Saturday, 1st July, 2006 - Vama Veche

I'm playing catch-up on our time here. In typical Romanian style it has taken two months to get the internet installed! On first impressions the Romanians make the Spaniards look like Germans - they are procrastinators of the highest order.



We've been here no more than 48 hours and we're off on our first weekend adventure. (30th July). Welcome to Vama Veche, the Goa of Romania. Vama is a seaside village on the Black Sea, near the border with Bulgaria. Even in communist time Vama Veche had a distinctly non-mainstream reputation to it which has grown since the '89 revolution. Although now, the intelectuals and bohemians have given way to gangs of pissed students, acid casualties and the odd bona fide rocker.

We were advised to get there on friday night as it is almost impossible to get accomodation during the summer weekends. We endured a 4 hour train journey, arrived before dark and bagged ourselves some chalets for 500,00 lei (£10) a night. As you can see from the picture "chalet" was a rather grand description for a couple of sheds at the bottom of the garden. But they had beds, a fridge and a telly in them and the washing facilities were clean and good, so it was all we needed.

We planned to have relatively quiet night as it was the England-Portugal game on the saturday, but as usual we peeked too early and had storming night on the beach with its camp fires and Goa dancing and in Vama's many makeshift bars which are built in a precarious way at the beginning of the season, then burnt ceremoniously in september.

Track of the day - Rekleiner "Somewhere" (sasse remix)

Saturday saw us on the beach and in the sea before grabbing a table in front of the big projector for the football match. It went a little like this - we got drunk, we got heckled by the locals who were all supporting Portugal, we turned into marauding english hooligans and heckled the locals, we lost the game, we all became best friends and danced on the beach till the sun poked its head up on the horizon.

<< The Evidence - Rylee finds a local who is also wearing a Mickey Mouse tee shirt, they become best mates, the end.