Meneghina Express’ numbers:

12379 Kilometers in 44 days

350 hours riding

297 batteries recharged

12 countries

4500Kg Co2 reduced vs. gas

Day 38 - Romania flag - July 17

We leave Odessa at 5 am, hoping to go in Romania . But we have to deal with the unknown: to reach Romania moving closer to Bucharest we must enter first of all in Moldavia (only for 1 km!!), as Ukraine doesn't have borders with Romania. We arrive at the border around 2 p.m.. The Moldovans are immediately difficult to deal with: our Chinese cars and the relative documents are obviously unknown and incomprehensible for them. After an hour of waiting, they force us to take out an insurance for travelling for just 1 km!

They also expect we pay a "green" fee, even though we drive electric motorcycles! The total cost of the impost is 150 €. Then we proceed towards the Romanian border. While we are in queue we see a car passing by at full speed and in the proximity of the bar the driver locks the brakes. The car hits the barrier and the driver, a completely drunk man of 150 kg, gets off the car and starts a fight with the agent ... needless to say that we were a bit worried. We go ahead and we meet an agent style -Gestapo who doesn't want to put his stamp on our Carnet of transit. We got our papers signed only after 4 hours of waiting. After 30 km we arrived to Romania, in the town of Braila. We have just found a hotel when Valerio realizes that he left his bag in the cafè where we had lunch.. in Ukraine!! Now it's 10 p.m. and while I'm writing he gets back on the car to cross, once again, the 3 borders...

Were we foolish to think that the road would have been easier at this point of the adventure? See you tomorrow.

Path traveled today