On the other hand, Polish people are lovely:)
We bought some beers, apple juice and vodka from Tesco hypermarket, and drove the rest of the way to Bolkow for Castle Party. We arrived there just in time, as the darkness started to fell. Set up our tent and stuff and walked around the town a bit, looking if our friends have already arrived here. We didnt find any of them, but our a bit ruined budget got some relief as Laura found a 50 zloty note somewhere laying on the ground:)
Today the weather is fine, which is unusual for this place. Bolkow is situated just next to the mountains, so last year it was raining all day. The sun is shining now, and the temperature is around 30C. Having my morning beer and relaxing on the air mattress just next to a swimming pool. Our local friends just arrived and are setting up their camp next to us, and we should go to get our festival tickets... Nice to be in here again :)
When Marek got out of work, we got back to his place and stayed there for a while... Tonight a group of Couchsurfers were attending a Singing for Fun in Krakow party in a local club, and we went there. We had around 30-40 local people in there, singing group karaoke etc. Was kinda fun :)
At the morning.. Or actually late afternoon we packed our stuff into the car and started driving north towards Krakow. Crossing through Slovakia took a few hours, because of the small roads and roadworks, but we finally arrived Krakow half an hour ago. A local guy Marek, who we met when we were in Krakow a few weeks ago, will be hosting us in here.
Luckily, the Hungarian license plates look exactly the same as the Finnish ones, and they did not write our nationatility anywhere.. So, I guess those tickets will never find their way to finland, and you can guess am I paying them :)
We took our car to another place, where parking is free, and then went to have a walk around the city. Laura has some kind of fixation about zoos, so we ended up going to Budapest Zoo with Milla, while her boyfriend was working. Just walking around the zoo, taking some photos etc.. A decent zoo, not so cool as the one in Vienna, but not bad either.
When Peter got out of the work, we went to have a few beers in a small bar. Nice place, totally hidden in a small courtyard.. In Hungary they have a strange habit. Once in a year everybody throws the stuff they dont need to the street, and those who need can collect them. All the chairs in this bar were collected from the streets, and none of them are similar to each other.
I was surprised of the quality of Hungarian beer, this is really good. I thought they only had good wines and the awful Unicum. Maybe we have to take a box of it home :)
During the 14 hour driving from Bucharest nothing special happened, except a Romanian police officer stopping us for overspeeding. The limit was 50, and I was following the locals driving around 60-70kmh.. They let us go immediatly though, just saying "its ok, go". Probably the radar reading wasnt so bad then, or maybe they didnt want to try to communicate with foreigners, most police officers around there dont speak so good english.. The van driving in front of us wasnt so lucky, I guess he got a speeding ticket:)
In Budapest we are staying at a Finnish girl, who is living in here with her Hungarian boyfriend for the summer.
Tomorrow we should be heading towards Budapest, no idea if we get a couch or some accomodation in there yet.. We will see tomorrow, and its 800km away from here so it will be a long day.
Well, that didnt work. So, I called the embassy of Finland in Bucharest. The lady working in there was really helpful and promised to write me an official paper telling that I do have a driver license and give me their cellphone numbers if I got any problems with the police about the missing drivers license. We took a bus to the embassy, got the paper and now that problem should be sorted out.
We had a friend living in Bucharest, Tudor. We have been meeting him a few times while we have been somewhere in Romania, and I sent Tudor a message if he is in Bucharest today. He was, and after having a quick dinner at the hostel we headed back to the city to meet up with him. Tudor took us first to a nice restaurant in a park in the centrum of Bucharest, and after that to a Couchsurfing meeting in a bar on top of the national theatre of Bucharest. Quite familiar place, we have been attending meetings there a few times.
There was a lot of people attending the meeting, around 30 I guess. We spent a few hours in there, and then took a taxi to our hostel with Tudor. I just wish they had safety belts in the taxis, because the local taxi drivers are driving like headless apes...
We did book our hostel only for one night, and earlier today we had been talking with the hostel owner and he told us its not a good idea to leave Bucharest today towards Transsilvania, because everybody will be going there at friday evening and the roads are totally crowded. The hostel was quite full booked, but he promised that we would get a bed in there, or a mattress somewhere.
Obviously he had forgotten to tell that to the receptionist on the nightshift, and the hostel was totally full, no space for a mattress or anything. With one phonecall we managed to get a Couchsurfing host however, a local girl that was attending the meeting promised to host us at her place.
They came to the hostel, and we were supposed to follow their car to their place. At some point the car got out of the sight, so we had to manage at our own. She had jumped to our car at the hostel, but she had also just moved to a new apartment and the city is big, so she was not sure of the right route either.. Half an hour of driving around the city, and we got to her place. Time for some sleep again.. And we are still thinking if we should stay in Bucharest or go to the festival in Sibiu tomorrow.
While we started driving up the Shipka Pass to 1.2km altitude, the darkness started to fall. There was a lot of big trucks on the road, and they could not drive faster than maybe 20km per hour on the mountains. So, we spent a few hours in darkness following the really slow trucks on the small curvy roads. In one of the pictures below you can see how the road looked like on the GPS map..
Also the condition of the other roads was really bad, they were full of holes and bumps. Around 1 at the night we finally got into Romania, and followed a decent road to Bucharest. We found our familiar hostel Butterfly Villa easily around 3am, felt like being at home to return here once again :)
Seems like we will be spending one more night in Bucharest, as the traffic out of the city is really crowded at fridays and we have a few friends to meet in here.
Around 10 we woke up and left Istanbul. Driving out of the city in the morning rush was not one of the best moments of this trip, but we managed to do it anyway.
These few days in Istanbul have been quite fun, but unfortunatly I was sleeping so late every day due to the antibiotics that we didnt have time to do much.
