The stories continued...

So after arriving in Romania we spent the night in a hotel with the Kiwis and then headed off promptly the next day. The drive through Romania was actually really beautiful.  We drove through mountainous areas, small villages and a National Park; Transylvania was lovely as well.  It was really nice to be off highways, although we dont think Diana appreciated it much.  Seeing as how we cant drive very fast we arrived in our destination city of Bracau a bit late and had to run around to find a place to stay for the night.  The next day was a L-O-N-G one.  First it took us over an hour to get out of Bracau as they had closed the bridge we needed to get to the highway.  The drive from there was hilly and the roads rough.  We entered Moldova without any problems but all of a sudden we came across what I thought was just a police check point but turned out to be the border of a region/country within Moldova we didnt know existed called Transnestra (I think...).  They searched through all of our things leaving Moldova and tried to get us to pay some made-up tax, which we refused and luckily they didnt insist.  In Transnestra however they wouldnt let us through until we forked over $40 for a "road and emmigration tax." We refused for about an hour and then finally decided paying $40 would be better than driving the 300 km aound this region to get into Ukraine.  After finally getting through that hastle we drove onwards towards the Ukrainian border, laughing about the made-up rogue country we had just entered.  Thinking that the worst Transnestra had to offer was over, we were proved very wrong when they pulled us aside yet again when trying to exit this ambiguous region.  They ushered us into an interrogation room of sorts and had us empty our pockets of cash on the table.  We of course knew not to carry a lot of cash on us as these border guys would definitely dream up a way to get it from us.  I was sure this guy in the interrogation room was going to make us give him all the cash we had and to be honest I was starting to get really worried (interrogation rooms will do that to you).  After much arguing on our part and then finally dealing with someone who was reasonably nice and spoke decent English, we got away with only paying $5 more dollars for the alleged road tax stamp they hadnt given us at the first border.  With a sigh of relief we drove the ten feet to the Ukrainian border only to be pulled over once again.  This time we were in trouble because we didnt have a Green Card (and Im still not sure exactly what that is...) so once again we had to pay for that and wait about an hour.  We were then held for about two more hours because the name of the Registered Keeper on our V05 car forms was Alex's brother Scott, and not Alex himself.  This apparently was "big problem."  At this point we had spent many, many  hours on these horrible borders, it was about 11 at night and we still had 70 km before we would reach Odessa.  We were not happy people on that Ukranian border.  Finally, after much trumping around self-importantly, the border guys let us go through.  We were three VERY relieved individuals to say the least.  Arriving in Odessa wasnt quite the reprieve we had imagined however as it took us about 2 hours driving/wandering around until we actually found a place to stay for the night.  The past two days have basically been spent relaxing and seeing Odessa - taking a much needed break from driving, especially after the antics at the borders.  There ended up being quite a group of ralliers in Odessa; the Kiwis had arrived a few hours before us and we ended up running into three other Rally teams as well; one team with two Australian guys, one team of Brits (which included Jack Osborne actually, for those of you who know who he is) and then another team of 3 Brits with backgrounds from India, Sri Lanka and Iraq.  We all plan on convoying onwards together with three of those teams tomorrow.  Who knows how much of the Ukraine we will get through tomorrow as the country is quite large, so we shall see.  The next time I blog we may be in Russia, assuming Diana makes it and the Russians let us in!  Long roads ahead, long roads ahead...