Hi Jean, very interesting pictures - I schedule a trip going via Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania to Moldavia and return via Hungary back for next year. (Therefore is already quite booked
) Therefore - thanks for your impressions of that area
.
By the way- I have the same „new design“ on the front bumper and really it takes not much of an impact (just mud) to get it …..
Looking forward to read more of your experiences during this trip.
Good travel!
It is the first time I leave European Union with a car, and I wasn't aware I needed a road tax vignette in Moldavia, I thought it was for motorways like Hungary and Austria, but there are no motorways here, only Grenadier roads.
When leaving the country I had to pay the vignette (about 4 € for a week) and 50€ fine. The woman at the border was pissed off, but I kept apologising, stayed smiling, used my 4 or 5 Romanion words I learned, and finally she gave me a laughter back.
By the way, I never prepare a trip in detail, I let my brain in peace and choose my road every day while driving, and I take the smaller roads, and dear to leave the road for picknick for instance, and then continue the track. I did quite some off road, but this can be avoided.
Moldavians are usually bilingual: Romanian and Russian, unless they are ethnic Russians, in that case it is only Russian. I have some basic notions of Russian and that helped. Sometimes they speak some French or English.
Romanians speak sometimes French, but the youth has a better knowledge of English, as they belong now to our political zone.
Of course, sometimes you find people who speak German or Spanish or anything else because they lived abroad.
Most of the time people are friendly and helpful, especially if you greet them first in their language.
It could be my Grenadier was the first to enter Moldavia, because the brand was not known in their IT systems, and they had to input all the data manually.
Another picture, not Grenadier related, but also quite some horse power: