Again... I know that Sofia is in Bulgaria and not in Romania, but such are the vagaries of this web-site. We survived a night in a Serbian service station last night. It was about 30 km from the Bulgarian border and catered specially for Turkish truck drivers - we must have been a long day's drive from Istanbul (which was about 700km away). Spent the morning passing through Serbia whic, in general, is quite a sulky country. That all changed in Bulgaria, which is very friendly and very poor. I'm now in Sofia, which is quite a fun city, and heard my first call to prayers this evening (there's a large mosque in the centre of the city - Sofia having been part of the Ottoman empire for a long time). It's an interesting mix of mid-east and west. You can sit out in a cafe watching the world go by, drinking a coffee and eating a kebab. Tomorrow we're off to Istanbul, leaving at 06:00am. Then there are three days off driving to explore the city before heading further east to Goreme.