Halfway down the Danube

In Search of the A-2

So we wanted to drive the A-2 highway this weekend.

You have to understand: Romania, a country half the size of France, only has about 200 km (120 miles) of highway. Half of that is the "Pitesti Autostrada", the A-1, which goes from Bucharest west for about 100 km/60 miles to the nondescript small city of Pitesti. (It was built by Ceausescu in the 1970s because the country's first car factory was near Pitesti, and he wanted a highway from the factory to the capital. The other 100 km consists of various odds and ends scattered around the country -- a few miles here, a few miles there.

Otherwise, if you're driving around Romania, you're driving on two-lane country roads.

Until about two weeks ago, that is. That's when we read in the news that 55 km (~35 miles) of the new A-2 highway had been completed.

Now, the A-2 will eventually go about 250 km east from Bucharest to the port of Constanta on the Black Sea -- it's supposed to be completed in 2006 (although there is room for some skepticism here). When it's done, the trip from Bucharest to Constanta (the country's largest port, a major industrial center, and the center of its most important tourist region) will take just over two hours instead of three and a half.

Putting that aside, we were looking forward to driving on it. Months of driving on Romanian roads leave you sort of wistful for a real highway. There's the A-1, but it's not in great shape, and even a small pothole makes a hell of a bang when you hit it at 120 km/75 mph. So when we decided to drive from Bucharest to Constanta, we naturally decided that we'd take the new A-2 just as far as we could. A big, fast, new highway: it wasn't like we gave it a moment's thought. We were there.

Except we couldn't find it.

Oh, we had a map that showed where it should be. It should start right around a Bucharest suburb called Pantelimon, and run parallel to the two-lane road that leads to Calarasi.. We know that road well. So we drove down to Pantelimon, and...

...and nothing. No highway. No signs for a highway. No construction equipment. Not even a little back road wiggling off somewhere that just might lead to a highway. It was just the same old two-lane road to Calarasi.

We drove around for a while, casting for the missing highway like a dog on a cold scent. We kept looking at the map: Pantelimon isn't that big, it must be around here somewhere.

But it wasn't.

Well: the map had a dotted line that showed where the A-2 was supposed to go. And it showed an exit off the Calarasi road about 25 km (15 miles) ahead, in a town called Fundulea. So, okay.

We drove along the Calarasi road, slipping into the normal long-distance Romanian driving experience: speed up to 100 kph, get behind a truck, slow down. Breathe some diesel fumes. Wait, wait, pass the truck. Speed up to 100 kph, hit a town. Slow down to 60 kph. (The towns are full of local cops who are waiting for people to blow through; we saw at least half a dozen people pulled over in the course of the weekend.)

Leave small town, speed up to 100 kph, get behind a piece of farm equipment. Slow down, wait, wait, pass. WHOA there's a horse-drawn cart coming the other way, half on the shoulder, half not. Swerve, veer, get back in lane. Speed up to, whoops, another town, slow down. Pedestrians in a crosswalk, full stop. Out of town, speed up to 100 kph, actually stay over 100 kph for four or five minutes, hit a long line of cars behind a particlularly large and slow truck. Wait, wait...

Normally one doesn't mind this so much. It's just how things are here. But the thought of that highway was tantalizing and frustrating. Smooth high-speed driving, just out of reach! So by the time we reached Fundulea, we were ready to jump on that road...

...except that it wasn't there. No signs. No exit. No indication that anything had changed in Fundulea, or ever would. Just the same old two-lane road to Calarasi, blowing on through.

A weird, paranoid sense of unreality gripped us. Had the newspaper lied? We hadn't actually met anyone who'd driven on the A-2. Or had we somehow misremembered it? Maybe it went to some other city entirely. But no: there it was on the map, a thick dotted line. But it wasn't there.

Since there wasn't really anything else to do, we continued on our way. Maybe the A-2 existed and maybe it didn't, but anyhow we were going to the beach. We would try again on the way back.

[to be continued]

Posted by douglas at June 30, 2004 03:49 PM