Читать книгу Danny Beer. Tourist on Wheels. A European Adventure - Danny Beer - Страница 26

Okay, traffic may be heavy but the road is wide with shoulders, oh so lovely shoulders. A constant downhill helps keep the speed up all morning. So why turn off?? Even if you did find that other road it won’t be any better than this. Get back on the highway. That’s right.

Just before lunch, and about half way is a detour around a large town so you take it. Well the sign says Bucuresti this way. Almost immediately the road turns crap. The surface is horrible and the shoulders have disappeared completely. You make a conscious decision to turn off onto a smaller road for the last sixty km but the sign indicates it is a truck route. You decide to give it a miss. Most interesting and especially scary is when you move over to the left lane to let a big semi-truck turn off to the right. As it passes you on the right another semi-truck passes on the left. It wants to turn off to the right as well. It just wants to overtake the other truck while doing so. You miss being sandwhiched between the two.

Sure enough the road improves immediately after joining up with all the town traffic. The next order of business is to get some lunch. You find a restaurant and order some kind of chicken dish and a coke. But the coke is warm so you try to ask for some ice. Another customer makes matters worse by saying you want ‘diet’ and she tries to give you a diet pepsi. Eventually ice is procured and you sit down, drink your coke and await your chicken. Half an hour later it still hasn’t arrived. You try to ask. Is it coming? Is it being cooked? You know, there aren’t any other customers here keeping you busy.

“Two minutes.” She tells you. Five minutes later you ask again. Then she comes out with the frozen chips to ask if you want any. Why are they still frozen? You asked for them half an hour ago. You point to your watch to emphasise your point. You get your chicken and that is it. She gives you two gerkins as some kind of salad and later you see how expensive this salad is! Disappointed you pay for your overcharged meal and go. Coming into Bucuresti your nice wide shoulder is replaced by a nice looking sidewalk which is absolutely useless for cycling on.

Cars start to get a bit more aggressive. The white minibuses are the worst, insisting on driving as close as possible and more some irrelevant of how much room they have on the other side. Roadwork is being done which is no great hassle as it slows the traffic and in places allows you your own private road to ride on.

Through town and to the hostel you go. Let’s see what this town has to offer.