The English version of our blog: July 15th After starting from Budapest and picking up our team mate Mark in Prague, we made our way to the stariting point, Klenova castle. Finally we get to know our team mates! And our first impression was: There are even more crazy people like us! Not only there were all kind of crazy styled cars, like an actually Fiat Panda dressed as its name giving animal, an american school bus or a London taxi, the people dressed crazy too. Costumes like „where is Waldo”, wonder woman or all kind of animals (e.g. chicken, zebras, tigers…). From the camping grounds we left for the big party in the castle. After having most awesome czech barbecue and worst beer ever we went to enjoy the castles view while getting to know the crazy travel plans of the other teams („we travel through Irak and Iran…”). After listening to the czech bridge band whose members were probably older than the castle, we meet the staff of our main charity organisation: Cool Earth. Finally we got to know where our money went, surprising fact was that the whole organisation consisted only out of 4 reliable persons but they the efficiency of 40! After some chats we returned to our camping site to continue the party in an old army hangar. It was really a crazy party, it wouldnt be a surprise if some teams already had to delay the rally because of „drinking consquences”. July 16th After having a rather short rest we packed our stuff and went to the Czech-Out Event. After some formal talks, we saw the „strongest man of Czech” Djafar, quite an odd show seeing a huge guy lifting people with his teeth and pulling cars. The highlight was seeing some concrete blocks being hammered on his belly and two motorcycles crossing his belly. After this intellectual show it was time to start! We all got into the car and did some nice motor howling and honking concert driving through the offical foto and start line. MONGOLIA, HERE WE COME! On the way we did not only fill up our tanks but also our beer deposit with czech beer for us being beer gourmets. We hereby have to mention that our driver was always sober, only doped by adrenaline because of mad drivers. July 17th After finally having gathered all of our team members in Budapest and doing some food shopping we started quite late. The highways in Hungary have been a piece of cake compared to the „Romanian Highways”. Already the sudden change at the border was quite an adventure. Suddenly the roads became war like and the truckdrivers were playing „Need for Speed” in real life. Also we almost got scammed when paying our road tax in a suspicious looking petrol station. They demanded 200 Lei. Not knowing the exchange course we almost paid like 50 Euros for a month ticket. After checking quickly the exchange rates we realized that we are about to pay 20x normal amount. So we decided to have a look for an other road tax store… We continued to Arad in Transylvania , after doing a quick drive-by photo shooting we continued our way to Sibius. We almost didn’t make itt here because the sun started to set. Maybe you heard about fearsome vampires coming out in the night forget about them, in lunatic Romanian car drivers coming out in the night are much more frightening. Some overtaking maneuvres which not even Vin Diesel in a random hollywood racing movie would have dared were common. Eventually we arrived kinda stressed out in Sibiu. After being denied by two hotels we just decided to go to the pitstop party in the center to try our luck. It turned out to be an awesome party! Free beer, good atmosphere with lots of Romanian locals and Mongol Rally participants it was almost better than the Czech out party! We followed some Rally people to their stay in another village and it turned out to be an awesome, big… July 18th Church! In the darkness we didn’t even realized it but it was big evangelic complex lead by some german immigrants, so we could talk to them easily. The village turned out to be Grosna, the „city of storks” because there were more than 100 of these majestic birds living there. We had to leave quite early so we unfortunatly participate int he huge breakfast made out of local eggs, bacon and vegetables prepared by a british mongol rally guy. Later we only heard the legends how awesome it was. Pretty tired from the last night we headed to Dracula’s castle next to medieval city Brassov (drive by photo shooting). The village next to the castle was named Bran (probably named after Bram Stoker, but just guessing). It had a pretty impressing aritechture and original medieval style, though we were expecting some more vampire stuff like coffins, blood and other twilight stuff. The next stop was Transfargasan highway which is hard to describe, it was so breath-taking, just have a look at the pictures . We also meet a two famous romanian musicans shooting their new music video. They gave us a cd sample which was …”interesting”. After doing some crazy filming (just wait for/have a look at the awesome videos!). Then after seeing some more once-in-a-lifetime beauties like reservoir lakes, dams and a sun set we left this place and our next destination was:BUCHAREST July 19th After having a nice 3.5 h sleep on theMcDonalds parking lot, almost fresh and energized, we had a short drive by photo shooting in the capital. which was pretty…communistic. Run down houses , old soviet memorials and ,not to forget, crazy drivers. OK, TIME TO HEAD FOR THE BEACH PARTY! We got lost…After visiting some villages we never intended to see we meet a random french rally team who had an awesome ambulance bus heading to turkey. They were so lucky to be invited by a romanian family to stay and sleep. Hmm, why didn’t this occur to us, maybe we should hide our Hungarian flag? After acquiring the exact location of the party we were finally going into the right direction! On the way we got to see some romanian culture again, like a father letting his baby car on the highway, some rowdys getting out of their car in the middle of the crossing to chase an old man (it didn’t look like they were old friends…) and did i already mention the crazy driving? Eventually we also reached Oha Beach, our next party spot, being greeted by some fellow rally folks. Later on after setting up our tents, having a nice swim in the black sea (we reached the most eastern point of romania, from now on we would be circling north around the black sea), one of the veteran teams arrived, the Dixie Chickens. They had a huge american school bus filled with a lot of insider people who already participated in the Rally last year (this gave us motivation that no one regretted participating!). Interesting fact was, Mongol Rally was not enough for them they were doing a whole world trip. Again the beach party was pretty fancy, electronic beats, dancing on the beach, full moon and more nice stuff. July 20th After having slept quite ok, we exchanged some phone numbers for later on meetings with our tent neighbours and got on the way! After making some unplanned deteriorations we made our way to the Moldavian borders. After passing the romanian part being guarded by a officer who never heard about the word „nice” we got into some chat with other rally teams (they are everywhere!) while waiting on the permit to use the moldovian roads. One team wasn’t allowed to enter because they didn’t know that you need a visa… Another guy was denied entrance because his car had an export license plate and the moldovians were afraid that he would dump his car in their beautiful country… So both teams need to take the loooong detour around Moldavia. After having used the moldavian streets we understood why they were so keen on getting road tax money, there is really a lot of work to do…We just hope our money lands in the potholes and not in someone’s trouser pocket. After a long day of driving we decided to get a nice hotel next to the road instead of camping. With our best russian knowledge we managed to get a room for 13 Euro per person and a Shaschlik for 3 Euro. July 21th The journey continues to Odessa. After a very quick border check in Ukraine („You are third rally team today, do you have some souvenir for me?”) handing out our personalized little compasses gifts we managed to go past every control easily. Surprisingly the street quality increased again on the way to Odessa. We were surprised what a nice contrast programme this city offered, compared to the small grey, post-sovietistic villages Odessa had quiet a lot to offer. We parked in the center and got assured „personal car protection”, seeing the gypsy children he was permantely screaming away we payed the triple parking costs for our beloved Mouflon rally car. We made a 2h city tour and met in our favorite place, Mcdonalds (we should get sponsoring money visiting them so often with our attractive car…) the rally team „Dude, where is Baataar?”. They already managed to collide with a romanian taxi and had to pay a horrendous amount to the taxi driver. We exchanged news like one of the honeymoon rally teams arrived so late to Odessa that they were so desperately looking for a room that they paid 180 Euro for Hotel Londonski. Eventually we decided to keep on moving so we found 50kms away a very nice camping place at the sea. July 22th Unfortunately it was not possible to go swimming because it was just jellyfish time and there were more of these painful creatures at the beach than stones. We packed our small belongings into the car, had a nice russian tomatoe-omelette breakfast and made some pictures with a russian war veteran and the obligatory sweet cat pictures.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 10:31:21 +0000
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