Buna ziua Romania and our second breakdown

Serbia was so lovely, not exactly what we had expected.  The campsites (even though they are scarce) are very lovely, modern, clean and tidy.  The hosts, even though they expect you to drink at least 3 shots of their poison they call Brandy, are very hospitable.

And the people are much the same; we stopped about 30 km from the border into Romania to get some fresh bread for lunch, and to use our last Kuna money.  Whilst stopped a guy came up to us and asked if it was okay to look at Mildred, he then took us behind the shop to his shed to show us the 1964 Split screen he was currently working on.  Then into his bedroom to see on his PC the other VW projects he’d completed. 

After that lovely experience, we crossed the border.  The Romania customs took their time – we were the only non-carriage truck there and they hadn’t seen a NZ vehicle passing though before.  They checked passport, ownership, green card.  Talked to each other heaps, then decided they should do a customs check.  We opened the sliding door, they took one look and shook their heads and asked with hand signals if we had any guns or drugs.  Then we were off.

Timisoara was our first stop and even though Tomtom was back online, not all streets were named so it took a bit of figuring out how to find the campsite.  When we got there we were very disappointed in the camp, it wasn’t as bad as Budva’s camp, but was a close second with their bathrooms.  The up side was the restaurant, which we were parked close to, had a function on so we got live Romania music all afternoon, and their singing was excellent.

We moved on the next day to Baile Felix, a small village near the Hungarian border.

18km from our destination whilst travelling on a single lane of roading at roadworks, Mildred stopped dead.  We managed to glide through the road cones to the unsealed other side of the road before completely stopping.  This time was more serious than our first breakdown and it in 38 deg heat.

Our points were completely closed and couldn’t be adjusted as the wear strip that goes on the cam was broken, out with the new replacement points we were carrying and we were off.  All up we were stopped about 30 minutes, we were grateful to have one complete side of the road to ourselves to work on and that the passing one lane traffic was going slow.  What we didn’t realize until we pulled away was how lucky our timing was as 30 minutes later the road sealer machine would have been at the exact spot we broke down on.  I finally had to admit to Daryl that carrying all the tools and spare parts, instead of shoes and clothes, was in fact very handy.

Again our camp site is not flash, but it’s opposite the local hot pools and very handy to the town.  We stayed two nights, rechecking our points, washing Mildred, and doing various other maintenance tasks before exploring the village and the local market stalls.  We had our Romania dinner last night - wild pig, it was very nice but gamey, we forgot to take a photo.

Today we move onto Hungary.

 Here's a lovely photo of Mildred all happy again, in a field of Sunflowers.