Travels through a midlife crisis...

[Viktor]

Typically the more 3rd world the country is, the more ridiculously expensive car is necessary, say in Moscow your Merc S600 ought to be Brabus tuned as otherwise its just bog standard car.

Have a look at this beauty and his owner, a Romanian billionaire, I think this one beats Abramovici, Yukos & Co...this picture deserves a Pulitzer (just for the record Merc Maybach special edition, £ 500.000 ...)

http://www.gulp.ro/poze/gigi_becali

[GreenerGrass]

This is how to tour Romania

[AtW]

I reckon a Honda Gold Wing would be the ultimate bike to tour Eastern Europe.I'm sure it would impress the local chicks.

Typically the more 3rd world the country is, the more ridiculously expensive car is necessary, say in Moscow your Merc S600 ought to be Brabus tuned as otherwise its just bog standard car.

[GreenerGrass]

Sounds great. What are the roads like in Romania?

Smooth tarmac?

Will Romanian mountain girls do anything for 20 euros? Or do they have vampire teeth?

I reckon a Honda Gold Wing would be the ultimate bike to tour Eastern Europe.
I'm sure it would impress the local chicks.

[ratewhore]

And I'm sorry, lines like "laid across the landscape as if by a giant hand drizzling black syrup from a giant spoon" and "the BMW has really begun to feel like an extension of me; the experience akin to dancing with a sublimely gifted partner" belong in the shredder. I'd walk in front of a train immediately if any of that tulip was attributed to me, even in error. What a tosser.

Guess you've never toured on a motorbike then. I suspect he's a GSer...

[Mordac]

..

expat, Mordy is a product of the Saff East.

Milan.

And what's your excuse Beansey?

[milanbenes]

..

expat, Mordy is a product of the Saff East.

Milan.

[expat]

So, to summarise, nice country, shame the police are bent.
And I'm sorry, lines like "laid across the landscape as if by a giant hand drizzling black syrup from a giant spoon" and "the BMW has really begun to feel like an extension of me; the experience akin to dancing with a sublimely gifted partner" belong in the shredder. I'd walk in front of a train immediately if any of that tulip was attributed to me, even in error. What a tosser.

Shame you've never known those feelings.....

[AtW]

So, to summarise, nice country, shame the police are bent.

When the police is bent it is never alone - it is you who will be bent too, just the other way to ensure balance in the system.

[Mordac]

So, to summarise, nice country, shame the police are bent.
And I'm sorry, lines like "laid across the landscape as if by a giant hand drizzling black syrup from a giant spoon" and "the BMW has really begun to feel like an extension of me; the experience akin to dancing with a sublimely gifted partner" belong in the shredder. I'd walk in front of a train immediately if any of that tulip was attributed to me, even in error. What a tosser.

[Viktor]

Just came across this article, now this is quite a rarity on UK media nowadays, from all the articles targeted to Eastern Europe...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/trave...863616,00.html

Mike Carter is pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome he and his trusty motorbike receive from the people of Romania. Until, that is, he falls foul of the long arm of the law
...
Still, Draculand apart, Romania has left perhaps the greatest impression on me of the entire journey. It has also caused me to feel an intense personal sense of shame. For, of all the countries on my route, it was always Romania where I felt I would get robbed or beaten up, where dark forces operated (and not just at full moon) and the civilised world would come to an end. I've no idea where those prejudices came from, but how lamentable, how ignorant, they seem now.

For, from cities such as Cluj-Napoca, full of pavement cafes and impossibly glamorous people, to the aforementioned fairytale castles, to Sibiu (busy tarting itself up for its role as European Culture Capital next year) with its magnificent baroque palaces, to the villages I rode through with their traffic jams of horse and carts, where almost everybody would wave and in some cases offer me a bed in their homes for the night, it is possibly the most beautiful and civilised country I've ever been to. As I said, deeply ashamed.

From Transylvania, I head south on the legendary Transfagarasan Road, a ribbon of tarmac across the Fagaras mountains, laid across the landscape as if by a giant hand drizzling black syrup from a giant spoon.

After 11 weeks and 9,000 miles of motorcycling under my tyres, it's the kind of road you dream of: 40 miles of hairpins galore, vertiginous descents and climbs into the clouds, tunnels, lakes and forests. And I know it's a cliche, but the BMW has really begun to feel like an extension of me; the experience akin to dancing with a sublimely gifted partner. It's hard for me to imagine that it was less than three months ago I set off from London, utterly petrified, and here I am speeding, free, without a care, through the Romanian mountains ...
...
'OK, for you, for cash, there is 50 per cent discount,' he says. And he is smiling and removing pictures of his family from his wallet to show me. 'This my sister, she lives in London.'

And I remember reading in my travel guide about the last vestiges of the once endemic corruption among the Romanian police and how it is being clamped down on as the country strives for EU membership and how, if stopped, you should always insist on going to the police station and getting a receipt, which I do.

A melancholy fills the policeman's eyes, as if recalling a lost, glorious age, and we drive off, slowly, to pay the ¤30 fine.