Karen's Blog about her move to Bulgaria

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The trip across Europe

The trip across Europe

Landed in Dunkirk.  6pm local time. Sunday

Decided to drive for a couple of hours so that we were well past the border.  We had been advised that there are many break ins and thefts near to the border.

Gosselies France

Around 9pm stopped at a Motel called Formula 1.  As it had no Restaurant we ate at a lovely little Italian place across the road.

The Motel itself was very basic but clean.

It had very interesting toilets and shower cubicles.  After one had finished using the toilet instructions were to close the door properly.  Then the toilet cubicle went into a ‘self-clean’ mode and disinfectant and / or water came out of grills in the walls.  We don’t know exactly how it was done as we could only listen from the outside of the closed door.  I lived in fear of setting the thing off accidentally when still sitting.

Paid 5 Euros extra for breakfast which turned out to be bread and jam – no croissants or toast, cereal or anything much else.

Germany     Monday

Left Formula 1 in France at around 9.30 am and drove until lunchtime.  Stopped at a Motorway cafe for lunch and spent half an hour talking to the toilet attendant who was Bulgarian.  He took us into his liitle ‘office’ and wrote down contact details abd said ‘’if ever you are passing mt town call in’’.

Saw a sign which made us laugh ‘Ausfhart’  We saw the sign again afer a couple of kilometers, then again after a few more kilometers.  We said either this is a very large popular town or we are on some sort od ringroad.  Only after we had seen the same sign a few more times and 20 kilometers further on did we realise that Ausfhart actually means exit.  Made us all laugh.

9pm Feeling a lot brighter now so speeding along singing and chatting. Nearly forgotten about being overloaded when blue flashing lights appeared behind us.  The German Police !!!  Of course they pulled us over, and began carefully examining the van.  They asked ‘is it very heavy?’  we said ‘’well we were weighed in Dover and they let us carry on’’ (which was not far from the truth)  Ron tried to distract them by shaking hands and asking them if they could recommend somewhere to stop for the night.

They kept asking for documents that we didn’t have because it was a hired van (We assume they wanted a log book because we showed them the road tax, Insurance and passports etc.)  Luckily Ron happened to be driving so the driving licence issue was not a problem.

They were eventually satisfied and said we could carry on, then as we were getting ready to set off they said that one of our tail lifgts was out and we must stop at the first garage to have it fixed.  Felt like being in the film ‘The Great Escape’ when the escapees were safely on the train to cross the border when one of the police foiled them at the 11th hour. 

Austria  Monday night

 

 

 

Safely over the border into Austria, but now worried that Austrian Police will pull us for having a tail light out.  We decided to go to an Hotel straight away.  Because this was a major town, all the Hotels were in the town center and my toes were curled up at the thought of being stopped again by the Police.  All the Hotel carparks we came across had underground parking but with heifgt restrictions, so we couldn’t park the van.  Ron and Karl wanted to fix the bulb immediately so we stopped in a side street to change the offending bulb. 

Changed the bulb, no light – changed the fuse – no light.  Also at this point we thought that we had left the torch in Dover along with the rest of Ron’s tools, so Karl had to try to fix the fuse inside the van by the light of my mobile phone which kept turning off every few seconds.

We decided to drive on out of the town centre (Passau) and find a n Hotel for the night. 

The Sat Nav showed a Hotel or B&B along a small road, so off we went in the big van into what looked like a private housing estate.  We were sure that there was no large Hotel here but perhaps a B&B so that we could park the van and sort the lights out in daylight.

We parked the van and Ron got out to have a look for somewhere to stay.  He saw a light on in a house so walked up the path.  The door flew open and a totally naked man stood in the doorway, shouting in what sounded like German.  All poor Ron could think of to say when confronted with this sight was ‘Hotel???’  The naked Austrian kept shouting ‘Nine Hotel, nine Hotel’ We thought we had better leg it quick before he called the police who would be interested in our overloaded van with no tail light.

 

Karl drilled small holes in the headlights, this allowed water to drain out and the fuses held.  It turned out that the torrential rain we had driven through in Germany had collected inside the light cover.

We all piled back intto the van and set off again looking to stop at a Motorway Motel as soon as possible.  At 12.30am arrived at a nice Hotel which to our relief was still serving food and cold beer.  We satayed up until about 2am trying to wind down before bed.

Austria  Tuesday Morning

 

Bought the necessary vignette pas th drive in Austria – lasts for 8 days and cost about 8 euros

Left Hotel at 9.30 after reasonable breakfast, with lights now fully operational, then had an uneventful journey until we stopped for at a service ststion lunch at 3pm.  Thank goodness we stopped then because as Karl checked the van he noticed that the tracking had been out of line and the tyres were scrubbing off.  We couldn’t risk driving any more miles like that as soon the tyres would be illegal.

Fortunately, there was a garage near the service station – unfortunately they didn’t have the correct size tyres, but they told us where we could find another garage who could have the tyres in stock. 

Arrived at the second garage who said it would take 2 days to get the tryes.  Karl said the only other way would be for him to put the front tyres on the back and the back tyres on the fromt.  As we had only one jack and the van was so heavy it would have taken him half a day to do the job.

At 4.45 pm we came across a garage who would change the tyres over for 25 euros.  We were so lucky because the garage was about to close and they were in the process of pulling down the shutters when we arrived.

I had to close my eyes as the van was lifted up, because the garage was using a jack that was only supposed to lift cars.  One slip and the van (and possibly the fragile contents) would be ruined.  All went well and the van (and the mechanic) survived!

Hungary Tuesday

5.30 in the evening by now, so we decided to push on and try to make up some time.

By 9.30 we were looking for somewhere to stop but not having any luck.  Stopped at a garage to ask and they directed us to a place about 20 kilometers away.  We arrived about 10.30, and Ron got out to see if they were still open and whether they had any vacancies.  He came back grinning saying ‘Gurss what? They say we can have a bungalow for 24 euros for all three of us tonight’

We thought that this was a piece of good fortune and couldn’t wait to see what the bungalow was like. 

The bungalow was like a Wendy House.  It has 2 single beds, bunk beds and a sink.  It was about 12 feet square, and we had to laugh as we had been expecting something totally different.

The place however was lovely.  The dining room was still open, so we had a meal before bed.

Next morning when we cme to look around, we found ourselves in the most picturesk surroundings with many weeping willow trees, a pond and swimming pool (which was , sadly, empty)  The little ‘bunhalows’ in the grounds were cute, and really ment for camping holidays.  The shower block was pretty basic with no doors on the shower cubicles, but hey ho you can’t have it all!!

Had breakfast and a walk aroung the grounds before setting off once again at around 11am.

Hungary Wednesday 

 

Set off once more to see how far we would get before night time.

Throgh Hungary and into Romania.  Ron had to make sure that he was the one driving through the boeders because we didn’t want to complicate things with Karl’s lack of driving licence.

Had a vote for stopping overnight somewhere in Romania or just driving on until we reached Bulgaria.  I would have preferred to stop but the boys were doing the driving and they opted to carry on.

We hadn’t filled the van up with fuel, as we were trying to keep the weight down as much as possible especially when going through borders. 

Romania Wednesday

 

Bought the necessary vignette pass to drive in Romania & Bulgaria which lasts for 7 days and cost 8 euros.

Romania is very mountainous and driving around hairpin bends in the dark with hardly any road markings and a drop at the side of the road was a bit scary.

We followed a convoy of large wagons, as it was easier to follow lights, and the grooves in the road from the lorry tracks made trecherous driving as our van was too small to follow the lorry grooves and kept slipping on and off them.

We dicided to folloew the lorries until we got through the worst of the winding roads and onto motorway reads again, so we didn’t stop for fuel so that we could stay with the convoy, thinking that we could re fuel somewhere along the way.  How wrong we were!!!

We turned off the bad roads onto more normal ones, but there were no petrol stations for miles and miles. 

The fuel low light was on constantlt by this time, ans still bo sign of a garage.

Eventually the inevitable happened and the fuel ran out.

The roads were dark and had no lay by’s to pull into.  We couldn’t even pull off the road a little as there was a grassy 4ft drop at each side of the road.

We had been advised not to stop at all in Romania, as it is dangerous to do so.  Now here we were at 2am on a fast road with no diesel.

By now we were all very tired having driven for 15 hours and it started to rain.  We put the warning triangle behind the car and Karl put on the high visibility jacket – then we waited………….

Thursday Romania (early hours)

Karl flagged down a car coming in the opposite direction.  Not sure it would stop but thankfully it did.  There were 3 young men and a girl in their late teens, and as luck would have it their car was a diesel like the van.  They let karl syphon off some fuel (he was still tasting it days after) and then took Ron 23 kilometers to the petrol station to buy a can and some diesel.

The petrol station would not take euros, so the young men changed some for local currency so that we could fill up.

The van was difficult to start after being starved of fuel, so Karl used aftershave to get it going – don’t ask me how. 

We were so grateful for the help these young people gave us as no one else stopped and left there we would have had to walk hoping to come across a garage but not knowing how far, and worried that the hazzard lights would run the battery down.  All our posessions were in the van, so one of us would have had to stay with it. A very dangerous situation to be in in Romania.  Also the road was so dark and fast that it was likely that a vehicle would run into the back of the van smashing all our things.

We were told that very few people stop for breakdowns or even emergencies in Romania as they are afraid of it being a set up and being mugged.

We gave all the rest of our euros (probably only about 50) to our rescuers, but it was worth much much more.  We must have had a guardian Angel that night.

Filled up with half a tank of diesel and carried on heading for the border with Bulgaria.

What we hadn’t realised is that at that particular border crossing (Silistra) there is a Ferry boat to take vehicles across.  By now it was 4am and the ferries had stopped for the night.  We bought a ticket and were told to get in line and await the first morning ferry.

The first ferry turnrd out to be 5am so we didn’t have very long to wait.  We were in line behind a lorry, then more lorries came behind us.

At about 4.45 the loading began.  The first lorry went on, then the second, then us.  The van made an almighty scraping sound as we went up the ramp onto the boat.  We thought we were not going to make it as by this time Karl had said that the clutch was neat to the top, and we could smell it as we dragged the van up the ramp.  But at least we were on.. Or so we thought!!!  After much shouting and arm waving, a man came up to our van and ordered us off.  We pretended not to understand as we desperately did now want to have to get off and on again.  The man insisted saying ‘first the lorries  you last’ so, we scraped our way back down the ramp.  Of course this time the men heared the noise and we were worried that we may not be allowed back on at ass seeing as we had scratched their ramp!

We sat in the van looking up at the ferry and finally when all the lorries were loaded, we were allowed to drive on.  This time the men had pieces of wood and blocks to make it easier for ud to get up the ramp.  We could heat them later speaking to each other and pointing at us while making scraping sounds!!

We thought the ferry would be a quick 5 minute crossing abut it headed down the river away from Silistra, and we began to think that we had made a mistake ang gtten on the wrong ferry.  There was nothing we could do but enjoy the trip, and watch the sun rise.

The ferry docked at aroung 6am and with much fuss and stop start re position the blocks we scraped our wat gratefully off the ferry boat.

BULGARIA  Thursday

Finally arrived at the border of Romania and Bulgaria.  The end is in sight!!!  All the lorries were waved through. We were told to wait.  Here we go again just as we are getting close to home, produce the documents, have a look in the back of the van etc.  No problem though, and we were on our wat for the final 70 or so kilometers to Malina.

MALINA  at last at about 8.30 am.

We arrived and saw that someone had weeded all the path outside the fromt of the house painted the curb black and white (as is the tradition here) and planted some little flowers.  We had paid one of our neighbors to plant some grapes and said that they could use our land to grow things until we arrived.  We didn’t expect to find a little flower bed, and it made us feel so happy and welcome as we had neither asked for or expected such a thing.  What we were totally unaware of until a week later is that we were being charged 1,200 lev for this, but that’s another story!!!!