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Week 6: Vama Veche and Bulgaria

I spent most of this week camping on Vama Veche beach in South-East Romania. Vama Veche is the most fun loving beach village in Romania, with lots of freedom to enjoy yourself. Nudism, Cheap alcohol and the occasional smell of marijuana. As we were camping on the beach I was a little worried about getting robbed, I managed to find a hotel who would let me leave my motorbike and bags at their hotel for safe keeping. The beaches are full of cool people, hippie, punks, rockers, motorbike gang members and naked people.

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We camped a few meters away from the shore and spent our days swimming in the sea and enjoying the sun. In the evenings we drank cheap beers and vodka while listening to rock music in the beach bars. The bar where we spent most of our time had huge speakers on the roof playing music onto the beach, if you are on a budget you can go to the mini market behind the bar and buy your beers for half the price then sit on the beach with everyone else.

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This morning I left Romania after an amazing 3 weeks and headed south into Bulgaria. It felt really strange leaving Romania, I had really got used to being there, its strange making friends and getting to know places only to leave them without knowing whether you will return. I’m staying in a hostel in Varna for a night or two before heading further south to check out a wild beach called Irakli.

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Short update to cap off week 5

Since Bucharest I have spent a few days on the coast of the Black sea, working my way down towards the Bulgarian border. I have heard of a town on the border called Vama Veche which is supposed to be some kind of alternative, hippy beach resort. I think I will stay there a night or two before I head into Bulgaria. I have just had a quick google search and found that there are similar places scattered along the Bulgarian coast called wild beaches. I think I will take a look at some of those if I can.

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Mountains, Burns, Police and Pain

Since my last update I have had quite a varied few days. Firstly I went back into Brasov and had a few drinks and found a geocache near the Black church.

A day or so later I travelled back on to the Transfagarasan and then hiked in the Fagaras Mountains with some friends. We hiked for 3 days and camped for 2 nights. The scenery was amazing and I got some great pics, which I have already added to the facebook group.

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The only downside to the trip was that I wore shorts for half a day while hiking above the clouds with no sun cream. I get badly sunburnt and my legs went bright red and swelled up so that it was painful to walk. We came back down off the mountain and I rode my bike to a hotel and checked in for 2 nights, spending an entire day laid in bed applying after-sun to my legs.

This morning I woke up and had a shower, I noticed that the longer I stood up and moved around, the less my legs hurt. I decided to pack up and head to Bucharest. The journey took me through the mountains and at one point I was pulled over by the Police. They said that I had overtaken a HGV on a stretch of road where overtaking was not allowed, the punishment for which is having my license taken away for 3 months and a 200 Euro fine. As you can imagine I wasn’t very happy about this prospect.

I asked how I would get my license back, they said they would post it to the UK.
I explained I wasn’t going back to the UK, they said I could collect it in Romania.
I said that in three months time I will be living in Africa somewhere and explained that I am travelling the world, they commented that I must be rich to travel the world.
I pointed out that the line in the road which signifies that I cant overtake had been completely worn away and not repainted, they made a joke that life in Romania is so hard that someone had to take the line away to be used elsewhere.

I started to think that they were trying to get me to offer a bribe but I wasn’t going to risk offering one. Eventually they said that I seemed like a good man and that they would let me off this time, they returned my license and sent me on my way after I gave them my website address of course. (If you are reading this, thanks again)

After that encounter I continued to Bucharest and found a hostel, dropped off my bags and went for a walk. My legs were stiff from riding the bike all day and they had swollen up quite a bit so I decided to find a pharmacy. After some helpful advice I bought some hydro cortisone spray which also contains antibiotics, and some aspirin then went to explore the city.

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I walked around for a few hours and started to notice that if I stopped walking for even a few seconds my legs went stiff and as soon as I tried to walk again they were really painful. I headed back to the hostel, took my trousers off, sprayed my legs with the hydrocortisone, took some aspirin for the swelling and now I’m laid in bed with my legs raised. I’m hoping that they will heal quickly because the rest of my Europe trip involves beaches and hot places.

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Week 4: Brasov and surrounding areas

Since arriving in Codlea, from the Transfagarasan, I spent a few days staying in a friends house and then checked into a hotel close to their house. We have spent the days visiting the local areas, Codlea is the town in which she lives and it has a medieval fortress with an old church inside. The town itself is surrounded by beautiful mountains which look amazing at dusk. We also visited Brasov which is close by and is a larger town, also with an old fortress and lots of history.

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In the other direction out of Codlea is a town called Rasnov, this town also has a fortress but this one was built up in the mountains which makes for some awesome views.

Yesterday we went to Bran, this town contains the castle which was the inspiration from the Dracula story. We managed to sneak in to the castle grounds without buying tickets and walked around taking pictures. Afterwards we got some food and went to try to find some geocaches. Unfortunately we didn’t find any in Bran as the clues involved too much time walking around and it was getting dark.

We came back to Codlea and found the one and only geocache in Codlea. Today we are heading back into Brasov and will try to find some of the many Geocaches in the town.

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Transfagarasan

I stayed in a hotel in Sibiu which meant I had to pay a little more than I was comfortable with, although it was still cheap, around 30 Euro. But to make sure I got a fair deal I really had a great breakfast. I started with a bowl of cereal, then had scrambled eggs and sausage with toast, then cold cooked meats with cucumber, toast with honey, two slices of cake-bread, a yoghurt with apricot jam, a coffee and two glasses of fruit juice. Then to really make the most of it I put two boiled eggs in my pockets to eat for lunch. I walked around Sibiu, which I had been told was the most beautiful town in Romania. I agree that it is nice but I’m not sure its really all that special.

Once I had walked around I set off for the Fagaras mountains to drive along the Transfagarasan. As I drove up the North side of the mountains I was driving through clouds but on the South side the air was clear and I had some great views across the mountains.

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I was heading for Brasov but missed my turning, by the time I realised the course correction added an extra 30 or 40 miles onto the journey. I arrived last night and will spend the next day or two here.