WORLD OF WILL

With our new objective of returning to the UK in one piece and in time to catch our flight to Asia, we left Croatia and drove straight through poor old Slovenia without stopping. This was a shame because from what we could see it was actually a surprisingly lovely country and we felt slig htly rude for ignoring it. Two hours later we were back in Austria and back to "civilisation" – by which I mean we were passing easy-to-find campsi tes, with lots of amenities, every few miles. We ended up at one, just outside Lienz, that had a washing machine (we'd not done laundry for weeks and th e van w as getting a little bit whiffy), a bar and, more importantly in the continuing heat, a swimming pool. There is something slightly thrilling about bobbing around in a pool at the foot of a mountain. Driving through the endles sly dramatic scenery is an amazing experience but the steep inclines and winding hairpin bends are taking their toll on th e van. We had a scare with the br...

Now, I realise that Serbia and Croatia have had their differences in the past, so I thought there might be a slight hold up passing from one country to the other. So there was no surprise when the Serbian border guard frowned at us, frowned at our passports, then back at us. "Where have you been?" he barked . "Belgrade," I replied . "Beer Festival?" he asked with a wry smile. That was unexpected. Then we got to the Croatian border guard who saw us approaching, rus hed over to his colleague who was scanning our passports and snatched them from him before waving us aggressively into a "search area" by the checkpoint. He then asked us whether, in English, he should say he wanted to "look inside" the van or "see inside" the van. We told him that either worked. He was very pleased with himself as h e came aboard and was still smiling as he foraged in the overhead lockers, under the benches, under the duvet, under the mattres...

As mentioned previously, Bulgaria really wasn't endearing itself to us so we thought we'd head to Sofia to see if that could help change our minds. The one and only campsite for Sofia is something of an enigma. At the oxymoronic Tour ist Information office, the woman behind the desk said she had heard that there was a campsite but couldn't be sure. The address we had from the internet turned out to be a car dealership. We then got lost tryi ng to circumnavigate a military base and ended up at a petrol station and thought we might as well fill up. Then a miracle happened. The atten dant was not only friendly, helpful and fluent in English but the second thing he asked us after "do you want it full?" was "are you looking for the campsite?!" I nearly hugged him. There was a secret, non-signposted lane that peeled off the main highway to the city that seemed to be known only to this petrol attendant, the surly man-bear that sat at reception and two prostitut...

We are not enjoying Bulgaria. Everything is difficult. It's like nobody wants us to be here. To get in to the country we had to pay €5 (in a country that has yet to adopt the Euro) to cross a bridge that looked like it had been put up the weekend before by a scout troop, had been destroyed mid-week and was only just being repaired again in time for our crossing. Just to make sure we knew our place, they then reduced it to a single la ne of moon-worthy craters AND made you queue for half an hour before letting you on it. Then, when you eventually arrive in Bulgaria, you have to get a road tax vignette before you use any of the roads. But they'll only sell you them at petrol stations – the first one being 5km down the road. There is nowhere to camp so even if you find a "campsite" on the internet, once you get there it simply doesn't exist. If they do exist they refuse to signpost any of them. And sometimes , just to really mess with your head, they'll put u...

After dropping the German girls off at a train station, Claire and I headed to Bucharest. We could tell we were reaching a capital city because the road-side prostitutes were more attractive and wore a superior quality hotpant. They lined our approach to the campsite and one was even checking in to one of the on-site bungalows with a client as we arrived. She only needed it for 20 minutes as it turned out. Bucharest is a non sense. For a start it's a city that wishes it was Paris. There is a Gare D u N ord, a Charles De Gaulle Strada and an Arc De Triomphe. Ceausescu was so obsessed with the Champs Elysees being "Europe's biggest boulevard" that he cleared a great swathe of Bucharest just so he could build himself a boulevard that is slightly wider and slightly longer . This he filled with hundreds of fountains, the biggest of which is about three storeys high – and on the day we were there had its own rainbow! This super-boulevard leads to his crowning glory – o...

We are slowly becoming besotted with Romania. We camped in a little village called Carta in the week. It's one of the many little German Saxon towns which are all over this part of Transylvania (mwa ha ha). It has a ruined monastery and a lovely little chapel where all the inscriptions, hymn books and dwindling congregation are German (we met the German priest). And everyone is just so damn friendly. We we nt out to get some milk from the village shop one morning and on the way back to the van we were beckoned over by a large woman who, as is legally required of all Romanian women, had been sat on the bench outside her house. She dragged us into her yard where there were a dozen chickens running am ok and she offered us some of their eggs. We smiled and accepted the eggs. Erensie, as we think that's what she told us her name was, then led us through the chickens, through some sort of barn and into the biggest vegetable garden I've ever seen. She was growing produce on a n ...

We are in Transylvania (mwa ha ha ha) and our first stop was Sighisoara. This old walled Saxon town was the birth place of Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad Dracul, on whom Bram Stoker's Dra cula was based. Despite this – they are very restrained as far as Dracula merchandise goes – it manages to be not too cheesy and is a very pretty walled town with very pretty coloured houses lining twee cobbled streets. It's the epitome of quaint. It sits on a hill, has little towers around the outer wall and is topped by a church at the top – the whole place is like one of those porcelain dioramas of a fairytale to wn you s ee advertised in the back of certain newspaper supplements. From there we went on to another Saxon city – Brasov. Brasov is a great city but I fear it may have aspirations above its station. Firstly there's the giant Hollywood-style "BRASOV" sign in big white letters on the hillside above the city. Then there are the big umbrellas at every bar...

We headed up into the mountains this week and found a picture-postcard village called Rimetea. As well as being stupidly beautiful it is also an odd little Hungarian enclave where everyone speaks Hungarian, eats Hungarian etc – a hangover from when this area was actually a part of Hungary. The campsite we were looking for turned out to not be a campsite at all but rather half a dozen little huts for rent – and all were occupied. We met an American guy from San Francisco in the main square who was the re with his Hungarian-Americ an girlfriend, so they were able to help us communicate with the locals and work out that we couldn't free-camp and that most of the quaint little "pension" guest houses in the village were full. It was about 7pm by this time and I didn't fancy a drive back down the winding mountain roads, plus another bit had popped out of the front of the van whe n we'd hit a pothole on the way up. So I had a sulk and then patched up the van (using a Dan...

Hungary was fast becoming our favourite country and Szeged, our last stop, was putting in a very strong bid for favourite city. For a start our campsite, an old 1950s holiday camp with concrete chale ts on stilts, was right next to the mighty River Tisza and had a 36° natural spring swimming pool to wallow in. Szeged itself is lovely – lots of amazing Art Nouveau buildings, stunning fountains and impressive plazas – a real unexpe cted gem that we only found after a recommendation by someone at our la st campsite. I also had my second haircut of the trip. I had to mime what I wanted to the non-English-speaking Hungarian woman attending to my hair. She nodded, scalped me and then gave me a nice head massage to help me forget. After a great couple of lazy days we headed for R omania. At the daunting border crossing we had to find and show our passports for the first time in eight weeks. We were interrogated as to our destination and what it was we were up to. We then had to "queue...