Roads and roads, this is Romaina, rather stay at home

Romania, a place of superstition and intrigue and Dracula and... And everyone lives on the same road. At least that's the case in northern Romania. It's called the E17, it's narrow and it stretches all the way from Hungary in the west to Suceava (which is near the borders of the Ukraine and Moldova) in the east. A time zone changes somewhere, maybe it's at the Hungarian border, but it might as well be that a time warp has sent you back to another era - on that isn't know, and that doesn't know an awful lot about town planning. The entire northern population lives on this road, right next to it, house-after-house. There's countryside out there, but you can't see it from the road because it's in everyone else's back-garden. You wish they would live a bit away from the road, or commune together and create towns or something; but no, it's just one long village that follows the main road. Admittedly, there is some swelling of the population in some places to create what you might call a village - invariably around a church, but mostly it's just a row of houses that goes on and on and on... You'd think this would play havoc for the postal system - I live at No. 50 372 on the E17 - but they get around this by having a minute interruption of the houses, never more than about 100 metres, then you enter a new town - which is just a new row of houses next to the road. This plays havoc for driving because the speed limit in town is 50kph - 30mph. You just try driving 200 miles at 30miles per hour. Then there's the horse carts. And the trucks. It is also poor and driving all that way, it's hard not to feel sorry for these folk. Your mate lives in the same street but 100 miles away and the nag is feeling a bit ill sort of thing. There's also not much by way of work; there are a few factories, but they are now simply hunks of rusting metal. You get the feeling that people around here aren't into employment. It's not as if they're lazy though; there's always someone sweeping! They sweep a lot and it tells, because there's no litter and everything is clean - which is not the same as neat, because what verges there are, are overgrown and the entire road has a look of being unkempt. The destination was Dracula Castle Hotel. Yes that's silly and immature, but, hey, why not? The travelling is why not. If someone says to you: "Hey, you've won a trip to Romania and you'll stay at the Dracula Castle Hotel but you have to drive there," simply say: "No thanks, I think I'll remain here". There is a reason to visit northern Romania though and that would be to confirm that it is better wherever it is that you live. The only work anyone seems to have is to sweep and to move heaps of hay, by horse cart, from one place to another. Quite why they move hay around isn't clear, since there's quite a lot to be found in everyone's back garden. Perhaps they do this to annoy the trucks that grumble along down their road. Whatever the case, Lilith was mostly silent along the trip because there was nothing to say except, every 10 miles the inevitable: "Keep going on the road for another..." how many every miles were left. She'd also send out the odd warning bell if I slipped past 30mph. Paulo was sulking about the speed and was still smarting that I had blamed him for the traffic ticket we got in Hungary. Initially fascinated by the architecture, the horse turds that littered the street, the horse-drawn carts that carried hay, the women sweeping outside their homes - which explained another fascination, the lack of litter, and the fact that people could live like this, it all soon became dreary. That was after about half-an-hour of it. The next eight hours were just tedious. We arrived at the hotel (it was nice, like any hotel) as the sun went down and I awoke when the sun rose. I had hoped to get photos of the Carpathian mountains in the morning - because they are magnificent, but the place was heavy with mist. Perhaps that added to the atmosphere, but mostly it made for crap photography and hazardous driving. So we set off. South to Bucharest. At first the road was much like the one we had left, but then it clears - as in there weren't any houses next to it. But no sooner does this happen when you hit construction work. One has to think that once that road is redone, it'll be beautiful and evveryone will want a house next to it - it'll become prime real estate and the envy of anyone who currently lives on the E17. For now though, it is a hundred miles of stop-and-goes. Then you hit Brasov - I saw the industrial area, thanks to Lilith's sense of humour - and it is an industrial area. Just like any other industrial area. After that, you head into the mountains again and then it gets beautiful. Really beautiful. It's as I imagine Switzerland will be, except the architecture might be different... It's also obviously the bit that tourists visit - can't think that there are too many tour operators who offer discount prices on a drive along the E-freaking-17. But to think that we'd move faster to Bucharest was simply folly; the windy road, while beautiful, went on and on, and the trucks made the going slow. It was going to be another entire day of driving, and there was no chance of visiting the castle where the Dracula movie was shot... That was sad. So we learn to plan a bit better... We arrived in Bucharest in rush hour. It wouldn't have been too difficult, but they're in the throws of redoing the main road - the resurfaced road, all four lanes of it, have no road markings. This makes the traffic circles a nightmare. There were horns tooting everywhere, but I'm proud to say none were directed at Paulo. Lilith, probably feeling sorry for me, led us directly to the hotel and that's where we find ourselves tonight. Tomorrow, we go to Sofia: it's not that far away and hopefully, traffic willing, we shall have a full afternoon to take photos. That's what we hope anyway. One thing concerns me though, odd places like the Slovak Republic have ornaments above most of their letters and that place was strange... Hungary has fewer decorations on their letters and it was better; Romania, not only has the same ones above them as the Slovaks (or are they Slavs?), but they put squiggles under their S's and T's too... In Bulgaria they change the entire alphabet, turning Rs around and stuff like that. We shall see what tomorrow holds.