Sunny, isn't it? [Typical Brit.. always going on about the weather.]

I'm checking in here to say Hello.. to avoid doing any real work.. and to wave vigourously in the direction of anyone visiting the site for the first time.. having perhaps met me or the bike at The Bonneville Celebration -- the 50th birthday party for the Triumph Bonneville.

I love the fact that, having ridden around the coast of Europe, I'm taking the bike home to where it was built -- close to the the geographical centre of England.

I'm guessing there won't be too many three-year-old bikes with 50,000+ miles on the clock, and 50,000 miles-worth of dust, rust an' mud. I know.. I know.. I've been promising for months.. well, years.. to clean the bike after this weekend. Unless someone smart and forward-thinking at Triumph wants to buy the bike and stick it in their museum? ;-)

But as someone who rides alone, and certainly doesn't class himself as quoteunquote A Biker, I'm really looking forward to this weekend.

Anyhoo.. to any newcomers.. please pootle around the site. Follow the diary from the start of the trip to Norwich. Via several hundred interminable blo- I mean diary entries around the coast of Europe.

Or you might prefer to look at my photographs?

PS Don't forget to buy the book when it comes out.. if they're still printing books by the time I finish writing the danged thing.

A very warm Hello -- and if you're in Norfolk as you read those words, you'll appreciate the irony. Brrrrrr.

I got back to this Fine City on Saturday.. worth riding through the rain and fog because (I guessed right) my sister had baked me and Pa a luvverly joint birthday cake.. and my brother had flown over from Norway to help us eat it. Incredible.. what a brilliant welcome home*.

And I know I owe you the last remaining updates to the blo- I mean diary.. and there are photos from Germany and France and, err, Dover, to add.

But first I have to wash my underwear, book a double session at the barbers and catch up with family and friends.

And.. even before I have time to clean my underwear.. sorry, but I had to share that with you.. my family had called:

-- the local newspaper [a fab spread on page three -- thanks Laura and Nick, that made my day!]
-- the local BBC TV station [6.30-7.00pm tonight; available online but only for 24 hours.. click on Watch now.. I turn up after 17 minutes.. the clip will be online 'til 1900GMT on Tuesday]
and
-- BBC Radio Norfolk [17:40 tonight.. was available online.. but not 'Listen again'.. so I think you've missed it..]

So.. may I take this opportunity to say a special (warm) Hello to anyone finding this site for the first time as a result of this little media blitz. You've got 2-and-a-half years' worth of my nattering to catch up on, 1,799 pictures to browse through.. and if you spot me in Norwich, please say Hello. I'll buy the first round of house red if you're prepared to sit and listen to my anecdotes....

* I still haven't worked out where 'home' might be. But back home with Pa in the home I grew up in, feels pretty homely.. even at 43.

and believe me, you are all dear to me.

Or should that be, you are both dear to me?

Apologies for the way the updates have dried up. I haven't really been in K-9 for the last month.

Far from it. As Sasha and Melanie.. and Zoe.. worked out, I have been as far as the road will take me, and now I'm heading back to Norridge.

The temptation, the usual phrase, is to say "I'm heading home.." but I don't know where that is. Give me time, I'm only 42.. just.

I've got some kind of writer's block. It may be that I don't want to admit to myself that the two+ years are over.. though in my head it doesn't feel like anything's over. But here I am in Prague.. not very besidetheseaside, eh?.. with a wi-fi connection and a weather eye.. trying to plot a route through the snow storms.. and I owe it to you.. and me.. to catch up on my time in the Crimea.. riding down the Valley of Death.. snooping on the Rooskie Black Sea Fleet.. listening as a judge and a policeman and two prostitutes have a 'party' in the back room of a suddenly-very-quiet bar.. having a chambermaid grab my face and kiss me Goodbye on the lips.. and she looked a lot like Martine McCutcheon..

.. and reaching the end of the road, because I wasn't willing to play games with the Roosian consulate in Odessa to get a visa to reach Sochi. No tears.

No ferries to Georgia. Or Trabzon. Or Istanbul.

So I'm heading back for mine and Pa's birthdays, too much yule log at christmas and a bit of a think.

Oh, and I'll be popping round to show you the rest of the photos.. all 6,144 of them. So get a bottle of house red in, stoke up the fire and plump the cushions. I'll be over in a jiffy.

--Mike
Prague

It was cold in Kerch.

Route: Odessa - Uzhney - Mikolaiev - Kherson - Armyansk - Krasnoperekopsk, otherwise known as K-9

[Ukrainian readers of a sensitive disposition should kindly note that I am transposing the names from my Ukrainian map (Cyrillic script) to the Latin by myself -- with a wing and a prayer and a tenuous grasp at best of the Cyrillic alphabet.]

.. talking of which, I can't get my tongue around Krasnoperekopsk, my home for the night, even when I sit down and concentrate, so K-9 it is.. even though it should be K-14. It's even tougher in the original, Cyrillic:

Красноперекопськ

By the time I'd read that I would normally have been through town and out the other side, but tonight I was guided here -- it's a small town at the very top of the Crimea -- by my new best friend, Vitali.

Vitali found me accelerating away from a police checkpoint on a tree-lined road at Tarasivka, which roughly translates as 'In the middle of nowhere'. Police checkpoints like to stop foreign bikers not, it turns out, to check my documents, but to look at the bike. It must be infinitely boring standing there all day, especially as all Ukrainian drivers flash their lights to signal to oncoming traffic that a checkpoint lies ahead.

Vitali was on a big Honda sports bike. I'd just been thinking to myself, 'Hmmm haven't seen any bikes for a while' when there he was in my rear-view mirrors. I think he was still in second gear when I reached top gear and top speed. We rode together for about 30 miles -- much further than I had planned to go today but I didn't want to turn off two minutes after 'meeting' him.

Turns out, over a coffee, that he was able to point me towards the best roads in the Crimea, discuss the traffic cops and share his love of fast riding.

He couldn't tell me whether he'd support Roosia or Ukraine in a football match, though.

What he could do was guide me through the darkening back streets of K-9 to a decent, cheap hotel. I never would have found it by myself, not least because there's no sign saying 'Hotel', or even 'Gastonitsa' -- 'guest-house', I'm guessing, which is the Roosian term. But a hotel it is, a bed and a shower of sorts and a place round the corner where the waitress, after much discussion, suggestion and laughter, recognised my impression of a chicken. It can't be a very good impression, mind, because the food they served only looked vaguely chicken-esque, and tasted of cabbage.

--

I skipped a lot of coast today -- a 150 mile loop to see Otsakiv, for example; a 100-mile hop on dirt roads to Pokrovskiy which would have been followed by the same 100 miles back on the same dirt roads to rejoin civilisation; at which point I could have chosen to do a further 300 miles or so looping round Otsakivskiy, Tsornormorskiy Krinizh, Novofedorivka, Lazhurney and Scadovsk. In the cold. On appalling roads. Mostly in the dark.

I didn't.

--

It's Ukraine. It's a tractor. For fans of that book

--

Is Lenin doing what I think he's doing with his hand?

It's like being in Roosia.

When I venture to say 'Thank you' in Ukrainian, people laugh: this is most disconcerting. I have worked out why. They aren't laughing at my accent when I say Djah-kaw-yow; they're laughing because I'm trying to speak Ukrainian, here in Ukraine's fourth largest city. Nobody here speaks Ukrainian. They all speak Roosian. "I am Ukrainian because I was born here," they smile. "But my family come from Roosia."

I have asked the same question of everybody I meet who speaks English. Travel agents, waiters, shop assistants, museum assistants. "If Ukraine played Roosia at football [or volleyball, for the gals] who would you cheer for?"

The Norman Tebbit test of 'Britishness' comes in handy. Blimey, never thought I'd say that. But so far everyone has managed not to understand the question, or tell me they don't care for sports. Nobody will answer the question. I think it's because they don't feel cofortable telling me that the answer is Roosia.

This doesn't feel like Ukraine.

"Maybe in the villages near here, they speak Ukrainian," I've been told several times, "though I never go out to the countryside so I'm not sure."

"Nobody in my class at University/ in my apartment building/ in this bar speaks Ukrainian."

Now I say Djah-kaw-yow to raise a smile, before thanking them with a Spassiba.

--

Djah-kaw-yow, incidentally, sounds to these ears like a line from Iko Iko -- I've always heard it as 'Djak-a-mo feen-an-nay', even though the Internet tells me it's 'Jackomo fe no nan e'''. I tend to sing the Neville Brothers or Dr John version to myself, rather than Rolf Harris'

--

This is a city of Hummers, Mercedes and Maseratis. One of the long list of travel agents told me: "Tourists are amazed when they come to Odessa. All the cars are so expensive, ha ha. Everybody has a Bentley. My flat is worth $400,000. Ha ha ha."

But it is also a city of Ladas, Ladas and more Ladas. They cough and wheeze and they're dirty and they break down at the dirty side of the dirty, broken down road. I hear the travel agent's laughter every time a car belches.

--

Vehicle registration plates in Odessa all start with 'BH'. This reminds me of the BBC Radio 4 programme 'BH' -- as in 'Broadcasting House.' Which reminds me of my chum Helen, who works on the programme. Hello Helen :-)

--

Another thing about the number plates. (I know - I need to get out more.) Personalised number plates are clearly not provided here -- not like the UK, where magician Paul Daniels drives a car with the number MAG 1C, for example. And yet there is some leeway for personal expression, presumably by paying (bribing?) someone in the Registration Of Motor Vehicles Directorate. Because all the big, expensive cars, the Bentleys and Mercs and the 4×4s, have plates with some kind of pattern.

I'm guessing that
BH 8888 BH
cost more than
BH 2112 AH
or
BH 2244 AC
It was certainly on a more expensive car.

No Ladas have number plates with patterns, that I've seen.

I cannot believe I noticed this.

--

Saw the new Bond James Bond film.. dubbed into Ukrainian. Or Roosian. Either way, can someone tell him to stop flirting with M, stop explaining everything in long chunks of dialogue and start doing more of the moves. Walk the walk, James, don't talk the talk.

The Bond Girl is Ukrainian, apparently. A lot of the women here look like Bond girls, to be fair. They all get in and out of Bentleys with patterned number plates and kiss shaven-headed goons or men old enough to be their fathers. *sigh*

--

It is a city without litter. Like the woman who wouldn't ride her scooter a teensy-weensy bit illegally, people don't break the law.. or don't want to be seen to break the law.

--

It is a city of casinos -- neon-lit, open "non stop", there's nothing glitzy or glamorous about them. In fact, seen through open doors, they aren't casinos at all. Just a darkened, smoky room filled with slot-machines, peddling the hope of some kind of instant wealth, however meagre, to those who can least afford to lose their hrivny in a fixed game of chance.

--

The fashion here is for camouflage. Full army camouflage. It's like All Saints won the fashion wars. In the countryside, I can almost understand why someone who can only afford one set of outdoor gear, and who hunts to supplement his meagre income, would opt for camouflage. Here in the city, I wonder if it's a sign that the wearer is, or used to be, in the military. Or whether it's more sinister -- part of a martialisation of civil society.. in a country where a significant minority holds allegiance to a foreign government.

--

Lots of US shows on TV. Films like Conan The Barbarian and plenty of Van Damme that play up to that hard man/ camouflage image. Putin would be proud. The voiceovers are annoying. While the original voices can still be heard underneath, heard but not quite understood, a single male voice says all the men's lines and a single female voice speaks for all the women. Hard to follow when three or four men have a long conversation, say, or an argument. Especially as the emotional range of the voices is so limited.

"Dangnabbit, I left my sunglasses in the car" is delivered with the same passion and energy as "Aaaaaaarrrggghhhhhhh my intestines have been ripped out by that man-eating lion"; "Can I have a look at that ash tray?" sounds to me like "I lurve you, I lurve you. Leave your wife and children and run away with me to the Congo."

--

Has someone done a cover version of Stop! by Sam Brown this summer? If not, can anyone explain why I'm hearing this 20 year old song at LEAST three times a day? On the radio, in bars, in cars?

--

It must be confusing. TCH is a Ukrainian TV channel. That's Cyrillic TCH, so their website URL -- written in Latin script, of course -- is at TSN.ua.

--

There are armed guards in jewellery shops in the downtown area. That's armed as in *sub-machine guns* they stroke their huge weapons as they ogle the oligarchs' girlfriends, wives and daughters -- the only ones who can afford this bling. I can't confirm if these heavily-armed goons are police or army making some money on the side, or private security guards carrying unlicensed arms, because I wasn't about to walk into a shop to ask, not even for you, dear reader.

--

I'm in Odessa. Wow.

When I set out on this little jaunt, I had no idea how long it would take (872 days so far) or how far it would be (38,000 miles, give or take, so far.)

And I had no idea where I would finish: either the Roosian-Georgian border -- make that the Roosian-Abkhasian border, for reasons which became more widely understood during the conflict there this summer. Or, if I took a boat from Sochi, in Roosia, to Trabzon in northeast Turkey, I could ride round the Turkish coast too -- to Antioch -- "if Turkey is in Europe."

Sochi or Antioch? Antioch or Sochi?

Being in Istanbul helped me to decide: crossing the bridge over the Bosphorus and seeing the sign 'Welcome To Asia'. Besides, it'll be chilly by the time I get to Trabzon. So.. Sochi it is.

Wrong.

The decision has been taken out of my hands by the Roosian Consulate here in Odessa. Specifically, the head of the visa section [I have his name scribbled down somewhere. I'll add it in here when I find it.]

"He's an angry person," I was told by Natasha, a travel agent I had hired to help me with the paperwork.

He's a git.

I had no illusions that this would be easy. Roosia isn't easy, and I have experienced all this before...

When I started in Murmansk, I entered Roosia with a visa organised from London.

I spent most of a whole day in Helsinki queuing for a visa to be allowed to queue everywhere I went in St Petersberg. A phaff, but not an impossibility.

In Riga, preparing to enter Roosia again at Kaliningrad, I used a travel agent instead. I didn't quite trust him, so I this picture in case he ran off with my passport.. but in the end the process was so easy and so quick, the visa in my hands first thing the next morning, that I didn't even mention it on this blo-- I mean diary.

But that was all in 2006, and if a week is a long time in politics, the last two years haven't been kind to Roosian-British relations. The little matter of the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko didn't help -- it certainly didn't do him any good. Britain didn't appreciate Roosia's actions in Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And Britain didn't vote for the Roosian entry in Eurovision..

So it took two days and three different travel agencies making phone calls, faxing and planning days' worth of queuing before I got a definitive answer from the Mr XXXX at the Consulate.

"I haven't heard this one before," Natasha told me. She looked bemused, frustrated, embarrassed. "When I mentioned that you were British, he told me the visa wouldn't be available for at least seven working days.

"At least seven working days..," she repeated.

"Meaning 'more like 14 working days?" I suggested.

"Meaning.." and at this point I do declare she blushed.. "Meaning, I cannot guess what he means at the best of times. But this... is not the best of times. I'm so sorry.

"He also demands to know where you will be staying every night, with documentation." (Previously, a one page faxed 'letter of introduction' has been enough.)

"And," she referred to her scribbled notes again, and adjusted her glasses, "he wants details of what you plan to do for every day of your stay."

(I don't know what I'm going to do in the next hour, normally..)

She couldn't believe what she was having to say.

"And the visa will cost US$300."

She winced.

I shrugged.

"He's an angry person," she repeated.

And, you know what?, I wasn't angry.

I suppose I had a right to be miffed. This bureaucratic nonsense, whether imposed from above or the product of one little man with too much power and an anti-British chip on his shoulder, was derailing my journey. After 872 days and, yes, 38,000 miles.

In fact, I had already made up my mind. I wasn't about to thread myself and the Bonneville through the eye of a Roosian needle. Impossible -- especially with the panniers. Nope, it's not worth it. I have too much respect for myself, and not enough for any bureaucracy.. perhaps especially for Roosian bureaucracy. St Petersberg may be my favourite place on the whole trip (it's a contender.. but how can I possibly choose between that and a Greek peninsula, or a Portuguese windmill, or Venice, or Tarifa.. or.. or..) and Kaliningrad was an absolute highlight because of its very existence, not to mention its monumental ugliness. Murmansk, the start of it all, I can never forget.

But I have been unable to *like* Roosia. Too many checkpoints and petty minded officials and police and greyness and militia and potholes and uniforms and, above all, too much poverty, everywhere, real poverty, not just accepted but positively encouraged by the state. Pensioners who have nothing but memories of a life of war and hardship creeping past the inelegant displays of super wealth by the newly, stupidly, illegally rich. It's an ugly caricature of inequalities you can see in any other country. It's all too much.

Besides, in Odessa, everyone speaks Roosian. I'm heading to the Crimea, which is even more Roosian than here. Don't let the fact that it's Ukraine fool you. So it's not like I'm missing out on my fair share of borscht, bureaucrats and Baltica beer.

And it's getting cold. These things matter when you're riding a bike.

Mr XXXXX, you faceless cog in an unpleasant state machine, I might just dedicate the book to you.

Route: Izmail - Tatarbunary - Bilgorod-Dnistrovskiy - Odessa

[Ukrainian readers of a sensitive disposition should kindly note that I am transposing the names from my Ukrainian map (Cyrillic script) to the Latin by myself -- with a wing and a prayer and a tenuous grasp at best of the Cyrillic alphabet.]

"The roads improve after Tatarbunary."

With these happy words ringing in my ears, I set off, though I was tempted to ask 'How could they get any worse?'

And a few miles after Tatarbunary I almost went back to describe in bum-numbing, suspension-shattering detail exactly how they just *had* got worse.

It's extraordinary -- at times, like riding through a snow field of moghuls, at others like biking over logs. Having had problems not once, but twice with my shock absorbers -- each temporary fix requiring further replacements, I am particularly fussy about riding at speed through potholes the size of a cow and sometimes the depth of a cow too. A tall cow. Wearing high heels.

And the days are getting shorter, quicker. It's pitch black by five. Too dark to be comfortable on the bike by 4.30.

All in all, I'm glad I made it to Odessa today, all of 170 miles down the road.

Odessa -- wow.

With the Carpathian Mountains that straddle Romania and Ukraine behind me, I'm now well and truly in the steppes. It's flat, low, sparsely populated. Fields are huge, miles and miles across; some now grassland, others freshly ploughed: the black earth of Ukraine, bread basket of the USSR:

How many books, articles and essays have I read about these fields? [Answer: lots. But not for 20 years.]

I met some [more] extraordinary Ukrainian women today.

First, stopped up by the side of the road to warm up my hands, I noticed a woman riding a small scooter up one of the regular dirt tracks that fork off at right angles from the main road, leading for mile after straight mile down the edge of a field to goodness knows what kind of remote place. She rode up to the highway, close to where I was parked. Close enough to wave in two-wheeled solidarity; close enough to see that the hairy herbert on a bepanniered Bonneville wasn't a Ukrainian policeman; close enough to see she didn't have number-plates on the scooter. She duly got off the scooter, pushed it over the two lanes of tarmac, remounted. started the engine and rode off the other side. There was nobody else in sight. Hell, there probably wasn't a living human being for ten miles in any direction. But she wasn't about to ride an unregistered motor vehicle on the public highway.

Second, stopping for a much needed cup of hot "chai" on the outskirts of a dirt-poor village, I met Maya and Inga, her daughter. We had about six words in common, but once again a smile -- or a laugh -- says more than enough. Maya marvelled at my presence; I scoured the shelves of her little village shop -- toothpaste, cans of beans, disposable biros, the abacus in place of a cash register -- and marvelled at their survival. And -- forgive my immodesty -- but which of the two, mother and daughter, was flirting with me the most?

Third, an old woman, convulsing, swaddled in cardigans and tights, carrying a short walking stick, lying on the edge of the other side of the road. Yes, convulsing. I stopped as fast as I could -- just as a white van filled with men drove past, slowly, on her side of the road. They CANNOT have missed seeing her. But they drove straight past. I don't enjoy writing this, because I don't want to sound like I'm showing off, but they didn't stop, and other cars hadn't stopped. But I did, and I know that you would have done, too.

I grabbed her hands -- they were warmer than mine (!) which I took to be a good sign -- and the violent jerks started to subside. She watched my eyes. I couldn't make her understand a word. Another car passed. And another. The third stopped. Thankfully. A young man in a 4×4 who spoke to her in Russian (I think) then Ukrainian (it certainly had an effect.) She was breathing normally again. She showed no signs of being in pain. Nothing was broken. We got her to her feet but she couldn't stand upright. Vodka. It was about 11 in the morning. (I should be getting used to this.) She was in a state, but not in danger. Not that the people who had passed her by could possibly have known that.

We made her comfortable at a point away from the traffic, and left her to sober up. I've been thinking about her all day. The chances of me having found her the one and only time she got that drunk are pretty slim. She was less than a mile away from a village and pointing in that direction. She'll be OK, if not on top of the world. Had there been any doubt, 4×4 man could and would have taken her. And.. If I had been able to take a passenger and speak her language.. I would have done.

--

There are a LOT of memorial markers here, headstones, crosses, plastic flowers, marking fatal accidents. I thought I'd count them, so I could emphasise the point here: in the next five kilometre stretch, there were precisely... none. So much for making my point. Then, before the next kilometre marker, there were *six* of them; and a large monument to Soviet soldiers killed here in the Second World War.

--

Level crossings here are not automatic. There's a small hut with a wooden chair and a bed and big pot of tea, and an employee of the railway who comes out to manually close and open the gates. I saw this happen twice. The operators, both times, were women.

--

50 people in a field, stretched out in a row as they moved up the ploughed rows, sewing seeds, I guess, by hand. They looked very cold.

--

To Odessa. A long suburban crawl, then finding myself by luck on a main drag, past the railway station -- which I mistook for a castle or stately home planted in the middle of the city -- and shops that looked increasingly affluent. I was heading, of course, straight to the Potempkin Steps.

I've seen my fair share of history besidetheseaside, and Odessa has plenty of it, but this was cinematic history. Somehow, it tastes different. And blow me down if I didn't shed a little tear when I realised I'd made it here. Not like me at all.

Go on, treat yourself. Watch this clip:

Route: Isaccea - Brăila - Galaţi - Giurgiulesti (Romania) - [1.4 miles of Moldova] - Reni (Ukraine) - Orlivka - Izmail

I explored Isaccea early this morning before fleeing. There is a memorial to the war of 1916-1919.. just shows how different our perspectives are. As well as 'Romanian' names -- Gheorghe Radulescu, Marin Dima, Sandu Topoleanu, a couple of Popescus -- and there's a 'Popescu' in every list of Romanian names, from dead soldiers to 19th century politicians to any football team in Romania ever -- there are some 'Turkish' names. Ahmet Iusmin, Ferat Husain and Zechia Memet all died for Romania. There's a mosque in town too.

--

The hotel owner may have apologised for his manner last night. He told me "I was drunk". Hmmmm.

He had also been on the phone to a friend, 'the head of the Romanian Coastguard'. "He says the nearest border crossing at Giurgiulesti is closed. You'll have to go on to Oancea to cross into Moldova at Cahul."

We studied my map. It doesn't look good. Oancea is 40 miles further north, for starters. The problem isn't Romania, he explained, but Moldova. They make things up as they go along. Crossings open or close with no notice. So even when I get in to the country, it's anyone's guess which route I'll be able to take to get through to Ukraine. And, by the way, the roads are terrible, the people are gangsters and don't trust their petrol.

[I checked: he's never been to Moldova in his life, or Ukraine, although it's on the other side of the river. "It's poor. Why would I want to go there?"]

Best case scenario: I get through at Oancea *and* the border guards there know which of several possible crossings are open into Ukraine.

Worst case scenario: Moldova won't let me through any of their crossings with Ukraine and I'll have to pass through Transnistria instead.

Transnistria?, you ask, what the hell are you on about, Mike? What is a Transnistria when it's at home?

Short answer: Transnistria is a breakaway Moldovan province seeking independence and/ or closer ties with Roosia. It's small, paranoid, dangerous and a treasure trove of horror stories about corrupt border guards; lots of them; all over the internet.

--

*And What Actually Happened...*

I escaped from Stelian and rode on to Brăila and Galaţi, crossing the big river itself along the way on a little ferry. There is nothing blue about the Danube here -- it's a steely metallic grey, fringed with cranes and gas holders and warehouses and rusting long boats tied to abandoned docks.

In Galaţi I asked around and was told that Yes, of course the Giurgiulesti was open. It's five bum-crunching miles down a rocky road -- worth checking despite what the Stelian's pal, the Head of the Romanian Coastguard, had said. He was wrong. I was.. unsurprised.

The Romanians waved me through. I smiled and said "Don't be surprised if you see me again in a few minutes.. or a few hours."

But, while it took ninety two minutes to cross from the Romanian-Moldovan border to the Moldovan-Ukrainian border.. a distance of 1.5 miles.. an average speed of 1.0222222 miles per hour.. I had no problems whatsoever.

I almost spent long enough to grow attached to Moldova. The border guard at the Romanian frontier who spoke engagingly in French; the apologies with which they sold me the obligatory "road tax and insurance" (€10 for 1.5 miles *is* a little steep, after all); the.. err.. well, I didn't see anything else of the country. There was a rusty bus parked by the road, a couple of homesteads with wooden fences, petrol stations selling fuel in a currency I have never heard of, and those potholes.

Getting in to Ukraine was slowed by the need to buy more insurance, which involved waking up the insurance salesman and helping him complete the paperwork [my Ukrainian is almost as good as his..]

I was through, into Ukraine and reached the village of Orlivka, a mile across the Danube from Isaccea, after no more than five and three-quarter hours and 77 miles. [Average speed.. I'm obsessed.. 13.391304 mph]

--

But really, it's all a bit of nonsense. Here's the view down to the Danube from Moldova:

and here's the view down to the Danube, 1.5 miles and an hour-and-a-half later, from Ukraine:

And if you're thinking, 'I can see what you're getting at, Mike. Not much difference. But clearly the roads in Ukraine are much better', I submit the following exhibits for the prosecution.

Ukraine. My average speed may stay quite low here too:

I just had time to ride on to Izmail, still on the Danube -- ten miles from Turcea, yesterday's town with the big kebabs but a day and a half's riding and two border crossings away. A town with almost no public lighting and no apparent centre. There's a bus station, a supermarket, a taverna which had run out of food, a couple of statues of Lenin, some teens in hoodies, a walk-on part in history that I couldn't sniff anywhere. No view of the river: not through design, I'd suggest; rather through the complete absence of design.

And a small hotel on a dark street with a funny, smart, relaxed, beautiful, sassy, confident, attentive, twinkling receptionist; I discovered, quite innocently I must point out, over nothing more than a cup of coffee, that if I wasn't leaving in the morning on a bicycle made for one -- and if she wasn't married -- I would find it rather easy to fall in love with her. I don't know if this makes it easier or harder, but she seemed to feel the same way.

--

I took this picture on 1 November 2006, thinking this little Estonian village was as close as I'd be getting to landlocked Moldova, the country. Wrong!

Route: Constanţa - Mamaia - Istria - Tulcea - Isaccea

Checked out. Went to a bank machine to get some more lev out.

Card in, tap-tap-tap-tap:

YOUR TRANSACTION
IS BEING PROCESSED

And that's where the screen stayed.. and stayed.. while I scratched my head and wondered.. do I stand here until tomorrow morning.. it's Sunday today.. in cold, cold Constanţa, on a quiet side street with newspapers blowing past, no shops open and hardly any people walking past.. just in case the card pops out?

And then, ten very long and unfunny minutes later, ddzzzzhhhht and out came the card. Phew.

--

I set off this morning not knowing which country I would be in tonight. That's a freedom I've come to cherish besidetheseaside; not knowing what's coming is hugely liberating and, let's face it, in 2008, you're not supposed to live this way. This time, the variables included the weather, the state of the roads and, if I got that far, how slow/ corrupt/ open the frontier crossings of Romania, Moldova, possibly Transnistria and Ukraine might be. Indeed, which crossings I would have to ride to. There are various routes, none of them strictly coastal, and I've read horror stories about most of them, the least svary being that they're simply not open.

In the end, I'm still in Romania tonight, so hopefully that opening paragraph is just a teaser for tomorrow's blo-- I mean diary.

--

I was in no hurry. Quite the opposite. Together with my family in Norwich and Norway, I spent today remembering my dear old Ma, a year after we lost her. She would have loved the scenery -- clearing blue skies (though she would have appreciated the grey stillness of the early morning, too!) over a vast, melancholy tundra, gently sloping to the sea.

I shared a moment with the big old sky, a plain, solid candle.. and these two, gathering winter feed from the remains of a cornfield across the way.

He called over, gesturing with an unlit cigarette. And here am I, with the lighter I'd bought yesterday to light the candle so, for the first time in two-and-a-half years, I was able to help. I thought I could risk asking for a photo in exchange. He said Yes; she was unsure; but when I showed her the result she insisted a take a picture of their dog as well. I gave them the lighter and we parted best of friends.

--

At Tulcea, I was only a few miles from the Ukrainian city of Izmail, but those miles are across the delta of the Danube, a marshy jumble. There are dirt (i.e. mud) tracks down to the river, but no crossings. Waiting at a roundabout on the outskirts I was joined by two Romanian motorbikes -- something Japanese and a big, shiny BMW. I haven't seen another motorbike for many days; even the ubiquitous Ero-teenager-on-scooter-that-sounds-like-a-hairdryer is a rare sight here in November.

These beasts stand out in more ways than one. They're probably ten years newer and twenty times more expensive than any other vehicle I've seen today.

Turns out Gabriel and Dan are out for a day's ride. They treat me to the *biggest* kebab you ever did see at a roadside kiosk in Tulcea and we swap war-stories. Or rather, I tell them a bit about the trip, but when I ask them what they do for a living, Dan laughs nervously and says: "Well, I work for the Romanian tax office and Gabriel.. he's.. a... err.. an entrepreneur'."

I know enough not to ask too much about what a Bulgarian 'entrepreneur' does to make big money. But suggesting slyly that "no doubt you pay all your taxes to Dan on time" is met with a laugh so loud it scares birds out of a nearby tree.

We couldn't finish our kebabs. These kids were on hand to devour the leftovers. They looked like they could do with them:

--

Gabriel and Dan were heading the same way as me but with dusk setting, and so many extra horses in their engines, I insisted they leave me behind if I was too slow for them. We rode out of town together (twice as fast as I had ridden in..) but it wasn't long before they waved and zoomed off. Good, friendly folk.

I got as far as Isaccea before darkness had fallen. I'm a good 60 miles from the coast, but this is the delta of the Danube, remember, as well as the junction of three countries with plenty of mutual suspicion and not much of a road budget.

I'm also half-a-mile from Ukraine, on the opposite bank of the Danube, but it's going to take many miles to get there by bike.

'Thankfully', a little hotel emerged from the gloom. I say 'thankfully' in inverted commas.

Beggars can't be choosers. Let's just say that, in an ideal world, I wouldn't care to spend the night in a hotel room with cracked windows, no curtains, damp streaked across the ceiling, no hot water, unwashed towels, threadbare blankets and a sticky floor.

Particularly not a hotel whose owner, Stelian, has lived in the States for many years, and who tells me -- a week after the Presidential Election, remember:

* Barack Obama's father "came to America to inseminate a white woman"
("Do you mean, 'had a child with his wife'?")
* Obama "went to a strict Muslim school somewhere in the Middle East"
("Do you mean, 'went to school in Indonesia where, after all, he happened to live at the time'?")
* but he also attended a Catholic school "because he is a whore who attends different churches"
("Did he really? Oh my. Do you think that was his decision or his mother's?)
* "She went with a black man. What right did she have to order her son around?"
(".... [speechless]... ")
* Obama's victory "was bought and paid for by the blacks, and they could afford it because they all sell drugs and never pay taxes."
(".... [beyond speechless]... ")

By this stage Stelian had already told me how he escaped from Communist Romania at the age of 20, became a success in Germany, then came back to work in this country where he was arrested, twice imprisoned, beaten and forced to 'donate' his yacht to Ceauşescu's psychopathic son Nicu. How it took 20 years to be allowed to marry his wife because the authorities hated him. How the elite who ran Communist Romania had survived unscathed and now were running 'democratic' Romania into the ground too, while skimming off millions of dollars for themselves.

And.. get this.. how Ceauşescu, destroyer of the country and nearly of Stelian himself, was a disaster for Romania because he was "TOO NICE TO THE PEOPLE".

I was waiting for him to say "At least he made the trains run on time" but the Romanian equivalent appears to be "He killed and he crushed and he was hideously corrupt, sure, but at least he balanced the budget."

Stelian had also shown me the gun he keeps, because if anyone comes to rob him he.. oh, you can guess the rest. Sad, bilious guff. I didn't want to give him a platform for any more of this.. even though I was thinking.. here's my story for Romania.

I retreated to my room and felt rather lonesome.

So.. what of Romania?

The land of the Romans. Descendants, I have been told proudly, of retired Roman Legionnaries who retired to the delta of the Danube.

I'd like to thank them. I'm back in a land of the Latin alphabet, and more than that, a Latin language. Have you read The Name Of The Rose? Remember the monk who speaks a mixture of alle die sprache de tutti Europa mit le star of der book? Una espece de proto-Esperanto, innit.

Turns out he was actually speaking Romanian.

With a smattering of French, Italian, Spanish.. and English and German.. I can read the language pretty well.

The bike is in the Parcare Privata of the hotel.

It's next door to a Magasin Mixt. Further along, there's a Magazin Alimentar which, you won't be surprised to learn, is where to buy legume and fructe. There's a Cosmetica too, next to a Clinica Veterinara that specialises in treating animales de companie -- pets. You can buy a bilete de avion in an Agentie de Turism. It's not all buy buy buy, though. Relax for a moment in the Galeriile de Arta.

Although at times it seems hard to find any building which isn't actually a mobile phone shop or a currency exchange.

People put signs saying "Nu Blocati Poarta" on their driveway gates.

This evening I could have eaten the scaloppina de porc, or how about a mixt grill, an omlette with ou -- of course -- and some ceapa; or a salata cu fructe de mare. I tried a bottle from the vinuri list and finished off with a cup of cafea.

I might have had trouble with the a patru formaggi pizza but if it was anything other than patru -- unu, doi, trei or perhaps cinci formaggi and I'd have understood straightaway.

I could go on. Well, I do go on.. but you know what I mean.

Understanding the spoken word? When a Romanian tries to speak to me? Errrm, give me another day or two;-)

Varna - Kavarna - Krapets - Durankulak (Bulgaria) - Varma Veche (Romania) - Mangalia - Constanţa

I'm racing round the Black Sea because it's bloomin' chilly and it's only going to get colder. That's why I'm already writing from Romania, having spent... [counts on fingers and toes.. only four nights in Bulgaria. Still, that's four nights more than the time I was Arrested In Bulgaria For Spying.

I grow attached to a country very quickly, so that Bulgaria had a hard fight living up to Turkey.. but already, I got defensive about Bulgaria and Romania has a lot to prove.

Take my last moments in Bulgaria, for example. I'd followed the 'coast road', intermittently approaching the Black Sea, north towards the border. I took a final loop down to the sea itself at Krapets -- I could never resist a name like that -- and found a small, dirt-poor fishing village. I don't take pictures of extremes of poverty and I try not to dwell on them here. I don't get a kick out of others' misery.

Krapets is no worse off than most of Bulgaria that I've seen; the houses are ramshackle, the roofs corrugated, the dogs thin and sickly, the women headscarfed, the paint long gone. The fishing boats are small, worn, creaking. So was Gheorghe: tobacco-stained fingers, acres of whiskers missed by his razor the last time he remembered to shave, clothes too thin for the cold. We managed a conversation of sorts in half-a-dozen languages, and lots of laughter. He had Paul Newman's eyes. And so did his pal, Reçip, who wandered ovr while we were talking, just in time for this photograph:

Reçip, on the right, is Turkish, and was greatly tickled when I remembered how to say Fally-man-derrit.

--

The border is at a place called Durankulak. Susan, I took a photo for you and it's in yr inbox. Other Duran Duran fans can apply by email.

--

Romania is poorer than Bulgaria. It certainly feels it.

More 'secondhand' shops - a giveaway.

But that's nothing. In small villages near the border with impoverished names like "2 May" and "21 August" (nobody wealthy or connected or powerful makes a choice to live in a village called 2 May), the side of the road is liberally sprinkled with people selling potatoes and cabbage. Lots of potatoes. Lots of cabbages. Nothing else. When 20 of your next-door neighbours are competing with you to sell potatoes and cabbages to the thin line of traffic pootling past your front door.. you're poor.

I'd noticed this occasionally in Bulgaria, but here most of the gardens I see have been turned over to grow vegetables. Potatoes, I'm guessing. And cabbages. Animals are tethered in open ground and on road verges in every village. A manky cow; a pair of goats; a donkey; two horses. There are ducks and an elderly woman wrapped in layer upon layer of cardigans and tights, fussing over a flock of geese. A gooseherd: my first!

Horse-drawn wooden carts.

Women sitting together on rickity benches and discarded kitchen chairs, set back from the road, watching the world motor(cycle) by. This is another first -- and long, long overdue. All those men gathered in cafes and benches across Europe, from Portugal to Italy to Albania to Bulgaria, drinking coffee or more likely guarding a long-finished cup, some playing cards, some chatting, some arguing, some who have clearly said not a word to anyone since 1977. But I have *never* seen, until today, women doing likewise.

I still won't approach them asking if I can take a photograph of them in all their picturesque poverty.

Bonfires everywhere as people burn up the falling leaves. They leave litter everywhere; their houses are in a state; but they get rid of their leaves. The smell is wonderful, and reminiscent to me of my dim and distant past, getting in my Pa's way as he stoked a lingering "bonf" at the bottom of our garden, gettin caught on purpose in the smoke so that his old green gardening jacket and once-were-green gardening cords, and my t-shirt and jeans, our hair and our hands and our very beings, would become infused with the pleasantly harsh tang of burnt leaf.

It's the smell of Doctor Who and Final Score and the Generation Game and toast for tea on a Saturday night in 1973.

That's it. Romania smells of the seventies. Luckily, without a hint of Brut 33.

--

Constanţa: time to catch up on the site, and my sleep.

Route: Burgas - Nesebar - Sunny Beach - Varna

I was sad to say goodbye to my British chums in Burgas. The folks at the London are generous, inclusive and funny. It hasn't all been easy for them, starting a new life in a new country. For what it's worth, it seems to me that they've done it for the right reasons and, pub quizzes and Full English breakfasts aside, they're integrating with the country -- and the people -- around them.

On the other hand, don't get me started on some of the patrons of the pub. From them I heard nothing but whining, complaints, self pity and a lazy, contemptible racism aimed at the Bulgarians they live near -- but not among -- as well as the multicultural country they have left behind.

They're all here because it's cheap. "It's like Spain was 40 years ago." And it probably is. Bulgaria is a poor country, as much of Spain was. People are moving from countryside to city, leaving property, often in poor repair, for sale.

But poor, rural Bulgaria is ugly -- concrete, cast iron, rubbish-filled, unkempt, unhappy -- in a way that Spain never was. It was Sovietised: factories and apartment buildings and roads and work practices and bureaucracy and attitude -- the infrastructure is hardened and a bit useless. It won't recover as quickly as the people. And the Brits who I heard whinging better get used to it.

Take Nesebar. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but not from where I was standing:

I didn't stop.

--

Bulgaria joined the EU in January 2007. I have yet to see a Bulgarian car with the little blue 'EU' badge on its number plates. Rather, everything still sports the Bulgarian flag.

I'm guessing that new Bulgarian cars do indeed fly the Euro flag. It's just that I haven't seen any cars that are anything like as young as two years old.

--

Sunny Beach is exactly what I expected/ feared, and in November I couldn't even gawp at the people. There were no people.

Varna, on the other hand, is Bulgaria's biggest coastal city. It's got thousands of years of history, and an Archaeological Museum. Which, more than a public house, however cheery, is the kind of thing I normally stop for.

I lounged all day and fetched up at The London in time for this:

And very good it was too -- especially the topical 'Bond themes' round.

Now then. I'm mentioning this quiz. So.. who do you think won? Despite the cheats who were quoteunquote 'marking' our answers.

Who da man?

[Correct.]

--

All of which should leave me with time to recap on the story of When I Was Arrested In Bulgaria For Spying. But I'm not convinced your life is long enough to cope. If you really want to hear it.. and, I confess, it's a bit of a stonker.. email me. Smanf, Chris and others who've heard it a gazillion times before, breath a sigh of relief.

Route: Tsarevo - Sozopol - Burgas

So there I am riding along quite happily, wondering to myself, as y'do, if today will be a quiet enough day for me to have space here to relate the story of When I Was Arrested In Bulgaria For Spying.

It takes a while, so I was half-hoping for a quiet day with nothing much to report.

Some hope.

For example, I found myself almost immediately riding on a short inland detour. But when it's alongside a gentle, autumnal river looking as peaceful, as pristine, as picturesque as this, well it's almost enough to turn the head of a young man in search of somewhere to live besidetheseaside:

(Sad to say, nothing's that natural without a reason. This is the Ropotamo river and it's in the middle of a bird reserve. I can confirm that the rest of the Bulgarian coast -- so far -- is doing a fair impression of the Spanish costas 30 years ago. I stopped in Djuni to visit the ruins of an ancient castle. Only, on closer inspection, having traversed muddy tracks, rocky tracks and someone's back garden, I discovered it was a half-built hotel instead..)

Then there was Sozopol. It's Ye Olde Bulgaria. Very pretty, very nice -- by which I really mean too nice. It's had a heritage makeover. The old buildings have been cleaned up; the new buildings pretend to look old; shops sell postcards and honey and tea-towels and woe betide you if you're looking to by a can of paint. That's not what the tourists want, now is it?

This time I wasn't complaining, mind. Ironic, I thought, verrrrrrry ironic, as I took pictures of the old houses and the new-old houses. What a hook on which to hang the story of When I Was Arrested In Bulgaria For Spying.

But it wasn't to be.

Coming in to Burgas, the first big city on the Bulgarian coast, I was expecting to ride straight through. It's only 30 miles north of Tsarevo, for a start. Not much to say for itself online. There are bigger and more interesting cities to come.. and, not least, places with names like Sunny Beach and Golden Sands. Written, on my map, in English. Yes! Imagine what they're going to be like! I took Benidorm on on its own terms and loved it. Could lightning possibly strike twice?

I didn't need to get to Sunny Beach to get thoroughly Benidormatised. Just as I was enjoying the ride down the waterfront, working ot how many friends I could convince to buy shares in an old, semi-derelict apartment building shaded by trees and hidden behind the main drag, I turned the corner and found myself outside The London Pub.

Hard on the brakes. An instantly cheery welcome from mine host and hostess, a Full English and a cup of PG Tips, happy banter in the front bar. Ride on to Sunny Bay? WhyonearthwouldIwanttodothat? I was putty in their hands, and asking around for the best place to stay.

Two things:

One. Even as I was getting off the bike, I heard someone say "Oh, Pete did that!" Then there was "Doesn't 'e remind you of Pete"; "Remember when Pete said that?"; "That isn't quite how Pete described it"; "I'm not sure Pete would say that" and "Hmmmm I wish Pete was still here."

Pete arrived on a bike earlier this year. He'd come in from the east, had no fixed plans, stayed for months. Pete, who I've contacted via the long-distance bikers' bible, if you ever read this.. you're a bloody legend here in Burgas. Everyone wants to see you again. And I owe you a drink or two. For the drinks I've been bought here, and more generally for leaving such a positive impression on the 'locals' (well, the local expats), that I got such a warm and immediate welcome. (I'd like to think that somewhere round the coast of Europe, I've made a few people think more positively about bikers too.)

Two. Maybe I've been away from Britain for too long.. although I flew back a couple of week ago!.. but Les Battersby was sitting in the bar talking to me about his sex-life, now he's retired to Bulgaria; Sharon from the Old Vic was serving, (her mum Ang has blonde hair now, and was working in the kitchen); Tucker Jenkins was eating a plate of chips and inviting me to karaoke later; strangest of all, a long-faced Blakey was propping up the bar, complaining about the quality of Bulgarian carpenters while doing an impression of Boycie out of Only Fools And Horses.

Verrrrrrrrry strange.

Route: Istanbul - Bahçeköy - Arnavutküy - Vize - Dereköy - Malko Turnovo (Bulgaria) - Tsarevo

Up the Bosphorus, through Beşiktaş and Bahçeköy, then Kemerburgaz to Göktürk, a series of diversions to Bolluca -- I wouldn't make that up, promise -- and Arnavutküy. Aren't these names great?

I had hoped to spend another night in Turkey, somewhere rural and empty and quiet after the hustle and bright lights of the big city, but with the knowledge that winter is a-comin' I'm not giving myself long to get round the Black Sea, and with the distance from Istanbul to the frontier not being great I couldn't justify going that slowly.

Which is ironic, because this afternoon I got a speeding ticket when I could have *sworn* I was under the limit.

It was a particularly desolate stretch of the D020 between Vize and Pinarhisar. Vize is a one-horse town. The horse was pulling a cart; the driver appeared to be asleep. No-one else was in sight but the dogs asleep at the road's edge on the outskirts of town. Nevertheless, there's a built-in incentive to stick to the speed limit here: potholes, ruts and rubbish on the road.

Beyond town, the road opened up again and I picked up speed. I saw the old, worn-out sign: "Radar". Even though I've seen it a hundred times or more, I checked my speedo instinctively: between 80-85. Even if the cops are awake and working all the way out here, I reasoned, they won't stop me if I happen to be 5kmph over the limit.

Wrong!

They were very friendly: apologetic, even. But, they indicated, as I was travelling so much over the limit, there was nothing they could do. (No hint or indication for a moment that they wanted a bribe.)

So much over the limit? The speed limit is 80, I pointed out. I hadn't been going that much faster, had I? No no, the limit for bikes is 70, they replied -- all this in sign language and scribbles on the dirty bonnet of the police car. Huh? HUH? Since when? Since forever, apparently.

Yes folks, motorcycles are legally obliged to travel 10kmph slower than all other vehicles on the road. This is dunderheaded, cack-handed, ill-thought-out, populist political buffoonery. Stupid. Dangerous. Since when did Sarah Palin start writing Turkey's traffic laws?

Ignoring the fact that most lorries here were built, seemingly, before the Age of Steam, and that many bikes are designed for speeds three times as fast as that -- I am no apologist for speeding hooligan bikers, and certainly not one myself -- this aberration of legislation requires bikes, the most exposed and vulnerable road users, constantly to be travelling slightly slower than everyone else. That means more frustrated car and lorry drivers growing impatient; more overtaking of little bikes by big heavy painful vehicles; more pressure on the biker to stick to the very edge of the road, where the potholes are bigger and less swiftly repaired, and where roadkill normally ends up. And riding a bike into a dead dog or sheep is not very funny. In a car, you'd feel the jolt, and possibly sick. On a bike, you'd crash, and possibly die.

Which is not to say that speeding is big or clever.

Which is not to say I never do it.

Which is not to say I ever speed, officer, if you're reading this, thankyouverymuch.

--

I checked this with Erkut, my Istanbullu biking buddy. Seems that is the speed limit and the cops had every right to stop me. Or, as he so eloquently put it: "Yes unfortunatelly, they sucks. U r foreigner." (Yes, before you ask, this was a text message.)

--

Here's an interesting update: turns out I wasn't the only bike caught doing exactly 91 kilometres an hour in Turkey this week. Coincidence? Or the default setting for 'foreign bike'?

--

All of which got me to the border, quite some way inland, slightly later than I had hoped.

It was twilight when I arrived and by the time I emerged into Bulgaria it was dark. Time enough for the Turkish authorities to charge me for the photocopy of my passport that they needed for their records.. how is that anything other than crap?.. and for the insurance desk on the Bulgarian side to attempt a really naughty little scam -- I've linked to a description I've posted on the same biking forum; no need to get hot under the collar here too.

There is a hotel in Malko Turnovo, the first village after the border, but it was full. It has a jacuzzi. As I rode the 60 kilometres to the next available bed, in Tsarevo, I decided that the hotel had been booked by a convention of boozy Bulgarian lingerie models who were, even now, moaning that they should have left at least one room free so that some random male traveller could have joined them.

This was a ride at once fantastical, thrilling and bloody stupid.

Once I was away from Malko Turnovo, pointed toward the right road by a young Roma kid standing at a dark crossroads on the edge of the village.. and I don't want to let my imagination wander down that dark pathway.. the road grew.. you've guessed.. dark.

Dark like you seldom see in northern Europe. A complete absence of electric light. No houses, no vehicles, no street lights. No moon. Trees rising on either side of the narrow tarmac ribbon. Dark sky, dark trees, dark road. A couple of times I pulled over, switched the bike off and breathed in the darkness but the fear that, after all this time, this is when the bike would choose not to start again, made me nervous to do it again.

And I've just realised, as I wrote this down, that I really did pull over to the side of the road. When the silence, and the darkness, were complete enough to know that there was no other vehicle, no other person, for many miles in any direction.

Loved it.

Between Malko Turnovo and Tsarevo I saw three cars, two policemen at a checkpoint, and one man gardening at night in the solitary hamlet of Gramatikovo. He didn't even raise his head as the bike chugged past. I wonder if he bothered mentioning it to his wife that night. "You do go on, dear. That's the second time you've mentioned the traffic this year."

I'm writing these words. I made it. But riding at night, in a new country, with dodgy roads, in forested country full of goodness knows what creatures -- that's dumb.

--

Several hours in the country and I haven't told you about When I Was Arrested In Bulgaria For Spying. This can't last.