:))))

Sorry for the delay in posting this.  Irina receiving a thank you present and rather cheeky card for herself and Aldo from the tourists !

We've been home a week now and I think it has all just about sunk in !

First of all a few stats for you:
We clocked up 3850 miles ( give or take one or two ), but others will have done more as they started in Whitby whereas we started in Hull.
We had 18 driving days and 4 non driving days.
Our Plus Four averaged 43 mpg - this is going to be considerably lower for the Roadsters and Plus 8's !
The blog has had 3682 page views to date.

Finally, great thanks are due to everyone who made this trip possible.
Huge hugs go to Neil and Viv who first came up with the idea of this great adventure and then had to organise it all !  It was no mean feat before the trip and continued throughout the 3 weeks when things didn't exactly go according to plan.  Well done you two and many thanks from all of us. You can have a rest now :)
Thanks must also go to Irina and Aldo from Draculamog, who kept us 'under their wing' during our stay in Romania.  Not only did they arrange our days for us, but also our evenings; and they took part which took up a lot of their valueable time and which was hugely appreciated.  Although we personally didn't get much time to chat to them, I know that a few of us did and found their knowledge really helpful.  I'm sure some of it will be used for the forthcoming Miscellany article.  Irina also bailed us out big-time by arranging accomodation for two nights at short notice when it turned out that the booking agents had made a boo boo. Again, no mean feat ! Thanks also to Haydn for the entertainment :)
Our personal thanks once more to Morgan Austria for helping us out with the passenger door mirror.
I sincerely hope I haven't forgotten anyone !

So that's it, except to say to everyone who helped arrange the trip, to the good folk we met along the way and indeed to our fellow travellers - thanks for the memories !

Sue Wolstenholme

Just had a look at the stats and was amazed that there have been nearly three and a half thousand page views !  Crikey, hope I haven't made too many spelling mistakes :)
Just a few thoughts if you are intending to visit Romania:
There are a lot of beggars around the cities and hotels.  These can be men with children, women with children or children on their own.  It's hard to ignore them, so if you can't, we found sweeties worked with children.
There are a huge amount of stray dogs.  Most seem friendly, but you can't touch them as you don't know what you might catch.  The upsetting part is when you see them dead by the roadside.  This happens an awful lot and you have to harden yourself to it.  We saw a dead wolf one day.
Whilst most toilets were actual toilets, outside the cities ( service areas etc ) they are pretty smelly due to lack of proper cleaning.  Antibacterial handwash a must !
They are probably working on it, but the drains are inadequate at the moment and there can often be a strong smell of sewage.  This can happen around the cities and also when you pass service stations.
With the building of so many new roads, the situation will probably improve, but traffic is pretty horrendous if you're driving.  There's just too much traffic for the existing roads.  Strangely, the new motorways are very quiet.  I don't know if the locals have to pay to use them maybe ?
Whilst little English is spoken, some speak German.
Can't think of anything else just now !

So, here we are at home and still letting it all sink in !  It really was an amazing trip, and also a very busy one, so I think we'll need the blog just to remind us of where we have been.  Each day was full on as we had lots of miles to cover in order to see everything. Consequently, each day was looking forward and there was no time to look back.  I think our own mileage was eventually about 3850, but that will vary for the other Mogsters depending on what they did and where they went.  I think talking about the trip outside of Romania is probably not needed on here, as whilst we saw some beautiful places they are all reasonably accessible and I'm sure many of you following the blog will have visited them at some point.  The mission was to see Romania ( and paddle in the Black Sea for some of us ) and that is what we did.  The people were very friendly and also very curious about the Mogs.  At first when half a dozen big, burly male Romanians approached the cars it felt a bit intimidating; but very quickly we realsied they were simply curious.  At no time did we feel under threat - unless it was an HGV up your bumper !  I'm not sure how this would compare to visiting the more rural parts of the country, as we were very much town based, other then crossing the mountains which was awesome :))  I think the really important thing to remember when visiting is not to think about how much they still have to do, but about what they have achieved. Would we visit again ? Perhaps, to see what else has been accomplished.  Would we drive there again in a Mog ?  Maybe not, as there are just too many other places to drive to !!
Just remembered - I tried to blog last Sunday but the internet kept freezing so I couldn't post or save what I had written.  I think I got most of it on later except that I forgot to say that Hartmut and Regina left us on the Sunday as they were back in their homeland and had to go to work on Monday :(
I'll probably add a few more bits to this over the coming days and I hope our fellow Romanian Trip Mogsters might add a few comments of their own; but for now cheerio and I hope you've enjoyed the blog.

 On Tuesday we had a bit of time to spare on the journey from Reims to Zebrugge, so we took main roads instead of motorways and called off for a coffee in Damme.  Ironically, we were there last May with my Sis and hubby for a holiday in Brugges. 

 As we approached the port we found the bridge up - bit of a pain as it started raining whilst we were waiting so hoods up and they then stayed up overnight.

 Reims It looks quite grand, but it's only small and has a really nice feel to it

 For my sis !  :))

Winterbach to Reims today. Started off badly trying to get around the outskirts of Stuttgart, got better for a while when we lost the traffic, but then the weather closed in and we were hoods on for a while.  Finally got them off again and had a pleasant enough end to the drive.  Yesterday's mileage was about 110 and today's about 325 so accumulative total around 3600.  Reims is rather nice !  To Zeebrugge tomorrow to catch the ferry back to the UK.  I will say a lot more soon about Romania and the Eastern Bloc countries - but I think it's better to let it all sink in first.

 Winterbach

 Tubingen

So yesterday we were actually staying on the outskirts of Winterbach which is just outside Stuttgart.  It was a 'do your own thing' day so some went to the Mercedes and/or Porsche Museums, some to the Auto fair south of Stuttgart ( which I'm told is a bit like the one in Berlin ), and some to the city whilst it was closed - probably the best time to see a city ! We did none of the above.  We strolled into Winterbach ( pretty little place ) in the morning for a coffee and a wander round, then we set off to Tubingen which is a real gem.  It's actually a university town, and the buildings are really lovely, so we spent a good couple of hours wandering.  We then set the sat nav for the hotel, but with a via point in, and we discovered some real Mog roads :)  Lots of winding 's' bends, through villages, skirting pretty towns and even a bit of forest - definitely up there as a great day of the trip :))

 Photos from Vienna