2558 km, Greetings from Baile Herculane

Hi Everyone,

Yet another message, since we have some extra time today. We've decided it was time for a day of rest. Yesterday we left Timisoara for a journey to a town called Caransebes. We hoped to find a little hotel or hostel there. We arrived there fairly early, despite the wind being in our faces and traffic being "Romanian" It seemed we had good legs yesterday. Therefore we decided to go for the camping site near Armenis a nice 138km from Timisoara. When we arrived there, there was no camping to be found and no one in the village knew of its existence. It was getting kinda late and the next camping was still very far away. By now it was about dinner time and we needed a full meal again (lunch a big plate of spaghetti and ham and eggs around 15.00). For some strange reason the first 4 restaurants did not serve any food at all. In fact the seemed surprised we walked in there to ask for that. It seems restaurants here are
places were you rest, smoke and drink booze/beer. We survived on some cookies and chips we still had left in our bags. After that
we moved on and decided to have a go at making it to the camping site anyways. We managed to get there just before dark around 9 p.m. So in the end we had a really tough day. The sun was bloody hot and after about 95 km we had some hills as well. On the end of the day we had 181km on the counter. Resulting in some nice sore muscles this morning.

In the end we stranded near Baile Herculane a little village about 30-35 km from the Serbian border. We are getting a little fed up with the Romanian attitude and driving skills and are quite happy to leave this place again tomorrow. Hopefully we will find a better atmosphere across the border. Then after tomorrow some serious climbing will need to be done and we will be heading in the direction on Sofia and after that Plovdiv in Bulgaria. Istanbul is getting closer and closer.....

Lets hope the roads will be a bit better in the next places we visit. Over here it's been a disaster. The main road from Timisoara to Orsova is almost impossible to drive. The traffic density is very high due to the fact this is the main passage road to Bulgaria and Greece. Also its regularly suddenly interrupted from asphalt to dirtroad and the other way around. mostly due to construction. (about 15 long strokes over 90 kilometers). We've been eating dust a big part of the way :( Funny part is that our suspension on the bike allowed us to overtake the cars and trucks driving there. That must have been embarrising for them ;) Despite all this, we have to mention the surroundings here are absolutely beautiful. Lots of beautiful mountains and nature everywhere. Today despite all the heavy work the bike did its job and we had no failures at all.

p.s Pisti we crossed the border near Mako at a village called Ladanyimajor. The CD's are still in the bags. The post offices here are not open on Saturdays. we'll send them back home in the next few days.

Take care all,

Greeting from Baile Herculane