My advice is simple. In the words of Nike, Just don’t. Fly. Go by train. Bus it if you must, but on no circumstances, unless you are fools (like us) should you ever consider driving from Romania to Montenegro through Serbia. Before I tell you why, here are some parting observations as to what you’re likely to encounter in Romania.- Brightly coloured houses – under the vile Ceaucescu regime (so repugnant was this dictator that when the time came to overthrow him in 1989, Romanian TV not only showed his arrest on live television, but also his execution by firing squad on Christmas Day) the people were allowed to paint their houses any colour they liked as long as it was commie-grey. Since 1989, Romanians have been boldly – and blindly – experimenting with orange, blue and lime green renders, often matched with roof tiles the colour of Stabilo Boss fluorescent markers.
- Even the most ardent dog lover will be considering canicide after spending any length of time in Romania trying to get to sleep. The 200,000 or so stray dogs the country is home to bark. All. Night. Long.
- The Romanian language is dead easy to figure out. Essentially a mish-mash of Romance and Slavic languages, anyone with a smattering of either will instantly be able to make themselves understood. Scusaţe ma? Unde este mi prijaten? Mersi! Buna Sera!
- Vlad Tepeš has been rather overexposed in Transylvania. For those who don’t know, he was the real life ruler of Wallachia in 1450-something who was fond of skewering his enemies from scrotum to shoulder and whose bloodthirsty antics inspired the legend of Dracula (the name itself means “son of the dragon”. Vlad’s dad was called Dracul). Now you have the Dracula Castle – several of them – Dracula Restaurant, Dracula Shop, Dracula Campsite…
Speaking from a road-trip perspective, however, the thing that will linger longest in your memory is the journey itself. To this end, I have devised a quick multiple choice question:
Which of the following has the most road sense?
A Romanian pedestrian
A Romanian driver
A Romanian dog
A Romanian child
A Romanian cyclist
A Romanian horse
Driving in Romania is a nerve-wracking experience. Leaving aside the fact that dreadful, pot-holed roads and smoke-belching trucks will instantly double any estimated journey time, getting from A-B in Romania is a bit like playing those ancient Space Invaders arcade games where you have to dodge the bombs. The game ends, of course, when there are so many bombs being dropped that you simply can’t avoid them. Romanian pedestrians walk in the road, even when there is a sidewalk. They have town meetings in the middle of the road, on sharp bends, and if they happen to be walking home after a night on the palinca, they are liable to collapse – in the middle of the road of course – without any warning whatsoever (as well as offer you a swig, oblivious to the fact you’re behind the wheel of a car). A Romanian child’s first response on hearing a car coming is to run – without looking – into the middle of the road. They share this instinctive manoeuvre with Romanian dogs, whose flattened corpses litter the roadside like fag packets, and Romanian cyclists, who clearly believe that the shortest distance between two points is in fact a very wobbly line. Romanian drivers, however, make this smorgasbord of dodgems truly terrifying. They will overtake at any opportunity, and they will overtake given no opportunity at all. Blind bend approaching, over a hill, four trucks in front of them and “no overtaking signs” prominent? No problem! A Romanian will overtake anyway. Nowhere in Europe – in fact, nowhere anywhere, and that includes Africa – have we seen so many crashed cars. Cars with smashed fronts, smashed sides, cars in ditches, cars upside down. It’s like the entire country has only just discovered the automobile. Only the horses can be relied upon, so if you chose the horse, well done! It’s probably just as well that they wear blinkers.
On the up-side, our route did take us past plenty of cool stuff as we motored through Transylvania. Sighisoara, an ancient Saxon walled town (and naturally, supposedly the real home of Vlad the Bad), was worth stopping for, as was the tiny hamlet of Viscri. Of course, we had a slight detour on the way: we took off with Penny and Duncan's keys and had to turn back after two hours on the road to return them...ho hum.
Penny and Duncan are in good company. None other than Prince Charles himself has bought into this tiny, beautifully preserved medieval Saxon village and the fortified church was worth the visit by itself (it’s also worth mentioning that HRH has also invested in Maramures…!). Transylvania also contains perhaps communism’s greatest achievement – The Trans-Fagarašan Highway. This awesome road is open only three months of the year when the snow clears, and takes you from one side of Wallachia to the other past vertiginous pine forest and glacial lakes, all via a sequence of serpentines that would rival Italy’s Stelvio Pass or the Davos run in Switzerland if only the tarmac were of half-way decent standard. A low-slung sports car would have broken something long before it got over the mountains. Amazingly, our redoubtable Honda made it all the way without suffering any further indignity, either self-inflicted or otherwise.
After a night in the nowheresville town of Curtea de Argeš, we decided to make the charge for the Montenegrin border in one long burst, a full day’s worth of driving. Not for the first time, Serbia was to cause us bother. It was difficult enough finding Romania’s Iron Gate border in the first place - they had clearly given up signposting it. After all, they probably thought, why would anyone want to go into Serbia? Our journey across to Monte was to prove why. Zipping onto Serbia’s only motorway for a fifteen kilometre stretch to get onto the right road west, we were puzzled to see “toll” signs and yet encounter no barrier. This surprise was to turn into anger when we peeled off just ten minutes later to be met with a toll-barrier on exit.“Karta?” asked the guy in the box.
“There was no barrier at the entrance,” we explained, non-plussed. “We came on at Paračin, just 15 kilometres back. How much should we pay?”
“No ticket, €56,” came the reply.
What?
We explained again. We proffered our passports showing our entry into Serbia barely two hours previously, and handed over the map where we had clearly biro-ed our route.
“See, we came on at Paračin. There was no barrier, how were we supposed to get a ticket?”
“No ticket, €56.”
“But we’ve only used the motorway for ten minutes!”
“Ne mogu raditi ništa,” the attendant confirmed after checking with his superior. “No ticket, €56.”
He then hilariously suggested that I leave the car, hitch-hike back to Paračin, hitch back and then pay the 100 Dinar fee (about one pound).
“Be serious,” I remonstrated. “I’m not going to leave my wife in the car and hitch-hike there and back. There was no barrier, and even if there was, who is going to give a ticket to a pedestrian??”
The guy shrugged; I don’t care, not my problem.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here...
Seething, we paid the €56 fine, Emma pointing out to him, not unreasonably, that Serbia had few tourists as it was without the authorities cheating fines out of the people who did come into the country. It left a bitter taste in the mouth. When we got to the Montenegrin border, we had a brief half hour delay involving our insurance papers. The Montenegrin officials couldn’t have been more helpful or apologetic at keeping us waiting, even at gone eight in the evening. The next morning, I accidentally parked somewhere I should not have, and when I pointed out the lack of signage, the policeman in Kolašin smiled, shrugged, and told me it was ok if I just moved elsewhere. The contrast could not have been greater. Montenegro was a “can-do” country. We just hoped that this positive attitude extended to the bureaucracy we were bound to encounter buying a house there.
We had decided to return to Skadar a few days ahead of schedule as we were getting conflicting email confirmation regarding the vital signatures we were chasing up, and in this part of the world it was often a better idea to be driving matters along yourself rather than trying to manage everything remotely through intermediaries. Our subsequent meeting with both Dubravka and Slaviša proved that we were absolutely right on that score. Slaviša had fulfilled his part of the deal by producing signed and court certified paperwork for all four owners as promised (which was a very pleasant surprise, we had thought there might have been a big problem getting these); in fact, the paperwork had been ready for over a week, but Slaviša, Dean and Dubravka between them hadn’t quite been able to meet up and move onto the next phase of the purchasing process. Our arrival had rather galvanised them all into action – we had another evening pow-wow in Dean’s garden and established that not only were the signatures in order, but that the disputed parcel of land would now be included in the deal, exactly as we had originally agreed with Slaviša. The two remaining barriers to the sale had both been removed within hours of our return. Barring a few more legal niceties – and of course the small matter of payment – the house was ours!
Of course, we had a few conditions of our own to add to the pre-contract (when the deposit is paid prior to exchange and completion). The next two weeks in Skadar are going to be busy if we’re to buy into the Balkan lifestyle like Prince Charles has…
Charlie, seriously, this is a bit of a step down from Buck House
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