Dave Smart Day 20: Bucharest Determined not to turn up in a major city looking for a place to stay again, I was up early and on the Internet to find a hostel. Having booked the East Hostel in Bucharest, I got fed and watered and set off for Bran Castle, the setting for Dracula. [...]

Dave Smart Day 19: Cluj-Napoca to Brasov I wandered around Cluj in the morning, a really pretty little town, and scribbled a few more notes about the preceding days travels whilst sitting on the main square listening to some chill out music being piped from the café. I decided Brasov would be the next stop [...]

Dave Smart Day 18: Off to Transylvania After little thought I decided to keep on going East and headed for Transylvania and managed to get lost on the way out of Budapest, my only real regret about this trip is not having detailed maps for this area on my GPS as I could wander off [...]

Dave Smart Day 17: House of Terror Fin and I headed to the House of Terror, a museum about the Communist oppression, it was really quite interesting and unpleasant at the same time, and some of it was hard to understand as it was all in Hungarian, then we noticed a few people wandering around [...]

Dave Smart Day 16: A visit to old monuments from the Communist era On Sunday I had heard about a museum called the House of Terror, but sadly found out that all the museums were closed on Mondays, so I arranged to go to Memorial Park with Antoine, as it’s a bit out of town [...]

Dave Smart Day 15: Relaxing in Buda and Pest Some of you may know that Budapest is made up of 2 parts, Buda on the hill on the west bank of the Danube and Pest on the east. We were staying in Pest in a fairly central area, so I decided just to take a [...]

Dave Smart Day 14: Budpest day two, and the Salsa is better We awoke late and I had the nastiest hangover I’ve had for a very long time. What’s worse than that, the room I was in had furniture on the wall looking like a normal room, imagine waking up with a hangover to see [...]

Dave Smart Day 13: To Budapest Having done quite a lot of driving I decided to stay in Budapest for the weekend. I booked a bed in the Home Made Hostel and left around 11. Not knowing what the roads would be like in Slovakia or Hungary, as my GPS had no detailed maps, I [...]

Dave Smart Day 12: Heading South in Czech Republic Again up at a reasonable hour. The hostel had free internet access and tea and coffee. I left Luke and John sorting out insurance issues and headed across town on the Metro, why can’t all city transport systems be as cheap as this? Around 75p for [...]

Dave Smart Day 11: A day in Prague We actually got up at a reasonable time after a late night and started to get stuff sorted out. The café next to the apartment had Wifi access so we had a light breakfast and Keith arranged to meet the guys whos BMW he had bought the [...]

Dave Smart Part 10: Poznan to Prague I was up early at 7.30am to replace the fan belt, which took about 25 minutes, on completing it I noticed a couple of small bolts on the ground after I replaced the grille. they were from the radiator top bracket which I undid to remove and replace [...]

Dave Smart Part nine: Gdansk to Poznan Another late start saw me pushed for time for the day, my only real plan was to get to Prague by late Monday afternoon to meet some friends at the end of the CzechWrecks rally (see www.streetsafari.com) The trip from Gdansk to Prague some 470 miles would seem [...]

Dave Smart Part eight: Mini and a shipyard Had a bit of a lie in then after a pleasant breakfast, Jagoda and I jumped in the Mini for a sight seeing and photo opportunity tour. We headed for the gates of the shipyard, the scene of many Solidarity protests that I remember from TV when [...]

Dave Smart Part seven: Berlin to Gdansk – what a day! Before I left Berlin, there were a few things I wanted to do, get pictures of the car at Checkpoint Charlie, The Wall and a BMW MINI dealer around the corner from the hostel. As I reversed on to the pavement outside the BMW [...]

Dave Smart Part six: Berlin – a tale of two cities After stupidly falling asleep last night I got up early to see as much of the city as I could in the limited time available. Far from being a city of former East and West, I found Berlin had many other contrasts during the [...]

Dave Smart Part five: And so to the East… I set off from Osnabruck at about 11, with the GPS set to ‘avoid highways’ and had a lovely morning travelling the A roads, culminating in an enjoyable frickadellan and strawberry tart for lunch. I found from the locals, that the old East/West border was to [...]

Dave Smart Part four: Salsa dancing already I left Erwin’s place mid morning and headed for Osnabruck in Germany, weather was dull, but good at first, however as I crossed the border, the Germans decided to make me feel at home as the skies slowly lowered and it started to rain, quite heavily in places. [...]

Dave Smart Part three: Working for my keep As it was good to see Erwin again, I decided to stay for an extra night in Meijel, but Erwin had to work today, so I went along with him and we removed the carpet from a large office in about 2 1/2 hours which left the [...]

Dave Smart Part two: The first day Well today I left my friend’s house at about 9.40am (I should have really left at 9.00) so things were always gonna be a little pressed for catching the ferry at Dover. Headed up the M5, down the A358 and then onto the A303 towards the M3, when [...]

Dave Smart is about to take his ex-S2N Mini for an adventure across Europe. And we’ll be keeping track of his progress. For more information, visit http://getjealous.com/marvelousminiofdoom