July 2005
I had spent weeks researching this epic trip which would encompass potentially five new countries for me: Serbia/Montenegro, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus and also include return visits to Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria and Poland. A five week road trip was estimated with my dad to cover all of this. It didn’t take long to load my dad’s campervan, apart from all the food that my mother included, because as you all know, Eastern Europe has no supermarkets…not!
We had a cheapie Norfolk Lines 2.45pm ferry booked between Dover and Dunkirk in France for Sunday July 10th which was almost deserted. Security had been stepped up after the London bombings and it was surprising to see armed soldiers at the harbour. Arriving around 6pm, the French were also un-typically stopping everyone. We made a run for the German border via the coastal road to Ostende, Belgium, inland to Brussels joining all the Sunday drivers returning to the capital after a day out, around the Brussels ring road and onto Aachen inside the German border. We could only cruise at 60mph so you get used to pottering along.
Sleeping at a truck stop by the side of the busy autobahn for a few hours, I got up around 6am the next morning and drove towards Frankfurt via Koln while my dad grabbed a few extra hours’ kip in bed, having done most of the driving yesterday. Crossing the River Rhine outside Koln brought back memories of various times I had passed this way.
From previous experiences of driving down these autobahns, I always remembered the efficient roads and incredible crazy speeds that German drivers roared past, sometimes at 200kph+. But the autobahn system is obviously wearing out, not surprising when you count the hundreds of trucks moving along in convoys. We were plagued on this journey with various road repairs and this morning’s rush hour brought backed up traffic which slowed progress. Away from the road works, the bastards still drove like demons.
Onwards through pleasant rural countryside, fields of wheat and forests via Wurzburg, Nurnberg, Regensburg. As in England, the motorways bypassed all towns so we just occasionally glanced at small villages looking down on us. We also crossed the impressive meandering Donau River across five separate bridges as we approached the Austrian border mid afternoon.
Into Austria, where the scenery didn’t change. We passed Linz, then headed south of Vienna and down to the Hungarian border. Hungary had joined the EC in 2004 and the old border watchtowers stood derelict. At Sopron, Hungarian immigration waved us through. Having visited Sopron in 1997, it was surprising to see how much western development (shopping malls) had taken place on the outskirts. Ironically, the first sign we saw in Hungary was “Tesco’s Hipermarket”. Cheap beer, wine and sausage and an ATM to provide Hungarian Florin was our first stop.
We followed campsite signs to Ozon Camping, a 4* modern campsite on the edge of town. It was nice to have a hot shower after travelling for 24 hours. I was surprised to find that my bottle of Hungarian wine had a metal cap lid! As we sipped Hungarian beer with 1000 miles under our belts in 2 days, we were ready to start the sightseeing at a more leisurely pace. I had toured Hungary in 1998 and was just going to show my father a few highlights on the way to Croatia.
The following morning (12th), we set off around 8am along Highway 84 to see the Esterhazy Palace at Fertod, about 30km east of Sopron. The rain began to pour down (and didn’t stop for 7 hours). About 20km along the main road, we approached a minor crossroads. My dad was driving. My head was down looking at the map. Apparently a car approached the main road from our right (as with the rest of European countries, we were driving on the right hand side of the road) but did not stop. My dad had no time to react before the car shot across the road. We sideswiped his rear and he spun out of control across the road and ended up in a ditch, his car a crumpled mess. Our campervan taking a serious hit to the front left hand side, screeched across the road but my dad handled the lack of steering superbly and brought it to a halt. It felt as if we were going to topple over.
My dad took some of the impact on his knees but was unharmed. We were both wearing safety belts. We clambered out to see various cars stopping and the other car lying in a ditch. I went to check that the driver was ok. He was in his early 20’s, lucky to escape from the impact. Probably late for work or he misjudged our speed. His car was totalled both back and front. The campervan’s left hand front was completely crushed in; whole front caved in, passenger door buckled, metal crushed into the front left wheel.
What the fuck do we do now? It was pouring with rain. Someone called the police who arrived within 10 minutes. Noone could speak English, and we couldn’t speak Hungarian. It was just a bit of a shock. One minute you are off to see Hungary, the next you are standing in the pouring rain with a totalled campervan through no fault of your own.
A local doctor stopped to check everyone was ok and he could speak English. He told us that the rain had been terrible lately and that his cellar had flooded which was why he was late for work. He checked with the policeman (who could not speak English) who told him that the local lad had admitted liability. He had not stopped at the junction. There would be paperwork to fill in.
In the pouring rain, we climbed into the back of the police car, while the policeman wrote the Hungarian driver a ticket for reckless driving. I was concerned that we would not be able to complete the Accident Report, but the policeman had a Hungarian version of the European standard and it all went smoothly with sign language. The policeman even added his own comments in Hungarian to say we were the innocent party.
Meanwhile three breakdown trucks arrived. One was a large mobile crane to pull the other car out of the ditch and dump it on the second flatbed truck. A total write off. A third truck pulled up to pull our immobile campervan onto a flatback. The driver’s name was Dano as in ‘Book ‘em Dano’. He was a happy, friendly man who could not speak English. ‘Where do you want to go?’ he gestured? Fuck knows. Where do you go with a totalled campervan with everything you own in it? Dano managed to indicate two choices: the Fiat garage, where they would charge us money to store it or a local campsite where he had connections. Whatever you say Dano.
We were taken to the ‘Lover Campsite’ just south of Sopron centre, which had just hosted a folk festival. It was a mud fest. Unlike our campsite last night, this was obviously the original old communist camp site with crappy wooden bungalows and basic facilities. But in our predicament, anywhere that sheltered us from the incessant rain was a welcome gesture. Dano dumped the campervan near the toilet block and told the receptionist lady in the crappy receptionist area to let us use the phone.
There then followed a paper chase of phone calls to armies of insurance people. Dad called the English insurance company who said he had to call the French version. So he called them and gave them our number at reception. They needed to check out everything with the English insurance. An hour passed with no return call. So we called back. Sorry the computers systems were down, just came back up. It’s weird to talk to complete strangers in other countries. Your current predicament relies on them so you have to stay civil, when you really want to say ‘Listen lady. It wasn’t our fault. We have the paperwork handled at this end. The guy has admitted liability. We are covered. Deal with it.’
So as the rain poured down outside, we sat in the reception area and read our books and waited for the phone calls which never came. It is a strange feeling to feel as if the circumstances are completely beyond your control. In the end we retreated to the campervan which was still functional with out an electrical supply and a battery powered the fridge and lights and we had a gas stove to cook and heart water. The rain just continually descended for hours. I’m sure I saw Noah building an ark nearby. We sat and read and snacked and said ‘so how are enjoying the trip so far?’ to each other. It was just bad luck. What can you do? Deal with the shit and move on.
Eventually, the insurance company called back. They would send an ‘expert’ tomorrow to check the state of the campervan. I was tempted to ask ‘What is the Hungarian for ‘Its completely fucked’’ but thought better of it. By now the receptionist had gone and a large bellied (even bigger than me) security guard took over. We had noticed that the communal toilets were locked up. He opened up one of the bungalows for us which had a boiler providing hot water and a toilet. Sorted. We read a lot during this whole episode.
The following morning, the sun had returned. The insurance man and the ‘expert’ turned up around 10.30am. We learnt the Hungarian for ‘Your campervan is fucked’. Various documents were signed. Later in the day, we signed the van off to the insurance company with a paper faxed from France.
The next problem was how do we get all the gear home? We had discovered that along with paying for the breakdown recovery (a very reasonable £62 in Hungary), we would have to find our own way home with all our gear. Dano had indicated that we could not rent a car in Sopron. Our insurance man said we could, and drove us to the downtown central square where we sat out a wooden kiosk for oh, 90 minutes, until a lady appeared and told us that the rent a car office had moved. She gave us a card with an address that meant nothing to us or to most people. I guess we spent an hour finding the address where a girl told us ‘we don’t rent out cars anymore’. The Hungarians were keen to help us. It was that just they had never heard of the place.
Licking our wounds, I restocked with beer and wine and we caught a local bus back to the campsite where we prepared Plan 2. During this, we had to drink the beer and wine and cope with the fridge running off batteries. Unfortunately, Camembert cheese does not store well and we had evidence of this every time we opened the fridge door. It smelt like something had died in there.
Plan 2: We can either catch a bus to Budapest 200km away and deal with Hungarian rent a car services, or we can catch the 8am bus from Sopron to Vienna. Which we did. We just had to wave our passports above our heads when the Austrian passport control on board the bus. He didn’t look at any of them.
The comfortable bus dropped us in the middle of Vienna’s tourist centre around the Hofburg museums. I had toured Vienna extensively in 1998. We caught the metro out to the airport and interrogated the car rental companies. Eurocar had no cars available. Alamo said that they had a car but it would cost 1000 Euros to drop it off in England so we’d have to bring it back to Austria. While dad started on Avis to compare rental prices, I asked if the drop off price was the same for France or Belgium.
‘Hang on’ the efficient desk jockey said, “We have a French Ford Mondeo which needs to go back to France’. He checked their offices and came up with one at the Calais ferry port. ‘It’s a bigger car, but you can have it for the same price – 350 Euros. We also had to buy some temporary road tax for Austrian highways for 8 Euros. His parting words were ‘For god’s sake, don’t let it out of your site in Hungary – you aren’t covered!’
We eventually found the monstrous car in a car park. State of the art with 13,000 kms on the clock. I drove the beast through the heavy Vienna traffic back down to Sopron where we stripped the campervan in an hour and filled the car with everything. We left the campervan at the campsite with Dano haggling on his mobile about trying to get the wreck which was due to be collected the following day by the Hungarian insurance com pany. Austrian border patrol searching for people being smuggled in, just looked at the chaos inside and thought ‘bugger going through all that.” Back in 1998, my old girlfriend Jo and I had driven our Ford Fiesta to Calais in 11 hours, stopping only for petrol. My dad fancied beating this. We left the border at 3.30pm.
He took over at the border and drove like a madman for four hours into Germany, reaching speeds of 180km. ‘Why are you driving so fast’, I asked looking up from my book. ‘Because we can’t do this at home’. Even better, with French plates he could tell speeding German drivers exactly what he thought of them and the French would get the blame. We switched with each other through Germany, we stopped only for petrol and blasted down the autobahns into Belgium in darkness. Approaching Brussels after midnight, the roads were completely empty. I just kept my foot down. We rolled into Dunkirk around 2.30am equalling the record but with a longer route (and we had not had to deal with all the road works on the original run).
Norfolk Lines wanted a ridiculous amount of money for the fare. A French girl said ‘today, the fares went up to high season so that is extra and since it is a Friday, this counts as the weekend so that is also extra.’ Come on lady. It’s only £88 booking on the internet. Since when did Friday count as a weekend? Does Monday? And it’s only 3am on day one of the high season. No dice. So we drove to Calais where P&O offered us a return fair for the car for the same price as a single with Norfolk Lines and the ferry left at 5.45am.
By now I had been up for 24 hours and had been on the move ever since we woke up. I tried to grab 30 minutes kip on the 90 minute crossing before we reached Dover and drove back to Norfolk. We arrived back at 9.15am. 1810km after picking up the car.
We’d have to take the car back to Calais 5 days later, but we were home with everything. Plan 3 was to start the trip again using my dad’s car. As soon as we got home, he was on the phone talking to insurance companies. He drew a blank. They refused to insure a car heading for stupid places like Belarus and Ukraine. But after three days of phone calls, we got the green car. I booked another ferry to Calais for Sunday night (24th July). This time we would head for Poland and do the trip in reverse.
Postscript. In 3 days, we had driven 2161 miles up and down the same roads and crossed Europe twice across 5 countries. 2 days were spent sitting around in Hungary and dealing with Vienna. The entire exercise cost £750 excluding the campervan and we were back where we started.
This is How Not To Tour Eastern Europe