Fantasy freelancers

[krigl]

Today we went from one capital to another, Chisinau to Bucharest.



Sunrise over Moldova.



A giant shuttlecock fell from the sky and impacted the ground just 1km ahead of us. Luckily, being made of cheap and light plastic, it did little damage to the surrounding terrain. I shudder to think what would have happened to the sundry consumables we're carrying to various petrol station convenience shops had it hit us though.



Ruined houses near the border... nice.



And another reminder of the war...



Time to get those papers ready again. And some quality bottles of vodka, just in case.



Back in Romania, approaching the first turn-off to Bacau.



There it is.



Making good progress south. Driving 'a rigid', or at least this one by Madster, is a little tricky as it bounces all over the place when the roads are rough. Something to do with the fact that ETS2 doesn't have proper physics for 'rigids', maybe. I guess it behaves like a very big but very light cab? I don't know, but it's a fun challenge and it's nice to photograph something different for a change.



At the scenery town marking the 2nd turn-off to Bacau, a local retired border guard seems to have built a house identical to their former place of work. Very strange...



Instead of turning right/North to Bacau (which will be in the next set) we turned left/South to Bucharest, and found ourselves on a motorway. Well, kind of. Top speed 100km/h, which is much faster than the probably ex-motorway I went on by the coast near Ravenna in Italy during my last holiday, which had 2 lanes in each direction, overgrown concrete barriers, plenty of holes and bumps, and a speed limit of 50 km/h.



Factory next to a roundabout that interrupted our speedy passage.



Back on the motorway, we meet roadworks, of course.



Scenery town north of Bucharest. Getting ready to turn East and make our first petrol station shop delivery.



Well!



Heading Eastwards... hoping the petrol station has a loo and a coffee machine, or at least some conveniently placed bushes.



First delivery done, we are approaching Bucharest from the North. Baltic Sea assets in evidence here. I wonder if the modder was like, 'yay, new stuff I can use in Romania' and then a few months later 'I don't believe it, SCS are doing Romania next'. Or perhaps they knew, but wanted their region to look its best for a few more months.



Nearly there.



Wonder what the locals think about this...



Heading along the northern part of the ring road above the capital. Now, THIS is a crane. Would like to see this replace the ancient crane assets used everywhere.



Bucharest and its surroundings have had a lot of work done on them.



Aiming for our next delivery to the West of the city.





Here we are, 2 garages in nondescript surroundings between Bucharest and Sibiu.



After that, went back to Bucharest and took the southern part of the ring road past the station to our final delivery point.



Delivery complete.



Impressed by the city, we went to buy a garage there.



Just about to make that purchase. Very cool part of the ProMods map.

Back again soon, I hope. Cheers!

Milan

[Sam!]

Again great shots!

[TheNuvolari]

Wonder what the locals think about this...

Whenever I'm there I'm always a bit scared despite it's just a game!

[krigl]

Garage bought in Bucharest, I hired some locals to fix it up. The noise was incredible, so I retreated to a hotel in town right opposite Ceaușescu's Palace of the Parliament and spent a couple of days exploring the town and taking a few photos.



The city has a big mix of old and new.



Old and grand city building which escaped Ceaușescu's systematization, or perhaps was rebuilt.



Off to the service centre to have the truck refitted by request from my colleague in Chisinau.





Our hotel, with the truck after refitting, ready for the next trip.



The view from the hotel - spectacular, eh? Of course, they only had a room for me at the back with a view of a rusty generator cabinet and lots of broken beer bottles and cigarette packets.



This impressive building holds a number of records, and I recommend reading the Wikipedia article about it. Just google Palace of the Parliament.



Congrats to the modeller for doing a superb job in bringing this building (and the rest of Bucharest) to the game.



Anyway, eventually it was time to leave, and here we are heading out of - I keep wanting to write Budapest... maybe those adverts are justified after all - Bucharest on a mission that will take us north to the cities of Bacau and Piatra Neamt. We've already traversed the first part, so let's skip to the Bucharest-Bacau-Chisinau turnoff...



North of that, we meet this tower. Could it be a lighthouse? Could it be that the Black Sea once extended all the way over here? Probably not, but who knows... just look at what happened to the Aral Sea. And the Iapetus Ocean!



Here we are entering Bacau, from which a road also heads east to Chisinau... and west to Sibiu.



It's a cool place, so took a few shots...





As you can see, we are set up to pick up some logs. Next set we'll be heading into the forested mountains north of Piatra Neamt for that.
Of course, we'll be just pretending, not actually doing that. My first experience of driving 'a rigid' was a bit of a surprise. It only had a chassis behind the cab, and you have to pick what you want on the back from the 'Truck Customisation' screen along with the paint scheme (choosing didn't take long this time). I didn't work this out until I'd tried to get a Cargo job and found that it was impossible. It slowly dawned on me that whatever you put on the back is only cosmetic, and you can't actually do any jobs with it - the game doesn't allow it.



So driving 'a rigid' takes the art of pretense to a new level. Not only are you pretending to be a truck driver driving a pretend truck on pretend jobs for pretend money, you are actually only pretending to do pretend jobs for pretend money.



So I'm going to pretend to drive north of Piatra Neamt with an empty truck, then 'fly' back to Peatra Neamt, change the truck configuration at the garage there to a 'full of logs' config, then fly back to the forest north of Peatra Neamt and pretend to have picked up the logs and take pictures of us driving back. In different weather. And then process them in Gimp, put them on Imgur, and post them here with some ludicrous waffle to accompany them.



Oh my God, did I break the fourth wall?

Never mind that, just look at the lovely scenery! And that truck... interesting company name, that.



Well... anyway... It's cool to be able to take pictures of a different kind of truck for a change, though, thanks to Madster for making it possible!



Here we are leaving the lovely city of Bacau for a short drive north to Peatra Neamt, empty logging rack rattling behind us, the truck feeling light and responsive.



Sunkissed fields surround us.



On the outskirts of Piatra Neamt we are greeted by a large industrial facilty.



Arrival. Peatra Neamt is another very well modelled place, so here are some more shots...











It was lunchtime, so we stopped for a bite in a local eatery... time to end this post for today.

Cau, Milan

[Sam!]

Impressive shots. One can only express the respect for his work to the model builder from Bucharest. Very nice.
Every single building has to be modeled before it can be brought into play. A photomontage is not enough. Has anyone ever told that the folder was also very good. No idea where he is now. How did he say, who wants portfolios must also be model builders. Clear that it is not enough to move red, blue and green.

I'm looking forward to the next recordings!

[krigl]

After lunch in Piatru Neamt we found it had started raining. As we had to go into the mountains, I was a bit nervous. But just a bit.



Heading north out of town.







Getting up high.



I recognise this dam from other people's images of ProMods' Romania.



Someone knocked these down, but not me, honest!



We've reached the logging area not far south of the Cluj Napoca - Balti road. Loading up with slippery logs amongst the trees and falling rain with the scent of wet pines and mushrooms filling the air was an experience. Then all of a sudden, the sun came out, the rain stopped and birdsong returned.



On the way back south, logs loaded, via Peatra Neamt and Bacau to Chisinau in Moldova.



The dam looks a lot nicer in the sunlight.



High up, looking down the valley.



Sad reminder that real driving isn't a game.





Passing through Peatra Neamt.





And Bacau.



Passing along an as-yet unexplored stretch of road from Bacau to the Chisinau - Bucharest road.



Another reminder.



The scenery town that marks the junction.



Now driving north towards the Moldovan border at the end of the day.



Having delivered the logs and returned the 'rigid' to my colleague, I refitted my truck and began an epic trek through the heart of Romania from the hilly east to Timisoara in the plains of the west. Leaving Chisinau resplendent in yellow and with an authentic trailer to haul.



Past Bacau we got into a spectacular mountain region. Wow...







When I see someone rich, both my thumbs start to itch...





A really nice part of the map!!! That's the end of this set - cheers!

[krigl]

I have some spare time right now and another set to upload, so here goes... continuing our trek from Bacau to Timisoara.



Great scenery in this village under the mountains.



Heading west, the roads start to get a little wider...



This is quite a large 'scenery town', not sure what it is.



With its cathedral and two castles it must be somewhere significant, I would guess. And it reminds me a little of home - seems to me that the cathedral and the 2nd castle (not visible in these pictures) were both taken from SCS's Going East DLC's version of Brno, the place where I live in real life. I can see both buildings from my window right now!



Similar view at street level. Got to make progress and get to Timisoara before nightfall.



A beautiful yellow carpet surrounds us once again. This part of the map may be based mainly on assets from the creaky and aging Going East DLC, but it's well put together, has a lot of character all of its own, and is really lovely to drive through.





Reached the outskirts of Sibiu. We'll avoid it this time, taking the ring road to the north.



Sibiu, yet another nicely made town.



North of Sibiu. My coffee flask is empty. Need to find a petrol station.



A last one of Sibiu. Knowing that I will never return to these places genuinely makes me a little sad. Read something the other day though about how doing things virtually can be considered semi-equivalent to doing them in real life. We have memories of places we visit in virtual worlds, and the things we did there, the fun we had... is it really that different from going there in real life? Certainly cheaper... and more environmentally friendly too. As long as we don't give up travelling in real life completely perhaps there's no harm in it? Or is there? The experience is less complex, less real, less human...



Continuing west towards Hungary, the countryside is getting flatter.



And the sun is getting lower.







Almost there!



Finally, we've reached Timisoara, just in time to get some shots of the city at sunset.









Dropped off the cargo and found a hotel. We're nearing the end of our travels in this part of the ProMods map - but there are still some great places to visit ahead of us. The next job is going to be a very heavy haul, and into Bulgaria!





Night night!

[Sam!]

Thanks for the recordings. Just great.

[krigl]

My colleague in Chisinau contacted me once more with another job - to take a massive crane from Timisoara to Pleven in Bulgaria. I asked if it would need special permission, escort cars, flags and the like and he said nah.... it's not that big, don't worry about it. Well, better safe than sorry, I thought, and refitted the cab with as many bright and flashing lights as possible so, you know, people won't fail to notice us or something.





Not too bad, eh?



On the day of the job Timisoara was looking fine.





We went to the local Bosch factory and picked up the crane. It seemed rather on the large side to me but what do I know, I'm just the owner of a multi-million Euro trucking company.



Soon we were leaving town and making our way to Craiova down roads already shown in earlier sets.



My colleague turned out to be right - the job was doable. The turnable wheels on the trailer really helped with negotiating various corners and roundabouts on the way to the Bulgarian border. Here we are in Craiova.



South of Craiova we entered the Land of New Assets. It was then that I realised we needed fuel...



It doesn't look like the back of the crane could fit under the petrol station roof, does it? It didn't. Luckily, the roof wasn't solid... it's just some kind of quantum projection from the n-th dimension.



The Romanian side of the border at Calafat.



Once again I made a potentially expensive and embarrassing error... and was saved by the lack of covalent bonds or whatever between the molecules of the virtual roof once again. Meanwhile all the other traffic without exception went round the border post along a nearby road and didn't bother going through it at all... guess it's an ex-border control building now. Because of EU membership, right? Oops.



Crossing the Danube River that marks the border between Romania and Bulgaria, in no-man's land.



And we're in another new country!



On route to Vidin, the first Bulgarian town on the schedule.



There it is in the distance. Stopped there for a while and sent the drone up to get some shots.







Looks pretty realistic to me, very nice.



Then we were off again, through hi-fidelity countryside - very pretty.









After some time we got to Dimova, a small scenery town or village which was very nicely made.







And there we will leave it for today - two more sets to go.

[TheNuvolari]

picture #10

The Romanian side of the border at Calafat.

It's a very rare occasion, but sometimes two fleet trucks close to each other can be seen. That's such a nice detail! Not sure if it's intentional or just a huge coincidence though.