Thursday 18th September. Day 14.

Day 14. We left today at 7.30am with hopes of making the Austrian border by mid morning. A broken down lorry on the Budapest ring road put pay to that but we still managed to cross into Austria just before noon.

We had to top up our electronic toll boxes at a cost of 75 euros per vehicle. The total cost of taking the convoy through Austria in both directions has been over 1500 euros. I don’t know if I mentioned last week but Austria is the only country we have driven through which has refused to waive toll charges for the convoy. All the other countries have given us exemption as we are delivering humanitarian aid. Something to think about when you are choosing where to book your skiing holiday for next year…!

After a brief stop at the Austrian border we carried on and drove right across Austria in the afternoon. Some of the mountains to the South already had snow on them and the scenery generally was beautiful and much more green and lush than Hungary in the morning. (I still recommend France or Switzerland for your skiing though!)

At 5.00pm we crossed into Germany and carried on until around 8.00pm. We have covered about half the distance we need to cover if we are to make Bruges by tomorrow evening. Hopefully tomorrow without the traffic and border delays we had today we will do the other half in shorter time. We are not taking any chances though so it is breakfast at 6.30am for a 7.00am start.

I have included a few photos of Millar to go with today’s post as a couple of people were asking about him.

Finally, I said last week I would explain a bit more about the problems with the Bulgarian adoption laws as they were explained to us at Pleven.

The first problem is the time it takes for the process to run its course – usually about 4 years. This is obviously a major issue as the adopting Parents lose the opportunity to have the child from a very young age which is obviously desirable if at all possible. The other problem is that the natural Parents of the child have the opportunity to inspect the adopting parent’s home and impose conditions on how they want the child to be brought up. As it was explained to me this is a major problem which can scupper many adoptions particularly if the child comes from Romany tribe and 30 of the clan insist on inspecting the adoptive Parents home. This may be an extreme example but most people would say that if the natural parents have abandoned or given up the child then they should not be in a position to dictate to the adopting parents how they should bring the child up. However, consider this. What if the natural Parents don’t want to give the child up for adoption but are simply too poor to keep it. In those circumstances is it not fair that they should have some opportunity to feel that the baby they love is going to a decent home? Something to think about.

I suspect there is no easy answer and that what is really needed is a flexible system which puts the interests of speed and the child first but caters for the needs of those Parents who have to give up their children reluctantly.

On that note I will bid you goodnight and hopefully be writing from Bruges tomorrow evening!

Peter.