Well what a brilliant time we had at the rally. We managed to find it ok and found that the people on the gate had been primed to expect us so we didn't have to pay to get in.
We wandered around and looked at the bikes then stood to watch the games taking place; there were a lot of drinking games (obviously! before we came in we has to sign a disclaimer to say we were responsible for our actions and after seeing the amount of alcohol and drugs being consumed I understand why!). Whilst we were watching these Kaleem found us and was very pleased to see us. He asked us to stay where we were and the next thing over the tannoy came an announcement for Colin from England to come forward; I pushed him into the ring but then Kalim said Colin and his wife and a group of Romanian lads then held the rope up for me to go under! We received rapturous applause and cheering along with a bag of goodies which included a bottle of fizz, a pen drive, a tshirt, a key ring air fresher and some dashboard cleaner! All sponsored by Mitchelin.
One lad shared his home made spirit with us; it is a traditional Romanian drink which tasted a bit like Schnapps. He seemed to take a huge delight in our being there. Kalim came back to talk to us about our tour; he introduced us to his wife and then said that she liked to go out on the bike to a coffee stop and then back home, she wouldn't do the tour we were-I think he was impressed with me! He then asked how old Colin was and thought it great that he was doing this at 50; as if 50 is old!!! They hold this event every year and Kalim wanted to know if we would come back with some of our biking friends; he got very excited at the thought of a group of British bikers joining in. We said that just to ride directly to Romania would be over 2 1/2 thousand kms and it would depend on how many could have a long enough holiday to do that. They then suggested that we came back and then spent time after with different people who would guide us around their part of the country; might be another holiday idea?
During the event we saw along with many variations of drinking games, Russian roulette played with eggs; 2 opponents sat facing each other across a table, each took an egg from the bowl and cracked it on their opponents head! If the egg was fresh and broke they were the winner, it got very messy!
There was also the slowest ride to the finish line- we could have won that one we thought! Two very noisy rounds of the loudest bikes! Also the best customised bike class as well.
What made me smile was the music they were playing, we listened to Slade, Status Quo a lot!!
We sat and had something to eat and had a lively discussion, I won a bottle of wine from the Mitchelin stand- they were giving free wine to the first 50 ladies so I went and then gave it to the Romanians to share,
Colin decided that we should get a t-shirt and we then spent over an hour talking with the stall holder and various other lads, of course most of them were drunk but were still very enthusiastic about our tour and asked lots of questions about England. One lad took Colin's email address- am not sure why or if he will have kept hold of it!
The games and events finished and the band began to set up. We had noticed a lot of security people were around plus a couple of policemen; the store holder said that now a lot of the towns people would arrive for the concert and that was when trouble could begin; we took this as our cue to leave.
We had a wonderful evening and so nice to talk to people about their country,