I was pretty terrified, if I'm honest. I had no idea what the next 5 weeks was to hold. We'd done our research and prepared as best we could - I felt more like an overland traveller than a charity rallier (of course, you should really prepare as the former if you want to do the latter responsibly). But two nagging fears kept bouncing around my mind.
In the research I'd done into previous rallies and the conversations I'd had with various people, traffic cops & border guards were invariably made out to be corrupt, sleazy bastards who would take any and every opportunity to bribe you out of some cold hard currency, in return for the most trivial of perceived violations. I'd heard stories about them even going so far as to drag people back to the station and show them the cells, the intimation being that that is where they would be spending the foreseeable future if they didn't play the game. What's more, they were rumoured to radio their mates further down the road once they'd tapped you up, meaning you could be stopped repeatedly on the same stretch of road and do nothing about it.
Many of the veterans laughed this challenge off as almost a highlight of the trip; war stories were forever being swapped about how teams had talked, sped or otherwise wangled their way out of fines, or negotiated their way down from $500 to £5 and a packet of Rich Tea biscuits. Sometimes it took hours to wait for the local cop to get bored enough to start bargaining.
I'm not the sort of person who is good at this sort of stuff. And I was travelling with my girlfriend, so I didn't want to put us in the situation where we were bankrupt by the end of the first week - we had, by our frankly finger-in-the-air calculations, just about enough money to get us to UB and back as long as we had no unforeseen expense. But I became convinced that everywhere east of the EU was swarming with bent coppers just waiting for some fresh Western meat to cruise over the horizon. It was a source of significant concern, and one which I tried to hide from my co-pilot.
Secondly, despite the extensive planning & preparation we put into the trip, I overlooked one thing - vaccinations. You may think this is possibly the most important thing to remember, along with visas to get into the various countries. And you'd be right. My problem was that I'd read the advice on the NHS website, and all suggested certain jabs were 'recommended' for the countries we were going to. None were 'required'. This, to me, suggested it was a good idea to get them if you wanted to ensure you were definitely ok, but it wasn't really a big deal.
It was only when I re-read the information a fortnight before departure that I discovered 'required' only applied to vaccinations you had to prove you had had to be allowed entry to a particular country. 'Recommended' shots covered pretty much everything else you had a chance of catching whilst there, irrespective of severity. Of course, with 14 days until the off, it was too late to do anything about it, so when I wasn't stressing about the local constabulary, I was trying to work out how to avoid dogs (rabies) and trees (tick-borne encephalitis) for the entirety of our trip.
We had another session of drinks in the Regent with some of J's mates on the Thursday night, when we also received our van livery from our friend Wojtek. We couldn't afford proper stickers, so he printed them on high quality shiny paper, and they looked amazing. The only thing they weren't was waterproof. He also made us a selection of Gogol Bordello cds for the journey, my favourite band - and as it turned out these were pretty much the only music we took with us, alongside another CD made for us by J's friend Alex. It provided the anthems of our trip, and several of the songs still make us well up even now when we hear them.
Work was finished, Friday was upon us and beyond that..... the rally.
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