Matt and I love the movie Borat. Sacha Baron Cohen plays Kazakh television personality Borat Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan who goes to America to make a documentary at the behest of the Kazakh Ministry of Information. The movie is a funny social satire as shocking as they come.
On our last trip to Bucharest we couldn’t help ourselves, we had to drive 80 kilometers north and visit the small gypsy village where Borat was filmed.
The drive between Bucharest and Glod is amazing, smooth roads, beautiful villages with houses with signature Romanian roofs. Entering Glod is like entering a new dimension. People here are poor, I mean dirt poor, in fact, some people are living in dirt huts. Wild chickens, dogs and donkeys roam the streets (well more like “street” as there is only one paved street), children “hang out” playing with rocks and garbage as their whole extended family sits on plastic lawn furniture occasionally yelling at them to get off the road as semi trucks zoom by.
After 10 minutes of arguing over where the safest place to park our rig would be, we turned off the engine, locked everything up and stepped into Glod.
Our large camper didn’t go unnoticed, every single “Glodian” (or is it “Gloder”) greeted us with huge toothy grins and hearty giggles.
The kids loved being in photos.
Here is half the town’s people peeking into our camper, trying to sell us mushrooms and asking for money. We decided not to mention the movie Borat and simply enjoy Glod as is.
Everyone was 100% friendly but the constant begging was rather sad/distracting, we really wanted to spend more time talking to everyone, making friends or maybe enjoy some soup at the local eatery.
A few homes weren’t so bad, with a few finishing touches they would fit in most Eastern European towns.
A few strange things happen during our stay. A lady told us to move our car off the road and away from her gate and when we returned to the van a massive pointy rock was tucked in under our back wheel. Good thing I caught that in time! Next, we stopped at the local market and shared a beer (which I drank 90% of) then all of a sudden a man came up to us threatening to call the police if we didn’t give him “hush money”. Thankfully nothing came out of it.
Though our experience in Glod finished on a sour note, all in all it was worth the detour.