| What are we doing?
September 9th, 2007 Ams-Odes Rally 2007 "What on earth are you doing, Ed?" "Playing, with the wind." High time, for my taxiboss Edwin Gorter to relax some. Like any true enterpeneur he works like a madman, to keep his company afloat and, if possible, make it flourish. He does this by, amongst other things, taking a lot of shifts himself - after all, he does not have to pay himself. This then leaves little time for office work, which has to be done too though. Proper recipe for red eyes and an ashen grey countenance. So when my regular business partner, Adrianus Warmenhoven, informs me that he will take part in a rally, I reply "Cool! Need any copilots?", he says "No, but why don't you take your own car?", I decide to do just that and Ed then asks if he can be my copilot, I think that's a fine idea. All the more so, because Ed speaks Russian and is a teetotaller. That the Russian can come in handy is obvious: the rally will go from Amsterdam to Odessa, in Ukraine. Which used to be Soviet Union, so they speak Russian there yeah. Da. The teetotalling will turn out to be handy for an entirely different reason. The rally rules namely sport a three-tier classification. Getting to the finish town of the four race days as early as possible is tier 1. But the €700,- entry fee not only renders participation, a hotel and an evening meal in a restaurant booked in advance, for each of the racing days, but also means VIP-access to a nightclub. And being in that nightclub for as long as possible is tier 2. Each team must, at that, appoint a 'designated driver' for every morning AFTER the party in the nightclub, who will then be tested for alcohol prior to departure. Alcoholtest positive? Then the team can't leave and will have to wait until the 'designated driver' tests negative again. So that's handy, because, for Team Taxi Adriaan', I can appoint Ed 'designated driver' for four days, and proceed to rake in the points at the party as 'designated drinker' meself. Great. Tier 3 is the amount of money raised, for the charity. The charity is the Sputnik Foundation (Stichting Spoetnik), which renders humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Stichting Spoetnik does this through a multitude of projects. The project the Amsterdam-Odessa Rally 2007 has linked itself to, is support for a specific psychiatric hospital. Stichting Spoetnik's philosophy is not to wire money, but to actively deliver goods. These, it buys on the spot, or collects, in Holland. And so the stickers read: 'Ams-Odes Rally 2007, Psychiatric Aid for Ukraine'. Stickers that we, by the by, will not yet affix to our cars for a while. You see, we leave on the same day the Quote Rally and some other rally do, and authorities in both Holland and Germany are rather strict with trafficrule-breaking rallydrivers, of late. Better the disguise, therefore, on our way to the end-of-Europe. Day 1 08.24.2007: Amsterdam-Prague The first stage, from Amsterdam to Prague, looks like it's going to be a tedious one. Proper roads, through civilized lands, after all. Imperative, therefore, to enliven matters somewhat. This, Ed takes care of immediately. Neatly ready on time, I'm parked, in my Opel Combo Diesel (renowned, in shady circles, as the 'Chielmobile'), with bag and bagage, in front of the door to Taxi Adriaan's offices, in the Waarderpolder. Ed can't leave yet: wages need to be paid, people need to be instructed, power needs to temporarily be handed over, this still has to be done, that still has to be done. I get his gear from the Citroën C3 (and everything else, which is what happens when you tell me to "Also get all loose-lying objects!", then I even take the rooflight and ride receipts, whilst wondering why on earth Ed wants to take those along - which he doesn't, as it turns out later, but the rooflight will prove useful yet), despondently slump behind my steering wheel and wait. Swiftly, this becomes more irate and I begin a honking that increases in speed and urgency. It helps, but not enough: it takes a long time, before Ed sits down beside me. Immediately, I hit the gas hard, towards partyship 'Odessa', moored alongside the Oostelijke Handelskade in Amsterdam. See, that's where the start is, and it promises to be quite something. Drivers will run to their cars 'Le Mans'-style (I should like to see my delivery van standing between the Audis (2), Lexus LS400s (2), MGs (1), Saabs (3), Volvo stationcars (2) and Landrovers (1)), and Adrianus has announced to me that he will commit foul play by, when the rest roars off, calmly getting out of his car again and going to get a cup of coffee on the partyship, there to pass the licence plate numbers of the other cars to the highway patrol, then to calmly leave the country at 70 miles an hour. He's invited me to be his accomplice and I have, because of the craziness of the plan, but mostly because of the cup of coffee, agreed, so I'm looking forward to it. What a letdown, upon arrival at the quay. Everyone's gone, and the partyship's shut. No start, no coffee. But there is one other late-running team, in 1 of the two Volvoes, which, moreover, is handed the trophy-for-the-winner at that moment, by persons unbeknownst to me, who apparently arrived with it too late too. Ed and I don't hesitate: we WILL get to Odessa, rally or no. And so we hit the gas, while I call Adrianus. He has not made good on his threat. This is because he's too nice of a person, a quality which will work to his detriment, later on, concerning the ranking table. But for now, he's driving near Amersfoort, not making great speed: rush hour abounds. Thus, the rest of the drivers only increases the gap between us in Germany. And because Ed and I have a solid strategy for stops (we combine everything, so we only use the toilet where we also tank, eat and drink), we achieve reasonable speed, as we drive by Colditz towards the Czech Republic (unfortunately, we have no time to take the tour). Even so, we run into slight trouble just before Prague. There we are halted by police on the highway turnoff (when I was here last, the highway just ended in nothingness, but it's been completed since) we need. Further down, an accident has happened, so we can't go there. Detour in the direction of Teplice. No problem, by itself, were it not for the traffic jam along the secondary road we end up on. Looking for an alternative, therefore. I try to find one using my TomTom by telling it the highway no longer is an option, but I make a mistake in so doing, and remove the wrong roadnumber from the planning, and so TomTom keeps directing us back to the highway. 
This to the great annoyment of Ed, who thinks TomTom is a nogood novelty, and so wants to stop to buy a map. I (sturdily battling the presence of paper in my life for years on end now) flatly refuse this, and eventually succeed in making TomTom change its mind. We get onto a different secondary road, and this leads us by Lidiçe (hamlet once completely exterminated by the SS, chickens and dogs included, after which a park was created atop it - this to revenge the murder of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague; unfortunately there is no time to visit the monument), to Prague. In Prague TomTom unerringly directs us to the Evropa Hotel on Wençeslas Square, where Reinhard Spronk (flagman, not related to Heydrich) awaits us with an enormous finish flag (and I raise eyebrows with my attire: for today, I have put on my WandelSoc.-jumpsuit, with wing and ribbons). 
We haven't even arrived last, and so contentedly set out to sticker the car.  Having billeted ourselves in the Mövenpick hotel, dinner follows, in Mlynec restaurant, adjacent to the Charles Bridge. Minimalistic, but of great quality. As it should be, because, as the scenario states, 'Mlynec's Marek Purkart is the first chef in the Czech Republic to receive the Michelin Bibendum award, twice.'. Most pleasant, champagne included: a party, well-earned.
 After dinner, the party moves to club Mish Mash, by taxi. At Ed's instigation, I decide to not join in: he'd rather walk there, through Prague, and I think this is a good idea, not just for digestion. I once got cheated heavily by a cabdriver, here (Prague is more spoilt than, for instance, Brno, touristwise), so I begrudge them any and all. Besides, more useful to see some of such a town, now you're there, than to tear through it in a car, right?
Right. I establish that the city I once took a horse-and-carriage tour through with Max, is as beautiful as ever. We amuse ourselves over an unusual work of art: an enormous pump, decorated on the inside with a painting of a voluptuous woman. 
We admire the view of castle Praha from the bridge across the Vltava and, after climbing the hill, settle down in a beergarden, with drinks we buy at the stand that is there for the purpose (alcoholfree for Ed, of course). "You don't get this anywhere else", beams Ed. But I remember that this is the spitting image of the beergarden-above-the-abyss, on the Aare in Bern, so I tell him that. It is no less enjoyable because of it. As we stroll through the borough behind the beergarden we marvel at a small Dutch cheese store (No kidding! With outlets here and in Amsterdam, as it turns out!).  At the door to club Mish Mash we are refused entry. That is, we are free to go in, as long as we pay the full entry fee. This is against agreement, we have paid in advance, after all. Thieves, those doormen! They look like newly released criminals, all of them, anyhow. I text Adrianus, he takes action, and shortly thereafter the Belgian contact of the rally-organization here arrives, who then gets us in at his own expense, claiming he'll settle this score with the club owner later.
 Fine. What follows is a long night in an oversized discotheque, with (to the great joy of the flagman) horny babes and (difficult, since drink vouchers are distributed that I, with my fortyish eyes, can hardly read, but which are sometimes intended to procure normal, yet sometimes distilled booze, always featuring multiple choices thereamongst) booze and music. Just prior to closing time a lady turns out to be interested in me. I think "Yeah wonderful, but I've got a ranking to achieve here, and it looks like Farid is about to collapse, so you can go fuck yourself.". She slinks off disappointedly.
Some five minutes later Farid does collapse insofar that he, as last remaining organizer present, sounds the retreat to the hotel. Good. There's me and three or four others left: mission accomplished. Day 2 08.25.2007: Prague-L'viv But this does have a downside, it turns out. Upstairs in our room, there's a half hour left, or so, before departure. I shower and drop down on the bed. It feels like immediately that Ed wakes me, and then Farid and I find ourselves giggling in the lobby, knowing that we won't be doing any driving, for a while. Green light for departure is given, and then our team strategy proves itself. Ed namely has, the night before, when I was in the club, used his time not just to find out how to quickliest leave town, but actually practice that route too. And so we dive into the tunnel directly adjacent to the hotel, and before we know it, we are on our way towards the Polish border via the E65. The first one to overtake us, thereafter, is Adrianus, with an invisible, for flatly sleeping Tom beside him (Tom also went to the hilt in the Mish Mash), but by then we've been on the road for an hour or some. 
That we're moving towards Poland, Ed and I already planned the night before; it was either that, or through Slovakia, but that would have given us an extra border, so loss of time, on the way to Przemyśl. Przemyśl? Przemyśl. That's where we need to go, because today's finish will be at that border crossing, between Poland and Ukraine. This since, normally, negotiating this bordercrossing takes some 12 hours. The organizers have therefore arranged for the Dutch consul in Ukraine to escort us through, and to then drive with us, in convoy, to L'viv. No sooner said than done - but first, we need to get through Poland. And although those are still fine roads (enough so for me to happily fall asleep, next to the driving Ed), things don't run flawlessly. Loads of roadworks make for a sizable delay.  Passing Oświęcim (again: pity there's no time, to take the tour) and Krakow this is all within bounds: we make good speed and as I (behind the wheel by now, following a refuelling- and hydration-halt) spurt along I see Ed making weird dancing movements, with his arm, from the right window. "What on earth are you doing, Ed?" "Playing, with the wind." Pleased, I notice Ed is relaxing. Spoils gained.
But it won't last long, today: all hell breaks loose past Krakow. For hours on end, we stand at snail's pace on a two-lane road as, along the opposite lane, we are overtaken at will by vehicles (Polish) accelerating faster than our Combo - and when, finally, a usable gap appears, things naturally go wrong. As Edwin rouses me, and I make as much speed as possible to, with heavily roaring engine, over the left half of the road, overtake three cars in front of us, the foremost of these, a small red car, decides to suddenly hang a left. My road blocked. Evasion impossible. Life becomes a slow rewind, sharp in slow motion. What remains is a hard pull, leftward, on the steering wheel. We graze the other car with our right hand side. Somewhere, a mirror breaks, and then, braking, we come to a halt with screeching tyres - on the verge, against the metal pole of a traffic sign. We get out and inspect the damage. To the victim's car first. It turns out to be intact, barring the left mirror, which loosely dangles from it - but had already been affixed with ducttape. Then to our own car. Our right mirror has come off, it lies broken on the roadside, and both the hood and bumper beam sport a sizable dent - but the radiator has thankfully not been hit, and we are not leaking fluids. We swiftly arrive at our conclusion: we offer the lady, who proves to be Canadian by origin, emigrated to Poland, money for her mirror. But she will have none of it. She insists on police. Dammit. While we see at least two competing teams roar past us (we see the shadow of a Volvo station, and the Mitsubishi of Team 'The Mitsu strikes back'), we then spend our time filling out a claim form. Which, in the end, will not be used, for when the cops arrive, they keep it short. "Woman, what business have you, waking us for this? Don't be ridiculous, accept those Dutchmen's money, and get lost.", is about the gist of it. She does, but 'that money' has by then become €120,-: a ridiculously high amount, around Poland, for a mirror. But then, we are rid of her, and can continue our journey. Which otherwise proceeds smoothly but when I, finally, turn into the layby at Przemyśl and come to a halt amidst the rally racecars and a jubilous reception by our fellow rallydrivers (who have by now been informed by Adrianus, of our adventures), I do so shaking, with a sigh of relief, and tears in my eyes. Yeah well. Happy with my reflexes, pleased with the way things turned out, but an accident's still an accident: misfortune. 
But the solidarity now clearly is growing, and this is greatly pleasing. Add to that that, again, we aren't even last to arrive: Team 'Bokito', the organizers' team, is still behind us, in their Chrysler Voyager. Flagman and all, because there were no flights from Prague to Przemyśl, so he was forced to go by car.  Reinhard's a good sport though, so when he arrives he jumps from the car with a huge flag and proceeds to finish us all.
The waiting consul, meanwhile, must remain so a little bit longer. Everyone has made his acquaintance by now. Nice guy, although, myself, I'm disappointed somewhat that the representative of Her Majesty's government in Ukrainian parts does not speak a word of Dutch. But that's how things go. He has, in any case, to wait some more, because the Bokitoes dish out today's daytrophies, at this finish. The 'Bookhouse Boys' are awarded yesterday's trophy, and Team 'Spoetnik' gets today's. 
Then, we set out for the border for real. Once arrived, we form a line in the VIP-lane where, for the sake of a pretty picture, I hoist the Taxi Adriaan rooflight that comes from the C3 onto the Combo's roof. The result is an impressive image. 
Meanwhile, we chat with the people in the 'ordinary' lanes. Truckdrivers mostly, of, at times, overly burdened and therefore lopsided trucks with flatlined tyres. They have, indeed, been there for some ten hours. For the first time, we now see what will turn out to be typical, to borders in these parts: the discreet exchange of bills, making bureaucracy disappear like smoke. For now, this does not bother us at all: thanks to the consul, we pass the border in 3 hours - every car having been checked for insurance papers and content, and having been outfitted with a pass certifying that we have entered the country in it (the consul explains that one has to hand over this pass again upon leaving the country, because importing cars for money is good business; he also explains the illegal practice entailing that you sell your European car for three times its value, which the buyer wants because he will save on import duties, then wait 24 hours, then report the car stolen and leave the country by air, leaving you with a nice sum, a practice the consul does of course denounce).  But by now it's dark, and because of this things become complicated after all. The consul has declared he would like to walk around L'viv with us, as guide on a small tour, but we can all sense we won't make that. He does make the utmost effort: what begins now is a deathride, over very bad roadsurface, through total pitchblack darkness. Along unlit roads with mean speedramps and large holes, the first cars roar off at such great speed and past other traffic, that the rest has growing problems trying to follow them. And even though one pissbreak is held, 1 car already fails to make that, and by the time we reach L'viv, pummeling through red lights across town, and careening across the cobblestones unhealthily hard, the endeavour's degraded into a free-for-all and at least 3 cars have been dropped.
There are those who are annoyed by this. Edwin, for one. "This 'convoy driving' they were on about's a farce! Bunch of unsociables!" And Adrianus, who hasn't yet arrived, when we're behind beers already. But I, on the other hand, agree with Farid that succesful rallydriving includes the assertivity needed to find the address you are to get to. It has, after all, been listed, in the script that everyone's got. What I do have doubts about, is the fast driving through the dark. During the day is one thing, you can then still maintain an overall view and estimate matters. At night, on bad roads in an unknown country, I find to be quite another. I am glad nothing went wrong, but deem this to be luck. Adrianus will, over dinner in living room restaurant Kupol (ex-cel-lent, by the by, with genuine Russian food, amongst which caviar), become a lot angrier. Tom and he, as 'Pirates of the Ukraine', along with two other teams, are namely disqualified by the Bokitoes, for leaving Prague ahead of schedule. "But you yourself said we could leave!" 
"Yeah well," is the Bokitoes' answer, "you can always do anything - but you know what the rules say.".  Even I feel this is a bit far-fetched, since, being organizers, one can expect participants to regard one's word as law and so to justifiably interpret "You may leave" as a safe signal for departure. And since almost everyone seems to feel this way, the Bokitoes eventually back down, and convert the disqualification into a time penalty, equalling the number of minutes left early.
Meanwhile, even before everyone's finished dinner, more or less the same thing happens to the ride to the hotel, that happened to the ride to the restaurant: consul and party set off, and anyone who does not immediatelyh follow, can find out for themselves where the hotel is. Ed and I do follow, but immediately lose them. No matter: the Dnister hotel, it turns out immediately thereafter, is just 'round the corner. Once quartered Aad and Ed, as designated drivers, decide to conspire for the exit reconnaissance. They will therefore check arterial roads leading out of the city on the map, and predrive these. Tom and I happily set out, meanwhile, for the club, Millenium. It turns out to be an enormous affair with two floors and a large dais for the DJ, with a gigantic videoscreen behind it. What also stands out is what appears to be utmostly normal in (former) Russian territories: police-like guards inside the club. This despite the fact that, upon entry, everyone is checked for arms, by means of security gates and optional frisking. Those guards, out of boredom, busy themselves with petty things: they blow a fuse, for instance, when you appear to contemplate stepping onto the dancefloor with a drink in your hand. The ladies, meanwhile, are at times beautiful, here, but decidedly more unapproachable than they were in Prague. This does not prevent Martin Plak (both co-organizer of the rally as well as, as only organizer, not a member of Team 'Bokito', but of Team 'Psycho Riders') from bending them to his will. Martin namely also is a DJ, and has arranged for permission to spin a set as 'DJ M-ART-IN STONE from Amsterdam'. Giant slide behind his head and all. And he does get them dancing, so I shoot brilliant film of this, to our twofold content. Having completed predriving the exit roads, Ed also appears in the club, but he takes off again, when the place closes. I then leave, in select company, for a very shady lapdanceclub in a suburb. Its door policy is hilarious. The joint's about to close, you see. But some kind of translating doorman negotiates for us, with the invisible staff present below, in the cellar. The demands put down by them change every time. "You must buy at least 20 beers, and then lapdances cost 100 hryvnia (the Ukrainian monetary unit, which Ed and I have swiftly and permanently begun to call "greebees") each." "Fine, as long as we can get something to drink." The man disappears below, then returns. 
"14 beers, and 100 hryvnia per lapdance." "Fine, as long as we can get something to drink." It goes to and fro like this for about four times, and our answer remains the same. Finally, we are shown inside and then find the staff in utter confusion. We are again warned that we will have to buy a minimum quantity of beer. "Fine, as long as we can get something to drink." We eventually do, and by the time we finally return to the Dnister hotel with the last survivors, things have come to pass that I will not describe here. I also vehemently deny that 1 of us stood on the stage naked, with a nude lady hanging from him upside down, let alone that I remember who that was. Meanwhile, I have at least had a very good conversation with the doorman, who turns out not to be that at all, but a Belgian para-cum-pilot, who was actually just about to leave when we arrived, but who is immensely intrigued by our rally story. Day 3 08.26.2007: L'viv-Kiev Back at the hotel the group occupies the outside terrace, for another beer. I partake, but when the partyleague is closed for the day, I split, and go shower and change in our room, then to pack up. On my way to the car, with the first two bags, leaving the hotel not through the lobby on the ground floor, but via the terrace on the first (which is possible, since from there a walkway leads diagonally down to the parking lot. It is closed off by a small fence though, I find out when I end up in front of it. Details, details: I jump the fence, two bags and all), I am stopped short by a hotel guard, apparently under the impression I am attempting to leave without paying. I laugh my head off and try to explain there are many more bags plus an Edwin upstairs, so that is not the case, but he is unrelenting: I am to follow him back into the building, to the reception desk, there to prove to him all is in order. What do I care. Having loaded the bags into the car, I follow him into the lobby. Gives me the opportunity, at least, to look the beautiful receptionist in the eye. All's in order of course, and so I am free to proceed packing. Thereafter, I find myself in the car, waiting for Edwin, for a long time. Later, this turns out to have been the moment of the large group portrait. Yeah, well. Then, at the start, noone gets to leave, because, since someone's left behind an unsettled bill, the hotel staff keeps the parking lot barriers closed.  But by then we, and the 'Pirates of the Ukraine', have been gone for quite a while. See, Ed and Aad, last night, parked our cars in such manner that we do not have to pass through the barriers, and directly turn onto the arterial exit road. I fall asleep immediately, as Ed steers the Combo along roads of which he will later state that they are the worst of the whole trip (I, by the way, do upon writing this still not believe that, because I cannot imagine worse roads exist than those in Moldova later on).
 While I sleep, Ed picks a big rock up from this stretch of road, which was lying in the middle of it, and that he intends to present to the rally winner as a trophy, later on. Also, he evades a ticket. For as he, having been caught up with by several other teams by now, approaches a roundabout, Aad roars across it in his Lexus at such great speed that the confounded cops on its far side combust with rage. Aad has no problem with that, he's been and gone by then, and disappeared in the distance (he will later describe this part of the rally as a "boy's boytoy dream" and, among other things, wake Tom by getting airborne with the car). And those cops, they don't take their baffled anger out on Ed. He namely gets confused by the roundabout, steers off of it too early, and so returns to it later. By the time he does, he can drive past 'Always a surprise' who are for it, at that very moment. It will, it turns out later, be the biggest brigandry trick of the race: Pim Landman gets swindled out of €750,-! Some cop got to go take a loooooooooong vacation, I tell ya.
 This highway robbery, by the way, is utterly normal along roads like these. The police namely earns next to nothing, just like the rest of the population (€3,- is a day's wage). So what do they do? They stand by the roadside with a lasergun, on which they keep the number incurred by the car that drove by them the fastest, that day. And when YOU then pass at a speed exceeding the limit (they are, I must say, most fair in that: they do not stop you if you don't drive too fast), one of these misplaced Mladiçs (for that's what they look like, because of the kepi) happily approaches you with his hairdryer, going "You drove 168 here, sir, that's gonna cost ya!".
Normally, Edwin makes it a game never to grant guys like that any leeway and, if necessary, to do time for it. "Let them write me a ticket - they can't account for that, administratively, anyhow." For, he reckons, if we pay 20 euro a head, and the guy stops 3 of those foreigners a day (a Ukrainian, of course, only pays 1 euro or so, when fined), that makes him make more than us westerners, by comparison. Which is outrageous, given the poverty among the rest of the population. He's got a point, but we are part of a rally here. So when, shortly after I wake, we are stopped by a traffic cop for the first and only time, we do indeed pay the €20,-, because then at least we get to carry on. But first we have a pleasant conversation with him, explaining the rally, and my ludicrous garb.  Where namely yesterday, with a view to the border crossing to be passed, I still opted for decent and unobtrusive black, today, now I know there are no more borders, I've crossed the border by donning my Yoghurt-uniform: blazer of bright azure, blouse with pink ruches, brightly coloured rings with fake gems of plastic, and goldcoloured rapper-pimpchain. The cop's confounded of course, but amused when we explain I'm a rocksinger. We get to go on, and he also informs us that, 12 miles onward, there's another hairdryer-with-cop-attached waiting for us. Handy! Things we like to be forewarned of! We amble past them at snail's pace. We really shouldn't have done that, we miss out on a golden opportunity here. Hidde van der Veer, not part of the rally organizing team, but so too, because he knew of the good cause and so arranged for it to be the rally's, had challenged us all, before departure, to be the first team that managed to get a cop to contribute to the good cause.
We could now have done this. I think we'd have stood a fair chance had we now pro-actively stopped at that second checkpost and there had said "Say! Your colleague, 12 miles back, donated to our good cause! Do be sports and mimic the gesture?!". But we don't and drive on. Due to the cultureshock, maybe. Cultureshock? Cultureshock. This highway that leads from L'viv to Kiev will stay with me 'til dementia. The highwaymen, you see, are not the worst. This originally beautiful four-lane speedway (two lanes on either side) namely gets interrupted by big holes 3 ft. wide and 1.5 ft deep. Do not drive into them, kills your carter. But that is not the worst. This highway namely also is interrupted by zebra crossings, painted across it in red. "Wouldn't it be cool to stop for one of those?" I later ask Adrianus, in Kiev. "I did, four times!", his answer will be. Hilarious, to grind to a halt, coming down from 168mph, and then kindly give way to one of those old ladies. Never happens normally, of course, so I expect she fell over for shock. Those zebra crossings, by the by, are not the worst.  Along this highway, horse- and donkey carriages are normal traffic namely. And they only go 3 to 6 miles per hour, so you need to beware of them when sailing in at 87 (or faster, like the other teams). Not to mention the bicyclists, blandly pedalling along the hard shoulder, against traffic too. It's faster you see, between villages, than the dusty rural roads. But that is not the worst.
These roads, by nature, namely carry but two kinds of motorized traffic: Ladas going 56 mph at the most, belching smoke and falling apart as they go, and three-piece convoys of brand-new, jet-black SUVs with dark bulletproof windows, armed men in the first and last, and the mobboss in the middle car, leisurely doing 100 to 120 mph - a difference in speed that is at least as dangerous as the one between us and the horse-and-carriage combinations. But that is not the worst.  There namely are all sorts of gramps and grannies, sitting on the side of this road, selling jars of jam, and fruit, and something unrecognizable that looks like drying vine leaves. And so it may come to pass that one of those SUV convoys suddenly steers onto the shoulder, without indicating beforehand, to take along a jar of jam for grandma (and so we do too, and don't buy a jamjar-for-grandma, but do buy one of those things with the drying vine leaves - it turns out to be a whipping rod for the banja, with which you therefore beat eachother to a pulp after the sauna, to improve blood circulation). But that is not the worst.
The U-turn, a trick prohibited in the entire EU, isn't just allowed, but is in fact a necessary manoeuvre, here in Ukraine. It really befalls us! En route to Kiev, we run into a sign reading 'For Kiev: make U-turn here'! So you have to steer straight through the hole in the central reservation and crash barrier, and cross the highway as you turn unto the opposite lane, then drive a few yards back, and then take the exit towards where you need to be. Utterly normal, here. Who needs the overpass? So what you get then is a heavy truck combination parked across the roadway, busy undertaking this U-turn, while everyone is pummeling towards it at speeds varying between 0 and 120 mph. A-ma-zing. I shall never forget this. This goes for the finish, in Kiev, too. All of a sudden, the world's back to normal: from this insane highway, just before Kiev, you suddenly end up on roads befitting a metropolis: shiny, new, and wide. Ever slowlier, for increasing traffic, I drive into town. Then the 'Psycho Riders' catch up with us. They realize Ed will come in handy here, since he can decipher cyrillic. So they join us in the search for bar Mokko, today's finish (TomTom's no longer an aid, as we drove off its map at the Polish/Ukrainian border). We quickly run into a dead end, on the edge of an e-nor-mous pedestrian zone. We park the cars, and Martin and Ed proceed on foot, to reconnoiter. Bas and I stay behind, and exchange experiences of the past day. Upon Ed and Martin's return, the Mokko turns out to be situated diagonally to the left, on the far side of the pedestrian boulevard. All that remains is getting there, by car, because it needs to pass under the finish flag, if we are to achieve our just spot on the ranking table. Well, that ain't easy. Crossing the pedestrian zone and getting to the other side is not the problem. But to then find the side street with the Mokko on it, that runs back down to it, turns out to be a drama. For at least an hour we drive around flabbergasted, not getting anywhere (exciting though, because the hill that leads upward from the pedestrian zone is so steep that I can only climb it in first gear, with smoking and screeching tires, even with a sizable run-up). The 'Psycho Riders' eventually give up on following us and disappear down one of those side streets, and from view, as Ed is outside the car, deciphering a sign. "Where'd they go?", he inquires upon return. "They drove thataway, downward here", I answer. "Good! We need to go in the oppposite direction!" No sooner said than done. But even THERE we don't find our vaunted side street. Having driven downhill again too, we find ourselves on the edge of the pedestrian zone, one street too far up. And while I strike up a cheerful conversation with some cabbies hanging about (Ed refuses the easiest solution, namely to ask one of them to show us the way by driving ahead of us), who automagically recognize me as a colleague (very strange, since that's not mentioned anywhere on our car or on me), Ed goes to recce on foot again. He returns out of breath. "Up! It MUST be 1 street back! It HAS to be there!" He says the same thing to Team 'The Wolf', who've come down the same hill beside us. "Follow us!" And so we go. We drive back up, 'The Wolf' in our wake, and hang a right onto the road that runs parallel to the pedestrian zone. At that moment, we are triumphantly overtaken by 'The Wolf', in their Volvo. From the sunroof, a scornful middle finger protrudes. Small thanks. Us and our good behaviour. With friends like that, who needs enemies? But when, thereupon, the majestic gate that is the entrance to the Krechatic, on which the Mokko is, appears on our right hand side, 'The Wolf' is too late to notice this, and drives just past it. Triumphantly, we press past behind them, and under the gate and Reinhard's rolling finish flag. Gotcha! Ed's middle finger scornfully sticks from the window.  This royally gets to them, although it doesn't make a difference to the ranking. It namely doesn't concern order of arrival, but time of, which is nearly equal. This does not go for the 'Psycho Riders': they only arrive an hour after us. Poor dudes. by then, we've already spent an hour at the sidewalk café with the Pirates (they gained the stage victory - partly due to Ed's exit reconnaissance-and-predriving-strategy) and the rest, and after we admire a parked Lamborghini (Ed doesn't like it, but I'm breathless, although it is of course a totally impractical car on roads like these, because of its low road-holding) we leave for the Mir hotel.
Which turns out to be hard to find, but we do, following a sizable tour. The Mir hotel is a Stalinist colossus: guards on every floor, glory past all around, but this neatly maintained: even the worn patches on the chairs have diligently been dusted. But there is no hot water, so we're in for cold showering. Quite refreshing though. In so doing I discover my ankles have swollen considerably, because of working the clutch and gas pedals. Tsssk. That's what you get with roads like these.  Unfortunately I cannot photograph the hotel since, as I discovered en route to it, I have left my camera in the Dnister hotel in L'viv. Even a phone flurry, through Reinhard, with the Bookhouse Boy left behind did not help: my Nikon had 'not been found'. Well. Bookhouse Boy left behind? Yes, 'cause they fell out, so that team fell apart, 1 of them is travelling home, and the other is joining 'Royal Flush'. They aren't the only unfortunate team, by the by: the 'Great Balls of Fire', them with the Landrover, have been plagued by technical breakdowns for the past two days, so on day 2 arrive some 4 hours behind us at the Ukrainian border, therefore reach Kiev much later.
 Anyway. After showering, a cab ride to steakhouse Steakhouse follows, through a nightly Kiev. This ride, Ed forgoes: in front of the hotel he strikes up a conversation with two ladies hanging about in a car (1 of them a doctor, what the other one does I don't know), and gets them to tour him around town - and then he enters into dialogue with our floor guardess, who aids him in the exit reconnaissance for the next day.
We, meanwhile, have dinner, which is reasonable, but unremarkable, just like that whole Steakhouse: good, but uninteresting. Well, you can't have them all, and it ain't easy, to arrange restaurants for a rally from thousands of miles away. We therefore do not hold this against Farid. Let alone the club that follows, for it is absolutely fantastic. Now namely happens, for the first time, what will continue to be at a premium for the rest of the week. The climate here is a relatively dry one. This means one can do here what cannot be done in Holland: build very large open air clubs.  So this Jeans Beach Club takes up an area of a mile by 164 yards, with in it toilet blocks, two dance stages (one of them really big, with a lowered dance pit and galleries around it), an outdoor arbour, cafes, and even a real bit of beach with recliners, by the banks of the Dnjepr (this, once we have arrived on the Tivoli-esque isle on the edge of Kiev and have made our way by and through a permanently established fairground, with several other clubs and restaurants in between, to the back of a dark wood, where the Jeans Club turns out to be, turns out to be closed by now, and I'm directed off it later during the night by a guard, who's under the impression I shall attempt suicide by wading into the water, whilst all I really want is to quietly look at the stars, but hey).
Great. Even the fact that we run through the free booze Farid arranged fairly quickly does no detriment to that. And Farid is not to blame for that anyway, by the way, because our thirst is great, after such a long dusty day of driving.  And so we have great fun. In the end, I am te last to return to the hotel, thus winning the partyleague for the night (and so completely, because the other two nights it was a draw between me and the others remaining) - but nobody sees that, because the remaining organizers have by then long since left with those left, when I wasn't paying attention but haggling on that beach with that guard. Doesn't matter, because the organizers later believe my story, when Erik comes around to jot down everyone's end time.
 And doesn't really matter to the ranking table either, because 'Team Taxi Adriaan' cannot keep up with the 'Psycho Riders' and the 'Pirates of the Ukraine' in driving, because of our slow small Combo. For Tom though, this night will have consequences. For because someone from the organization tells him that the Pirates (IF they go on the way they have), can no longer be beaten, both in driving and partying, he decides to quit early and heads back to the Mir hotel at 03:45.
Martin only arrives there at 09:00, so Tom loses a large chunk of ranking. Day 4 08.27.2007: Kiev-Odessa The departure from the Mir hotel then has disquieting parallels with the one from the Dnister hotel: the reception desk has not only returned the wrong passport to one of us, making it necessary for the rightful owner to find out who's got it, and at the reception desk to find out whose passport is superfluously there, before we can leave - because the Bokitoes, perceivedly or no, graze a parked car while driving out, the parking lot guard icily lowers the barrier and no one still on it is allowed to leave. 
Edwin solves this, by signing a claim form as 'Evert van Benthum' of the 'Elfstedenweg' in Haarlem, and shoving this into his hand. We're gone, and I go back to sleep contentedly. A few hours later I wake along the excellent, but boring highway from Kiev to Odessa. Amazing, though, are the roadworks there. Some guys are replacing the crash barrier, and this is not done, as it would be here, with a crane and whole segments at a time, but by hand, tube by tube. And all that without protective roadblock and pylons. Never heard of health and safety, they must have here. Just out of Odessa we're hilariously overtaken, along the shoulder, by the Bokitoes, who disappear in an enormous dustcloud... ...to just three cars ahead of us, in the traffic jam along the road now seriously narrowed, due to roadworks at a larger scale.  Edwin wants to catch up with them too, but I talk him out of it, partly by bringing it to his attention that we shall soon need to pull over anyhow, to don our tuxes. First, we attempt to find a shortcut, by using an overpass to find the secondary roads along the coastline, but when the overpass turns out not yet to have up- and downramps, we drive on, to indeed finally don our tuxedoes, at a gasstation on the edge of Odessa.
 I namely own two, so brought 1 along for Ed, and the other for myself. Seemed to me to be an aptly festive touch to the finish. And so we drive into Odessa in tux, and, following some aimless touring (during which I must almost use force to prevent Ed from getting a haircut), reach the finishflag with no trouble, having been led to it by a friendly local leading our way. The smokings cause quite a stir and are a success, so we happily hit the beer and burgers, at O'Neill's Irish Pub. We make pleasant smalltalk with a propster (one of those dames pretending to like you, but trying to get you to join her on a drinking spree in multiple catering establishments, because she gets a commission), and a man who arrives in an oldtimer. Beautiful set of wheels, so we make several group portraits in front of and around it.
Since Edwin speaks Russian, the very same guy parades him into his appartment too, so that Ed can have his picture taken with a Ukrainian flag and an old Soviet machine gun. 
Cute. Somewhat less cute is that Ed and those of us left (and between those, due to lack of cash, mostly Adrianus) have to arrange for payment of the ginormous food and drink bill, because the organizers and more than half of the rally participants have hit the road towards the Black Sea Hotel. Which is where we too end up, but no sooner than that we've un- and repacked our luggage at the wrong branch of it. 
The Black Sea Hotel is both luxurious and western, most pleasant. We billet ourselves, and then get into a cab towards the Balalayka restaurant, for the dinner finale. Restaurant Balalayka's a snooty joint, waitresses in traditional dress and loads of fake vine leaves and the like, and questionable food. The somewhat blackened steak, for Pim of 'Always a surprise' (again living up to his team's name therefore), turns out to be fitted with incooked maggot. When he points it out to the waitress, she doesn't see what his problem is. Yeah well. Ukraine you know eh. Then, following an inventory of what everyone believes to have collected for the good cause (almost noone, of course, can be certain, because the accounts are still open for donations), the awards ceremony takes place.  We turn out to have reached seventh place, partly due to my party ranking. Very good, we are most happy with this. Edwin uses the opportunity to thank everyone and announce that he will hand the winner an extra stone and whipping rod. The winner turns out not to be. The organizers namely proclaim that the 'Pirates of the Ukraine' and the 'Psycho Riders' have landed at a par. This raises eyebrows.
The Pirates namely finished in front of the 'Psycho Riders' every day (barring the last, when they finished together, Martin in the car with Aad and Tom at the finishline, no less) and even won a day trophy. Moreover, the Pirates, so far, collected 1000 euros for the good cause, whereas the 'Psycho Riders' at Balalayka reached some 100. And Tom was always last to leave the party, barring Kiev, as said. So those five hours should outweigh the rest?  I have no idea as to whether or not this is possible. See I'm VERY bad at calculus. Certain, anyhow, is that Aad and Tom think it is not possible. And also, they are indignant about the fact Tom was told he was unbeatable before he went back to the Kiev hotel three hours and one quarter earlier than Martin - but I do not share in this, their anger, because I agree with the organizers that you are no longer unbeatable when you then let yourself be beat - and over the fact that during the last leg they purposefully held back and let others take the lead because it should otherwise be too easy for them to win (they even picked flowers, for that reason) - but I do not share in this, their anger, because I agree with the organizers that you no longer win when you let others get ahead. Looks, therefore, like Aad's been too much of a good guy.
Yet few believe that the organizers are right, and the buzz is loud, all 'round the room. This, of course, doesn't matter, because the organizers, as organizers, are always right, even if they're not, and so they are now too. The organizers, following consultation of the drivers, decide that 1 winner needs to arise from the stalemate. And so it is decided there shall be a last-man-standing contest: both teams must appoint a 'designated drinker' and they must, until 1 rolls over, compete in Club Ibiza, that night, thus to decide who's the winner, of the Amsterdam-Odessa Rally. Tom and Martin are designated 'designated drinkers', but Tom then decides to cop out: he absolutely intends to go to the club, but also to just leave when he gets tired, because to him the finish flag at O'Neill's was the end of the race. An attitude I both support and applaud. And so when, sometime later, we leave for Club Ibiza, the mood once more is excellent. And it so remains, since Club Ibiza is da bomb. An open air disco constructed, in white plaster, in Dali-style on the Odessa beach, by the Black Sea, with a fine dancefloor, a pond (yes really), three stories, boxes and sitting areas everywhere, and... ...water pipes! Aad and I immediately order one (seems harmless to me, since I'm fairly sure I won't hit the bong again after this trip), with champagne below and cherry tobacco up top. And although I haven't, of course, smoked for some six years now, my body infallibly remembers what to do with it. So I experience an enormous nicotine kick, topped by a maniacal gigglish edge because of the champagne. 
Ground for great joy. Thusly intoxicated we have a great night, watching those dancing, and even dancing some ourselves. In between, Aad and I take time for some beach experience, and enjoy a good conversation on a pier jutting out into the Black Sea. On the way back to the Ibiza we see something dancing in the dark. It turns out to be a totally raving babuschka, enjoying the music that, in this no man's land between nightclubs, bursts from the Itaka discotheque, which is right next to the Ibiza. Party on grandma!  At night's end, when leaving the Ibiza, an argument arises though, because the thievish staff pretends there is an unpaid bill (they attempt to prove this by way of a vague photocopy with two bills on it). Ed's bartering with them, when Pim Landman (of 'Always a surprise') catches wind of it and explodes. He insists that the money already paid by the rally organizers has already been pocketed by the club's staff. Which of course is true, but does not seem all that relevant to me, so I try to calm him. His outpour of anger does, though, lead to a confession on the part of the thievish staff that said leftover bill, said to not have been paid, has never been - in the end, they turn out to only want tip. Which Edwin then pays, together with Pim and Scott (of the 'Insurance Racers'), to end the argument.
This solved, we set off, back towards the hotel. But that ain't all. For whilst I walk with Vince Blondeel Timmerman (of the Bokito's), we are caught up with by a bewildered Sybolt Boersma (of 'Always a Surprise', again living up to his team's name therefore). "I lost my phone guys!" Vince, to me: "Can you frisk this man?" Me: "Sure.". Sybolt turns out not to wear a phone. Vince, to me: "I knew you could.". Me, flabbergasted, to Vince: "How'd you know that then?" Vince, to me: "You radiate it.". Gee, thanks.  Me, to Sybolt: "Did you ask them if they found your phone, yet?" "No." "Well then do, 'cause now is your last chance. Pretty soon, they'll be done cleaning and locked down, then you'll never see it again." Sybolt lurches back and Vince and I happily continue our conversation, while waiting. Sybolt returns. "Haven't been able to find it." "Yes, but did you ask THEM whether they found it?" "No." "Well then do, 'cause now is your last chance. Pretty soon, they'll be done cleaning and locked down, then you'll never see it again." Sybolt lurches back and Vince and I happily continue our conversation, while waiting. Sybolt, however, does not return. Vince and I decide to go size up the situation. Sybolt stands amidst a throng of guards, 1 foreigner besides them, who speaks English and translates.
"What's the problem?", I ask him. "They've returned my phone to me", says Sybolt. "Good!", I say. "What's the problem?", I again ask the interpreter. "Sybolt, according to them, has promised them a €140,- reward for the phone, so they want that reward." I think "thieves", but I say "Sybolt, did you promise them that?" "Nope", says Sybolt, "I didn't promise them anything - but I did just give them 140 greebees in happy thankfulness, for finding my phone." "Ah", I say, and then, to the interpreter: "So there we have it. There is no problem. We shall now leave. Bye." The guard most briefly considers his options, then shrugs in disdain and turns around. "See", I think, as we walk away, "you were just conning the lot, little friend.". We head for the taxi stand at the front of Arkadia Beach, the part of beach that the Ibiza is part of. And we take a cab with, most unusual, a female cabbie behind the wheel. Her disintegrating Lada brings us back to the Black Sea Hotel without further problems, but when we've debarked there, Vince gets beside himself. "I lost my phone guys!" Me, to Vince: "Then you've probably left it in the cab. 'Cause before that you still had it, you were programming my number into it. Call it with Sybolt's phone." The phone rings, but is not answered. "Try again." The phone's dead, all of a sudden. "You've lost it for good, that's obvious. Gentlemen, I'm off to bed, enjoy your night." I leave a confounded Vince and Sybolt and return grinning, to the first hotel room, this journey, that I will actually honour by getting a full night's sleep in it. My mission is completed.  Edwin's, however, is not: in the hotel's bar, after he's warned them not to raise the subject, but they have asked him for his opinion nonetheless, he throws a fierce fit over the race results in the presence of, amongst others, Erik and Roy of the Bokito's and Bas of the 'Psycho Riders'. Ed feels the 'Psycho Riders' did not rightfully end on a par when the calculus is done, and that even if that would be the case, they most certainly wouldn't have, for reasons I cannot state here (that 1 of the 2 'last men standing' used pills to keep it up in Kiev and, in the Balalayka, announced he would do the same in the Ibiza, is a rumour I can confirm nor deny - and one can ask oneself who, among the partypeople, really scorns partydrugs).
Day 5 08.28.2007: Odessa  Having woken because of the returning Edwin, I learn that Aad and Tom have just left the hotel for breakfast. I decide to run after them, and we have it together, in a much too expensive, but otherwise fine western restaurant just down the street. And I pay it for them, because I feel that they've earned themselves a present, being the true winners of the Rally (for let there be no doubt, I too think that they are).
 We find, furthermore, that the ladies here come in just two varieties: incredibly tasty, or as ugly old woman. We debate the matter some, and conclude that, when they reach 30, they withdraw to behind the Ural, then to return as ugly old woman. 'The Change', we call this, and from then on we divide women in 'having undergone The Change' and 'not having undergone The Change' (we do leave the MILFs out of it, a category of ladies-who-have-not-undergone-The-Change that Aad adds later).
After breakfast, we roam the streets athree, as, having catnapped, Ed does on his own (he, amongst other things, gets a haircut). Lured by large posters depicting objectives, we amble into a gun store, where the knight's harnesses in the hallway prove to be the least unusual article available: they range from fishing tackle, outsized knives included, via handheld guns to sniperrifles-with-telescopic-sight-and-silencer, to AK-47's at €300,- apiece and heavier firearms than the Dutch army brings to conflict zones. Whether I can buy a taser for in my taxi? "No sir, that is an illegal arm in Ukraine." En route to the Potemkin stairs (of movie fame) we descend a different set of stairs (we shall later learn from at least one team that they erroneously held these to be the Potemkin stairs) when Aad suddenly cries eureka. He recalls that, during the first rally drivers meeting preceding the rally, in the Tara's on the Rokin in Amsterdam, flagman Reinhard told him: "Yeah, and it's great, such a rally, because for some reason or other one or more teams finish equal, and then we have a last man standing contest!". Now the coin drops for me too. I was there, and I can remember this indeed. Asked how the equal finish was arranged Reinhard said: "Well, as organizers you can steer things a little eh", I now also remember. 
Suddenly everything falls into place. The Bokitos must have despaired, that there was such a difference between the Pirates and the other teams, in the ranking. Much harder to organize that last man standing contest after all. And that you'd want to have one, THAT we can imagine, because you then keep your last club party, that after all takes place after the finish, interesting, for everyone.  Put into a milder mindset about it all by this discovery, we sprightly descend the fake stairs, at the foot of which, at a small grocery store, I produce a small drawing of stairs leading down to waves. "Ah, the Potemkin stairs!", the punters cry, and 1 corner and 300 yards later we are at the foot of those stairs indeed. But it's a letdown. Their grandeur is namely heavily detrimented by a motorway at its foot, created at a later stage, with, below it, of all things, a car dealer. Striking, also, is that there is no tourist trap, barring one lonesome salesman of old soviet medals. Strange, when you realize this is Odessa's most famous monument.
 We trundle on, along the harbour front, across, amongst others, a bridge to which lovers apparently affix a padlock with their initials or names engraved at a special occasion (Engagement? Marriage? Breakup? Who knows? The bridge is full of them.), and shortly thereafter decide we'd like to go to the beach. So we wave down a local. A local? A local. There namely are official cabs in Odessa, but if you just stand by the roadside and expectantly point at the driveway, a random car will stop, and you negotiate a price for wherever it is you want to go to. I will wonder, for years to come, whether such locals are coincidentally on their way to grandma and stop when they see such a stop signal, or spend their entire day looking for rides. No idea.
In any case, a local in a kind of riding bomb pulls over. "Have a seat there. Please don't smoke, 'cause all that below your seat is gasoline!" 
He faultlessly takes us to where we want to be: a beach with real locals. There, Aad and Tom take the bumper cars for a spin, we parade about some, I buy gross sunspecs and we don a beer, before heading back to the hotel.  We have dinner together with Ed in the best of three restaurants with local food of which the names were written down for me by the Black Sea Hotel receptionist, restaurant Kumaneç. Excellent food indeed, in Russian style: small portions of all kinds of foodstuffs, the stuffed dumplings that are part of the national cuisine in the Czech Republic too the absolute high point among them.
Then, Aad and Tom leave for the Ibiza, where the rest of the rallypack has namely gathered, having held an awards ceremony on the beach, for the 'Psycho Riders' (without a trophy, we learn at a later reunion, because it accidentally got stolen by the 'Great Balls of Fire', who thought it was fetched from their hotel room by the organizers, but later found it in 1 of their own bags). 
Ed and I first head back to the Black Sea, to refresh ourselves. We therefore arrive pretty late at the Ibiza, and so have enough energy to, afterwards, walk back to the hotel.  This, we do via the beach boulevard, and so we learn that, besides the Itaka, there are many more smaller establishments along the boulevard, and... ...Katya, an inebriated Russian girl, with whom, and with her two friends, both fitted with boyfriend, we walk back to town (past what Katya gigglingly calls the "impotence-monument": a large soviet needle with Lenin below it and a star on top), into a supermarket and up to her door, where we bid farewell. At dawn, we return to our hotel by city bus, which is an experience in itself. Buses like that one would not be allowed to carry the name in the Netherlands, because they would not pass the motor vehicle test. But I enjoy it to the fullest: it's a great ending, to a weird day.
Day 6 08.29.2007: Odessa The next morning I have breakfast in the Black Sea Hotel, for the first time. Should have done that before! I discover, unbelievably, oatmeal porridge, really! Healthiness, among all the unhealthiness, very good. There will be more of it, today, since I decide to, after breakfast (which I, by the by, enjoy together with Ed and Hans Beckers of 'The Mitsu strikes back' - the table talk mainly concerns the gigantic rift between rich and poor in this country), take myself to task in the fitness studio the hotel, according to Edwin, sports: he namely saw it mentioned in cyrillic on the sign beside the elevator in the basement (it isn't mentioned anywhere else, not even in the leaflets in our room). But it exists indeed: around the corner, on the 7th floor, next to the exchange counter established at reception, is the fitness studio, and I am warmly welcomed there by trainer Andrej, who patiently explains that fitness costs 25 greebee, being coached by him another 14 greebee, and the sauna 40 greebee. The greebee stands at 6,1 per euro, so I think it's peachy keen. Andrej completely takes me apart in two hours, then blandly asks: "Say, how long ago is it that you last worked out?" "A year", I groan. "OH! Well, THEN this is enough." Yeah right!  Anyway. I pleasantly cool down in the sauna, then totter back to our hotel room. At the reception desk I run into 'Great Balls of Fire', who provide me with the phone number of a Landroverdealer (who's just repaired their Landrover), so we can bug him for the phone number and/or address of an Opeldealer, so we can replace our mirror-gone-gone-in-Poland and some other stuff (the Combo, we noted down in the hotel garage, leaks a tiny bit of diesel, the claxon no longer works and the hood no longer opens - bit of a nuisance if you want to check damage and fluids).
 But first, after intense relaxation on my part (I, among other things, watch tv, during which I note that the news is exclusively about president Joesjenko, and his great deeds of today, for the duration of 5 items no less - I cannot escape the impression that this is not because he dictatorially orders this, but because the producing staff just isn't used to making television any other way; Joesjenko would be crazy to inform them otherwise), and some roaming through town by Ed in the afternoon, we have dinner with 'Finenzo' and the 'Insurance Racers', in a fine, albeit somewhat western and therefore expensive restaurant, Steakhouse (NOT comparable to the Kiev restaurant of the same name). It does not only serve fine calamaris (one can always judge the quality of a kitchen by them), but also a fine supersteak (Jan-Willem of the Finenzo's has it, and he radiates joy) and lovely lamb. AND they have an amazing toilet block, with a floor made out of green glass. Most estranging and exciting.
 After dinner Scott (of the 'Insurance Racers') and Jan-Willem (of the Finenzo's) join Ed and me for a trip to Itaka, the nightclub next to the Ibiza. It turns out to be much larger, of a different concept (large greek columns here, and the whole thing looks like you're in the ruins of a pantheon), crowd (much better here, because it's not just the expensive Gucci-mafia-broads, but also, and quite a lot of, 'normal' people), and entertainment (there really is - we look, successively, at a stripshow of a fake cop-with-'arrested'-lady, and a weird act of some sort of chinese dragon with dansers in it).
We watch it all from the best spot in the joint: the utmost top right, where, with one's head in the breeze, to one's right one can look out over the boulevard (where yesterday grandma was housing away) and the Black Sea, and in front of one the entire Itaka is at one's feet. 
As Ed and Scott storm the dancefloor, Jan-Willem and I enjoy no end: not in the least because of the beautiful women. We get for free what I still had to pay for in L'viv: a poledance-show without pole, of at least three beau-ti-ful ladies. "I never want to leave!", Jan-Willem sighs. Not a bad thought - but those ladies are a bit fake. The lurid dancing means to lead to something. And that something soon unfolds: the lady dancing the most randyishly achieves eye contact with us and some people around us, and immediately a strapping black-clad fellow pops up next to her. The message is clear: you can have her, but only for a while, and for money, to be handed to him. Two older gentleman, seated slightly below us along the ring, eventually answer: they wave with money and sure enough, the lady leaves the club in their company, the tall one in black on her heels, who proceeds to pocket the money and then happily returns to the dancefloor. As does the lady, about a half hour later, and then the seduction begins anew (as, by the way, happened the days before in Club Ibiza: there too, 'professional' girls danced hornily in hopes of hooking a paying customer). Ed and I, meanwhile, find Katya again, the recently plastered Russian girl with whom we walked home from Arkadia Beach the other day. She's stonesober now, and turns out to work in Itaka, as waitress. Jan-Willem meanwhile meets a young lady he's met in the Ibiza, and she joins us with her friend. I, in the meantime, enjoy a waterpipe, champagne below, cherry tobacco on top. But when Jan-Willem points out to me that, atop the table in the wind as it is positioned, it does burn very quickly, I decide to put it on the floor, out of the wind - and accidentaly drop it, because it takes me too long to realize that the liquid reservoir is not screwed tight to the rest of the pipe. Manifold mirth, and thankfully all ends well and I get to smoke my pipe after all. Then Scott and Jan-Willem bid their farewell: they set off the following morning, and want to get a good night's rest before a long day of driving. The ladies seated with Jan-Willem now clearly prove to have been interested by his money: for now he's gone they too make a break for it as soon as courtesy allows. 
Somewhat bored with the greed of women I let my gaze drift elsewhere. And then the scales fall from my eyes. Next to me, aside the tree on the boulevard, I suddenly descry three ninjas. I swear to you. I pinch my arm to check whether it's true, but I swear to you: it is true. Three ninjas. I think: "What weird a waterpipe was that", and pinch my arm again, to check if it is true, but I swear to you: it is true. Three ninjas. Two fellas, one with boobs. One of the fellas hasn't yet lowered his facemask. He looks like an ex-Spetznaz-dude, with an insectoid tattoo in the neck, and he's smoking a fag, whils talking clipped and tersely to the other two. Then he turns seaward, flicks the still burning stub, with two fingers, onto the beach in a smart arc, and then pulls down his facemask. Resolutely, the three turn, and they run past below me, towards the beach, and disappear in the dark. Did I just see what I did just see? I don't believe it whatsoever. I think "They're going to kill someone" and "When I tell Ed this, he's never gonna believe me". Thankfully, Ed is still on the dancefloor somewhere. I decide to do careful reconnaissance. I walk the entire length of the Itika to the john, and, from there, cautiously through the gallery along the beach, all the way from the far end of the club. No sign of murder and mayhem. No blood-curdling screams, pistol shots, death-rattle or otherwise. Just the murmur of the sea, the animated chit-chat of the ravers, and the upbeat beat of the music. Until I step onto the uppermost part of Itaka, between the greek columns, and peer down onto the beach from there. Ninjas! I wasn't mistaken! There's at least six of them! One of them's not in ninja-garb, but in petite swimming trunks, doing a long leg of swimming outwards into the sea, diagonally away from the pier, and the rest busy themselves with the menacing negotiation of a just so menacing fitness course, set out with legs of wood: they take turns running up a diagonally placed plank, balance on the end of it, and then jump down from it - to, with a firm 'ptok', plant a very large knife into a pole, representing the victim, at the opposite end of it, during the jump. Amazing. Ninjas at practice. And they've got an audience too. Because I'm not the only one watching: they are also followed by a couple having a romantic dinner next to me, and by some 10 to 12 Odessians thronged together along the boulevard outside Itaka, AND by two cops. This somewhat settles me down: apparently this is all normal, since the cops don't budge, and even observe the performance somewhat smirkingly. I get Ed. He's as stunned as I am, but he can't but believe me, because he sees it too. Ninjas. I swear to you. Ninjas. That we return to the hotel is certain. But I cannot remember how and when. I am too befuddled. Ninjas. I swear to you. Ninjas. Day 7 08.30.2007: Odessa Today we go hunting. What we need are a mirror and a launderette. 'Cause I think it's all fine that Ed wants to hang on (I think this should first and foremost be his holiday, he's the overworked one after all), but I can't see what's riding to my right and I must now start doing the laundry, or I am no longer human. We drive through Odessa all day, and see all kinds of things. Complete new neighbourhoods are thrown up, southward along the seafront. Large, detached, square barns of houses, with a large garden around it and a wall around that. For privacy and security, and if it isn't enough, then sometimes there are armed men around the fence. Close to a military base, we find a long swath of market, with all kinds of semi-permanent and also permanent shops and stores around it - clearly meant for both neighbours as well as, particularly, base personnel. We buy peaches there. But we cannot find a launderette anywhere. We do find an Opel dealer. The Landrover dealer's number in hand, Ed has succeeded in locating it. We find it without problem, but he doesn't have a mirror: 3 weeks delivery time. Alas. What he DOES have, is an understanding of Opels. In no time my hood is up and fixed in such a way that it can from then on be opened and shut again, we find that the liquid levels are excellent, and the claxon is functional again. The mechanic wants no reward. This, we will naturally not have. At a small shop around the corner we buy a bag-full-of-beer, and we hand that to the beaming mechanic. When we drive off, I suddenly, and contentedly, note that my outside temperature gauge suddenly works again. It hasn't since I bought this car! Less pleasant is that from this moment on, my speed gauge doesn't work anymore, or at least, not properly: it reads, but unreliable values, and at higher speeds even often 0. We shall discover that you can then use TomTom, which produces a fairly accurate estimate of your speed on the basis of your GPS displacement. But we will only find this much later, because we shall unpack TomTom no sooner than upon leaving Rumania, and we haven't even got there by a long shot. I am having serious trouble accepting not finding a launderette (a hike through the neighbourhoods around the hotel doesn't produce one either; we do find a babuschka who'd be willing to do the laundry for us if she'd have a machine, which she doesn't, so that's little help). Back at the hotel I therefore start hunting for detergent. This is not easy, because it is on sale nowhere, not even at the omnipresent drugstores (I first thought they were pharmacies, thus that all Ukrainians suffer collective drug addiction, because the word 'Apoteka' is written on them in cyrillic, but the word turns out to mean 'chemist's' and they sell everything normally sold there, barring detergent, as said). Until I find one in the, of all places, poshiest shopping mall in town: the one right next to the hotel where, right next to the jeweller's store, there is a chemist's that DOES sell detergent. For the hyperrich: the smallest bottle I find is a half litre bottle of Persil, and it costs me 8 euros. Ridiculous. Satisfied, nonetheless, I do the laundry in the bathtub, and hang it all out to dry in the bathroom and cupboards. 
Then, Ed and I hit the road again. I decide to show him the beach I roamed earlier with Aad and Tom, so we head towards it, through the northern suburbs. When I want to park close to the beach, fate strikes. Above the road is a sign reading that in 100 yards I'm allowed to make a U-turn, which is what I want, since there's empty parking spaces on the far side of the road. So I check my left mirror (the one still there), and then look ahead again as I indicate left and turn, across the opposite lane. Screeching tyres and hooting both angry and scared: a BMW that, just now, wasn't there by a long shot, in my left mirror, and so must have driven at least 75 on this long, straight road, experiences the same accident we did in Poland, heaves its steering wheel to the left, but grazes us in passing. 150 yards further up he comes to a halt along the verge. He has driven insanely fast indeed. So really, this accident is his fault, just as the one in Poland was ours. But he's clever. He namely gets out angry, walks towards us and threatens to get the cops if we don't pay up. We buy him off with 100 greebees, to be done with it. We have, after all, only incurred a slight dent on the left front. Then, we do have a look 'round the beach, before we return to the hotel.  At night, we roam the town again. In the pedestrian zone where the 'Steakhouse' restaurant is and we therefore had dinner before, with 'Insurance Racers' and the Finenzo's, I see a machine gun up close for the first and only time this journey, in an art gallery. It namely hangs around the neck of a private guard, dressed as a police officer. The things in the shop are definitely worth guarding. I do not for a moment believe that the Van Goghs are real, but there is, among other things, and old Dutch master (haven't got a clue whose) with a view of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. Now I ask ya. Sometime during this ramble we buy some snacks (sausage in puff pastry and the like), from a stand, that constitute our evening meal, for next to no greebee. We eat whilst walking, happily. A lot cheaper, after all, than during the costly days with the rallypack.
Day 8 08.31.2007: Odessa  The following morning, we do dear again: for I off oatmeal again, in the hotel. Then we wander around town once more. This walk takes us past, among other things, the theatre, where below the big dome birds of prey apparently nest - their cries have bellowed over town for days, amplified by the architecturally sound arches. Next to that theatre we discover a wedding factory, where at least three marriages roll out and into white stretch limousines within five minutes. Lo-ve-ly ladies, not just because of their dress, and the most beautiful ones aren't even the bride! Amusing, also, that when a child pops a balloon some six alarmed, furrowed faces of men turn around, checking things out with a trained eye: armed conflict, this close to Caucasia, is never far off.
 On the far side of the road the hotel is on, we find, when looking for coffe (well I am, Ed doesn't drink coffee), sometime later, a Nescafé vending machine, in the street just like that! Very pleasant. But very unpleasant that, due to cyrillic, I cannot figure out how to get it to produce coffee without sugar. Yuck. Best be quick to eat away this sick taste, with apple- and shrimp puff pastry snacks.
In a park further down I buy a beautiful handpainted matruschka (one of those dolls with a smaller doll in it with a smaller doll in it and so on; this one's expensive, but way prettier than the machine painted ones at the other stands) for my pregnant sister. 
In the twilight of dusk, Ed plays a few games of chess with some older gentlemen, who do this daily, under a shelter especially built for it, and so cut him to pieces. I'm invited to play a game of checkers, but I stay away from a fruitless endeavour - I'd rather stick to taking Ed's picture, and listening to and talking with the men. In the evening we have fairly cheap pizza in an Italian restaurant (with a nice waitress, even though she misses some fingers on 1 hand, and strange digital pictures, pixellishly enlarged, of Venice-in-the-rain on the wall) in a vague suburb, while in the distance big fireworks go bang: it's a public holiday, because Odessa turns 100 today. We watch it from afar, before we return to the hotel. Day 9 09.01.2007: Odessa Today we have street breakfast, with puff pastry snacks and outdoor coffee-from-the-machine (yuck, sugar - good that I first procured an espresso at the hotel bar).  After, we decide to, before we leave, do some shopping, in the market place. This is easy, since it's right behind the hotel. We go from suprise to surprise there. In the section with the clothes and accessories we find the uniformity striking: stall after stall with the same shoes, jeans, shirts and belts. But Ed does find a rather unique and cute cap, for his girlfriend Saloua.
In the part with the dead fish we are struck by the enormous diversity. There are more species here than I ever saw in Holland, but no shark. My kind of sea, that Black one. What also stands out is the enormous amount of silverfish. Irregular too, in the Rhine delta: I mostly know these fishies from a drawing, way back, in a beautifully illustrated book with French rhymes ('Sur le pont d'Avignon' and the like).  We also buy sausages (tasty!) and chocolate (lovely stall with big boxes, 1 among them with photoes of Odessa on it). In the meat department we marvel at the ladies waiting there with just 1 dead bird, until they sell it so they can go home again: quite normal here. In the vegetables and fruit corner there are people like that too, sometimes with some 10 potatoes, or a heap of mouldy mandarins, as the only goods to sell. At the close of our shopping spree I have a large one-and-a-half litre softdrink bottle filled with Odessian red wine at a wine store behind the hotel. Nice! It turns out, upon testing that day, to be undrinkable, but when I reopen it at home, later on, its taste has dramatically improved. Ripewine. You learn every day.
 We stash the groceries in the car, and then get into the elevator upwards, to go and get the luggage from the room. But then, in the elevator, we run into Emily. She's a Chinese girl, of Canadian nationality. And she's in this hotel as an escort for a filthily rich Canadian Chinese, who has himself totally ripped off by Ukrainian 'brides', presented to him by an agency, and on whom he's already spent multiple thousands of dollars, without getting so much as a kiss in return.
Meanhwile, Emily sits in her hotel room alone, and hasn't yet gotten to see a single bit of Ukraine. 
We think this is so sad for Emily, that we decide to hang on for another day, and entertain her some. So we book another night and take her to the same beach where we had our second accident the other day, and that I roamed with Aad and Tom before.  Smart, to go back to that place: lifts the curse from it, concerning car accidents. Successfully, because we don't have one this time over, and cross the road without incidents. On its far side, we meet a Dutch couple, on holiday in a camper. They've just come from the Crimea, and don't like Ukraine. We don't agree with them completely, but wish them a very happy holiday.
While Emily dines with the rich Chinese, we fi-nal-ly find a real cheap restaurant where the locals eat: it is packed with youngsters, and the food there is fan-tas-tic. We have the waitress surprise us with the best she's got, and so we enjoy, among other things, calamari, loads of different kinds of fish unbeknownst to us on an assortment plate, big shrimps and, above all, mar-vel-lous mussels.  I've never seen them this big, and never tasted them so good, not even in Antwerp and Yerseke. Odessa finally more than lives up to its reputation as a port on the Black Sea. I happily flush the food down with a great stream of Staropramen (excellent Czech beer; Ed is most surprised that I'm able to glean that name form an enormous strain of Russian beer brandnames the waitress drones for me as possible choices when I tell her I want a litre glass of beer, but I've been to the Czech Republic more often than just during this rally, so that's why).
Then Ed and Emily hit the Itaka, but I am waisted, so I go to our new room, where I watch tv (a channel that exclusively broadcasts ingame sequences of new computergames; cute!) and phone Aad (who's arrived home safely and tells us that the returning teams are frenziedly mailing eachother); I fill him in on our adventures, so he can gleefully tell the rest of the rallypack that 'Team Taxi Adriaan has had another small accident'.  Besides this, he promises us great highways in Hungary. "It is evident to which use they put their EU money", he says. He also has hilarious stories of their return through the Ukrainian interior, stories I won't recount here, because Aad's writing his own report. I am soon under the impression that the way back will be more eventful, for many of the teams, than the rally itself was. We learn, for instance, that Team 'Last Man Standing' eventually left its Volvo by the roadside for the highwaymen, because it gave out, and 'Great Balls of Fire' has had to dig the Landrover out of the sand on a beach. I seriously wonder what's coming to us... ...but happy with more adventure to come, I finally fall asleep.
Day 10 09.02.2007: Odessa-Tiraspol-Chisinau The next morning we drive out of Odessa at last. As we breakfast on bread and sausage in the car, I contentedly steer it onto the sunsplashed road to Tiraspol. Tiraspol? Tiraspol. Tiraspol is the capital of Transnistria, Pridnestrovskaya Moldavskaya Respublika in full, an autonomous state that violently seceded from Moldova in 1992. Looking from Moldova it lies on the far side of the Dniestr, hence its name. 
The PMR has its own president, its own money, its own stamps and an army, but noone recognizes its existence, except Putin's Russia. If you're born with a Transnistrian passport, you're stuck well and true: 'cause you can't travel from there because noone recognizes it, and you can't even go to Russia, because it doesn't border it. 
Russia recognizes it because it stands to profit from a country of which it can deny being involved in anything that happens there. But that it does is certain, because most of the people there have Russian passports. This I was told by Peter Bruyn, journalist friend from Haarlem, who travelled there twice, once for Rails, the NS-magazine. He also told me that Transnistria has three kinds of industries: metal, textile and foodstuff. We're talking arms, fake brand clothing and cigarettes. Peter ran into weapons buyers of Al Qaeda in a discotheque there, and into a soccer pro from Ghana. See, the Tiraspol mob is so rich that it has bought a pro soccer club together, and has erected a bloody expensive soccer stadium, where, would you believe, Orange has played a match against Moldova, because the stadium in Chisinău, the Moldovan capital, was much worse. And this Ghanean, at the first possible opportunity, wanted to come to Holland, where his brother plays for Twente FC, I seem to recall from Peter's story. So I MUST go, to a country like that. Ed thinks I'm crazy, but does tag along. And so we drive towards Tiraspol. The road looks like it's been made for my favourite racing game, Need for Speed: two lanes, wide, with low shrubs on the left and right, and ferociously backlit by the sun. I enjoy my ass off, especially since there's almost no other traffic. Who wants to go to Transnistria? At the border, not many people turn out to want this indeed. The rows aren't long, so we're pleased. This means it's our turn soon. But we are in for it big time. We are awaited by a big, muscled customs officer. He looks, particularly, like Duke Nukem. "I'll rip off your head and shit down your neck", that Duke Nukem. He doesn't have to say it too, I already believe him. He speaks fluent German because, he explains, he's worked in Germany for a while. That we can understand him does not work to our advantage: he makes life very difficult for us. He namely feels that we ought to have a police statement pertaining to the visible damage to our car, to prove that this damage was not incurred in Ukraine, and he explains that without one, we cannot leave the country for Kisinev (Russian for Chisinău). We explain that we incurred the damage in Poland, and that upon entering Ukraine, noone told us anything about such a police statement. It doesn't soften his heart. He presents us with two choices: driving back to the nearest hamlet and buying said statement from the police there ("and I'll have to bribe those officers too", I think), or leaving the country through the border checkpost we came in through ("that's some 450 miles back, via Kiev and L'viv to the Polish border! He's out of his mind!" I think)). It's all bullshit of course because all of us understand what he's on about: he just wants money. But now Ed is adamant: there will be none. He elaborately explains that we drove to Ukraine for a good cause, that our money is needed for that, more particularly for a hospital in the Rumanian city of Braşov, where we have yet to go to. It's a lie, of course, but if he can lie, so can we. Ed is so tenacious that in the end he gives up and lets us go without paying, but does menacingly say "I will file a report!". Phoowey. Nice getaway. But we ain't there yet. Ten yards further up stands the next official: the one who will take our car apart. In the burning sun we line up the entire content of the car on concrete benches put there for the purpose, and fill out an incomprehensible form written in cyrillic. And you have to do this diligently too. 'Cause if you fill out 'I have no mobile phone with me', but they do find it on you, you're stuffed. You must also state how much of which currency you're carrying, and eventually Ed has to come inside with them to show this statement is correct, by showing them his wallet. Which, of course, is nothing but an entree for what it's really about: he eventually buys the guy off for 5 dollars. He namely carries some by coincidence. We repack everything, but then we ain't there yet. Since this was the Ukrainian side of the border. Now for the Transnistrian one. It starts with another commanding customs officer, this one right out of 'King Ottokar's Sceptre': in a green uniform, with a big flat cap and an oversized mustache. His creepiness turns out to mostly be superficial: he benignly waves us on. But he does direct us leftward, where we turn out to have to park at a separate customs office. It's for them to better swindle us. In the row to our right, the locals waiting for their own border crossing look at us both pityingly and jealously. I soon understand why. We're supposed to buy two visa here. One for Moldova, valid for some 90 days, and one for Transnistria, valid for just three hours. Transnistria, of course, is some 190 miles long, but only 20 miles wide, so that should be doable. Except that we know that those visa were abolished per January 1st of this year. We're being swindled, therefore. We do not give them a hard time about it, because it will all take much longer if we do: we make it out by paying 20 euros. And so we're only three hours further before we drive into Transnistria at last. Not bad. We decide to drive carefully, for a mobstate like this one must sport loads of brigands. We see 1 team-with-hairdryer by the roadside, indeed, but we calmly drive by them and nod friendly at them. "Shite", one can hear them think. And then, at the end of a long straight road, there finally stands the immense sign reading 'Tiraspol'. Or, well, sign? It's more of a sculpture: it's there in monumentally large letters. 
Tiraspol itself starts with the archetypical soviet appartment blocks, although they don't look very poorish here. And the rest of the Tiraspol we drive into particularly looks like a south-American favela, but one with good quality housing: single story, with a garden around it. We park in front of a gorgeous onion church, and walk into town.  We're in luck, as it turns out. Everyone is celebrating the 'day of autonomy': a national holiday. This then looks like a country fair, since Tiraspol is not much larger than a country village: a massive graduation ceremony of a school for song and dance is underway, sausage is being grilled, beer's being poured and, all the way down main street, small horseshoeshaped parties in the sidestreets are held. We withdraw some money from a cash machine (it's rubles here, but not the Russian ones: they have their own) and walk up and down the street, to inhale the atmosphere. Tiraspol is a city of low buildings. It's like walking through an American suburb. Wide streets, low structures. Not what I'm used to. But Ed explains that this is a typical Soviet city. There are, by the by, some large buildings too. In the distance, I spot the building featured on the calendar that Peter sent me, and we take our own picture in front of city hall.
And although we're there only briefly, we do take in some of the etraordinary status of this country: at one of the horseshoeshaped parties they've put exhibitory boards up, out in the street, the kind we know from libraries and museums: large and rectangular, with pictures and text. They describe the struggle for independence and, on them, we see men with kalashnikovs, running through trenches. 1992? Brrr. That's close.  And it gets closer yet. Because as we walk back, having bought some food and drink at a shop at the turning point (I have a cream horn there, for the first time since my early youth, but the ice tea's more important, 'cause it's bloody hot, in Tiraspol, today), we see that one of the horseshoeshaped parties on this side of the street is hermetically sealed off to the public. It is peopled by expensive men in suits, and guarded by types too large for their black twopiece, with earpieces in and crewcut hairdos of the Spetznaz type. Most probably, this is the arms dealers partying with the president. We act like we don't notice, but I am quizzically studied by the earpieces, who stare estranged at my own earpiece in particular (it's the Jabra BT250v bluetooth headset for my phone - what do they know). Ed buys some barbecued meat further on, of which I partake a little (not too much, doesn't fit beside the cream horn), and then we walk back to the car.
We drive out of Tiraspol and Edwin thinks he is smart by sending us to a very small border crossing, across a really bad road with big potholes. There, we are indeed only 1 of 2 cars, but the other one is Moldovan and is let through: we are sent back by two uniformed customs officers, because, as foreigners, we are to use the larger crossing. 
Probably has to do with the otherwise waylaid rightful bribes to be incurred by his colleagues there. Well alright then.  Having arrived at that larger border crossing between Transnistria and Moldova we fear the worst, in loss of time. Because it looks impressive. They've obviously done that on purpose, out of spite towards the Moldovans: it is marked PMR in very large letters and there's an enormous flag. Flag? Flag. The PMR, besides its own stamps, also has its own flag: red with a fiery green band across it.
The customs officer checking our passports (I now understand this is the construct at all borders in this part of the world: you first get one who checks your papers, and then one who checks your car - it was even like that in Przemyśl, but we didn't notice it there because, probably because of the consulary effort, they came together) is obviously making up something he can use as a reason to take some money from us, when we ask: "Can we buy that flag?". He looks at us befuddled. "But that's my national symbol!" "Precisely, that's why we want it!" Now I see three things in his eyes. That we can do no wrong no more. Dollar signs. And the realization that he won't be allowed to sell that flag. But he tries anyway. He walks from the booth, to the other side of the road, and up the stairs into the office, and his boss. Who throws a fit of laughter, but does tell him off in Transnistrian. Whether he's lost his mind, probably. 
He returns dejected. We cannot buy the flag, but we may drive on without paying him. This, we feel sorry about for him: so we hand him a pack of leftover Ukrainian greebees and drive ten yards further up, to the car-apart-taker. And we woo him too. Nothing gets unpacked, because we whip out a print of the Wikipedia-info on Tiraspol (prior to our journey, I have printed that info on all the cities we thought we would go by, to read in the car). The guy loves it and is very happy with it: we can drive on. He does first ask us how much we paid for the two visa, on the other side of Transnistria. And we are foolish enough to actually tell him. From now on, he will ask for €20,- too, for them. Their way to control pricing, apparently.  On the Moldovan side of the border we are stopped again, this time by a jolly and mustachioed customs official, who doesn't ask us anything, but immediately commands us inside, where he elaborately produces a stamped and signed green paper for us and presents it to us with a triumphant smile. We evidently are to be overjoyed to receive it. It costs seven dollars.
Pardon? Dollars. Good that Ed has some with him. I think it's a highway toll sticker, but find out much later that it's an environmentally technical certification of our vehicle (which he hasn't deemed worthy of one single look). Then, the taking-the-car-apart-business follows. Three ugly mustachioed types in uniform appear before us. OMG. They will most likely make our life miserable. But all of a sudden a woman, in the same customs uniform, appears before them and stops us! She is an overwhelming natural beauty, and she asks what kind of weird car this is, that we're in, with all those stickers on it and all. I get out enthusiastically, have her have a look inside, and take her to the front, where I proudly point at the sticker, explain it, and tell her the whole rally story. Three quarters into it she gives up. She raises her hands, stops me in midsentence, and then, somewhat apologetically, and with the most disarming smile I'll get to see this trip, says "Welcome to Moldova". I am in love instantly. With her and with this country. Free hospitality! It is a rare thing, in these parts. She goes to sit down on some steps by the roadside again, shoulders sagging, obviously unhappy with her tedious existance as customs officer. How we'd have loved to take her with us. The three mustaches look in our direction very jealously as we drive on, into a sunsplashed Moldova (this border crossing took us half an hour; so we needed 3,5 hours to get into Moldova from Ukraine, in total - I think we set a record!). 
So, across secondary roads we drive to Chisinău. They turn out to be okay, so all goes well. Still in daylight, we drive into the capital, where we hunt for an affordable hotel and a exchange booth. The local currency namely is a new one here again: the Moldovan lei. We find a lot of those booths, but they're all shut. Then, on a crossing littered with them (strange - this town does not look threatening, or like it's in the middle of a revolution or large demonstrations; but maybe this is BECAUSE there are that many there) we are halted by policemen. They check our passports and then fire up an utmostly friendly conversation about where we are from, what we are doing here, and how they can be of help to us. We are under the impression that they are overjoyed to finally meet someone - they're just plain bored. We learn that 1 of them studied in Paris, and he therefore speaks fluent French. Amazing. They even obligingly stroll along with us, athree, chatting, to an open exchange booth they point out to us, in a supermarket. We do decide to look around some more to compare exchange rates, and eventually end up getting it cheaper at a cash dispenser, further up. 
Then, we have dinner in an ex-cel-lent and cheap café and restaurant, about the only one we find open close by: 'Mon Café', it's called. On the way back to the car I suddenly spot what I saw in Ukraine before too: I spy a Dutch delivery van, with Moldovan number plates. 'Dijkstra Schilderwerken, Oosterwolde', this one has written on the side. I jot that, and the plates' number, down and will, upon return home, Google the company and write them, that their car is driving around Moldova. They will then tell me it is not stolen, but sold on, and be very amused, but. You never know, I think, when I fold the note away. Then, we billet ourselves, in Hotel Chisinău. This proves to be a dubious choice. For although, on the outside, it looks like a more picturesque, and therefore probably better hotel than the stalinist appartment blocks we see further up, inside it turns out to be the height of stalinist hotels. Friendly staff and wide marble stairs in the hallway, but there the comparison with a large country mansion ends. Above, on the floor guarded by an ageing lady behind a veneer wooden desk, the green, weathered (but meticulously vacuumed) carpet creaks, in a long, musty corridor with weathered plaster and yellowishly shining ceiling lamps, of which only three work. In the room is a large, broken fridge, and there is a bath and shower combination, but no hot water. Behind the toilet, through a hole in the wall, the pipes that run the entire height of the hotel building are visible. One can give morse signals to one's lower neighbours and such. The beds date back to the Great War and are fitted with ditto blankets. Further comfort is nonexistant. What do we care. We're wasted. We go to sleep, but not before I've paid the guards, downstairs, to guard my car, parked lonesomely alone on an enormous parking lot in front of the hotel. Day 11 09.03.2007: Chisinau-Constanza The following morning, after breakfast (in an enormous, dark party hall below and in the back of the building, where we are the only ones having breakfast and are served by an utmostly friendly lady who probably already worked there when the communists were still in power), and a short stroll through the hotel (during which, on the floor above the dining hall, we find all kinds of travel agencies, who rent office space from the hotel and have busy patronage - they organize travel to, predominantly, countries in the vicinity, such as Rumania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Turkey), we have a pleasant conversation with Peter, a Dutchman who turns out to have arrived here yesterday night having driven straight here from Holland. He is en route to Ukraine - just for fun, holidaying. He turns out to be a veteran in these parts and therefore strikes up a bond with Ed. I, meanwhile, buy a bottle of Chisinău beer off the beau-ti-ful woman behind the hotel bar, for home. 
Then, we head into town to change money for paying the hotel, and to buy souvenirs, and eventually do so in an underground passage with shops, where I proceed to leave my car papers, driving licence included, behind. Thankfully, they're still there when I return running, panting. I could kiss the salesman. I happily walk back to the Combo, with my papers and a colouring book with 'American' animals for my niece Emma. We drive out of Chisinău. My love of yesterday, of Moldova, again turns out not to be misplaced: I think the country is mag-ni-fi-cent. Much greener than Ukraine, and the highway we're on is the road from Odessa to Tiraspol raised to the square: beautiful, freshly constructed, holeless and wide, with low brushes on either side and a good view of the undulating scenery therefore, which is Ardennes-plus here: still hills instead of mountains, but a lot higher and overall larger than in Diekirch, for instance. Pity that Moldova is the poorest country in Europe. That's probably because they're unattractive to tourists: they are too far away from everywhere, and they have no ski slopes and beaches. Still, they could turn it into something, 'cause they do have splendid lakes, on which sailing and fishing must be good. All that's needed is some cash to pay for boats, a few hotels and a good airport, and hey presto. I smell chances. If only I had money to invest! That gorgeous highway harbours dangers too, in a land that apparently is not used to gorgeous highways: on the right hand side of the road, some five yards below, at the bottom of the incline, we see a car wreck, on its side, that evidently has hit a tree at a speed greatly exceeding 65 miles an hour, after flying 12 yards across the bank. Big game crossing, probably. And where maybe the big game survived, the driver most certainly cannot have. You don't live through a crash like that. And also, some further down, that gorgeous highway suddenly ends. Visions of my first trek to the Czech Republic, when the highway to Prague did the same. Now, at the end, where the roadworkers are, there's a terribly pissed off cop, irritated no end by the morons who, 12 miles back, ignored the sign saying 'road not finished', and who throws an absolute fit when he spies two crazy tourists in a rally car who did the same. Fuck the hell off! It is a clear message we quickly heed, 'cause this gentleman doesn't look like he'll be happy with some greebees. Instead, across secondary roads, we move towards Ungheni, and now we run into the worst road of the trip: a totally driven-to-pieces Hitlerway (there once was concrete, and it is so worn that sand would have been better: now there's concrete as if it has rained down: totally uneven and with enormous holes). We hobble along and up a hill, in the burning sun, at some 6 miles an hour, for miles, and ignore the hitchhiking farmer's wives by the side of the road. Can't take them with us anyhow. When we get down the hill again, the pain is suddenly over: a fine asphalt road starts there, and it leads us to an after all quite secluded border crossing, some 12 miles past Ungheni (at Ungheni itself, where we do spot the EU border, with oldfashioned no man's land, guard towers and armed two man patrols, like you're back in the old GDR, only trains cross that border via a railway bridge). 
Along the way, we see the same picture everywhere: rolling hills of fertile soil, with abandoned kolkhozes on them. The buildings haven't been torn down, but just been left. In front of them there are new farms, small detached houses, the personal property of the farmers from which they work the farmlands, usually larger than Flevoland province. The border crossing poses little problem, this partly because we already carry the environmental certificate for Moldova, for we would have otherwise had to pay for it now, as it turns out. But the most corpulent, utmostly benign mustache here soon thinks it's all cool. He takes a peek inside the back of the wagon, then lets us drive on to the Rumanian part of the border. We are optimistic. We should after all be welcomed home here, since this is the EU border. 
Well, this takes a while. Because this EU border, to my pleasure, proves to be heavily guarded. All that sports no EU numberplate is com-ple-te-ly taken apart before it may cross. But we may, when it's our turn, upon producing our Dutch passport and having declared that we transport no arms, excessive amounts of alcohol and cigarettes or other contraband, immediately drive on, and we don't even have to pay the officials. What relief! "They'll have been right pissed when the EU arrived", Ed says, "must have cost them half their income". Sure, but it is remarkable that they appear to be noncorrupt, which we like a lot. Twenty yards further on we buy a fresh highway toll sticker, for Rumania this time, and then we are allowed to drive into the country past the last official, who nods at us friendly. We drive through a quite rural area (geese and horses on the road everywhere) to the picturesque city of Iaşi, where we debark for a walkabout and the acquisition of a roadmap (TomTom's still at a loss here). 
Then, a hellish ride starts. We shall drive all night, towards Constanza, down the utter south of Rumania: a resort on the Black Sea on wich Ed has set his heart. "We're going to relax on the beach." I don't immediately believe him, for the road towards it is much less than relaxed. Largely unlit, with an admittedly rea-so-na-ble surface, but littered with dead things (probably predominantly dogs, but this has become hard to establish - it is continuously, that Ed and I exclaim "Oi, sumfin' dead!", on driving past it), and the Rumaniacs drive like insolent thrillseekers with a definite deathwish. Overtaking slower traffic on a two-lane road as you head right into the onstorming car has evolved into an artform in this country. And then there's roadworks everywhere, which make for a lot of delay and bumping. Not to mention the two times we take a wrong turn and end up on utterly inaccessible, bumpy secondary roads. We turn around again in both cases, since it's undoable. But in the end we reach Constanza, where we pass a ridiculously high number of hotels before, at the far back (or front) end of town, by the marina on the Black Sea, we discover a won-der-ful hotel: the Palace, where we happily billet ourselves. The whole hotel has just been renovated on the inside, with beautiful arches, carpet and lighting, and the room is luxurious and fitted with all necessary amenities, including a balcony on the side of the monumental facade (which reminds me most of the stately buildings around Hyde Park in London). We lay us down to rest contentedly, in the sweltering heat: it's above 86 here, night and day, apparently. Day 12 09.04.2007: Constanza And the next day's a hot one too, in multiple aspects. First, weatherwise: it's a glorious, beautiful, warm day, sunsplashed with pretty blue skies, and I enjoy it to the fullest as I have an elaborate and tasty breakfast on the terrace at the back of the hotel, looking out over the marina, the Black Sea and Constanza's skyline along it. Ed skips that breakfast: he takes it very slow, today. Good on him. After breakfast, we take a long tour around Constanza. We find a restaurant where we decide to eat that night, see an a-ma-zing amount of hotels (we count tens of them, but I fear that in reality there are more than 100), and drive down a toll road, past them, to Mamaia (a resort just out of Constanza). Just beyond it we find a large port, reminiscent most of a miniature version of IJmuiden (steel mill included). Towards it leads an impressive canal, dug by hand in communist days. And behind it is an enormous lake, on the inland edge of which large housing development is underway. This, as said, also happens along the seaboard between lake and sea, but there it's mainly hotels and appartment towers, where here the ground's somewhat cheaper of course, but enormous detached mansions with large garden and wall around it are constructed. 
Along the canal we drive from Mamaia to Costineşti. This is a third resort on the Black Sea, popular mainly with youngsters. The atmosphere is a bit Greek: a small street with stands selling everything, from beach paraphernalia to picture postcards, foodstuffs, clothing and sunglasses, a lot of small restaurants, and a big, wide sandy beach on a beautifully azure sea. And they've even constructed an inland lake, over which jetskis roar, and in the distance is Costineşti's symbol, according to the postcards: a shipwreck, which I think is there to please divers, above all. We admire the pretty ladies and take a dive into the water. This costs me my Swatch. Damn. So they didn't fit the battery properly after all, last time over. See the thing is supposed to be waterproof, which is why I bought it, so that I wouldn't have to take it off in the shower - I used to lose watches continuously in that manner, before that, 'cause of my legendary absent-mindedness. But oh well. It's served me loyally and without trouble for many years, and it does solve a problem. My father gave me a Medion-heartratemeter, shortly before I left, which is also a digital watch (and which I thererefore haven't brought along this journey, on purpose, so that I wouldn't lose it during), and kept pondering each morning which of the two watches to wear. So, problem solved. But I do now buy a belt bag, because I'm fed up with losing things. Should have done that way before, of course, and costs a fortune moreover (20 euros or sumfin'), but it does make me happier. We eat schnitzels below grapes that taste of frying fat, then drive on. Outside Costineşti, on a railway emplacement, we find an old train abandoned to the weather conditions, attached to which a locomotive, looking brand new, is rotting away. Odd. 
The circle complete and back in Constanza we have our first and only fierce argument this journey. I have, behind the wheel, been of a mind, ever since Costineşti, to take a ride in the cable-lift from Constanza to Mamaia, and to do so from Mamaia. The first, Ed agrees with, but the second, not, it turns out. As we drive past the funicular station in Constanza he explodes. "Here! Stop here! You're not going to pay for that fucking toll road again are you?". But the extra €3,- this toll road costs is expressly not my problem. What IS my problem is that, because Ed suddenly gets an idea, for the umpteenth time we now suddenly have to make an unexpected manoeuvre in traffic, thus end up in a life-threatening situation in traffic through a town we aren't used to. Avoiding this kind of situation is more than worth 3 euros to me, and I will even contend that both accidents we had this trip would not have happened when this kind of sudden moves, that I would NEVER make of my own accord, would not have been. There. 
Thankfully, the row does not last long, although I remain angry for at least another hour, as we experience the cable-lift ride and roam the beach in Mamaia.  That cable-lift is way cool by the way. It wouldn't look out of place between Bloemendaal and Zandvoort (about the same distance; that's where those tuktuks transport bathers from the one to the other now), but would absolutely not be allowed there because it doesn't meet Dutch safety standards: the ride at times skirts stalinist appartment blocks containing the older hotels and condoes on this seaboard, so that if one of those gondolas would detach itself you could have Bijlmer Disasteresque scenes when the thing would sail into your bedroom. Fun, though, to wave at the oncoming gondolas - and a great view of the resort with, among other things, an enormous outdoor swimming pool. Would not be possible in Holland either, but is easier to maintain in a warm and dry climate such as this one.
We marvel, on the beach, at what in Ceauşescu's time most probably was a very hip pier-restaurant to the apparatsjiks, but is now a concrete ruin which would also be outlawed in Holland, due to safety hazard. 
Back in Constanza we refresh ourselves at the hotel, and then we set off for the restaurant we discovered earlier during the day. It sadly turns out not to be one, but just a bar, so having had a drink there we leave again (pity, pleasant garden to be in). We eventually eat quite close by, on the far side of Constanza's main drag, at a fine steakhouse, which after dinner delivers a bill headed "Pizza e Pasta" (apparently they forgot to fill in something where it says 'Your restaurant's name here'). But they serve great food, and there's Leffe to accompany it. Nice ending, to a long day of pleasure. Day 13 09.05.2007: Constanza-Bukarest-Sinaia Pleasure continues next morning: Ed enjoys breakfast this time. Then, we find the condition of the outside of the Palace-hotel is pretty bad after all: the terrace we had breakfast on, when viewed from the harbour, awkwardly hangs from the back of the building. But renovation is imminent (we can deduce from the freshly renovated interior), so it will probably all be alright, in the near future. We run into a dead end, at this back of the hotel, and so have to turn around to get on to the road out of Constanza. Our goal is Bukarest. I want to look at Ceauşescu's palace, and Ed wants to look up his acquaintances. Acquaintances? Acquaintances. Edwin used to work at the Carlton Square Hotel in Haarlem (now a major client to his own Taxi Adriaan), and in so doing, ran into Claudio - a Rumanian who was in copiers for Ricoh and came to Holland off and on to follow training. They became good friends, and so, now we're in the neighbourhood, we pay a visit to his family. His family? His family. 'Cause he isn't there himself: he's on holiday, in Greece. But Ed knows his family too, since he's visited them twice already. En route to Bukarest we only find out by the time we reach Slobozia that there's a beautiful new highway, the A2, between Constanza and Bukarest, and that we therefore could have forgone the secondary road with all those roadworks and all that truck traffic. Pity, for we needlessly lose a lot of time. But, never mind: now to take it from here. 
"There's something missing!" "What?" "Haven't seen a horsecart yet!" It's a beautiful highway. It's like driving down the A9 - without any traffic around you. Wonderful. We drive into Bukarest and park some 30 yards from the offices of Roel Copiers, Claudio's company, which he's handed over to his father and brother Gaby by now - we meet them both there. Over a cup of coffee we discuss soccer (Gaby is as much in awe of Orange as we are of the Rumanian team, and all of us hope that Orange will beat Bulgaria in 3 days time), Claudio's new enterprise (he's trying to, in Germany, sell a system that, just like the Alcas one, supplies music to the catering industry - but comes with video; it's not a hit yet, but you have to start somewhere eh, and if you already have a well-running company, it is of course always possible you get bored), and anything else that comes to mind. I ask Gaby, for instance, what the deal is with those Constanzan hotels. He explains it's all money laundering, and that Constanza does lure some 70.000 tourists from the wider region each summer, but that those hotel owners couldn't care less as to whether the hotels are fully booked or not. That explains a lot yeah.  We inform the gentlemen that we'll pay a visit to their (ex)wife and mother, then leave the building. We walk down Bukarest's enormous central boulevard (constructed by order of Ceauşescu at the expense of the beautiful old inner city, which therefore no longer exists) that, with its tall, monumental appartment blocks reminds us of the Champs Elysées in Paris.
The boulevard runs into Ceauşescu's palace, and it, indeed, as stories about it say, is an utterly megalomaniac thing, constructed at the expense of the people. We do not venture into it, since there's too much we have to do today, but walk back parallel to the boulevard where, behind it, we find some leftover beautiful old houses and an old church surrounded by total ugliness (that's what, according to Ed, Ceauşescu did throughout Rumania, rather than demolishing them, he boxed in churches with ugly communist blocks, until they disappeared out of sight). Then we drive to the home of Claudio's mother, or rather, the homes of Claudio, Gaby and their mother. They're three, namely, large, square and detached, standing next to eachother on a plot of land some 40 by 333 yards large (with, of course, a fence around it), that Claudio once bought for a song and now is worth a fortune, despite the fact that it's situated right below the flight corridor for the smaller Bukarest airport. Along the way we drive by an Opel-dealer, where we therefore stop in hopes of mirror. Alas: two weeks delivery time. But it's coming down! I voice the expectation that we'll find it in stock in Germany, just before the Dutch border. 
Claudio's mother relieves us warmly (as does Ice, the husky-with-three-kids). She feeds us large quantities of pilav-with-chicken-and-paprika, feta-like-cheese, beer and Snickers-ice cream. We watch tv together with Claudio's mother in law, and her granddaughter (Gaby's daughter). On the news, we see that along the road leading from Iaşi to Constanza, more particularly in the Galazi region, everything's been washed away by enormous floods, that have done great damage in Moldova too. We seem to have made a clean but narrow escape. In the northwest of the country, meanhwile, a tornado is wreaking havoc, we learn. Way to go not! Before we leave, we talk to Gaby, just returned from work, and look around the other two houses. Then we drive towards the Carpatians, and to Sinaia. It's a mountain resort in the heart of Dracula country. We can hardly make it out, because it's dark and raining hard, but we notice we're in the mountains, since the road towards it juts upward sharply and it's full of S-bends, the temperature is dropping fast, and the air's a lot fresher. The town is packed with hotels, but we keep going up the mountain, under the false impression that higher up, hotels will be cheaper. This turns out to be the other way 'round: the hotels up top are much more expensive, because the locals assume that, if you end up there, you've already fruitlessly tried all lower ones, and will therefore be willing to lay down more money. We are, on the other hand, experiencing a wonderful bit of touristic route. We make our first try at Hotel Intim. That doesn't just sound wonderfully wrong, it IS: it's a 1-star hotel (that's proudly marked beside it, on a sign), that looks like the ghost villa from the Scooby Doo cartoons, and inside is exactly what you'd expect of a hotel in the Carpatians: creaking floorboards, long hallway, painting on the wall of a Transsylvanian ghostcastle-with-just-1-lit-window on it and bats around it, and a dusty counter at the far end of the hallway, with a bent, dusty, little man with a moustache and suspicious glance behind it. Does he have any free rooms. "No." That's all, folks. Pity! We drive on and end up in Hotel Alex, indicated everywhere wildly. It turns out to be a thieving mob. €50,-, for a double room consisting of four spaces: a narrow hallway, a bedroom, a small sitting room, and a toilet-shower combination. That sounds roomy, but everything's unnervingly low and narrow, the toilet runs permanently, the shower cabin is lurching to the side, and everything looks like it's in dire need of renovation. We are, nonetheless, so wasted that for today we don't give a hoot: time to sleep. Day 14 09.06.2007: Sinaia-Vorderhornbach The next morning I must, to reach the breakfast hall, move around the front of the building on the outside. This has advantages, because it's a real mountain morning: slightly humid, but fresh above all, with typical clear morning air, and this low mountain range before me is beautiful to behold, in the morning mist. Breakfast turns out to not be included in the price. Thieves. Then, I make matters worse by misunderstanding the menu. I interpret 'kaiser' as kaiserbrötchen, and order two. "Two rolls", I add to make certain. I further order some local cheese and sausage. What the little girl in pornographically sound traditional dress then brings me is 1 portion of cheese, and 2 portions of sausage, 1 of which enormous: that namely is the double portion of kaiser, I later deduce, from the bill. She also puts 4 rolls down - 'cause there are 2 in every portion, and she understood I asked for '2 bread'. Okay, my own fault, but I can't help thinking that there would have been less problems had the menu been more clear and the staff more linguistically educated. I have Ed, upon his arrival at the table, therefore make use of my sandwich filling, saves money after all. Oh well. We didn't wake with bitemarks in our necks, which is worth a lot. Then we make our getaway, to go and admire the palace of Rumania's first king, around the corner. Beautiful! And I'm saying that without us having been inside (given the horde of people waiting to take the tour, we don't think that's a pleasant plan, and we do think it'd be too time-consuming). It is a fairytale hunting castle, but most modest for a king. 
I decide to move to the toilet, when it appears along the road to the parking lot down the hill. There's a cleaning lady there to whom I hand some money. She hands me two sheets of toilet paper and points to the men's block. There, I discover that the bog is a French hole in the ground. I throw the two sheets in and walk out again. Shit.  By the parking lot, there's a Bastion hotel. Better! I walk in and ask: "Do you have a toilet?" "No, sir." "No?" "Only if you order something." "But I can't just pay for using the toilet without ordering anything?" "No." "But I don't want to order anything, I want to use the toilet." She's unrelenting. "No can do, sir." "Then I'd like one coffee, please." She smiles and nods. "What do you want in your coffee, sir?" I do not wait for the coffee, triumphantly shout: "Nothing!" over my shoulder, and leg it into the, by the by utterly comfortable, bathroom. There.
1 Swiftly downed coffee later, we drive downhill. Ed, after that, changes some money in Sinaia, and picks up a local newspaper (that of Claudio's late father in law, newspaper tycoon - Claudio's turned it into a paper in tabloid format before he sold it, following his father in law's demise). Then, past Braşov (ugly town, starkly Stalinist, grey, dilapidated appartment blocks; Ed tells me he knows it because some women doctors live there, whom he's met in Holland when they were there for something or other), we drive to Sibiu. It is a city of which Gaby said we had to visit it, because it is "beautiful" and, currently, cultural capital of Europe (this probably partly because of the efforts of Prince Charles of Wales, who seems to have taken a liking to it, according to Gaby). I must admit we don't get to see the centre of town, because we drive past it, but we find the rest of Sibiu to be as ugly as Braşov, and since the road there is a big orgy of roadworks and Rumaniacally driving bastards, we give it a pass. 
On to the Hungarian border. Well, this takes a while. See, since Rumania by now gets EU money, but not enough to construct decent highways all over, the money's being used for massive repair of the secondary roads. This will no doubt lead to joy in two years time; but now we only cross the Hungarian border after nightfall. And this is really not to blame on our elaborate getting of groceries, at the Spar in Deva.  Cool fun though: at the Hungarian border we drive onto TomTom's map. We literally see the solitary end of a road appear, on screen. Back in the civilized world! This does indeed turn out to be the case, since although Hungary is big, and we therefore burn enough miles to make changing places behind the wheel an utter necessity (at this stage, one of us sleeps in the back of the car while the other steers, this because we are fed up with it; we COULD spend a night in Hungary, but just don't feel like it), we make great speed, along (Adrianus' promise pans out to the fullest) GREAT highways.
When, in the middle of the night, we roll into Austria, I'm behind the wheel once more. It's raining cats and dogs by now, and Austria too, turns out to be larger than ever suspected. By the time, just after dawn, we arrive at the German border, we have already experienced that Austria also has a morons' parade (that's what I always call rush hour traffic in Holland; you really get to notice, after a quiet taxi nightshift, that around six thirty in the morning that morons' parade starts, of fools driving to work in an idiotic and lifethreatening manner).  In Germany (we already count two borders where we've been waved on without trouble upon presenting our Dutch passport: this happened both at the Rumanian-Hungarian as well as at the Hungarian-Austrian one, and this Austrian-German one doesn't even exist anymore, but for a sign) we halt at a petrol station and the tears well up in my eyes at the treatment I get from the service station attendant.
 Leave it to the Germans. The transaction is settled within a minute, I have attentively been asked about my general condition and my expectancy of personal happiness the coming day, which I've been wished in large quantities, and likewise, sir. All of this in this sing-song Swiss accent. Fa-bu-lous. There's a lot to be learned, for Schiphol's Total.
Just like driving. They can learn that from the Germans, in Holland. See, Germans really are the most civilized drivers in Europe. They drive like my driving instructor, but fast. That's how it should be! But it would be nice if they elongated those turnoffs off their magnificent autobahns a bit. Even in an Opel Combo they regularly produce near-death experiences. Somewhat further up we drive into Austria again. Austria again? Austria again. We namely have been en route, for by now the past 25 hours, to my childhood memory. They tell me one should never return to places formerly visited, because it can only lead to letdown. I shall belie that contention: I return, to Vorderhornbach. It is a small farming hamlet, and it's situated, near Reutte, at the edge of the Lechtal. Not on the side where Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, her family and half the world tend to ski, but on the non-tourist other one, in the Allgäuer Alps. I've been there twice earlier, in 1983 and 1984. So I was 17 and 18 years old at the time. And on a school trip. Twice, for a week, we were kicked out of our beds every morning, in Vorderhornbach, in a Belgian holiday home, to march up a mountain with our severely hangovered heads from 7 in the morning until abouts 3 in the afternoon, then down again. Both trips left an unforgettable impression on me, and they at least partly made me who I am. And I had long been of a mind to, as soon as I'd buy a car, first drive it to Vorderhornbach to climb the Grubachspitze anew - but this didn't come to pass, since between dream and reality lies complexity. So now that the chance arises after all, I must go. Ed, thankfully, is not the most difficult of men, so agreed to the plan in Constanza already. Day 15 09.07.2007: Vorderhornbach  Now that TomTom sends us off the highway, and high into the mountains, on the climbing road from Imst to the Lechtal, great triumph takes hold of me. It also envelops Ed: but this is more because we turn out to drive the Combo into snow. We pull over in elation, and proceed to throw snowballs at eachother! What wonderful contrast, to the 100 degrees on the beach in Constanza!
We drive this most beautiful part of route openmouthed. For even during those schooltrips I had not rode down such a pretty road: we couldn't have, back then, with that big Belgian touringcar. This is the kind of road that, in real wintery circumstances, simply gets closed, and all you see looks like a Märklin miniature railway - all, but for the mountains, for I haven't seen any miniature whatsoever come close to them the way they tower above us now, here, in all their majesty. Now we finally know where those ridiculous little trees came from: they grow here!  And when, alongside Gasthof Rose, I get out of the car in the middle of Vorderhornbach, that is the moment of my victory. I am overcome.
In a whirl, I walk towards the Grubach, and the supermarket built after those HAVO bastards (they were billeted in the neighbouring village of Elmen but came to our VWO-village to climb Grubach) had plundered the village store with the 90-year old, stone-deaf lady for years on end. That supermarket, thank God, hasn't grown, since then, and the Belgian home is still there. There's the balcony, where I threw a stool at Rogier van der Tweel's head, when he kept stalking me with a ghettoblaster playing (LOUSY music) New Order's 'Blue monday' (it only just not landed on a Citroën passing). And there's the corner room where Ruben Snater knocked me out accidentally with the heavier pair of boxing gloves belonging to Paul Vos (he'd brought along two pairs, for fun, I was wearing the featherweight pair, and Ruben, being 6 ft. tall, made short work of me). There's the corner window, from which I raised my eyes, towards the mountains, from where my help came, in the shape of inspiration, for several poems (in Dutch, which is why I won't repeat them here).  And so there is Gasthof Rose, the hotel-cum-cafe-restaurant where we got pissed out of our minds each night on Strohrum, and were frisked before we left the premises, because otherwise they'd be left without glassware (I still have 1 small Strohrum-glass, I remember; it's been drunk from quite a bit since then, but never again Strohrum - I've never had rumcoke again, by the by, since rum ain't rum if it isn't labelled 'Strohrum').
We were young and rash, but generally good. We still are. And so they are here. The old innkeepster bids us a warm welcome (I explain I've returned, after 23 years, to the village-of-my-schooltrip and she says: "Da sind Sie nicht der Einzige, der hier aus diesem Grund kommt") and gives us room 7, on the second floor, with balcony. Peace permeates our entire being and we crash down contentedly. From the balcony, I call Paul Vos and Debbie Scheltes, to tell their voicemail that I'm in Vorderhornbach. Slam. Dunk. Goal. Just before I go to sleep Ed suddenly breaks the silence. "Say. You wanted to go up that mountain, yeah?" I remain silent for a while, astonished. "Yeah..." "And the weather's fine now, innit?" "Yeah..." "Then we go up it now. For tomorrow, the weather may not be good." True that. I can't fault the argument. The old innkeepster has said she hopes weather will be better tomorrow, and hope keeps man alive, but doesn't equal a weather forecast. And so, having driven for 25 hours, we don't rest, but don shoes, and move up the mountain at three in the afternoon. We calculate, beforehand, that it should just be possible. Three hours up, two-and-a-half down. "Bergheil!", the young innkeeper wishes us, as we disappear from view.  We'll need it. The first few miles are alright (although Ed swiftly complains, about the toil). We enjoy the forest and the pretty waterfall, and the increasingly beautiful views. "Welcome to my world!", I holler at Ed.
Well, that's true. But that world will take it out of me, more than expected, today. My mountaineering boots namely turn out to be insufficient. Their profile, due to long marches, is way too worn. At the treeline the going therefore becomes rough, when I accidentally stray from the path and pull myself up along an avalanche trail. I already have to hold the spruce bushes and pull my own considerable weight up, while Ed is waiting above (he has, as soon as he saw me plodding along, sought out the proper path instead, and found it too). 
Somewhat further up things get worse. There's a fresh pack of snow on Grubach! Normally, this mountain's too low for that, and given the current state of global warming, I would certainly not have expected it to be there. Back then, I stood on Grubach September 21st, on naked rock, in sunlight, under a clear blue sky. Now, it's only September 7th yet, it is white, and I'm climbing through clouds.  Climbing, since I have so little grip, with my shoes, on the loose shingle and snow, that I slip away and downward. And I'm so heavy that, unlike Ed, I cannot clamp my feet down solidly in the snow, but slide down with it.
So, just below the summit, I decide to climb alongside the snow, over the rocks for a bit. Now, my indoor climbing course (once meant to become outdoor, but time and money didn't reach) comes to good use. "Climb with your feet", "never release your support before you are certain where the next one will be", "always hold three points" and "rest standing, in between", wise lessons they are. Still, I considerably damage myself, when my foot slips from the wet rock (my left hand's cut in four places, and bleeds profusely), and I lose the hat I bought in Costineşti. "We'll get that on the way down", the utterly irritated Ed calls from above. He's been cooling down for minutes, waiting above me. Logical, for him to be irritated. But, he doesn't share my weight and shoes. So, even when, angrily, he climbs down again and yells "Do I really have to show you how to?", then climbs away from me through the snow, I cannot follow him on that route. So I plod on. But I reach the top, and then try to fix my bleeding hands, with the first aid kit I took from my car and brought along. There's no bandaids in it! Damn. I stash it away again and open a bottle of dubious Odessian cognac. Even Ed has some. 
The alcohol glow helps, but still we don't go the final one hundred yards, to the cross on the summit. The path there namely slopes downward towards the abyss, and there's some 20 inches of snow on it. The alternative is to clamber across the mountain ridge to the cross, in the piercing wind, but Ed refuses to. Rightly so, to my mind: dusk is already upon us, I am soaking with sweat and wet from the snow, I'm shivering with cold in the icy wind, and my bleeding open wounds are hurting: not a good combination, high up in the Alps. 
We take some pictures, of the rallylogo-in-the-snow, and then call the retreat. I do swiftly pack a second stone, to place next to the other, that came from the same mountain top and has been in my bookcase for years now. Do I feel beat? Not in the least. You don't fuck around with mountains: it kills you. Enough is enough. And: was I really that tough, when I was 17, 18? I think so. I glance over my shoulder, at my blood in the snow on Grubach. "You made the necessary sacrifice - the mountain takes, before it gives", Paul Vos will tell me later, in Haarlem. I hope so. The mountain thankfully does not take my hat, since it is retrieved by Ed, with some difficulty (he now finally begins to understand what I just went through), as I'm still clambering down above him. 
The way back is at least as hazardous as the way up. The path has namely never been constructed, but has evolved, because so many people took it. And so it is most uneven, and full of roots, rocks, mountain streams and the like. And although I carry a maglite, it is of little help: it namely produces night-blindness.  We each fall on our face at least five times before we're back down. And every time that happens can lead to great trouble for us. It's lesson 1, in trekking: the most dangerous thing that can happen to you is breaking a leg or spraining an ankle, then to have to wait for help to arrive. Thankfully, we do not lose our way, since that would increase danger exponentially.
We safely walk into Vorderhornbach, and into Gasthof Rose. There, we are awaited by the gorgeous wife of the innkeeper. "Große Aufregung!" It turns out they already sent the mountain guides to find us, and they've driven up to the waterfall on a moped to see whether they could find us there yet. We probably missed them by seconds. They're recalled, and the staff of Gasthof Rose prepares an elaborate evening meal for us, even though the kitchen has been closed for some time already.  Having showered (the shower jet is powerful and warm, in Gasthof Rose - bliss!), Ed already gone to bed, I go downstairs again, to have a beer with the waitress and the innkeeper. I apologize, on this occasion, for stealing glassware, back in the eighties. My apology falls on thankful ground. Wiedergutmachung. A good thing, in a village where old Adolf still adorns many a mantlepiece. I learn two lessons, before I lay me down to rest: good shoes, and never start a climb like that in the afternoon. Always do so in the early morning.
Day 16 09.08.2007: Vorderhornbach-Neuschwanstein-Solingen-Haarlem  The next morning, we're late for breakfast. But we're forgiven, so get one anyway, and it is copious, with wonderful coffee. Then, hospitality increases. After breakfast, I walk to the supermarket, which turns out to have been closed half an hour ago. Not to worry. The innkeepster makes a call to the owner, a relative (a Schlichtherle too). He reopens the store, and we buy Strohrum (whilst I apologize for the shoplifting my HAVO-schoolmates did back then), a general map of the Lechtal, and (Ed) Mozartkügel. We take pictures of the Grubachspitze (the cross, a few yards high as it is, can hardly be made out, through the fog), from down below, and then we bid Gasthof Rose, and the innkeepster, farewell.
"Und, sind Sie jetzt enttäuscht, mit Vorderhornbach?" Where does she get it. No, I am not. I am impressed again. And, something's been made good on. The promise to myself, but the one to Reina too. Reina Milligan was the American exchange student we were all in love with, but who did it with Ruben Snater. She perished April 10, 2001, 34 years of age, in a car accident, I accidentally learned some time ago, through the web. When I last saw her (in Haarlem, where she visited my home on the Oranjestraat midway through the nineties) she said: "I'd like to meet you again". It was not to be. I returned to Vorderhornbach, for myself, but for Reina too. Rest in peace.  We drive back towards Imst, because Ed wants some pictures of the car along that high mountain road. We do take some, but it all takes so much time, that we arrive pretty late, in Neuschwanstein.
There, just across the German border, is crazy Ludwig's castle. I paid it a visit during the schooltrip (at the time, we got there by walking to it from Austria, through an enchanting valley bowl) and now we're here it seems worth the effort to me to show it to Ed. He agrees, for he enjoys the view of Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. We don't venture into the castle (given the horde of people waiting to take the tour, we don't think that's a pleasant plan, and we do think it'd be too time-consuming), but we do take a look at the castle from above, from the Mariënbrücke, the same bridge on which I once smoked a self-rolled filterjoint as conrector and namesake H.E. van Rheenen asked me: "And, Michiel, what do you think of the castle?" "Cool colours", I replied, as I recall. The castle is white. 
We drive into the German lowlands and onto the autobahn, past Ulm (this time over, thankfully, not with Wham!'s full 'Club Tropicana' album belting from the speakers on endless repeat as it did back in 1984). I call my audibly relieved father. He's entitled to be. What we did yesterday absolutely is the most dangerous thing we did during this journey, and we survived. Which doesn't alter the fact we must still drive home safely. But this proves to be no problem: shortly after nightfall, we arrive in Solingen without further ado. 
Solingen? Solingen. One of the female Rumanian doctors Ed knows from Braşov, and who by now lives and works elsewhere in Germany with her daughter (her husband is still in Rumania), happens to be in Solingen for training. We look her up (her name's Ioanna), and experience the village fair in Solingen in her company. Most unreal, to suddenly find ourselves amidst drunk, bragging Germans, out front of a packed bar. But, pleasant. Both glad and thankful, about and for this welcome break during a long ride, we bid our goodbyes and set off into the night again. Day 17 09.09.2007: Haarlem We arrive in Haarlem at five past five in the morning, at the Taxi Adriaan offices. We greet manager Jimmy Jaggoe, and as Ed starts recounting, I get his stuff from the car (all loose-lying objects objects too), prior to pissing off. At home I do three batches of laundry, water my thirsty plants and get the mail. Thus, I learn about the sometimes bizarre trip back of the other teams, and learn that we returned last: the 'Insurance Racers' returned Saturday night, so we beat them by a daypart. We are the Last Men Standing! In the mail's an invite to secondary school-friend and former bandmember Victor Schiferli's party, on the occasion of his fortieth birthday, that Sunday afternoon on Blijburg beach in Amsterdam. And so I've barely slept, an hour or four, before getting back into the car and driving to Amsterdam, to suddenly find myself on a sandy beach on the edge of Amsterdam (how bizarre!), with a cocktail (mojito) in my hand and a wristband (pink this time) on. Will it ever stop? 
When, shortly thereafter, I make my apologies to Victor and drive home shot but satisfied, an enormous poster greets me at the Haarlem city limits. 'Welcome home' it reads, with a big picture of the Bavo church below it. Thank you kindly. I drive by the office, vacuum the car and dump Ed's leftovers (the stone, the pingpong game, a pillow and a set of jumper cables), buy some air freshener canisters for the car, and some Chinese food. I've only just started to scan the receipts of the journey, inspect my financial despair (cute, the listing of debit notices and withdrawals en route), transfer other people's money to Stichting Spoetnik, and have my Chinese, when taxi coworker Ali rings. "Say, it's a Sunday night, so we're out on a binge! Wanna join?" A little later, I find myself in bar Flapcan with a wodka in hand, and via the Oude Floryn end up in Fidel, from which I leave with an excessively large Cuban cigar, a present of coworker Mehmet. Will it ever stop? "How was your journey?" How do I tell? And how do I explain it wasn't, but is? Day 18 09.10.2007: Haarlem  Today, I buy a new right mirror. It is available, on stock, right next to the Taxi Adriaan offices. Cab colleague Tom puts it on in less than no time, and I drive to Halfords, to get a blind spot mirror for it, which I contentedly stick to it. There. Mister van Reenen can drive again happily. And happily does so, to the Hendriks carwash.
 My trusty wagon deserves that, after all. We leave the stickers on, until they drop off, or until the next rally, but shine it will, around and below them! It will otherwise turn out to be in good condition: the friendly Turkish supermechanic Kadir will establish that the leaking diesel is the product of a small bust filter, and replace it, but can find nothing wrong otherwise, barring dents. But I can: the speedometer's broke, and as I write this, that is the only thing that still needs to be fixed. But if that's all...
Day 19 09.11.2007: Haarlem ...then that's not as bad as what befalls Ed the day after. Welcome home, but different: overnight, two of the Taxi Adriaan-limos are burgled by breaking their windows, and the Taxitronic TD 32 terminals are stolen from them. I'm amazed there's trade in them, since they're marked and numbered, but there you have it. 
They probably go straight to where I just came from: Moldova, or Ukraine, or something. Epilogue Two and a half weeks later I take two regular customers to Holland's most famous brothel, Yab Yum, on the Singel in Amsterdam, in Taxi Adriaan's Citroën C3. En route, I tell customer Arthur the story of my travel, there and back. "You're not upset we want to go all the way to Amsterdam?", he then asks. "No, dude. I'd take you to Timbuktu if that's where you wanted to go." "Really? Do you know where Timbuktu is?" "Yes, it's in Africa." "But we'd have to take the boat, from Gibraltar, to Morocco, wouldn't we?" "Or go through multiple conflict zones." "What?" "Yeah, you can drive the whole way, no boat, but you've got to drive through Turkey, Israel, Egypt and such." "Would you want to? Really?" "Arthur, if you say you want to go to Timbuktu, we go to Timbuktu now." "Okay! Let's go!" |
