Importing a car in Romania

Hi guys. Today I’m going to tell the story of how I imported my car in to Romania.

We have been announced by email that car arrived to Constanta which is a port at the Black Sea. We jump in a train and travel 12 hours by train to arrive to Constanta.

From train station you can find a taxi to take you to the port. Is not expensive since is not far. If you have time you can walk.
Arriving in port. If you don’t know what you have to do, you are fucked. We are from this category.

At the entrance of the port are offices of the shippers. If you lucky you might find somebody to prepare your papers.
We found out that the car is in a different port in Agigea which is like 20 km distance. We got papers fast, and even the lady introduce us to some guy that is going to help. The guy which has a trucking company has give us a ride to Agigea and explain us how things are going around. He propose us to give him papers and 50 Euro and he is going to make the papers for us.

At the arrival in Agigea we found out that we need a commissioner to help with papers between the port authorities, customs and us. They noticed that the papers where wrong, that the shipping company had misspelled the name. They send us back to Constanta to the shippers office to make a paper to correct the misspelling. At the shippers office we found out that they can’t do anything till next because of the time difference. (car was imported from Canada)

The same guy give us a ride to a pension. People nice there. Not expensive at all. Reason is that it wasn’t in the summer season when the price is getting tripled.

Next morning we went again in port waiting for the correction paper. At the entrance of the port you are charged a fee for each person to enter. If you are foreigner you are going to pay more. The correction paper arrived at noon and the commissioner try to help unload the car that day. Guys if you need somebody to move faster be prepared to give bribe. Other way, your papers would be sent at the end of the pile and you might stay there 2-3 weeks. But if you expect to see them “flying” you would be totally disappointed. They have 2 speeds: slow and stop. We stay in the commissioner office almost all second day and we have never seen people more lazy.

BTW, don’t ask about taxes and fees. I can swear that some taxes and fees have been invented just for me.

Only papers we have been able to finish the second day where the ones from customs, and we found the container and move it to the unloading ramp. We spend 1.5 h waiting for a custom agent to come and open the container. Didn’t happend. I think was hidding somewhere, because he show up with 5 minutes before his work time was over.

We returned to same motel where we spend another night.

Third day, early in the morning we grab the custom agent directly from his office and, almost drag him, bring him to the ramp to open the container.

Finally it happened. We saw the car. In good shape.

We sign the papers and off we go.

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