nivio & sabine's road adventures

Well this little introduction to our travel adventure is probably 8 weeks late , so our apologies. If this computer hasn't got spelling and grammar correction then be ready for plenty of mistakes. So this blog ıs Sabine and ı adventure to mongolia by our little bus and the second part by backpack, mongolia to australia. this trip is a bit like the return of the  Jedı for me .. notice the similarities...me coming home to Australia....no...okay.
so this ıs a quick run down of what we are doing and of our impressions so far. So let me start by saying ım actually laying down on a beach on the black sea in Bulgaria. Now i cant tell you exactly where we are but we are 80km north of the Turkish border. The problem is the letters are different, we cant quite read them they look like russian or greek alphabet but apparently they are bulgarian. so navigating around here is very difficult as you can ımıgıne but very doable.
So sabine and i decided to quit our jobs and leave our home and friends for this adventure. so this is now our life free from paying bills, waking up for work, birthday parties, unfriendly bosses and work colleagues, bbq, lang strasse and smelly fondues.
Sabine and i started our trip over 8 weeks ago now. After long time of waiting , we finally rebuilt our renault traffic 1998 model 2.5 diesel. we included our futon from our lounge room, and many of you might no this futon ıf you ever vested us our slept over in zurich then you have shared our bed . We put in a little kitchen , fridge and a water pump for shower. Now we are ready to drive from Switzerland to Mongolia the first half of our journey. the second half will be with our backpack through Asia to australia. We estimate that this will take a little bit over a year.
departure date was 23 april and this isn't a direct route we wanted to see portugal first , so till today the order of arrival of countries we have been.  1. France
                                   2. Spain
                                   3. Portugal
                                   4. Spain again
                                   5. France again
                                   6. Italy
                                   7. Albania by Ferry
                                   8. Macedonia
                                   9. Bulgaria
we've done over 9000 km and spent over 1000 euro in diesel so far. we've pumped out 30 litres of dirty fuel.  We changed our clutch in spaın, changed some fuses and other than that everything has gone good. Everything we built works so thanks everyone who help us with that.
    I have to tell you the first night of our trip was very interesting . Ignoring most advise not to sleep at the auto stop in France we decided to sleep at the auto stop on the autobahn. Now first night,  celebration drink but i go to sleep uneasy ı had such a bad feeling about this place and at 3 o'clock in the morning . Hello someone has a screw driver in my door. Yep someone was trying to break in as we were sleeping. i woke up and he just walked off if there's nothing wrong got into his car with his mates and drove off.
 
 I really have to finish this introduction. İts now two weeks later and we are in Alayna Türkey on the beach again. So some small adjacements to what we've done . We now have done over 12500km. Diesel in Türkey is over 1.50 euro a litre so our fuel cost have gone up by more then 1/3 . Our little fuse problem turned out to be a big problem our fan ventilator stopped working so a visit to bush mechanic was necessary. To top it all of we had an accident as well, someone run up my arse at the traffic lights. This door has now been smashed 3 times and if in Switzerland we would of got 3500 francs for it by the insurance. But here we had a very bad repair job that is just good enough to close the door and a total of about 80 euro to buy a new back  light which we have to organise ourselves. now we are hoping that it arrives today otherwise we are goıng to loose three days for this. Dealing with the Türks is really frustrating you have to fight for everything even when its there fault .
 
quick overbrıef.
France
auto bahn  very expensive, long drives
Spaın
Long drives, excellent tapas, great time with Ivan, new clutch, costa brava very beautıful, Sevılla very nıce , Costa Branca
Portugal
food is amazingly cheap and good, country looks very tıdy, Beautıful beaches, cheap alcohol, famıly vısıts
Italy
Rımını not to impress , Barı also not to impress we were really only in transit.
albania
negotiating for the ferry was interesting, people are very friendly, small country easy to get around, the beach has maınly brown sand. beautiful lake. some very scenic drives. lost of rubbish everywhere.
Macedonia
Very friendly people, met Ramons parents, food ıs excellent, lake ohrıs ıs gorgeous, fresh vegestable everywhere, dıesel ıs under 1 euro.
Bulgaria
very clean , most men are overweight , great to drive through, lots of dams, great national parks for hiking, most families have only one kid, food is mainly deep fried not so good, the black sea .
Türkey
Lots of people , traffic ıs law of the jungle terrible drivers, have to negotiate for everything really frustrating, prices very so much for the same thing, real salesmen mentally, some really nice beaches and some really bad ones, to many hotels, a lot package deal russian tourists, the fuel prices are unbelievable the country is unbelievable big.