Road taxes, paying bribes and getting out of Romania

Planning, as has been stated before, is extremely important when going on a driving trip abroad.

This includes having a good Sat Nav system (and Lilith is just that), but also a good road atlas and, of course, a travel guide book. My holy travel tome is "The Rough Guide To Europe On A Budget," and it is thicker than the Bible.

With this wealth of experience at one's disposal, one can map out and plan a journey safe in the knowledge that it will all go well.

Last night, the route to Sofia in Bulgaria, was well-planned and - according to the road atlas - was about 200km away. This was established using the atlas' scale measurement key. That shouldn't take too long to travel, even if the traffic is bad or the road is under construction, or if the speed limits are extra-ordinarily low.

That would give plenty of time to check out the sights in Bucharest in the morning, and still get in a bit of Sophia in the afternoon. Both planning and the day's blog done, it was off to bed.

Morning arrived and it was raining, ruling out the morning photo session. This might not be such a bad thing because the travel tome describes it as such: "Arriving in Bucharest, most tourists want to leave as quickly as possible...". It might have been a good idea to have read that before including the city in the tour.

The trip out of Bucharest was cleverly planned - first I stopped at a petrol station and spent my remaining Lei (Romania money) to get Paulo's tank up to three-quarter's full - more than adequate for the 200 km journey ahead.

Lilith was programmed to get us to Sofia and she announced happily that the journey was 243 miles long. This is a lot longer than 200km.

Never mind, when in Bulgaria, we could fill up again when we draw some of the local currency.

Off we went, the rain pouring.

We reached the border in quick time and I was not surprised to see that the border post was manned, but something looked decidedly different - the first was the money exchange booths that lined the streets up to the post, and signs which suggested that some kind of levy needed to be paid. I got closer and there was a board in English that said bridge tax.

I had no more currency, local or Bulgarian. I also could not turn round because I had already entered the one-way.

I parked Paulo and trudged, fortunately the rain had reduced to a drizzle, back to one of those exchange kiosks.

The man behind the counter had no English but somehow, I understood that he was giving me 25 Lei for the bridge tax and some Bulgarian currency. Of the 60-odd Euro I had on me, I was left with about 25.

I drove up to the boom gate and offered my passport, drivers' licence and vehicle registration - after-all, I was now wise to everything that is required in such circumstances.

The women in the gate booth then asked for something else. I hadn't the foggiest what she was on about; but after a bit of banter, I got to understand that I was supposed to pay a road tax in Romania. "So how much is that? And can I pay it here?"

She seemed to understand, but said she couldn't sell me road tax, and if I didn't have a road tax ticket then I had to pay a penalty - that would be 150 Euro.

I was dumbstruck and resorted to looking very pitiful about my current circumstances and absolutely at a loss as to what to do.

She pointed past the gate and said I should park there. I asked about my passport and other documents. She said "Park!"

I did, got out and trudged back to the gate.

She met me along the route and started asking about how much money I had. I showed her my Lei (for the bridge tax), the Bulgarian cash and the remaining Euros.

She scooped up the Lei and walked back into the gate house. She met me at the window again and motioned for me to give her the remaining Euros and Bulgarian cash. I did.

She returned my documents and shoved 10 of the Bulgarian stuff in my hand and said for me to go. She also said something that sounded remotely like, "Use the 10 I gave you to get yourself some Bulgarian road tax".

I think I was properly robbed there. In fact, I was probably robbed by the exchange kiosk bloke too. In fact, at those roadwork stop-and-goes the pervious day I was confronted by hawkers on the side of the road and was conned into buying glasses. Lots of glasses; wine glasses, whiskey tumblers and tall glasses too - so as I'd have a complete set. I was probably robbed there too. Eastern Europe is a lot like Africa in this regard - keep your windows closed when stopped in traffic, and don't make eye contact. You simply can't trust anyone who makes a living on the side of a road.

All of this has served to dim my already less-than-wonderful view of Eastern Europe to somewhere just above detestation. They mightn't like foreigners much, but they do like their money.

I crossed the border and understood why there was a bridge tax. It is massive and takes you across a massive river. I have no idea what it's name is, but there were large ships in it.

The city on the other side, Ruse, is ugly. Butt ugly. A lot like the people in Bulgaria. Some are so deeply tanned that you might think they're from Africa, or India, but their facial features are chiseled - there are no soft lines, just harsh angles. Weird, really weird. You can sort of see that you are heading towards Greece, because they look a bit like their southern neighbours and their writing is all Greek to me.

I was able to find a Shell filling station which sold me a month's worth of Bulgarian road tax. Apparently you can't buy less than a month's worth. I suspect I was robbed again - but at least I'm legal, even if the local population aren't.

Back to Ruse which is heavily industrial and the housing consists of huge concrete blocks that are only vaguely colourful because of the washing that hangs out of almost every window. It is everything that comes to mind when you think Communist Bloc.

At least, however, the Bulgarians have a better understanding of town planning than the Romanians and once on the open road there are few villages and towns, and those that exist are away from the main road.

The road has a lot of rest stops - little lay-bys where you can stop and rest your legs. I did this soon after crossing the border because Lilith insisted I do. "You have been driving for two hours; you may want to stop for a break," she said.

I used to just ignore her when she does this and she would come up with the same message every 30 minutes after that. I figured out that if I shut her off for a minute and turn her back on again, she would still remember the route, but would think I had stopped. I suspect she knows that I do this.

This time, however, I did stop and after a few stretches I felt much better about everything.

In retrospect, I'm glad I heeded Lilith's advice when I did, because almost all the other lay-bys were occupied by hitchhikers and, travelling alone, I'm a bit fearful of picking up strangers.

I had seen a few hitchhikers along the road in Romania, but not nearly as many as in Bulgaria. Here, they're at every niche in the road.

The all look very similar; they are always alone, they're always female, they always wear high-heels, they all wear figure-hugging jeans and they all have a lot of hair. The ones with blonde hair look strange because it clashes against their dark tans. Many also wear huge sunglasses with white rims.

What I can't get my head around is why they are hitchhiking. Certainly they seem to have more money than most of the rural people, because their clothes are new and expensive-looking compared to everyone else - surely they can afford, at least, to buy a bus ticket?

I've been taken advantage of by many people in this part of the world, so I thought it better not to give any of them a lift; even if they did look very innocent.

This brings me back to the poverty around here. It is extreme and if you look at a map of Bulgaria, you'll see that just like Romania, it has very few highways. Romania had just the one and it was very short, but Bulgaria has three. I got to travel on one and it is impressive.

After travelling at a maximum of 55 mph for so long, it was wonderful to be allowed to go 80mph. It is three lanes wide and perfectly flat. This despite going through a series of mountains. They've achieved this by tunnelling through the mountains and spanning the valleys with huge bridges that must be hundreds of metres high. It's an engineering marvel and I felt a lot less ripped off for having to pay a month's worth of road tax.

Paulo was thrilled to stretch his legs too.

Incredibly, no sooner did we get on the highway when the clouds began to disappear and the sun shone through. My mood perked to level just above despondency.

The magnificent highway brought us to Sofia in double-quick time and despite the 200-odd mile journey, we arrived at our destination a little after 3pm.

The rain was back though, but it was not such a downpour that it obscured my view of Sofia.

I wish it had.

Sofia is a slum. I think if there is a city worse than Bratislava, then it is this one.

Fortunately the rain is keeping me indoors, it breaks every now and again, but not enough to encourage me to venture outside.

While stuck in the hotel I've had a chance to look up Sofia in that travel tome and again I wish I had done my homework properly. It says .... "With its drab suburbs and distinct lack of charming old buildings Sofia can appear uninspiring to first-time visitors...". It goes on to say that new developments are making the city better, but I think it ain't worth getting wet for whatever new buildings they've put up. I want to see history.

Tomorrow, I figure, will be planned a lot better. I've watched the telly and things are getting worse in Greece - others have also told me it's nothing to write home about unless you go to the islands around it, so I'll give it a complete and utter miss.

I reckon I'll slip across to Skopje in Macedonia; it's not too far and it is the birthplace of Mother Theresa - They have a lovely monument to her in a delightfully old chapel. It's also got a peculiar review in the travel tome, which says "It's one of those places that can be described as appealingly ugly, with brutal Yugoslav-Era designs augmenting the mazy lanes of Carsija, the charming old Ottoman centre."

The guide says there's lots of great places to visit, and all within a small centre. Sounds good enough for me. What's more, there's no road tax, just a few toll roads that can be easily avoided. Planning done - we'll get out of Eastern Europe as fast as possible, but by the most charming route, then we can enjoy the far more impressive Western European culture at a leisurely pace.

That's the plan anyway.