The Smugglers' bus to Romania

Well this kind of thing doesn't happen when you take a flight between countries .... We had initially planned to connect to a bus to take us over the border from Chernivtsi in Ukraine to Suceava in Romania after a ridiculously long train journey (11 hrs) covering less than 300km !! Unfortunately we missed the only bus out of town and ended up having a surprisingly good time in Chernivsti

The next day we took the 7.30am local "smugglers" bus (which we think was this early because it gives them enough time to do a border crossing, sell the goods and get back in the same day). Cigarettes and Alcohol are phenomally cheap in the ukraine and we calculated that a smuggler can probably make about $500 a day in such trips. When crossing the border we wondered why we and other non locals were given the VIP treatment and herded quickly through customs, until we figured that they probably did not want us observing the "inspection" of other passengers!. The other passengers seem to manage to convince the border guards that all was legit and continued on, possibly minus a few packs of their souvenirs.