August 4th, 2011

...now browsing by day

 

Thursday. Van het Kastje naar de Muur. Frustrations.

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

A friend of my marina neighbor offered to take me to the Customs, to try and get my invoices stamped to get my GST refunds. He is a retired super cargo and I figured he knew his way around the system. We walked for ever from building to building and it turned out that much had changed since his retirement. Customs was not able to help me and I am supposed to go to a small sub port called Agigea, which is about 6 k.m. by water and 20 k.m. by road. But there apparently is no place for my boat to tie up. My friend has offered to take me there on Monday, but I have my doubts that I’ll get anywhere.

It is a lot cooler today and overcast, I got some more sanding done on the repairs and the Teak trim. And will continue this afternoon. Yesterday evening I drank a beer with part of the crew of the large Austrian tri-maran. They were supposed to get the mast stepped early this morning but it has not happened yet. It took them 8 days to get from Linz to Constanta. It took me more than 8 weeks. The two commercial river skippers went home this morning. One of them, Peter, a Serb was very outspoken about his dislikes for Muslims, Americans and Dutch (because we allow Muslims to build their mosques). But he was so blunt that it was disarming.