Click here to visit the website.