Having spent the night in Kecskemét some 90km south of Budapest after a day’s drive from Kraków to get thus far, we crossed the border with Romania at Nagylak/Nadlac. Anyone who has never ventured this far south-east  in Europe and finds themselves at this border crossing could be forgiven if they wanted to stick the car into reverse and find themselves back in Hungary pronto.

After queuing up for the Rovinieta and jumping back in the Golf, we became overwhelmed, surrounded by locals – washing car windows, begging, selling this and that. In a word, a bazaar in the true sense of the term. It was time to leave: but going forwards, into the unknown. One kilometre later, a sign informs us that it’s 660km to Bucharest. Then it hits you. Romania is severely under-rated and has tons of negative connotations. Yet the one-day transit to the Romanian/Bulgarian border at Giurgiu/Ruse (Русе) was one of the most eye-opening experiences I have had in a very, very long time. I didn’t even feel like this when we went for a three-day hike through the forests of the Lemmenjoki National Park in Finnish Lapland. It was a true sense of the unknown. We have all seen pictures of Lapland in geography books at school; as such, you know what to expect. They don’t show the Nagylak/Nadlac border crossing. They don’t show you the Arad ring-road (there probably wasn’t one back then anyway…). But they don’t show you how beautiful Romania is, or how kind its people are.

Nevertheless, ten hours later, at midnight, you miss the turnoff for the Bucharest ring-road and continue pounding along at 100km/h towards the city centre. I have only been to Bucharest once. At night. We got seriously lost, but still ended up seeing the Palace of the Parliament. (No we didn’t have a map of Bucharest centre, and in my humble opinion, GPS/SatNav is for pussies.)

Negotiating midnight traffic in Bucharest

Once Bucharest regurtitated us onto the Giurgiu road, we got to the border at around 1am. Having paid 6 euro at the so-called Friendship Bridge to cross the Danube, we drove up another 250 metres only to go no further. We were plunged into darkness; no cafe, no duty-free, just a two-lane-wide carpark which slowly began to extend once we had stopped. Some Romanians, but mostly Bulgarian cars and Turkish HGVs transiting through. Due to roadworks, the bridge operates on a one-way scheme [niech ktoś mi powie, jak ładnie przetłumaczyć ruch wahadłowy na angielski]. One hour the road was open going into Bulgaria, and then one hour leaving Bulgaria. We just missed our slot.

We had the Danube in front of us and the Bulgarian border on the other side: and another 100km to go. It was getting late…