Today my race around the Black Sea starts. I now have dates on which visas begin and end, and must get my timing right to be at the Chinese border on 12 September. But I still don’t have car papers or a guide for China, so who knows, perhaps I shall have to be airlifted out of the no-man’s-land between Kazakhstan and China after all.
The master plan for the next two days, however, is to cross from Turkey into Bulgaria, drive right through Bulgaria without stopping, cross into Romania, and find a place to stay for the night. Then tomorrow I will drive straight through Romania and into the Ukraine, after a short and uneventful trip, I arrive at the Turkish-Bulgarian border post. The customs officers look at me carefully as I drive up to the search station. When I get out, the black-clad men summon a strapping lass to deal with me. My heart sinks, no chance of chit-chatting my way out of this one; the only thing to do is to follow the example of the guy in the next search station.
He is talking into his shiny phone, seemingly oblivious of the treatment that his very fancy black four-wheel-drive with tinted windows is getting from the swat team. One man starts pulling off plastic coverings in the rear of the car; he then uses special tongs to separate the window fleece, where he checks with tiny torches. Another chap rolls under the car, where he taps various cavities with a little hammer. I expect at any minute for him to haul out a stethoscope. These guys mean business. But the owner of the car hides any anger, frustration or other emotion behind mirror shades. This is the way to go it seems.
So I fling open all the Wish Mobile doors, and stand back to let the lady do her worst. She starts opening a few zips and drawers, pokes about a bit, and concludes her search by asking if I am carrying narcotics. Bizarre. Yes, officer, if you look in the left door cavity, you will find 6 kilograms of Turkey’s finest. What possible answer does she expect other than ‘no’?
But I am an innocent looking sort, so soon I hit the E87 north. It is about 300 km to the Bulgarian-Romanian border and another 200 to the Ukrainian border. Even with border delays, I should reach my goal long before dark. The road makes its way through cornfields and then back to the sea, where vines, thriving in the moist heat, which makes the air so thick you don’t breathe it, you chew it, cover the trees, climb the buildings, and try to take over the cranes that line the sky around the port city of Varna. Here dingy buildings from the Soviet age stand like rotten teeth between modern supermarkets and new European-style high rises.
At the Bulgarian-Romanian border, bored Bulgarians wave me through and the Romanians are quite relaxed. This time the official business is dealt with in minutes. The border crossing brings about an immediate change in the look of things. The houses are finished, freshly painted and clean. The public spaces are neat; flowerbeds are tended and trim; the trees are pruned and painted with white socks to keep the insects off. From the signs in front of the restaurants advertising roast lamb with mint sauce, I am guessing that this part of Romania is a tourist destination favored by the English .
The speeding fines must be very high in Romania. Romanians drive very slowly and the “˜keep right, pass left’ rule does not seem to apply here. Romanians like to drive more or less in the middle of the road, and when they get into a town, they really slam on anchors. On the long straight roads a speed limit countdown starts kilometres before the occasional curve, until finally, one is expected to creep around the corner at 20 km/h. A dull orange Trabant, towing a tiny trailer carrying three huge cows – cow sardines – is keeping strictly to the speed limits, as are the other road users, who are transported mainly by horse-drawn cart. One horse power is the norm in Eastern Romania, and often it is one donkey power, so the 20 km/h ruling is not so outlandish after all.
The carved and brightly colored carts present great photo opportunities. The cart drivers think this is fun and stop in the middle of the road to pose nicely for their pictures. We exchange a few words of greeting and some pleasantries about the sparkling weather, both parties simply choosing to ignore the fact that we actually don’t understand a word the other is saying. The peasants point at the line of deep purple on the horizon – storm coming – we nod in agreement, and then wave each other goodbye like old friends.
As I wind my way along the Danube delta at the end of the European road, it is shocking to see how small the spread of the wealth of Europe is. These far-eastern parts of Romania could be somewhere in Africa. Reed-roofed huts plastered in mud stand in hand-to-mouth plots of land, half in and half out of the water. Chickens scratch around the feet of women in faded aprons who gossip by the village well, while a young boy rolls water home in a rusty barrel on a handmade cart, and I get held up in peak-hour traffic, involving two bicycles, a horse-drawn cart, a herd of swine, a gaggle of geese and me.
The sky darkens and in a sudden downpour I make it to a more familiar traffic jam of trucks and cars that queue across a bridge and through a small copse of trees. The trees prevent me from seeing the cause of the traffic jam; the rain prevents me from going to find out. Slowly it dawns on me. It’s a ferry! Damn! I am having a bit of a problem reading my map today; there it is clear as day, ferry, and I have no Romanian money. Euros would normally work, but I have no small change, so try to buy my ferry crossing with a €50 note. The cashier takes one look at it, and then simply ignores me. I could rot right there in front of her; she is not getting involved. Now what? Then a knight in bright red t-shirt steps up to the plate, and enquires in perfect English what my problem might be. In a jiffy he pays my ferry fee and I am once again in business. The kindness of a stranger saves the day. He joins his family on the ferry, and vanishes across the Danube, never to be seen again.
In Galati I find my way to the customs office, where a group of ladies – who express great concern at my driving all alone into the Ukraine – find maps and schedules. They make phonecalls and finally come to the conclusion that the road to Reni goes through Moldova for a few kilometers and, as I don’t have a visa for Moldova, it is not possible for me to cross into Ukraine from Galati . I must drive a further 60 km to a hamlet called Oancea, and there cross the Prutul River into Moldova at Cahul, where they have a 24-hour consulate and a visa can be obtained.
On a sunny Sunday morning the crossing from Romania into Moldova is no problem, one quick stamp, and off I go. In Moldova things become a little surreal, as life turns into a Kafka play. The crossing starts with a woman in military uniform opening a large gate and directing the Wish Mobile through a quick sprinkle of disinfectant. As a germ-killer this treatment is totally ineffectual, but as they will charge me for it later, some show has to be made. She then walkie-talkies my arrival to the main buildings, which I can see about twenty meters ahead. I can also see that there are no other cars or travellers at the border post, and that my welcoming party of three people in blue uniform and three in green is ready and waiting. They can surely see me too, but a long conversation on the walkie-talkie is required before I am allowed to move forward. At the customs house, a lady in green takes my passport, inspects it carefully, discusses it at length with her comrades, and then explains to me that I don’t have a visa. I bite my tongue and await further instructions, which soon follow.
I must leave my car here, and walk to the consulate to get a transit visa. Perhaps they are afraid that I might make a wild dash for the Ukrainian border. I have visions of the Wish Mobile bouncing through the sunflowers with the border guards on bicycles in hot pursuit. This thought amuses me while I sit on a hard chair in a dull green office, waiting for the customs official to work her way through her red tape. My name is filled into a ledger, and I am given an invoice of 30 USD for a 48-hour transit visa. Then I am sent back to green lady one, who now retains my passport along with the car. In exchange I am given a document which I am to present to an old gentleman in a small office. He has some work to do that involves making a great display of opening several large dusty ledgers. Huffing and puffing, he writes my details down in one ledger after another, adds another stamp to my document and €3 to the bill. He sends me to the police to register the car, more big ledgers, more stamps, and €5 to the bill. I then go to another office where, thinking that this is where I should pay, I put a €50 note on the counter. The man whips the note away with such speed that I smell a rat, and demand the money back. He reluctantly returns it with my document, which he has adorned with more stamps and directs me to the bank. In Moldova a large part of the population live off less than 2 USD per day. The €50 note I was flapping about so carelessly could represent someone’s monthly income here. At the bank, a clerk fills in another ledger, adds more stamps to my document, which is starting to look like a very interesting piece of modern art, before I hand over my cash to yet another lady, who is protected from me by heavy metal bars. Account paid, I return to my car via all the officials I had visited before, each one confirming the transaction with more stamps, until finally, green lady one checks the whole lot and seals it with a last stamp, and with that returns my passport.
As I am about to leave, one man asks:
“˜Will you be returning through Moldova?’
“˜No, I am driving to China.’
He stares, a glimmer of understanding, then his brain slams shut.
“˜Yes, but will you be returning through Moldova, as your visa is only valid for one transit and if you return you would need another transit visa?’
In the tiny town of Cahul about 25 people wake up every morning, put on their smart uniforms, and report to work at the Romanian – Moldovan border in the middle of the sunflower fields, fully convinced that they are doing something useful and valuable. I hope they never see the futility of it all.
This is an extract from My Year of Beds, a book about one woman’s solo drive around the planet. Read more here.
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