Moldova, Romania
September 9, 2008
“Any LSD or guns?”
I think the border guard was a little offended when I burst out laughing.
Getting out of Ukraine was easy, so far the worst the Moldovan guards had done was insist that I had to detour around Transnistria (around 250km) and say.
“Maybe a little present!”
I played dumb “Oh, what’s a present?”.
They looked at me in disgust and handed me a form to fill out.
I filled it out and made my way into the queue for customs where I was asked whether I was drugsmuggling, and no sooner had they started inspecting my panniers than a yellow Suzuki rocked up behind me and I heard.
“You’re from England?”
I turned, smiled and replied that I was, whereupon a beamish smile broke out on the guys face and he pumped my hand vigorously.
“Where are you going?”
“Chisinau”
“I live in Chisinau! We should go together!”
“Sounds good!”
How little I knew at this point what a blessing it would be.
The customs official had been observing this exchange in silence, and upon its completion, gave me a sickly smile and waved me through.
“Huh..” I thought to myself “that was easy…”
I waited on the other side of the border for my new compadre, who followed in very short order and asked:
“How fast you want to go?”
“Oh, hundred, hundred and twenty is fine by me” (kmh lads, kmh!)
“Excellent, I am Moldovan criminal police, we have no problem with speeding!”
As the country we were in at the time was Transinistra (a breakaway country from Moldova consisting of some 600,000 odd people) we still had to cross another border to get into Moldova proper.
We stopped at the next border post, showed our passports, Constanin (my guardian angel) exchanged a few jokes in Russian and we were whisked straight through.
I can’t help but think that would have cost me an hour and a small sum of dollars to get through on my own.
Once through into Moldova I realised what a blessing my guide was.
As you see, if there’s one thing Moldova lacks (apart from EU membership, and a first world infrastructure) is fucking ROAD SIGNS, I swear there’s only one of the fuckers in the entire country.
We went whisking down unmarked roads that I would have had no chance to navigate on my own, and when we arrived at Chisinau, Constantin even rang my hostel for me, found out where it was and took me there!
What a guy! It’s people like this that make travelling what it is.
I didn’t do much that evening, as even though I’d set off in the morning, it had taken me hours to find the right road out of Odessa and by the time I arrived I was ready for some food and some sleep.
And what food!
I had, of all things in the universe, Caviar and Sturgeon Pizza!
That, a beer and an orange juice came to just under 7 quid (horrifically expensive by Moldovan standards, but a cheap price to pay to be able to say I’ve had Caviar Pizza!
It was incidentally, like a very posh anchovie pizza, and since I love anchovies, that was just great!
The next morning I set off for the Romanian border, which should have been easy to find once I got on the M1.
However, the “M1″ at one point randomly curved off to the right and I went straight on (with, of course in grand Moldovan style, no signs indicating which way the main road was).
So I was left going down roads like this.
Which left me very glad I upgraded my suspension!
Gravel is fun, you have no say in where you’re headed, you’re just along for the ride!
At one point I hit such a vicious pothole that my tent/misc bag came off (amazing, considering it’s strapped down with two ratchet straps) and I didn’t even notice until about 10 miles later.
Fortunately it was still with me as it was locked on to the bike, I was just lucky it wasn’t hanging next to the exhaust!
Crossed over into Romania eventually with no problems, total cost of Moldovan borders?
$0!
Romania as I saw it was much prettier than either Moldova or Ukraine before it.
It’s almost as if some-one did the south downs, then some-one else responded “Pfft, I can do better than that!” then did Romania.
I wasn’t quite sure where I was spending the night, so I popped into a couple of Motels along the way.
“40 euros please!”
… Yeah, no thanks.
Seeing as the roads were blissful in comparison to Moldova (average speed, 100kmh!) I decided to press on to Bucharest and find a Hostel.
And what a hostel!
I parked up next to this.
Turns out staying at the hostel is a German chap doing almost the same trip as me!
With almost the same time frame!
He’s entering Turkey a little later than I am (25th rather than the 11th), and he’s going to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam rather than Philippines/Indonesia, but other than that, identical!
Oh, also…
The Hostel has a resident Pile-’o-Kittens (TM)!
So, what the hell, I figure I can stay another night!
Not Constantinople
September 15, 2008
Bucharest is not far at all from the Bulgarian border, took me no time at all to cross and despite being told you had to pay a toll to get over the river that marks the border, the guard at the toll booth lifted the barrier and waved me through without so much as a Moldovan Lei in exchange.
The roads in Bulgaria were much akin to Romanian roads (ie; 1,000,000,000,000,000 times better than the average Moldovan/Ukrainian road) and I was bombing down the weird style of wide single lane roads that characterises this part of the world.
Oddly enough when I leapt onto the first motorway on my route I was slowed to a crawl by a rolling traffic jam going at 20-30mph.
Being a slim fit vehicle (if somewhat more rotund than the average motorcycle) I flitted my way daintily through the traffic, sliding determinedly between cars like a skinny guy in a mosh pit full of dykes.
I eventually got to the front of the queue and found three police cars driving across all lanes of the motorway with their lights flashing, and beyond them in the distance I could see the Bulgarian equivilent of the Tour De France.
Urgh… 2 hours at 30mph in the blazing sun, could have done that stretch of road at 90, c’est la vie, I was stopping in Bulgaria for the night anyway.
I eventually found a campsite near Bulgas and settled down for the night.
In the morning I found the German owner of the site (known to the world as German Willie) who turned out to be walking to Japan (through Kazahkstan and China) on his own.
Though.. Being as he was 70 and had spent the last 6 years in Bulgaria apparently I do wonder slightly whether he’ll get to the end of his trip.
Still, it’s not about getting there is it?
Though judging by some of the tales he was telling me, he’s a very experienced traveller to say the least!
We said our goodbyes (he gave me some insanely thin towel I’ve yet to try out) and I motored off into the distance.
The road to the Turkish border was very very small, and I more than a few times I questioned whether it was in fact the right road.
Still, the roads were beautiful so I kept going.
My accident prone nature was bound to catch up with me again however and not long after I took the above photograph, I took a corner relatively quickly (though perfectly manageably), leaned over and heard a grinding metallic sound and suddenly I was on the tarmac.
Turned out the side stand had got trapped below the centre stand and when I leant over to take the corner it had scaped the tarmac and sent me tumbling.
Thank god for ‘All the gear, all the time’, I just stood up, dusted myself off, picked up the bike and carried on unharmed.
Close to the Turkish border there are some quite spectacular hills, and if the roads were a bit better surfaced they’d be good fun!
Woo! I made it to the Turkish border! And my last sign in Cyrillic!
The border was pretty easy, took a fair amoung of time to get all the paperwork as I had to go through umpteen different offices, but the motor insurance was a piffling $10 and the visa only $20.
Once I got through the border, oh my god, a whole new world of tarmac.
I think the Turks dream of paving the entire world, on the Bulgarian side I was riding single lane roads which hadn’t seen a construction crew this side of the millenium and on the Turkish side…
Good god, thank you Jesus, I can keep to my schedule and get to Istanbul today without a worry!
I bombed along the E80, a 3 lane super motorway, at 90mph and got to Istanbul in no time at all, though the 90mph wind speed did result in 3 days of excruciating muscular pain… Maybe I’ll keep the speed down next time…
“Istanbul 20km”
And then the houses started.
Istanbul is home to more than 13,000,000 people and good god it is huge.
A quick consultation with my map and I arrived in the area of my benefactor.
Taksim being a complete maze I did the traditional thing of giving the address to a taxi driver and following him through the death defying driving of Istanbul.
I was greeted by Sharron, a friend of my father, who’s staying in Istanbul teaching English and graciously agreed to put up with my smelly self and provide me with a place to sleep (and subsequently some rather delicious meals!).
I’ve been in Istanbul a few days now, so there is much to relate.
But, that will have to wait for another blog post!
In the meantime, here are some samples 
