Saturday 
2.8.2025 
677km Total: 1812km 
8h 26m Total: 22h 41m
2km Total: 8.8km 
It rained during the night and the temperature is a modest 16°C (61ºF) when I get on my bike and set off for the Tatra Mountains.
Unlike yesterday's navigation, where I rode pretty much north in straight line for 500 kilometres, today should offer a little more active riding, and it does.
Road 49 over the Tatras is a pleasure to ride and the view is breathtaking.
After the temperature on the mountain temporarily dropped to 15°C (59ºF), it quickly rose to 28°C (82ºF) when I entered Slovakia, and considering yesterday's exploits, I was prepared for rain.
I can say that I got really wet today as well, but that wetness came from inside and not from above.
Well, it was possible to at least alleviate it by opening all the vents and drinking water like a camel.
Not that I have any great hopes that road users will become more considerate as I go, but I don't mind leaving Poland.
Apparently, the average Pole thinks that all injustices can be remedied with a couple of flashes of the hazard lights.
Cut some off? Flash-flash.
Drive straight out in front of traffic? Flash-flash.
However, overtaking on the inside at 140+ km/h clearly does not warrant any flashing at all, so that seem to be considered perfectly normal.
The road through Slovakia and Hungary is not particularly inspiring, but I did opt for the fastest route, so I have, so to speak, gotten what I paid for.
Crossing the border into Romania was a rather bizarre experience.
They joined Schengen on January 1st this year, so there are no border controls, but everything still remains completely untouched at the border.
There were even illuminated signs telling you which lane to use based on your vehicle type and nationality.
I was completely alone there, so I drove up to a lane and a booth and must have looked quite confused as I didn't see a single soul.
After a while, I rode on, and at the exit there was a border guard in a car flashing a yellow light on the roof, but he didn't pay any attention to me at all.
Inside Romania for the third time, it is just as I remember it, an infrastructural nightmare.
I follow the signs for European route E60 and for most of the evening I naively hope that it will eventually turn into something resembling a motorway by Nordic standards, but no, it never gets any better than a Swedish country road.
The fact that the speed limit between villages is 100 km/h is of little significance, as the traffic density never really allows for it.
On my previous visits here, I had a bunch of my preconceptions confirmed (and some proved wrong), and not much seems to have changed since my last visit (in 2018).
An hour into the country, I have already seen an old man loading scrap metal onto a rickety cart pulled by a horse, and not long after that, another old man sitting on an equally rickety cart pulled by a tiller-like auxiliary motor so weak that he had to walk alongside it on an uphill slope that was anything but steep.
At the same time, Mercedes, Audis and BMWs whizz by on the road (admittedly mixed with Dacias, fake Chevrolets/Daewoos and models I've never seen anywhere else), but the income gaps in this society still seem to be abysmal, admittedly based on an extremely generalised 'analysis'.
And yes, unfortunately, they still drive like complete maniacs.
The miles tick by and the clock (with an hour lost due to the time zone change) is just after eight in the evening when I roll into the hotel in a small village called Floreşti just outside Cluj-Napoja.
There are three middle-aged ladies at the reception desk, all of whom look completely petrified when I start speaking English.
I then have to fill out a form with such Soviet-style bureaucracy that it's like doing genealogy even though they already had all my details from booking.com.
(I actually hate that booking service passionately, but there was no other choice.)
Any Stasi agent would have cried with joy at having access to all the information required to stay at a shabby hotel in a small Romanian village with less than ten thousand inhabitants.
Then came a real card debacle when my bank, Nordea refused to release the equivalent of 419SEK (€38) that the room cost, no matter what I did.
I had already spoken to them about going on a trip because they also refused to release payment for the ferry across the Black Sea, and they assured me that there would be no further problems.
So if you want a bank where you have to call and ask for permission every other week to spend your own money, switch to Nordea!
This is probably the first time I've paid a tip for a hotel room, as I was graciously allowed to pay in cash with euros but they didn't have any change.
The reason I started the trip with a couple of pretty long days distance-wise was that I had my mind set on spending a couple of nights in Bucharest (where I've never been before) before I needed to be in Varna for the journey across the Black Sea.
And it actually seems to have worked out as planned, even though it had indeed been a long couple of days.
I'll probably sleep on my stomach tonight, but my next accommodation will be on a feather pillow, because I couldn't find any other places with decent parking, so the next stop is Mercur City at a slightly higher cost than 419 Swedish kronor (+ tip).
Bologa, Romania
You'll have to admire the craftmanship and dedication that went into this at the hotel.
